The Most Frightening Thing Tonight: Congress

Get ready everyone, the Health Care Reform bill is about to arise from the hallowed halls of Congress. It won’t look ominous, but contained within these simple (yet completely unintelligible) pages will be a Government program which the blood-sucking power of Dracula on steroids.

For Republicans it appears that the Health Care Reform bill will contain that dreaded and all-consuming ‘public option’ provision. They will be running throughout the nation heralding their warnings that “the public option is coming, the public option is coming.” In their earnest attempt to regain the position of a controlling majority in both or either house, they will implore the citizenry to take up their pitchforks and torches and run the Democratic monsters out of town and to destroy the monstrous Health Care Reform bill before it can harm our children, the elderly or god-forbid our corporate profit margins. Hell, forget the children and the elderly, protect those profits. By golly, our campaign contributions and lobbyist paid boondoggles are being threatened. This evil will not prevail; as long as Republicans have the power to filibuster or to attach amendments to the bill, nothing will stop them from finding ways to limit the impact that the bill will have on their finances. Thank God, Congress has its own health care program and will be protected from being treated in the same manner as the common citizenry.

Democrats are also frightened by this bill. They are aware that they are awakening a monster of unimaginable proportions, an entitlement beast that has the potential to grow ever larger and more demanding than anything they have ever experienced or released into the public realm. But they are unable to stop themselves, they are being driven forward by a sacred belief and an undeniable need to save us all. No truly, it is undeniable; they made this a promise of their campaign and they can’t see a way out except to deliver a Health Care Reform program. And so the Democrats, and who knows maybe even a Republican or two, will insert their old and moldy concepts of how to serve the public by creating a Government imposed method for improving the health care system. It doesn’t matter that they don’t understand the organism that they are experimenting with, they are wise men/women; and their fore-bearers were wise men/women that had created similar creatures. What is there to be afraid of they wonder in their heart of hearts, when sitting in their Government offices late at night.

As we watch from the comfort of our couches, why do we have that chilling feeling and the hairs on the back of our necks springing up? Why the sense of doom falling upon our shoulders, and the churning in our guts that all is not right with the world. Is that cold sensation passing across our scalps an omen, a portent of our demise?

Well the creature is about to be released, and should it break its bonds; we may find that the monstrosity’s appetite is beyond our ability to satisfy. Perhaps we should have made sure that we had embedded controls and limits on the bureaucratic behemoth. And we wonder if we will all be beseeching ourselves with punishing ponderings, “Why, oh, why didn’t we ask someone who knew something about the danger we were unleashing?”
Happy Halloween!