Preserving Government

The Republican has not yet won in Massachusetts but is expected to today, giving Republicans their 41st Senator and wreaking havoc with the “health care reform” bill currently undergoing debate in Congress. Let me be on record that I consider it necessary that Congress pass some sort of “health care reform” very soon, although I am not of the opinion that any bill at all, no matter how bad, is better than no bill at all.

Current thinking appears to be that the reaction of Congress to the loss of the 60th Senate seat will be to resolve the impasse by simply having the House pass the current Senate version of “health care reform.” I can think of almost nothing that would be, in my view, less appropriate. My reasons are not entirely to do with the differing versions of the bill, although I do consider the House version to be considerably less pernicious than the Senate one.

This is a spending bill, and by the terms of the constitution all such bills must originate in the House of Representatives. This would stand that procedure on its head.

More important, such a move would establish the Senate as the “senior” of what are supposed to be two equal houses of the Legislature, allowing the elitist Senate to run roughshod over the “people’s house” which is the House of Representatives. Such a move would take our government one more step toward oligarchy by rendering irrelevant that legislative body which is, by its elective nature, most required to be responsive to the will of the people.

I have written to my Representative, urging her not to vote in favor of the Senate bill in the event that it is presented to the House for consideration, and I urge you to do likewise. The integrity of our form of government is under attack, and by the Democratic Party no less, and action by the voters is needed now.