Interesting Proposal

I’ve been say­ing this for a few weeks. The White House sounds like they’re ready to go it alone now that the Rethugs have said in so many words that they won’t vote for any­thing Obama pro­poses, even if he lets THEM write it in HIS blood. I’m begin­ning to think we’ll get some­thing through in rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, or else make the ass­holes ACTUALLY fil­i­buster for once, instead of cav­ing in at the threat of it.

But if not…what’s to keep Obama from sim­ply elim­i­nat­ing the age require­ment for Medicare, and/or the income ceil­ing for Medicaid, by Executive Order? Bush essen­tially ruled by Executive Order, and con­gress bent over. Of course, if Obama did it, the GOP would scream like howler mon­keys, but who gives a shit? Give the gen­eral pub­lic 2 or 3 years of cov­er­age by Medicare/Medicaid and I can’t see any­body get­ting elected in 2012 on the plat­form of tak­ing it away!

If the right-wingers hadn’t front-loaded the crazy so much, they could have dragged their feet and pre­vented any­thing from being done for four years. Now they’ve allowed Obama to shake his head sor­row­fully and say: “Well, if you chil­dren won’t play nice, we’ll just have to do it with­out you.” I’m sure he had many moti­va­tions, but I sin­cerely think this is what he ran for pres­i­dent to do, and he’ll regard his pres­i­dency as a fail­ure if it doesn’t get done. I think he’s will­ing to roll the dice on this.