So much for bipartsionship

So the only truly bipartisan amendment offered to the health care plan being debated in the Senate was an amendment to allow importation of drugs from Canada and a few other countries where drug makers often sell the same drugs they sell in the US at cheaper prices. This was an issue President Obama strongly supported in his campaign. It would have provided a powerful incentive for drug companies to level out their prices between nations. It would have cut the cost of health care for all of us.

So what did the Senate do? It defeated the amendment under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry. So much for campaign promises. So much for bipartisanship. So much for promises that the health care bill will reduce our health care costs. So much for claims that the Republicans are the party owned by big business and the Democrats are the champions of the little guy.

I was so fed up with the Republicans when Bush left office that the Democrats might have enlisted me as a staunch Democrat for the rest of my life. But the performance of this administration over the past ten months, and especially of the Democratically-controlled Congress, has been so abysmal that they have lost me for good. I would rather have the narrow-minded, priggish, right-wing Republicans in power than this group - and that is saying a lot! Bad as the Republicans were -- and they were bad -- they weren't as dangerous to the nation as this group of free-spending liberal ideologues are. No nation in history has survived the debt burden as a proportion of GDP that they are placing on us, and I doubt we will survive it either.