The reason I think the Kill The Bill Club are so wrong.. is that we do not even have a final fill

[Peacetrain]

What are you going to kill?

According to the all knowing.. we were never even supposed to get this far.. we will have a HCR bill

Now instead of lobbying and cheering on our elected officials to make sure the best of both the house and senate bills are in the ACTUAL FINAL BILL..

we have a chorus of kill the bill?

What on earth is wrong here? You want though out the bread before it is even baked?

[newfie11]

1. Thank you! n/t

[donco6]

2. The usual chorus.

"Wait - wait until the bill is written, then speak up - no, wait until it's through the House and see what the Senate comes up with - no, wait until the Senate is through and it goes to committee - no, wait until the compromises are voted on - no, wait until the president has to sign it - no, wait . . . oh, well, I guess it's a law - might as well support it now!"

[Peacetrain]

4. BULL HOCKEY..

[donco6]

6. Just speaking the truth in love. n/t

[Peacetrain]

9. I am going to give you the same advice I give my son..

Never asking for something will get one answer,,NO..
That is what kill the bill is..

[donco6]

19. And that's why we should speak up at every opportunity.

Before the bill, during the bill and after the bill. Never "wait" for the next version.

[Peacetrain]

Kill the Bill is surrender..pure and simple

[donco6]

23. Kill the Bill is democracy in action. n/t

[Peacetrain]

27. Kill the Bill is surrender..and encourging others to surrender is cowardly

The bills have passed the house and senate.. they will go to the President to sign.. sure throw you hands up in the air and give up .. I can't stop you.. but do me a favor and stop trying to influence other people to just give up.

If we just give up, we will end up with the worst in both bills instead of the best. The house has a PO and the Senate bill is better for women

[donco6]

42. Free speech - ya gotta love it!

I do. And I'll work to influence anyone, anytime. Thanks anyway!

[dkf]

3. That is why celebrating the bill is wrong too.

This is all premature and could come back to bite us

[Peacetrain]

5. So instead of putting out all that we can to support the parts of the bills that will be

dissected and then brought back together, sitting on the side lines and chanting kill the bill will get you and me what?

[dkf]

12. If we think we have any input in this backroom shenanigans i think we are fooling ourselves.

I'm disgusted with this process of selling out the rest of the country to buy votes. Yuck.

[Peacetrain]

16. Giving birth is a messy and painful process.Bringing these two bill together is the birth of HCR

[Diamonique]

25. I'm don't like it either, but...

... this isn't something that just started happening with this bill. This is the way politics has always worked with every bill that's ever been passed into law. I'm not saying it's right... just saying it's nothing new.

I'm sure I'll like some things about the final bill and I'll hate others. That's pretty much standard for me.

[treestar]

47. If you insist on looking at it that way

Not a single piece of legislation was enacted without selling out some part of the population.

[Tom Rinaldo]

15. The practical effect of liberal "kill the bill" sentiments now

is to increase the urgency of efforts made now to appease some liberal critics with enough progressive improvements so that they will support the final version. One reason why Bernie Sanders got that funding for health care clinics was because there was some concern he could have been persuaded to not back cloture.

[ProSense]

7. Kill the bill is completely idiotic

Who is going to kill it: every Senator who voted for it is out promoting it as a historic piece of legislation.

[Peacetrain]

11. What the heck are we killing? that is what I want to know.. Instead of

gathering together to lobby for the best parts of both bills.. we have people wanting to give up before we even start.

I cannot handle defeatists.

[ProSense]

31. The bill

The kill the bill crowd doesn't want any bill. They're not going to be satisfied with the final bill either, even if by a miracle it includes a public option.

Again, who is going to kill it?

[Peacetrain]

34. There are two things I cannot stomach.. cowards and quitters..

Just when we need people the most to influence the best being picked out of those bills..we get a chorus to guaranteed that the worst will be picked.. kill the bill? they have no idea what they are killing

[Sheepshank]

52. absolutely right!!!

kill bill is a call for status quo. Not a good arrangement under any sort of circumstances. Kill Bill is to kill the bill in it's entirety because something, a part and "particle" of the bill missing, that it doesn't appear to be possible, or probably everything everyone wants. There is no final, carved in stone bill yet...what is there to kill? At what point does any passage of any bill render the document stagnant and not open for future amendments? How many amendments and adjustments have been made to Medicare since it's original signing into law?

