RSSAmerica’s Elitists and Obamacare
Gene Lalor | January 12, 2010
Ever get the feeling that those people in Congress just don’t get it?
I don’t just mean they don’t get the idea of why they are there in the first place, to represent their various constituencies and to create legislation that serves the best interests of the nation. They surely don’t get that.
I mean that, for the most part, although they technically represent us, they seem different, above it all, as if they exist in another sphere, on another plane.
Every two or six years they descend to the commoners’ level to troll for votes from the democratic masses, when they rub elbows with the hoi polloi, glad-hand some few select constituents, bestow uninvited, germ-laden kisses on a few babies to demonstrate they’re just your average guys and gals, and then probably lather on the Purell and gargle Listerine after they’re ushered into their limos.
Infatuated with wealth, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “The rich are different from you and me” to his sometimes buddy Ernest Hemingway who gently corrected him with the rejoinder, “Yes, they have more money.”
Both writers were correct.
With some few exceptions, our elected leaders also have more money than the rest of us and, yes, they are different from you and me as a result.
Recently, CNBC featured a slideshow report on “The Richest Members of the US Congress” based on research conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics which determined that there were 237 millionaires in Congress, out of 435 members of the House and 100 senators: http://bit.ly/1ficst
My math-challenged brain computes that 44.3% of our D.C. representatives have a net worth above 7 figures, many vastly above 7 figures, a few well above 9 digits. Of the remaining 298 congresspeople, I think it would be fair to guesstimate that half approach those brackets and the rest might get there before they leave office.
There’s something about a seat in the House of Representatives or the Senate which tends to fatten wallets. Just ask Lyndon Baines Johnson, if you could. When he was elected to congress from Texas’ 10th CD in 1937, he was a virtual pauper. When he became vice-president in 1960, he was a millionaire.
Go figure.
Now, I believe in the capitalistic economic system which is far superior to any other type of economy and I don’t begrudge anyone’s wealth, even if it’s inherited wealth like Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s or whether it’s wealth gained by marrying it, such as Sen. John Kerry’s. All I am saying is that “The rich are different from you and me,” and not only because they have more money.
Thus. when Congress votes for tax increases, even tax increases on themselves, the rich or soon-to-be rich, they do so from a different perspective than you or I may have. They have more than adequate financial cushions to fall back on.
When Congress votes for multi-billion dollar and trillion dollar programs, such as Obamacare, or for huge, disguised taxes hidden in such programs as Cap-and-Trade legislation, programs which some say could bankrupt the nation, rest assured that if we are bankrupted, our leaders won’t be leaping off any roofs. More likely, they’ll tap their off-shore accounts and, if worse comes to worse, will ride off somewhere into the sunset and not look back.
America’s founders may have come from the elite class but they carefully crafted a constitutional, democratic republic. Their vision for America was that it be governed by citizen-legislators who would serve their country for a limited period then return to their farms or businesses and let other everyday citizens take over.
We have allowed that vision to be subverted and the result is the plutocracy we have today, a government out of synch with the governed, a government consisting of incumbents elected over and over, a government out of control.
Not that Republicans are any better but the ruling Democrat Party, the “party of the people,” boasts as many multi-millionaires with 7 Dems in the top 10 and a slight edge, 26-24 in the richest fifty. (2002 figures: http://bit.ly/mIOmR)
Again, wealth (not greed, Mr. Gecko!) is good. It’s only when wealth clouds judgement that it becomes a negative factor, a prime example of which is the House and Senate health care bills.
Because both have been hammered out in secret for the most part, another broken pledge by the president, this is somewhat speculative but it seems that when it all comes out in the wash certain groups will be the inequitable winners and most of the taxpaying public the losers.
The poor, the unions, Nebraskans, and Louisianians are among those who will snatch Obamacare’s golden ring, along with the most elite of America’s elite, Washington politicians.
Absent from both the House and Senate bills will be one of the most significant health care reforms, tort reform to cap outlandish court settlements much of which goes to lawyers. Not coincidentally, a major financial supporter of the Democrat Party is the Trial Lawyers Association and the majority of House and Senate members are attorneys.
Absent also will be any reference in these ersatz universal coverage programs to incorporating in Obamacare the very people who will pass Obamacare, the Washingtonians who bask in their own version of “cadillac plans.”
A few pols made noises over the past year about forcing the 9 million government employees and retirees, including congresspeople, to surrender their gold-plated Federal Employees Health Benefit Program (FEHBP) and join the rest of us in Obama’s scheme.
No doubt the powers-that-be, the powers who govern those who govern us, got to them, lectured them on the perks due them as America’s elite, and the noises subsided.
It’s said that the rich get richer and the poor . . . have babies. More apropos today is that the elite get to keep their FEHBP while the rabble, well, we get the leavings, aka Obamacare.
Contributor's website: http://www.genelalor.com/
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