THE LIE OF THE YEAR

Last week, the St. Petersburg Times' Politifact came out with an article titled 'Politifact's Lie of the Year: Death Panels'.  The article discusses the origin of the term - Sarah Palin's Facebook page - and the ripple effects it has had.  It talks about how ridiculous the claim was, how wrong, how politically motivated the whole argument was. 

But last night, Senator Jim DeMint, on the floor of the Senate, brought to light two things.  The first is the fact that there is, indeed, a rationiing board, called the Independent Medical Advisory Board (IMAB).  This board is charged with making sure the per capita growth rate of Medicare spending is reduced.  This will apparently not be done through rationing, though.  According to page 1004, the IMAB:

"shall not include any recommendation to ration health care"

Reeeally?  So, a recommendation to, say, restrict poor women under the age of 50 from getting yearly mammograms because it is 'wasteful' isn't rationing?  Not that anything like that would happen, of course.  Our government officials would never do anything as crazy as that. 

It's amazing how something so ridiculous and far-fetched, as supporters of the bill call death panels, keeps popping up.  Why does it keep mysteriously ending up in all of the legislation so far?  Because rationing health care is the only way to make this behemoth even remotely affordable.  And so the democrats keep putting it in.  When it is uncovered that the boards are back in, the knee-jerk reaction of the democrats is to denounce those who dare to mention their existence, calling them crazy, ridiculous, fringe, unhinged.  None of which explain why these boards keep ending up in their legislation.

As usual, they ridicule and deride, instead of attempting to explain or justify.  One would assume that is because there is just no explaining or justifying the rationing boards.  There are too many countries now that have them, and there is a plethora of horror stories about them.

The second thing is a rules change that Sen. DeMint exposed.  The Presiding officer decided that, although the wording of the subsection expressly uses the terms 'rules change', it is not, in fact, a rules change.

DEMINT: and so the language you see in this bill that specifically refers to a change in a rule is not a rule change, it’s a procedure change?


THE PRESIDING OFFICER: that is correct.

DEMINT: then I guess our rules mean nothing, do they, if they can redefine them. Thank you. and I do yield back.

This is not just unconstitutional.  It is a powergrab of breathtaking proportions.  Not only is it taking power from future congresses, it is taking power over all of our lives and making it nearly impossible to wrest it back.

For those who think this board is a harmless bureaucratic committee, think again.  There is a damn good reason why they have made this and only this unrepealable.  It's the only way to keep this nightmare of a bill from bankrupting the country down the road.  There must be rationing to keep it solvent - there are not enough doctors and nurses to care for us all, and there isn't nearly enough money to pay for it.

They are trampling all over our Constitution in order to make sure they have unchallenged power and control. 

That is not democracy; that is, as Senator DeMint so aptly put it, tyranny.