MAKING SAUSAGE AND LAWS

I always heard that there are two things you don’t ever want to see. They are how laws are made and how sausage is made. Well, I have never made laws but I have  made sausage. Simply put, if the ingredients are good then the end product should be good also. Good sausage is the result of quality ingredients and seasonings mixed together by a good sausage maker and the product is delightful. Shouldn’t good laws be the same? If the parts going into the law are good, shouldn’t the law then be good also?

A terrible thing happened a few years ago. Barack Obama decided to put together a scheme to redistribute the wealth in this country by taking money from those who work for a living to pay for health insurance for those who don’t. It obviously hasn’t worked.

Why didn’t it work? Let’s consider the ingredients in that law. First and foremost, it included a large helping of lies and obfuscation. There was never a time when the cost of insurance under Obamacare was going down. There was never a time under Obamacare when one could keep his own doctor. Other ingredients in the recipe were equally bad which resulted in a bad law that is now doomed to fail.

A major ingredient in this mess was that there was absolutely no participation from the Republican party. It was completely a Democrat scheme. Obama called together his Democrat leaders and basically told them what was coming and that they should let all their fellow dems know how they will vote. The Democrats are very good at this. The Republicans could learn a lesson from them.

So now the Republicans are left with the chore of repairing the healthcare insurance industry in this country. The voters gave them everything they needed to make this repair. They elected a Republican House, Senate, and a Republican president. It should be as simple as the President calling in the leaders of the Republicans in the Congress and telling them how to vote. The problem is that it doesn’t happen that way in the Republican Party.

Lawmaking is a give and take process. It requires negotiation if it is done right. The Republicans have had seven years to come up with a replacement for Obamacare and they apparently haven’t put together a program that can get the necessary votes to pass Congressional muster.

This now is where lawmaking and sausage making take on similarities. This is where it gets real messy. This is how stupid money-wasting programs get through Congress. This is where we get programs that test the swimming ability of shrimp and other ridiculous “boondoggles.” Dissenting Congress people basically sell their vote in exchange for something that benefits some donor to their campaign. That’s an ingredient for bad sausage.

Clearly, though, the Congress has to repeal and replace Obamacare. I have heard estimates that within two years or less it will die from its own weight. That is going to throw millions and millions off of any health insurance plan. We will have a serious crisis on our hands and it will be the fault of Obama and the Democrats but I am sure they, with the help of the national media, will blame the Republicans for not fixing their mess.

Trump needs to call the leadership of both parties into the Oval Office and tell them in no uncertain terms, get me a bill I can sign and do it immediately or else. There are ten Democrat Senators facing reelection in two years and they are from states that Trump carried overwhelmingly. There are also Congressional districts all across this nation where many are hurting from the disaster of Obamacare. Nobody’s job is secure.

So, to all of them I say, get busy with the work we hired you to do or we will get somebody else to do it. Pass the sausage.

Ron Scarbro