When I hear conservatives talk about their hopes of getting rid of President Barack Obama and the GOP again taking complete control of Congress, I get this feeling of dread in me. The reason why is because it’s quite obvious to me that those who wish for such things, have no idea what they’ll be getting themselves into. If they think things are bad now, give it back to those who made it bad in the first place and see what happens to this country.
Of course, if a Republican president takes over the White House and a Republican majority takes over Congress, and then if things go south, they’ll blame Obama and Democrats for it all. Even if they hold it for eight years as they did during six years of George W. Bush’s term and six more years before his term even began, they’ll do their best to blame it all on the Democrats, the ones now controlling the Senate and President Obama.
They blame President Obama now for even what he had nothing to do with, such as the bailout of the banks. I think many conservatives actually think that it was Obama who gave the bailout to the banks when it was actually George W. Bush and his administration, shortly before Obama even took office.
President Obama’s administration were the ones who got the $787 billion stimulus package passed which mostly went to stimulate the economy after most economist predicted that if something wasn’t done on a grand scale, there would be a much larger recession for the country to face. Obama did what he felt was the best thing to do at the time, which you probably could say the same thing about the Bush administration concerning the bail out of the banks.
I for one didn’t expect things to happen overnight as far as recovery. The near collapse of the financial markets, which by the way didn’t happen overnight, wasn’t because of the stimulus or even the bailout of the banks. It was because of bad financial policy for many years before the near collapse, mostly to do with the deregulation of the housing market. We can blame several factors concerning that but the least to blame is Obama and his administration; they weren’t in the White House when it happened, they just responded to it when they took over.
The reason I point all this out is because of the fact that all of the Republican nominees, especially former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney, want to deregulate the banks again so that bankers and Wall Street can continue doing whatever they wish, even at the detriment of the health of the economy. The reason they want to do this is because Republican voters cannot seem to figure out that the reason our country went into the worse recession we’ve ever had is because of deregulation. Instead, they think it’s all about the government having too much money and spending too much money.
It’s true; our government does spend too much money and that’s part of the problem, but not all of it. But it isn’t just Democrats who have done it; there was more spending than there ever was during the Bush administration and by a Republican controlled Congress at the time.
Many conservatives and even many independents don’t like the Affordable Health Care Act, and they don’t like it because of the mandate for everyone to buy insurance. What they don’t seem to realize is that the mandate was not the original idea of the Obama Administration or even the Democratic controlled congress at the time it was passed. It was an original idea of the GOP way back when the Clinton Administration was trying to pass a universal health care law. It was rejected by the Clinton Administration because they wanted a single-payer health care plan, which eventually failed.
The reason why the mandate ended up in the bill passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in 2009, was because it was the only way to get it passed. This is so that the health care insurance industry could continue making profits on selling the American people insurance because of the fact they would no longer be able to turn down anyone for coverage because of pre-existing conditions, age or any other factor.
What would have been better and what was originally desired by the Democrats and President Obama was a single-payer system that covered everyone who could not afford it on their own, which would have been paid for by taxes. This would have allowed the government to get a serious handle on health care costs which had gone out the window, making it impossible for many Americans to afford health insurance. Something needed to be done and what needed to be done had been avoided up to that point, and that was because it was political dynamite; it was much easier for past presidents and past congresses to kick the can down the road.
Instead, President Obama and the then Democrat controlled congress acted and passed the bill which would later be known as Obamacare. It was far from perfect and far from what Obama and the Democrats wanted, but something had to be done and they took the political risk and passed it. They paid dearly for it later when the midterm 2010 elections came and the Tea Party swamped the elections to put in “No-Compromise” Tea Party candidates who hated Obama and anything and everything he stands for. The GOP took complete control of the House of Representatives and also took away the super majority in the Senate from the Democrats.
All Republican candidates for president vow to repeal Obamacare because that pleases the Tea Party who plays an important part in who will be the next president. Now of course, these kinds of promises are just rhetorical because a president cannot repeal anything on his own without the help of Congress. But if they were given complete control of Congress, then that could be very likely.
With the repeal of Obamacare, it would be the end of health care for many Americans. We would have to go back to the old system which cut out health care for tens of millions of citizens because of cost and pre-existing conditions. The cost would continue to skyrocket and as the health care insurance industry continued to make bigger profits, more and more Americans would become unable to afford it. This would lead to health care becoming a luxury only afforded by the wealthy. I have to ask many of my fellow citizens; is that what we want for this country?
The only plan Republicans came up with during the health care debate at the beginning of the Obama’s term in office was a plan to cover just 3 million citizens, leaving still tens of millions without health care. That kind of plan is entirely inadequate to solve a problem that if not solved, will eventually spiral completely out of control and again take this country’s economy down.
Our decision as a nation of who will be president for four more years and who shall control our Congress next November will decide the fate of our country. We can make an informed decision and realize that though recovery is slow, our economy is recovering. Or, we can hand things back to the Republicans, they can reward the wealthy with more tax cuts and the middle class can continue to struggle to survive. The choice is clear to me; let President Obama continue to help our economy recover by giving him another 4 years and let’s also give him more power to do it by giving him a majority in both houses of our Congress, instead of letting it be controlled by the party of “No”.