Election day this last week encouraged me to ponder as to why not allow the citizens to vote on something so significant and so polarizing as the various health care bills? In local elections we can vote on where the money is spent - schools, bonds, etc. It would seem that overhauling the entire nation's health care industry, something that deals with our health and welfare and our abilities to receive this help would be worth allowing us the people the chance to vote on it.
When politicians hide these 2000 page bills from the public and push it through congress, bullying their own party members to vote for it, by default I don't trust it. After thinking about it, other than presidents, what is the last thing that we as a nation voted for? It would seem to me that we don't vote on things like this because it isn't the job of the federal government to do things like this. The government is looking to spend 1.2 trillion dollars on something extremely polarizing, this being our country and our taxes, shouldn't we the people have a say in the matter?
I worked as a Poll Worker on election day this year. It was a terrific experience, but that's another story.
ReplyDeletePoint: out of the 170 people that came in, I actually had 10 ask me, "Where's the question on the health care thing? Weren't we supposed to vote on that today?"
No joke.
Now, the first instinct is to make a comment about the intelligence quotient involved in that question, but stop and think.... James has a point, and these people apparently agree: why shouldn't we vote on this?
Of course, the obvious answer is: because we already voted. We voted for the representatives that are there voting on this for us. That's the simplistic and "civics class" answer. While I agree with it somewhat, there's a part of me that's simply not comfortable with the answer.
Maybe that's because I'm not convinced that the people we voted for and sent to Washington truly care what we think or what we need any longer. Maybe that's because I'm not convinced that they're not just in it for themselves, and for the power. Maybe that's because I'm not convinced that they're incorruptable.
Or that they aren't already corrupt.
When the Bankruptcy Amendments were up for debate in 2004 and 2005, I was convinced that our representatives need to do as Nascar drivers do: wear their sponsors' patches on their suit coats.
That way we know who paid for them, I mean, bought them off, I mean.... AHEM. Who lobbied the hardest and/or contributed the most to their individual campaigns.
I'd like to know it for both sides of the aisle: who are the insurance companies paying for? Who are SEIU, ACORN, and the unions paying for? Why is AARP all for this movement?
Something so sweeping, something that so fundamentally affects our individual freedoms, something that purports to support a right (that I am not wholly convinced we HAVE) to health care.... Doesnt' this make it nearly as important to a Constitutional Amendment in some respects?
Why would our representatives be so scared about letting the average person vote? Is it as Sen. Hatch said about bankruptcy: that his constituents were not smart enough to understand the complexities of the bill?
Or is it maybe because they're scared that we do understand it, and understand it all too well?