Senate Sickness

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid vowed never to bring a health care repeal vote to the Senate. So Mitch McConnell - the leader of the Republican Senate minority - found a way to do it for him. Thanks to a parliamentary trick, health care repeal is being considered by the Senate as an amendment to an airport construction bill.

What does one have to so with the other? Absolutely nothing - but it does put the 52 Democrats and independent Bernard Sanders of Vermont on record of defending a law twice invalidated by Republican judges and also blocked from implementation by Republican governors, including Florida governor and noted Medicare bilker Rick Scott. This gambit is a foolhardy play by the Republicans, who are talking about health care at a time when the voters want the government to do more about the economy. This is why the Democrats lost the House in 2010 and why Democrats in both houses are talking about the economy today. And the GOP wants to repeal the health care law just as more people are learning of its benefits and as the law becomes more popular.

The amendment will likely be defeated. And we'll still get better airports. But with right-wing activists having successfully blocked many of President Obama's initiatives so far, and with many of his other proposals concerning education and infrastructure looking more like pipe dreams every day, the prospect of making America a more civilized place - or, at least, a civilized place in the first instance - seems a whole lot dimmer than this time two years ago. :-(