Inhofe Vows to Stop Efforts to Extend Healthcare to Uninsured

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2 September 2009 :: J.E. Robertson

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has told a town hall meeting that he doesn’t need to read legislation on healthcare reform or to know any details of what’s in it, he will oppose it out of hand. Astonishingly, the senator told the citizens gathered that “I don’t have to read it, or know what’s in it. I’m going to oppose it anyways“. He didn’t say “let them die” about people in need of medical care who are uninsured, but the sentiment just might be there.

He also suggested that his position on the issue is driven by public opinion polls and his concerns about the 2010 elections. Inhofe’s statements should come as no surprise to those who have expressed continuing outrage at his radical positions, including the false allegation that global climate change is an elaborate “hoax” crafted by a shadowy network of totalitarian socialist schemers to destroy democracy.

But Inhofe’s nakedly partisan and unapologetically detached position on healthcare reform, his apparent opposition to any fix of any kind that would remedy the life-threatening situation in which tens of millions of American find themselves, due to non-coverage and insurance companies’ rationing of care, is startling. Inhofe says he doesn’t need to read legislation to vote against it or to deny its purported benefits to his constituents.

One wonders on what other issues Inhofe flatly refuses to read the legislation he votes for or against. He opposes healthcare reform 1) because he assumes, in error, that the proposals would “socialize medicine” and “ration care”, though they are designed to remedy the gaps in the current system that lead to denial of care, and 2) because he wants to hurt Pres. Obama.

Has he voted for gun-related legislation that he assumed was good for gun-owners, but in fact put new constraints on the right to bear arms? Has he voted against legislation that he assumed would cause abortion to proliferate or would be “pro-abortion”, when in fact what he voted against was designed to limit the number of abortions carried out or steer women to other options?

Has Sen. James Inhofe, arch-conservative of Oklahoma, voted against legislation he assumed would deny his state the ability to create new jobs, when in fact the legislation he voted down was designed to steer new, lasting jobs to his state, spurring higher rates of education, income gains and long-term economic prosperity?

What other bills has James Inhofe voted against, simply because he decided it would be more fun to vote against them, without knowing anything about the legislation before him? Sen. Inhofe’s confession that he doesn’t need to read and doesn’t care what’s in the healthcare reform legislation he plans to vote against is not just an assault on the physical and civic dignity of the people whose lives will be less care for as a result, it is a confession that he is not fit to serve in the United States Senate. Period.

Sen. Inhofe has finally confessed openly that his political career is an elaborate ruse to defraud the people of his state and deny them full representation in the Senate. What Sen. Inhofe does with his time, I guess someone else will have to determine: the voters’ confidence that he is in Washington preparing, reading, debating and negotiating legislation, is apparently misplaced, because Sen. Inhofe doesn’t read legislation before opposing it ferociously and with venom for all those whom it might assist.

What’s more: Sen. James Inhofe has admitted that he routinely lies about healthcare reform, specifically in order to kill it and to deny needed medical care to the tens of millions of American who currently cannot get it. He has admitted he routinely lies, because he is daily making claims and spreading false rumors about legislation he himself refuses to read.

How can he know, actually know, what’s in the legislation, if he won’t read it? How can he speak with any authority whatsoever about the proposed reforms, the president’s intentions, the nature of the interests of Congressional leadership, the benefits or lack thereof to the American people, if he will not read the legislation? He cannot.

Sen. Inhofe is like Donald Rumsfeld making the ludicrous and obviously false claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction stashed secretly “to the north, south east and west of Baghdad”. No specifics. No facts. No truth. Just a vague claim that overreaches by an astonishing amount. An insult to the public trust. An insult to the idea of public service. A defamation of the body in which he serves.

In a frenzy of partisan posturing, the Republicans repeatedly demanded that Democrats on Capitol Hill read the entire healthcare bill out loud, line by line, into the record, on live television. That Sen. Inhofe himself was unwilling even to look at the bill or find out what’s in it is one thing, but that the Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has also reportedly not read the entire text of the legislation.

Sen. Jim DeMint, who famously said he wanted to use healthcare to “break” Obama, has denounced lawmakers who don’t read legislation before voting on it, saying it outrages voters to learn of it. DeMint has been spreading some of the most egregious false claims about healthcare reform at town hall meetings, raising the question of whether he has read the legislation being proposed, or whether he really sees the life and death issue of healthcare as nothing more than a partisan electoral tool.

Sen. Inhofe should be invited to a meeting where constituents who favor reform read the bill, line by line, to him. It might take three days. He might have to listen to all the legislative legalese that goes into something like this, and maybe his ability to understand and to comment on such procedural jargon, to understand, in effect, the work he is in Washington to do, would be tested.

If Sen. Inhofe does not want to be a member of the United States Senate, then he should depart his position without delay. He is doing a grave and unconscionable disservice to the people of Oklahoma, if he casts even one vote without having read the material he is voting down. He is an elected, paid public servant: his absolute moral obligation is to the people who voted him into that office, and his refusal to even do his homework is a disgrace to the Senate, to the people of Oklahoma and to the United States broadly.

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