The more Americans know about the new healthcare bill before the Senate, the less they like it. That’s the unmistakable trend in polling on the issue.
But as Michael Cannon at Cato notes, that’s not stopping the Democrats from moving at full steam.
Rather than go back to the drawing board and write a better bill, [Harry] Reid instead did something that much of the U.S. Constitution and the rules of the U.S. Senate exist to prevent: he quickly rammed a sweeping and unpopular bill through the Senate, so he could win passage before any more of the American people learned how this bill would affect them….
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Reid’s power play succeeded, if that’s the right word. Around 1am this morning — day 185 day of Congress considering the Obama health plan without a complete cost estimate — and after buying off several senators with billions of the American people’s tax dollars, Reid cleared the toughest procedural obstacle to approving the bill. He cleared it on a strict party-line vote, without a single vote to spare. Barring some unforeseen snag, the Senate will approve Reid’s bill before Christmas.
The Democrats appear determined to pass this, poll numbers be damned. November 2010 is far enough away that most voters will have forgotten this unpleasantness… or so they hope.
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