11/7/2009 5:01:00 AM
Latta: Health Care Bill is bad medicine
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| Congressman Bob Latta |
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BY ED GEBERT
Times Bulletin News Writer
egebert@timesbulletin.com
There is no mistaking how Congressman Bob Latta feels about the health care bill that is awaiting a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"I'll be here till Kingdom Come to vote no on this piece of legislation," Latta flatly stated in a conference call Friday morning. "I'll be here to make sure the right bill gets put out."
The health care reform debate has reached yet another climax in Washington, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spearheading the effort to pass a bill before Congress breaks for the holiday. There are two bills circulating from Democratic leadership, one in the Senate and the other in the House. Latta noted that the House bill is 1,990 pages long - almost twice as long as the bill that was abandoned at the end of the summer.
"We're trying to get through it as fast as we can," declared the 5th District representative. "They are trying to push this bill through as fast as they possibly can before anybody gets the chance to look at it... They don't want the American people to have a good chance to see what's in this piece of legislation, so what they are trying to do is to break as many arms as they can at this stage and get this bill out [Saturday]."
According to Latta, there is a good chance that a vote will not come up Saturday morning, and that many House democrats he has spoken with are either leaning toward voting it down or have already come out against it. For her part, Pelosi wants to get a positive vote before allowing representatives to head home to their districts. Latta asserted, "I don't think she wants to send anybody home because what happened the last time she sent people home, and when the American people got to show up at townhalls and meet with their members of Congress. All of a sudden this piece of legislation that they wanted to get done in the summer, went to September, October, and now into November."
Latta lists many objections to the bill, including the effect on the nation's small businesses if they are required to provide health insurance for all employees. He said, "We have 10 percent unemployment in this country. We're going to have more small businesses going out of business because they're not going to be able to afford it. More people are going to be losing their jobs because of this. We're looking at losing millions of jobs under this piece of legislation.
Another sticking point is the overall cost - more than $1 trillion, as well as the cost to the states from Medicaid coverage which would be pushed into state budgets.
He also railed against the secrecy in which the bills were prepared, saying that the pieces of legislation were written "in the darkness of the night" without input from those with other ideas.
"Barack Obama as a candidate said that he would have total transparency and that you would get to watch on C-Span everything that was going to be going on," declared Latta. "They locked these doors. They wouldn't talk to people. They wouldn't talk to Republicans. They wouldn't talk to the American people, and this is what they came up with."
Latta continued, "They're not going to cover everybody in these bills. They started out by saying we're going to have total coverage for everyone at lower cost. What we're ending up with is greater cost and at the same time not covering everybody."
In response, Republicans have put forward their own plan, which Latta claims, addresses issues like medical malpractice insurance, tort reform, and lowering premiums which are not a part of the Democrat's bill.
"We want this whole process to slow down, but at the same time we want people all talking at the table," Latta explained. "But the other side is, 'We've got to ram this through because we don't anybody to know what's in there, and once it's in there, good luck ever trying to get it out'."
With both sides settling in for a showdown, Latta related that he had heard a member of the Democrat leadership say that they hoped that some members of Congress would simply give in and agree to the bill this weekend so that they could go home. But Latta noted that he had packed enough clothes to get him through until Christmas if necessary. "If they've got such weak-kneed individuals who don't have any more guts than that, that's not much of a member of Congress," he stated in disgust. "If their members are so weak-minded, we're in trouble here in the Republic."
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Posted: Saturday, November 07, 2009
Article comment by:
Kirk
More republican rubbish. When will people learn that doing something is better then doing nothing. Look where we are now after the republican mess of 8 years. Our nation is in the worst condition its ever been but guess what YEAH its improving thanks to Obama.
Posted: Saturday, November 07, 2009
Article comment by:
Carol Young
Bob Latta made the statement that the healthcare protesters (all 4000 of them, not 1,000,000 as had been reported by G. Gordon Liddy's producer)) paid their own way on buses to DC. This is so NOT TRUE. The buses were paid for by a guy named David Koch, a billionare who also supplied signs, talking points, petitions, and donuts to protesters.
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