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Now, I know we won't hear from President Obama until tomorrow. I know things are far from finished. However, as of today I'm beginning to think the light at the end of the health care tunnel is that of an oncoming train. Hear me out.
I've remained fairly positive about Obama because my expectations are/were low. I always sympathized somewhat with Edwards because, despite his numerous other faults (known and unknown at the time) he was the only candidate to make poverty and related issues the centerpiece of his campaign. However, I did think that Obama was the best candidate of the leading contenders. I might have given my primary vote (I didn't have one: Colorado is a caucus state and I wasn't in-state at the time) to Dodd just because I like his voting record, but I did want Obama to win the primary. However, as I said, my expectations were low. I never thought he was all that liberal, much less a "progressive". I am only 22 years old, so I can remember basically two presidents: Clinton and George W. Bush. I am well aware that Clinton was far from optimal, with his support of NAFTA, the 1996 Telecom act and other things. However, when I think back to my childhood I can only think that everything was way better than it was during my early adolescence and youth under Bush. To say the least.
As the entire economy seemed to implode late in the election, I decided I would be happy if Obama could just make things (politically) like they were when I was a kid, when things were generally pointed in an upward direction, or at least stable. All I hoped for, really, was some stability instead of the massive train wreck that was the year 2008. So, I happily cast my first vote for President for Obama by absentee ballot. I will never forget the night Obama won the election. I felt like we all caught a piece of extraordinary magic. I watched the election in Boston and ended up jumping up and down in Kenmore Square with hundreds of strangers (mostly fellow students) shouting "yes we can!" while everybody drove by honking their horns and flashing the victory sign. I ended up watching the victory speech from Chicago in a sorority house with a bunch of people who had tears of joy running down their cheeks. It was surreal in the best possible way.
So far, I have to hand it to President Obama. He hasn't struck any major blows for progressivism, but that is okay. He has done very well stabilizing the economy and returning us to some semblance of normalcy. Well, at least I'm not waking up every morning wondering whether today is the day Great Depression II starts. I know there are huge problems with the labor market, particularly for people my age just getting out of college, but I know he can't make everything better all at once. Generally, I just wanted things to stop getting worse for eight years. Then, once we got all that out of our system, maybe we could concentrate on really making things a lot better. You know, the inspirational "leaving a better place for our children" stuff.
However, the way the health care debate has been going the past week has finally made me feel like Obama might allow things to get worse in a critical area. People we are counting on are equivocating all over the place about the importance of the public option. Various reports suggest that even if the public option from HR 3200 passes, it won't cover more than 20 million people by 2019. Then today Baucus came out with whatever it is you want to call that bill of his, offering us an "individual mandate" to purchase insurance from the very companies responsible for this mess, and threatening to fine lower and middle class families if they can't pay up, to the tune of nearly 15% of their income. I understand that this is not Obama's doing and that he's probably not happy with it. But if this constitutes the baseline for conference committee negotiations, we may seriously end up with a bill that puts the burden of "reform" on working Americans while megacorps get to skate away with bags full of new revenue, some of it from taxpayer subsidies. If I wanted that, I may as well have voted for Mitt Romney. Yes, that's right. And if everybody's intuition is right, and Obama wants to just sign something and be done with it, that means he may put his pen to something containing this toxic mix of elements.
This does not take away from the fact that the Obama administration is far, far better overall than the alternative. I'm not saying this is a deal-breaker for me. However, it will be an immense disappointment. When it came to health care, I never thought we'd get single payer from this administration. I'm not upset it's "off the table" because I could not envision the President who thrives on compromise putting something so divisive out there in the first place. I did think we might get the ability to join Medicare either for no direct cost, or by paying what would surely be relatively low premiums. Now, even under the most optimistic potential scenario, that will only be possible for just 20 million people? And under the worst case scenario, it won't be possible at all.
Like I said, it's not a deal-breaker. But if we end up with the worst of all worlds, anything resembling Baucus' plan, let's just say my enthusiasm will be severely curtailed. That is why today feels like a giant kick in the gut.
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