Children, may I please have your attention?
Today House Republicans tried for the 41st time to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Dean of the House John Dingell, someone I am proud to call a friend, stood up and proceeded to dress down the anti-Obama tea party freaks that have come to dominate the Republican Party. He was addressing them about House Bill 2775 which would prevent subsidies from being distributed under the ACA until a system is devised to verify participant eligibility. As Congressman Dingell so eloquently put it, those protections and verifications are already in the ACA. But that didn’t stop the GOP (with the help of five Democrats, oddly enough) from passing the bill 235-191.
He started his statement with “Here we go again!”
“What a shame we have this kind of behavior on that side of the aisle,” he told the children Republicans.
Watch:
I love that he used the word “obfuscation” three separate times and called this vote “nonsense”, “baloney”, “obfuscation and deceit”, “witchcraft”, “a malicious assault on the most vulnerable people in our country”, and “political gimmickry”.
Anyone who thinks John Dingell is no longer effective in Congress needs to seriously reconsider that ill-informed opinion. Though his voice may not be as booming as it once was and he walks with a cane, he is just as smart, thoughtful, and politically deft as he has ever been. His is a voice of reason and sanity in a Congress full of Republican men and women who act like petulant children who haven’t gotten their way.
Thankfully, today, a grownup explained things to them.
