To my Republican friends: Be sensible in making decision on the health bill

If you listen carefully on the health issue, many Republican Congressmen are often making good sense (especially on tort reform). All the while they rightfully and correctly declare a difference in philosophy to the president’s plan, they say they want many of the same things the president wants in a health bill, but cannot go along with his means or determination.

Putting aside the 90 filibusters last year, many on bills that (once the filibuster was broken) 50 percent of the Republicans voted in favor of, the Republicans are not lying about a difference of philosophy on the structure and responsibility of the U.S. government. No, they are not lying, but they are dead wrong. And they have the willpower of “no� to constantly back it up.

The Republicans believe that the power to regulate business and commerce (including education, insurance and medical practice) belongs with the individual states. They do not want the bureaucracy in Washington to have control over medicine; 16% of the gross national product of the States.

Leaving it with the states (and local and property taxes) means less D.C. power. This philosophy is traditional, as with education, and was part of the founding fathers’ compromise to make all the states agree to other republic, that is to say, national controls (for example military and diplomacy).

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However, according to our Constitution, the United States is a “Federal Republic,� which is a contradiction in terms. A federation is a collection of independent states with a central government to coalesce policy and handle national matters and a republic is a collection of states in which there is only one central seat of power and the states only have administrative duties.

To further complicate matters, the Pledge of Allegiance contains these words which all of us have sworn to many times: “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation under God, indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for all.� One nation, not 50 states bound together but independent. So, each time any Republican has sworn allegiance he has done so to a republic, not a federation.

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Where were these same Republicans on the education issue with No Child Left Behind? Education is clearly laid out by our founding fathers as a states’ issue, yet they squeezed the taxes to leverage a national educational agenda. Just because now, with health care, they oppose the means of the president’s plan, the hypocrisy of declaring health to be a federal issue and not a republic issue is extraordinary.

As a matter of record, we regulate taxes, retirement (Social Security), discrimination, military, schooling, roads, air travel, medicines, medical equipment, banking — the list is almost endless — on a Republic level, as the Constitution provided. Congress has the right to decide which issues merit national standards and oversight.

The health bill is not a Constitutional Amendment level discussion, just as it was not on the No Child Left Behind educational discussion, nor on Eisenhower’s’road policy, nor on Kennedy’s NASA initiative, nor on Clinton/Gingrich’s NAFTA, nor on LBJ’s civil rights, etc. The health industry is the job of Congress to regulate.

It is exactly commerce in the national interest, just as it is their job to protect Americans on a national level from all sorts of commercial activities (food safety, air travel, highways, water, power and so forth).

So my message is this: Disagree with the president’s health plan, argue merits of each and every item you agree or disagree with, but stop the hypocrisy. If you took your oath of office (“...to protect and defend the Constitution�), if you swore the Pledge of Allegiance, you need to stop pretending we are a nation of self-governing states who have the right to carve up safety and business practices as suits the local governments (and local payola, lobbying and suborned interests).

Just stop for a moment and look at local state and lower level governments... would you trust your child’s safety to them, trust them to decide on racial discrimination, food safety, on the need to go to war, on the safety of medicine, on air safety? No, you would not, because quite often they are not expert enough to evaluate such matters.

The job of the central government, as laid down by the Constitution, is to oversee all such matters for the common good of all Americans. It does not matter if they are New Yorkers or Ohioans, Hawaiians or Floridians.

What is good for one American is good for all. That is the American way. Stick to the Pledge of Allegiance: “...one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.� And that means all as one, the same for each of us.

Former Amenia Union resident Peter Riva expresses his views from his home in New Mexico.