Obamacare: Side effects include nausea, anxiety, really horny sexual predators, institutionalized fraud, and disingenuousness in Democrats. Speaker Pelosi told us Congress would have to pass the bill before we would fully find out what was in it. Now that Obamacare (which recently received the endorsement of Cuban strongman Fidel Castro) is the law of the land, a lot of details are coming out about what exactly the Democrats in Congress have thrust upon us.
One of the details we’re now learning about is that the bill will allow for your tax dollars to be converted to Viagra and given to convicted sex offenders. To correct this disturbing development Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), a medical doctor, offered an amendment to the Senate healthcare reconciliation bill which would have criminalized taxpayer-funded Viagra for sex offenders. Seems reasonable, right? A rapist shouldn’t have the opportunity to smile, wink at his victim, and say, “This raping was paid for by your tax dollars.” And yet despite its un-debatable public benefit, Senator Coburn’s amendment was defeated by a Senate vote of 57-42.
Does that mean fifty-seven Democratic United States senators honestly believe taxpayer dollars should be used to subsidize Viagra for convicted child molesters and rapists? Even on my most cynical day I couldn’t believe that. United States senators know right from wrong—a fact which may make the truth even more disgusting: Despite knowing the wrongness of allowing this egregious violation of the public trust to continue, these fifty-seven Democratic senators chose wrong. They voted against Senator Coburn’s amendment because its passage went against their political interests. You see, if Senator Coburn’s amendment had passed it would have required an additional vote in the House of Representatives. Obamacare just barely squeaked through that chamber in a narrow 219-212 vote. Rather than face another explosive political battle in the House, the Democrats are opting to let anything and everything undesirable about the law as it is written stand—even if it means having sexual predators with chemically-enhanced libidos gallivanting around in our neighborhoods.
How shameful.
The Democratic opposition to Senator Coburn’s amendment also revealed a great hypocrisy of the Democratic Party. In addition to its opposition to taxpayer-funded Viagra for rapists, Coburn’s amendment included provision to enact recommendations from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) for reducing Medicaid fraud.
In September 2009, Democratic Senator Tom Carper called the GAO recommendations “an enormous opportunity to save money” to the tune of “hundreds of millions of dollars.” And yet, Senator Carper and his fellow Democrats are now, apparently, against the recommendations. Their opposition is particularly disingenuous considering that a bulwark of their plan for funding Obamacare is by reducing fraud in Medicare and Medicaid
What inconsistency.
In torpedoing Senator Coburn’s amendment, Democrats also revealed the insincerity of their professed respect for independent non-partisan government agencies. In the run up to the vote on the healthcare reform bill Democrats were “absolutely giddy” to taut the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s estimates on the costs of Obamacare. They were more than happy to exploit the CBO’s non-partisan reputation when it suited their political agenda. But now that another non-partisan independent agency, the Government Accountability Office (sometimes known as “The Taxpayers' Best Friend”), has made recommendations that go against the Democrats’ agenda suddenly those non-partisan agencies aren’t so hot. If anything, the GAO report should carry greater weight than the CBO estimates. The GAO report analyzed what is, the CBO estimates only guessed what might be. If the Democrats were truly interested in non-partisan analysis, fiscal common sense, and sound public policy, they would not have voted against enacting the GAO recommendations for saving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
I’m sure a few hundred million dollars seems like chump change to the Congressional Democrats. After all, they just committed to spend over a trillion dollars on Obamacare. To the American people a few hundred million dollars is still a lot of money; most of us will never come close to having that much money. Is it too much to ask for the Democrats to put aside their petty political agendas in favor of being good stewards of the public treasury? Apparently they think so.
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