Laws to Die For

On Wednesday, at a town hall meeting in Chickasha, Oklahoma, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) told his audience that he was not going to read America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (H.R.3200): “I don’t have to read it, or know what’s in it. I’m going to oppose it anyways.”

“I don’t have to read it, or know what’s in it”? Yes, Senator, you have to know what’s in it! It is precisely your job to read and understand it – a politician, elected by the people to represent us in the United States Senate, paid by our tax dollars to read, understand, evaluate and vote on our behalf, has decided to make a mockery of the Constitution of the United States and to boldly ignore his duty.

This is probably one of the most important votes James Inhofe will ever cast in his senatorial career, yet he is relying entirely on the marketing sound bytes fed to him, and to most of the uninformed bill’s detractors, by insurance companies whose control on our health industry and habitual cost saving denial of coverage are openly threatened by the proposed legislation.

Senator Jim Inhofe is not alone in publicly admitting his ignorance: he is joined by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has also admitted to not reading the entire document.

Did these two lawmakers exercise the same dedication when they both sent our youth to the front lines in Iraq? Pompously hailing their sacrifice on the altar of our Republic as the righteous price for the Democracy they ridicule by not doing the job for which they were elected. Both men are unabashedly ignoring their responsibility, forgetting the constitutional function they serve as Senators: to represent the People of their own state in the federal legislative branch of government, to make sense of the proposed laws, to calmly and intelligently evaluate and vote on our behalf.

If our leaders feel no shame in telling the People who elected them that they will vote on a bill without bothering to read its content, might this not illuminate a common practice on the Hill? Although Senate and House of Representative staffers are, indeed, hired to help our leaders through the lengthy processes of authoring and reading our proposed laws, it seems that a pivotal legislation, such as the Health Care Bill of 2009, does indeed, warrant the full attention of our elected lawmakers and requires their dedicated understanding of the entire bill, instead of basing their decision on chatter from insurance industry lobbyists, political marketers and posturing spinners, most of whom have yet to open the document themselves?

We are repeatedly told that the brave men and women of our military are put in harm’s way to defend and uphold our way of life; that those, who have sacrificed their life on the battlefield, have done so to protect our freedom and our democracy. When thousands of soldiers come home, many missing limbs – more often than not, to shattered families – don’t the lawmakers who send them to war, owe them to read the very laws our soldiers are bravely defending with their own life?