[OHdem10]

8. C.'on, we all know --Kill the Bill , refers to the Center Right Senate

Bill.

You also know this is the final bill and you are supporting
the first step to privatization of health care.

[Umbral]

29. Of course we do and the OP is nothing but a lame attempt at defusing the situation. nt

[Peacetrain]

30. BULL HOCKEY.. sitting on your butt and doing nothing is not defusing anything but

guaranteeing the worst of both bills.. What is lame is an attempt to influence people to keep them quiet

[Umbral]

41. Wait, I was mistaken. It's not another lame attempt to defuse the situation...

Its another lame attempt to blame the failures of our elected officials on the electorate. "You didn't do enough!" "You didn't make enough calls or send enough emails or write enough letters or make a big enough ass of yourself at the town halls!" "It's your fault the bill isn't what you want!"

[Peacetrain]

43. Fine..... just stop trying to influence others from giving up

[Frances]

10. I think the Kill the Bill people

want to weaken Obama and the Democratic Party.

Remember, the failure of the Clintons' health care bill led to Newt Gingrich and the Republicans taking over Congress.

If you think that was a good thing, then you should support Kill the Bill.

[Peacetrain]

13. The want to kill a bill we do not even have yet? Yep good way to insure

the next round of republicans and worse yet.

[TheKentuckian]

14. What does anyone realistically think will happen to improve this thing?

I'm not a Kill Bill Caucus member (yet, anyway) but that is a political calculation that failing to pass this turd will actually make Congress even more yellow and corporate friendly as well as result in a worse mid-term.

So far, so stankass as far as I can see. Thats not from the perspective of perfection but just acceptable. I've also become convinced that some folks will stand up for literally anything Democrats come up with, no matter how crappy.

I'll go along but I'm pissed because the corporations MUST be put on a lesh not further entrenched and empowered. We migh be doing something that will be better than what we have but we are far as hell from acceptable and workable much less fucking perfect. What is perfection anyway? I think that might be the cop-out phrase of the year. Letting the perfect stand in the way of the good means you have to have good and an ideal. The ideal might actually be a NHS but no one seems to want that. I'd guess for the purposes and context of theis discussion we might say single payer is perfection. My issues with this crap bill have nothing to do with single payer or even really a public plan so any use of perfection seems stupid as hell to me.

[Peacetrain]

17. Oh well , if you sit on the sidelines, you will get exactly what you asked for.. and yes

not helping these elected officials see what we really want out of these bills with a little TLC and encouragement.. (not only for them but for us) will get you exactly that.

[TheKentuckian]

33. Come on Peace. I've been on this all year and said nothing about giving up

but it should be pretty clear that our voices have not counted for much so far at all. The most unpopular parts stay in or come back from the grave the most popular punted.

You can't just pretend there hasn't been a process in place that reboots its self back to roughly Baucus.

[Peacetrain]

38. I am not giving up.. NEVER EVER.. there is a PO in the house bill

there are better parts of the senate bill for women.. this bill is going to go through, and I am going to write, cajole, post in here , talk locally do everything I can to get the best of both..

I am not going to get everything I want.. I knew that from the get go.

But I am also going to make sure that when this is signed, I have done everything I could have done, and then get right back to work.. lobbying for the things that did not get in there.

This is an open door.. If I can get a foot through it now, I can get the whole thing opened..

[Armstead]

18. Please read the thread I just posted about the time to question is BEFORE

[Peacetrain]

20. You have two bills now that have to be reconciled.. and there elements in both

that would be better for us.. Now is not the time to throw up your hands and give up, or encouraging others to give up.

[Armstead]

48. When we try to push for better we are called "bill killers"

[Frances]

24. And I posted in another thread

that we have to be realistic.

Yes, it is important for our Congress people to know that we wanted single payer and that we hope to get a public option at some point.

But we should also let them know that we think it's better to have this bill than no bill.

This bill can be expanded in the future, but if this bill goes down to defeat, then no Dem President will ever try again. If FDR, HST, LBJ, Bill Clinton, and Obama cannot get a health bill for people under 65, then no one can. And no one will try.

[Armstead]

49. Can't be changed better if the foundation is inherently bad

That is what we are doing. Building a bad foundation.

If you actually want improvements that is not the "realistic" way to go about it.

There are some things in the bill that are helpful. But they are outweighed by the poison pills that will undermine any further reforms.

