On the recordFebruary 1, 2011
we have come a long way in 1 year. On December 24, 2009--1 day before Christmas--this body passed a radical overhaul of our Nation's health care system. That is right. The majority passed ObamaCare on Christmas Eve. It was not this body's finest moment. It was not the administration's finest moment. And I expect that this debate will go down in history for its persistent lack of attention to the considered views of ordinary Americans--Americans who rejected ObamaCare's giant new entitlement expansions and the job-killing taxes haphazardly cobbled together to pay for them. It did not have to be this way. In the midst of the greatest fiscal collapse since the Great Depression, Americans wanted Democrats, who controlled all of the levers of power in Washington, to focus on job creation. Instead, like teenagers set loose when mom and dad leave town, they did what they wanted to, and focused on a government takeover of the Nation's health care system. Surprising only the most ideologically driven, support for ObamaCare cratered during the townhall meetings of August 2009. The message was loud and clear. Our health care system, and in particular the government policies that contribute to unsustainable inflation in the health care sector, might be in need of reform. But the solution to our problems is not additional government regulation and control of health care delivery by Washington bureaucrats.
