Cost: One Hundred Million Just to Talk
November 23, 2009
On Saturday, November 21, the U.S. Senate voted to allow the health care bill to reach the floor where it could be discussed. Not voted on. Not passed. Just for debate, just to talk about it. Some of the costs to talk are hidden. One was not so hidden. Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas charged the American people $100 million dollars…just to talk about it. That was the cost of her vote. There were other payoffs in the one thousand plus page document. Just to talk about it. Are those costs and the one hundred million dollars still owed even if the bill isn’t passed? Apparently so. The Senate majority leader thinks so.
I disagree with this system. I cannot see how the American people are benefitted by paying the good Senator Lincoln of Arkansas and ninety-nine other senators to talk. We love the Constitution. It has served us well in generally keeping the thieves in Washington from imprisoning us and from dipping into the federal exchequer to pay for trips to France and other multi-million dollar private projects. It needs to be amended, however, to prevent the American public from paying $100 million dollars to Senator Lincoln and her constituents just to talk about a piece of proposed healthcare legislation.
I propose that the Constitution be amended so that the title of any legislation dictates what’s in the legislation itself. That way we wouldn’t have to wade through twelve hundred pages of legislation to ferret out what isn’t healthcare and what is a fleecing of the American public.
I propose that the old girl be amended with language granting the President a line item veto on any appropriation bill so that these expenditures can be controlled. It should be a limited veto power subject to being overridden by a simple majority vote of the legislature. Such a power could prevent a one hundred million dollar expenditure just to talk about healthcare legislation. Maybe it could prevent the military from spending two hundred dollars on a T-shirt and one thousand dollars for a ball & p hammer they don’t need.
Maybe then, the American public could receive the legislation to which they are entitled without having to pay their already overpaid representatives JUST TO TALK.