A post by Pat
Isn’t it curious that there was more of a media debate about giving drivers licenses to illegals than about health care coverage? Where are the editorials and the Sunday show discussions about how mean-spirited and unfair it is to exclude illegals from health care? I would have expected to see more like this from E.J. Dionne.
Wilson and Our National Character
I am not at all at peace with the fact that the one issue about which a member of Congress chose to rise up and accuse our president of being a liar related to the charge that our chief executive wasn’t doing enough to build walls between illegal immigrants and health coverage.
How mean-spirited will we allow ourselves to become? How coarsened has our political culture made us? We like to see ourselves as a generous, caring and welcoming nation. Are we losing that part of our character?
There isn’t a debate because it is understood that the circumstances require certain things to be said now. Obama expressed it this way in an interview with Latino correspondents:
Health Care Debate: Immigrants Land On Sacrificial Altar
Obama told Hispanic Link columnist José de la Isla and other Latino correspondents that the animosity around both issues will be tough to overcome at present time. “I think that, with respect to the debate that’s taking place around health care reform now, it is not going to be possible to provide coverage for undocumented workers,” he said, noting that health coverage had already been extended to 11 million children including undocumented ones. “That was a fight that had been out there for a decade. And it was a huge accomplishment.”
We all know it is inevitable. Maybe Joe Wilson should have said, “You deceive”.
This is exactly what I am afriad of with any heathcare bill. They will add to after somethign passes until we don’t even recognize what it once was.
Apparently we’re in a lose-lose situation. If the president told the truth, then Joe Wilson lied. If the president lied, then Joe Wilson did a bad thing by exposing the deception, which was done for a noble cause. Either we’re liars or we’re mean. In either case we’re racists.
It seems we must acquiesce to bankrupting the nation and burying our children in debt and letting Obama decide who among us lives or dies. To follow any other path makes us the moral equivalent of Nazis.
The problem is obvious. We can’t win because the game has been rigged. If we want to get out of this box, we’ve got to change the rules.
The sad fact is that even if a bill passes totally excluding illegal immigrants from healthcare and with citizenship requirements, the supreme court will negate it to allow them to have coverage. We all remember the court requiring schooling for illegal immigrants in the 80’s.
Does anyone know when this “You shall not call the President a liar” rule was created?