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As you all know, Tom Daschle removed his name for consideration as Secretary of HHS a few hours ago. You can now officially kiss any meaningful reform of Health Care in the next few years good-bye. I've taken a lot of grief for my support of Tom Daschle. In some of the comments here, in nastygrams delivered straight to my inbox, and in person. The question I keep getting is some variation on how can I support Tom Daschle when I love to post on crime? There are two simple answers to this. First, I find a lot of the crime amusing. The mayor of Gulfport, MS indicted with his wife for embezzling Katrina funds? It's funny in a sick way. Charlie Rangel? It's funny to me. Homophobic, anti-gay Senators looking for love in all the wrong places? They hypocrisy is a belly-laugh. Sometimes, I find crime abhorrent, like the NY State Rep who slashed his girlfriend's face with a broken drinking glass: I find no humour in violence. But I find this stuff amusing because it is so common. Especially pay-to-play. Pay-to-play, right or wrong, is a ubiquitous part of much of government. You may think that Blagojevich (who will likely be convicted of pay-to-play, but will never serve a day for selling a Senate seat, because, well, he didn't) and Richardson are exceptions, but they're not. In fact, the Richardson pay-to-play scheme is far reaching and will bring down many more people by the time the investigation in completed. You don't find me saying that people who do these crimes are "bad" (except the violent ones) - I accept that it's how things are done. I'd rather they weren't, but that's how it is. Second, if you asked me prior to this election, what my personal issues were, I would have told you that they were the un-evisceration of the US Constitution and Universal Health Care. Both equally critical. From the first springs Supreme Court justices, leaving Iraq and ending torture, plus many others. The second is the necessary for the successful movement of the United States out of the current economic fiasco. Without it, we're putting a band-aid on a hemorrhage when we really should be removing the bullet and sewing up the damaged blood vessel. There is NO ONE besides Tom Daschle who could have brought the necessary skills and experience to the dual positions of HHS Secretary and White House Health Lead. No one. Sure, there are Senators, and ex-Senators, and public health wonks, and doctors. But Mr. Daschle is the whole package. What we will have now is some coverage for the uninsured. Patchwork, like SChip for adults. As more people leave commercial and non-profit carriers, those rates will rise, and become unaffordable to even larger businesses. Right now, large companies can absorb the costs, and small ones cannot. The problems will reverberate up the food chain. We will be unable to run a non-profit hospital set, and therefore hospitals will still compete with one another for patients through advertising and increased high-tech tools. Money far better spent on a tiered system, on prevention, and on chronic care. We may also band-aid the Medicare Part D donut, but we will do nothing to legitimately bring down drug costs. The cost to our nation is immeasurable in terms of the suffering and death which come from a lack of health insurance, and being the sole industrialized nation without health care for its citizenry. Even if the stimulus package passes, and even if it works to jump start the economy, our businesses cannot ever be competitive in the global arena if every manufactured good, and every service, has the addition cost burden of providing health insurance for the workers. Now, we'll have no one to help write, pass and then implement what we need to do. Perhaps a team can do it, but no single person. Daschle screwed up his own taxes. He wasn't put forward as HHS head because of his ability to fill out a 1040 form. This wasn't a postion that anyone could fill. Lose a Senator? That job is just not that hard. A mayor? Dime a dozen. This mattered. Universal Health Care, quickly and nuanced, mattered. And my final comment -- to the two of you who do this - please quit sending me personal emails calling me names. You may not agree with my position, although time will tell if I'm correct, but there is no reason to attack me. What I write is fair game, but please quit with the references to my gender and my religion.
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This week, the House has been very busy, and it's only Wednesday. A listing of votes and introduced bills is after the jump, but here are just a few of my favourites. 
