Health care reform an historic moment in American history

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Remember when Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) boastfully proclaimed last year that health care reform would be President Obama's "Waterloo"? In demented Sen. DeMint's analogy, President Obama was the defeated Emperor Napoleon.

Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1815 by the British army led by the Duke of Wellington, and the Prussian army led by Field Marshall Gebhart von Blucher. (In victory at right).

If health care reform is President Obama's "Waterloo," then today he is the victorious Duke of Wellington. And it is obstructionist Republicans collectively who are the vanquished Napoleon in demented DeMint's analogy.

The health care reform bill passed the Senate with a super-majority vote of 60 Democratic Senators on Christmas Eve, and passed the House with 219 Democratic votes today (34 Democrats voted against a long-standing platform plank of the Democratic Party, which is the only reason the vote was close). Not a single Republican stood up to defend average hard working Americans against the abuses by health insurance monopolies. Republicans defended the status quo by just saying "no."

The House also passed the "reconciliation" bill of fixes with one additional Democratic vote, and Senate leadership has assured House leadership that the reconciliation bill of fixes — which requires only a simple majority of 51 votes for passage — will be approved by the Senate. (The reconciliation bill also includes the college loans reform bill). We will have to await the vote in the Senate this week.

This "profiles in courage" moment ranks alongside the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the passage of Medicare in 1965. Those bills enjoyed bipartisan support from liberal and moderate Republicans. Today's Republican Party, purged of its liberals and moderates by radical conservatives, is an extremist fringe of its former self. This is not your father's GOP.

This historic victory did not come without great sacrifice and cost. The robust public option that President Obama wanted proved to be a bridge too far in this battle. In the elitist millionaire boys and girls club of the U.S. Senate, obstructionists were empowered by the Senate's antiquated filibuster rules, despite the fact there is a simple majority of votes in the Senate in favor of a robust public option in the bill.

That being said, for the first time since president Theodore Roosevelt first proposed national health insurance in 1912, Congress has acted to begin such a program. Today's bill establishes a floor, the foundation upon which the structure of a national health insurance program can begin to be constructed and to take shape. This is not the end of the fight, but the first victory in a century long campaign for progress.

It is with sadness and regret that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) is not with us today to share in this historic victory. Health care reform was the cause of his life. I am certain that Uncle Teddy is with us in spirit with a broad smile and a twinkle in his eye.

Today Democrats answered the call of history and began "the great unfinished business of our society," as Ted Kennedy described it, by reaffirming the moral character of our country. The winds of change are in the air.