As I said in the other thread, remember NAFTA, Most-Favored Nation status with China, banking deregulation, broadcast deregulation...etc.

We are stuck with those, but gthey have become sacred cows, even though most people don;t like the results.

[ipaint]

21. The only thing we are definately getting is a bill with a mandate.

Very necessary to save the for profit ins. industry from the 150 million plus migration of customers to medicare, in the next 2 decades.

Everything else is subject to reduced funding and elimination. Especially when the repubs regain power as a result of this new health insurance tax.

Typical neo-liberal bullshit. Throw the poor a few crumbs and use that to justify enslaving the entire populace to a private for profit industry with a history of being piss poor at doing their unnecessary job as middleman. Oh and hand to their horrible inadequate care our children and grandchildren's lifetimes too.

Brilliant.

[Peacetrain]

22. Fine, you sit there and stew in that.. you have a po option in the house bill

a better option for women in the senate bill.. but screw that into the wall.. give up is a better thing.. KILL THE BILL is surrender to the worst in both bills and a cowardly thing to do

[liberalmuse]

26. Kind of silly, huh?

I completely understand why people are unhappy with aspects of this bill, myself being one of them, but some are behaving like spurned suitors. I'm sad that the 'stupid' has seeped even into DU. Many years ago, people used to be reasonable and pragmatic. These days, too many people seem to be only capable of thinking in black-or-white, all-or-nothing. Hell, the extreme case of this kind of thinking is the terrorist. They don't get their way so they want to blow shit up. It's dangerous, IMO. If our forefathers had been so severely limited in their thinking, we'd still be a colony. Compromise isn't all that fun, but it helps us get things moving forward. It helps some of our idealism become reality. I prefer that to some Nirvana that can only exist in someone's head.

[Peacetrain]

28. Yes it is, and I do not even begin to understand it.

[Warren Stupidity]

32. "cheering on our elected " - sorry but that is stupid

as for lobbying our elected officials - we have no effective lobby. We have nothing to offer our 'representatives' in the way of bribes that begins to rival what the kleptocracy can offer.

[Peacetrain]

36. Stupid is throwing your paddles out of the canoe in the middle of a rapids.. that is exactly what

kill the bill is.. and of course if you sit there and just try to influence people to do nothing, guess what you are going to get NOTHING..

[Warren Stupidity]

40. You vastly overestimate the power of the left.

We have no paddles to throw out. We are hardly in the canoe to begin with. We have no voice in Congress other than perhaps one senator and a small group of representatives. We can yell on the internets or (in a passe retro sort of way) on the streets, and that is all we can do.

The is nothing at all wrong with a vocal coherent opposition voice against this bill. Somebody from the left ought to be providing at least an accurate criticism to compete with the utter bullshit lobbed from the far right and the meaningless platitudes in support of this bill from the center-right. Perhaps if we continue to be the only voice of sanity in an increasingly irrational and dishonest political environment, the left might actually start to gain credibility.

[elocs]

35. Tsk, tsk. Details, details, details. n/t

[customerserviceguy]

37. How much time do you think there will be

between the final draft of the bill, and the President's ink on it?

This whole thing is being done with sleight of hand, in the darkness. They don't want us to know who Congresscritters have whored themselves out to for a vote.

This is not the transparency that we were promised. Bill Clinton's failure on this issue was not because it was HCR, it was the secrecy in which his version of it was cooked up. We have repeated his mistake.

[Peacetrain]

39. That is why it is so important now.. to not stop writing, to let them know what parts

of both bills are more important to us..

If you were looking for saints in the halls of congress.. they do not exist..

[customerserviceguy]

44. I'm going to write Eliot Engle to tell him to kill the bill

if it does not make significant changes to dial the thing back to where it was several weeks ago. I can live with the House bill, but cannot abide by the Senate bill.

We have to make sure that progressive Congress members know that failure to pass HCR is failure of both the President to lead with specifics, and especially failure of their nominal Democratic collegues from red states who kiss corporate ass.

[Peacetrain]

45. Raise a little hell there.. Let them know what you want or don't want out of both bills

Just don't give up and surrender..

[NJmaverick]

46. I wish I had the answer to this self destructive behavior

but I don't

[Peacetrain]

50. It has me baffled in here for sure..

[Wardoc]

51. To use your bread analogy, yes, if a big ole cockroach landed in the dough I'd say toss it out. (nt)