Congress Must Veto Cap and Trade and Healthcare Reform Legislation

In this uncertain and fragile economy, it should be apparent that the decisions to approve or reject proposed Cap and Trade and Healthcare Reform legislation may be among the most critical our lawmakers have made in decades. The good news is that with each passing day the costs and benefits of each proposal are becoming clearer and a growing consensus is building that each proposal should be emphatically rejected by both Houses of Congress. Each piece of legislation represents the worst of the liberal agenda of this administration, is likely to cost our economy dearly and will not accomplish its stated goal.

Cap and Trade is intended to mitigate global warming. That was tried and failed in Europe and without participation by China, India and other emerging industrial economies, it will fail this time too. However, the charade will cause electricity costs to skyrocket and inflate the cost of virtually everything we consume. It will also encourage U.S. industrial companies to move abroad, where they can avoid its onerous limitations, and take our jobs with them. At the moment, Healthcare Reform proposals favor some form of government-controlled or sponsored program. Those proposals will likely bankrupt the nation. We need healthcare reform that will expand insurance coverage to everyone and improve the quality and availability of healthcare for all of our citizens. That reform will also need to pay for itself and keep costs from skyrocketing over the long term.

Some believe that the pending bankruptcy of California, New York and New Jersey, bastions of liberalism and free government spending for decades, offer a glimpse of the future of America, if either piece of legislation, as proposed, becomes law. Those states are attempting to hold their state legislatures accountable for their respective predicaments, and some are contemplating rewriting their state constitutions in order to prevent irresponsible government action in the future. We should hold the U.S. Congress similarly accountable for its actions before it’s too late for our entire nation.

It is a pathetic fact of life that Congress cannot always be trusted to act in our best interest and even more pathetic that our only recourse as a nation is to vote its members out of office years after the damage has been done. After more than two hundred years of weeding out the bad through elections, the best we have been able to do is to seat a Congress that has difficulty abiding our own laws and upholding the public’s trust. The sad truth is that, with far too few exceptions, many of these men and women might be serving time in prison if they had not been elected to serve time in Congress.

However, as trustees of our government, Congress does have an obligation to act in the nation’s best interest. I fail to see how hastily ramming through either piece of thousand-page-plus significant legislation, especially without reading it (as they did the stimulus plan earlier this year), is in our nation’s best interest. The effective dates for most requirements imposed by either—Cap and Trade or Healthcare Reform—is many years in the future, so what’s the rush?

Absent any real recourse, Congress should be required to “eat its own cooking” and feel firsthand the impact of its actions. It should be forced to consider the impact on global warming of its members jetting off to attend frivolous engagements. If Congress’ actions fail our economy, its own ranks and million-dollar office budgets, paid for with tax dollars, should be streamlined accordingly. Furthermore, congressional pensions should shrink as social security and Medicare benefits shrink and Congress should be prevented from raising their salaries until the economy substantially recovers. President Obama campaigned for healthcare reform by proposing healthcare insurance for everyone similar to that enjoyed by members of Congress and I hope he keeps his promise. If some version of the current healthcare proposals passes into law, I look forward to chatting with my local congressman as we wait in line for hours to see our doctors.