Why Are Republican Members Of Congress Lying About Health Care Reform? Let's Try Judy Biggert

Reagan opposed Medicare; Biggert opposes a public option

Yesterday I asked and tried answering the question Why Are Republican Members Of Congress Lying About Health Care Reform? I wasn't satisfied that I had actually gotten to the bottom of it. And then I recalled a passage in one of my favorite books of this year, Rick Perlstein's phenomenal Nixonland.

In this particular segment he's talking about Ronald Reagan's successful run against California Governor Pat Brown. Reagan was a spectacular liar for his entire career; in fact he wouldn't have had a career but for all the lies and distortions. He's a model for Republican demagogues to this day. The backdrop is the African-American riots in Watts and other major cities, situations that played right into Reagan's hands, who could never find enough social ills to blame on welfare.

The Los Angeles Times did an investigation: they could only find abuses in four-tenths of 1 percent of relief cases and editorialized that for the sins of these 180 families, and $31,960 lost from the state treasury, "innocent children whose birthright was poverty" were being put in risk of starvation. "If there is a better answer, it won't come from demagogic moralizing."

Reagan was the preeminent demagogic moralizer-- and the Time endorsed him in the general election nonetheless. In the agricultural San Joaquin Valley, speaking atop a mammoth harvesting machine, after loosening up the crowd with quips ("They say God is dead. Wel-l-l-l-l, he isn't. We just can't talk about him in the schoolroom"), he started talking about what his handlers had told him to talk about, farm policy. His audience shifted in their seats, bored. He started talking about how anyone coming to California could start drawing a welfare check within twenty-one days. That was false: only those who could prove five years of California residence in the last nine could get welfare, and then only after twenty-one days. It delivered him the crowd nonetheless. "Everything he says is America," a young woman told a reporter. An old lady chimed in, "Brown has practically ruined the state. He has a nice home but he lets the Negroes come right next to you."

Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois which is in the 14th congressional district, currently represented by conservative Democrat Bill Foster. One district over (IL-13) is conservative Republican Judy Biggert, who started her political career in the Illinois House of Representatives in 1992, when Reagan was already drooling on himself and was 3 years out of the White House. Yesterday she ran a poll (above) asking her constituents if they support the health reform bill as it now stands in the House, something she vociferously opposes. They don't agree with her. By a huge margin-- 70-20%-- Biggert's constituents, who rejected McCain for Obama by nearly ten percentage points, want the public option as a choice in the new legislation. Biggert has a long sordid history of stretching the truth into unrecognizable claims. Recently, like many Republicans, she took credit for the salutary impact of a transit and housing bill she tried to kill and voted against.

Biggert is on record opposing the legislation-- and on record lying about it to her constituents. "For most Americans, including those with private health coverage, the bill before Congress will mean major changes-- or even an end-- to their current plans or benefits. Others will find themselves affected through new taxes, employer mandates, and regulations on what medical options are available for providers and patients... [T]he bill will create more than fifty new bureaucracies, generate miles of red tape, and let Washington make decisions for doctors and patients. The end result? Revolutionary changes in medicine, including rationed care, lower standards, and long waiting lists for such common procedures as knee replacements or bypass surgery."

Apparently the voters in the west Chicago suburbs know her well enough to know when she's lying (her lips are moving). They told her on her own website they want the legislation to pass. Why do Republicans lie? You think there might be a connection to the $316,351 Congresswoman Biggert has scooped up from Big Insurance and their lobbyists? How about another $245,650 she got out of the Medical-Industrial Complex? That's about 550,000 reasons to distort the facts about health care reform exactly like her contributors are telling her to.