It appears that House Democrats will have just enough votes to pass the healthcare reform bill when it finally comes up for consideration sometime Sunday evening.
Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak and several other anti-abortion Democrats have reached an agreement with President Barack Obama that basically allows them to save face while voting for the bill. Obama will sign an executive order stating that the healthcare reform bill provides no federal funds for abortion, even though the bill has never provided federal funds for abortion. It’s the equivalent of Obama signing an executive order guaranteeing that federal funds will not be used to reimburse child molesters, but apparently it’s the kind of ego-stroking gesture that is needed to placate congressmen these days.
Stupak stated several times in a Sunday afternoon presser that he can now vote for the bill because it protects the “sanctity of life” that is so important to him and other anti-abortionist Democrats. So precious is the “sanctity of life” to Stupak that he was threatening to vote against legislation providing health insurance coverage that could save the lives of 45,000 Americans a year. Whatever.
If and when the bill does come up for a vote in the House, Georgia’s seven Republican House members obviously will vote against it. The only Georgia Democrats who are expected to vote for it are John Lewis, Hank Johnson, David Scott and Sanford Bishop. Democrats Jim Marshall and John Barrow will vote no.
Let’s look at the kind of people Marshall and Barrow have decided to align with by voting against the bill. There have been teabagger gatherings all over the capitol area this weekend as the anti-healthcare faction holds its “Code Red” protest. Here’s what the teabaggers said to some of the Democratic congressmen who are voting for the healthcare reform bill:
Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and fellow Congressional Black Caucus member Andre Carson (D-IN) related a particularly jarring encounter with a large crowd of protesters screaming “kill the bill”. . . and punctuating their chants with the word “nigger.”
Standing next to Lewis, emerging from a Democratic caucus meeting with President Obama, Carson said people in the crowd yelled, “kill the bill and then the N-word” several times, while he and Lewis were exiting the Canon House office building.
“People have been just downright mean,” Lewis added.
And that wasn’t an isolated incident. Early this afternoon, standing outside a Democratic whip meeting in the Longworth House office building, I watched Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) make his way out the door, en route to the neighboring Rayburn building. As he rounded the corner toward the exit, wading through a huge crowd of tea partiers and other health care protesters, an elderly white man screamed “Barney, you faggot” — a line that caused dozens of his confederates to erupt in laughter . . .
“This is incredible,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) told reporters of the slurs. “It’s shocking to me.” He said he hadn’t heard such vitriol since March 15, 1960 when he was protesting segregation laws that forced him to sit in the back of buses. “A lot of us have been saying for a long time that much of this, much of this, is not about health care at all,” Clyburn said. “I think a lot of those people today demonstrated this is not about health care.”
What is it about, a reporter asked?
“It’s about trying to extend a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful.”
Yes, these are the kind of people with whom Jim Marshall and John Barrow have found common cause: racists who call John Lewis a “nigger,” homophobes who call Barney Frank a “faggot,” and berserk right-wingers who have been spitting on congressmen who support healthcare reform.
I’m sure that Marshall and Barrow feel very proud to be associated with such a fine group of patriotic Americans.
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