The Detroit News
This week marks the beginning of March Madness in college basketball as fans from across America will be rooting for their team in the NCAA Tournament.
In Washington, Congress will start its own version of March Madness as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will bring to the House Floor the massive health care bill. While college basketball's version of March Madness will be based on true competition, Washington's looks like it will not be so fair.
The American people have watched as the behemoth that is the health care bill has lumbered forward for the past year and they have been outraged at the substance of the bill and the process with which it has been built.
While the American people want Congress to focus on our economy and building an environment where new jobs can be created, they are dumbfounded that Congress would consider a health care bill that is funded in a large measure with job-killing tax increases. Seniors are concerned that they are being asked to shoulder much of the cost with more than $500 billion in cuts to Medicare on which they rely.
Those who love freedom are troubled by what many believe is an unconstitutional government mandate that will require everyone to buy government-approved health insurance or face fines, additional taxes or even jail.
In the effort to secure votes, the Democrats have resorted to questionable tactics. Americans were outraged by vote buying with the Louisiana Purchase and Cornhusker Kickback. And now Pelosi is hatching a truly mad scheme to pass this bill.
In fact, the plan under consideration would have the House pass the Senate bill without ever actually voting on it. This would be done with a perversion of the process that would have the House pass a rule that would "deem" the Senate bill passed if another piece of legislation amending the bill is passed.
Everyone would like it if their team could be deemed the winner of a game if something else happened, but in the real world they will actually have to score more points than their opponents. Only in Pelosi's Washington can you win the game without playing the game. This attempt to avoid accountability through questionable legislative maneuvering is wrong and will be rejected by the American people.
Proceeding with this massive bill is madness given the fiscal situation. Last year, our federal budget deficit was over $1.4 trillion and this year it is projected to exceed $1.6 trillion. Federal entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are facing insolvency. The Democrats' answer to these challenges is to enact another multitrillion-dollar entitlement program that cannot be sustained and threatens our economic recovery.
We all understand that health care needs to be reformed, and we can enact reforms that would lower the cost of care without burdening the taxpayers with massive new spending. We can do this by unleashing market forces by allowing consumers to purchase care across state lines and by enacting meaningful liability reform that would remove the need for doctors to practice defensive medicine. These commonsense reforms are not even being considered by the Democrat majority in Congress.
The fact that the Democrats have resorted to unseemly vote buying and questionable parliamentary tricks to pass this legislation should send a message that we need to start over. Congress should vote down this bill and start again with a clean sheet of paper. To continue with this fatally flawed legislation is truly madness.
U.S. Rep. Candice Miller is a Republican from Harrison Township.