What if?

[dcsmart]

Interesting article

What if this is 1935 and Congress is getting ready to vote on the Social Security Act?

As political progressives, union activists or whatever, do you support the bill or oppose it?

No-brainer, right?

So what if I told you that by supporting the 1935 Social Security Act you would be selling out the working class and capitulating to right-wing special interests who wrote half the bill?

Didn't see that one coming, didja?

To get Social Security passed, progressives had to agree to exclude nearly one-half of the working class, including two-thirds of all African Americans and more than one-half of all women.

Yep, that's the deal you would have had to make in 1935 to pass what we know now is one of the most progressive and successful governmental programs of all time. But in 1935, it didn't look that way when progressives had to accept the deal racist, reactionary Southern Democrats laid down in exchange for their votes.

These backward elements held power over key committees that could have scuttled Social Security and prevented even a vote. Their deal? Exclude all domestic workers, agricultural labor, state and local government employees, and many teachers, nurses, hospital workers, librarians and social workers. Their special interest? Keeping power by keeping intact the American-style apartheid system they presided over.

So what do we do? Kill the bill and try to come back later or take what you can get now?

Remember this deal was made by progressives during the left's glory days. That's when we had one of the most progressive presidents ever in the White House, the most progressives ever in Congress and the biggest mass movement ever out in the streets. And progressives still had to cut a deal with the Devil.
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So let's bring this "what if" game to the present.

What if you are a member of Congress in 2009: do you vote for the deal cut in the Senate or vote to kill the bill?

Not so easy anymore, is it?

We know the flawed Social Security bill was strengthened over the years, adding household workers in 1950 and agricultural, hotel, laundry and state and local government workers in 1954. What we don't know is the future of the current flawed health care bill.

The one nice thing we do know is that improving it will be a lot easier than passing the original bill. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pointed out, many of the future improvements can be done through reconciliation with a simple majority vote as opposed to the anti-democratic, super-majority 60-vote process that gave the sociopath Joe Lieberman power to kill the public option and prevent lowering the enrollment age for Medicare to 55.
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France is considered to have the world's best health care system while Japan has the longest healthy life expectancy. Single-payer systems? Hardly. French citizens are covered by 14 private insurance companies. The Japanese have about 3,500 private health insurance plans. These multi-payer systems succeed because private insurers there are not allowed to make a profit selling health insurance.
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FULL ARTICLE
http://www.peoplesworld.org/what-if/

[valerief]

1. Which industry gets the FICA taken out of our paychecks? nt

[Eric J in MN]

2. A bill with a weak public option would be analogous to the start of Social Security.

A bill with no public option is analogous to the 2003 Bush Prescription Drug Bill, which gave billions to the drug companies.

[polpilot]

3. Exactly. Now the meme is nothing equals something.

[Laelth]

4. Take the profit out of health insurance. Good idea.

Is that what this bill does? No? Then ...

Kill the bill.

Forcing people to buy insurance is no more the answer to a failed health care system than forcing people to buy houses is the solution to homelessness.

:dem:

-Laelth