It is painful enough to watch. Even worse is the fact that this is a Senator… in our government… and one who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, no less!

We think that local officials in a banana republic or a village idiot somewhere would have provided a more substantial and engaged answer that showed intellectual input.

And some people actually wonder why the federal government can’t pass a fiscally responsible budget! The Democratic Party is infested with this type of zombie politician.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

He states:   “I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the healthcare bill… We hire experts.”

Are you kidding, Max?

You want Americans to be forced to pay trillions of more dollars for your health care system that severely restricts their rights and choices and will result in rationing of care. Many will be refused medical care that would have received it before and for significantly less. It is arcane and burdened by multilevel bureaucracies.

And, best of all, you and all your Democratic buddies in Congress won’t have to use it as you have your own, expensive, gold-plated plan with countless choices and ease of access.

That’s why the Democrats in the House and Senate who are up for reelection in November, must be voted out of office.

Vote Republican in November!

Key Senate Democrat suggests that he didn't read entire healthcare reform bill
Jordan Fabian     08/25/10

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), one of the chief authors of the healthcare law, suggested Tuesday he did not read the entire piece of legislation.

Speaking at a forum in his home state, Baucus and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius were asked by an audience member if they had read the whole bill and “if not, that is the most despicable, irresponsible thing.”

“I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the healthcare bill,” Baucus said, according to the Flathead Beacon. “You know why? It’s statutory language. ... We hire experts.”

Republicans, who opposed the law in lockstep, frequently criticized Democrats for the length of the bill and often pressed members if they had read the legislation or not. In March, Congress passed the legislation and President Obama signed the 961-page final bill into law.

At least one Democratic lawmaker, Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) made a public showing of reading the bill.

Democrats dismissed the criticism, saying it did not have anything do to with the contents of the legislation.

Baucus's office said that his comments did not mean that he does not know what it is in the law.

"Senator Baucus wrote the bill that passed the Finance Committee and then worked with his colleagues to write the health care bill that is law today. He has spent years crafting this policy and hundreds of hours reading and perfecting it," spokeswoman Erin Shields said. "There is simply no question that he understands the provisions in the health care law and knows it is a historic improvement that will make our health care system more affordable and accessible for families in Montana and across America."

Baucus held frequent hearings and published multiple reports about the legislation during the process of its passage.

At the town-hall event, Baucus defended the sweeping law.

“It’s not perfect, nothing’s perfect, but I’m telling you, ma’am, it’s a good start,” Baucus said. “Mark my words, several years from now you’re going to look back and say, ‘Eh, maybe it isn’t so bad.’ ”

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/115749-sen-baucus-suggests-he-did-not-read-entire-health-bill

That is why the numbers never added up, the legislation was written in secrecy, negotiations were conducted behind locked doors by Democrats only with Republicans being totally excluded, opponents were gratuitously charged with racism, etc.

Obamacare was mainly aimed at redistributing wealth
By: Byron York Chief Political Correspondent
April 2, 2010

It hasn't attracted much notice, but recently some prominent advocates of Obamacare have spoken more frankly than ever before about why they supported a national health care makeover. It wasn't just about making insurance more affordable.
It wasn't just about bending the cost curve. It wasn't just about cutting the federal deficit. It was about redistributing wealth.

Health reform is "an income shift," Democratic Sen. Max Baucus said on March 25. "It is a shift, a leveling, to help lower income, middle income Americans."

In his halting, jumbled style, Baucus explained that in recent years "the maldistribution of income in America has gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind." The new health care legislation, Baucus promised, "will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America."

At about the same time, Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and presidential candidate, said the health bill was needed to correct economic inequities. "The question is, in a democracy, what is the right balance between those at the top ... and those at the bottom?" Dean said during an appearance on CNBC. "When it gets out of whack, as it did in the 1920s, and it has now, you need to do some redistribution. This is a form of redistribution."

Summing things up in the New York Times, the liberal economics columnist David Leonhardt called Obamacare "the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago."

Now they tell us. For many opponents of the new legislation, the statements confirmed a nagging suspicion that for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress, the health fight was about more than just insurance -- that redistribution played a significant, if largely unspoken, part in the drive for national health care.

"I don't think most people, when they think of the health care bill, instantly think it's a vehicle to redistribute wealth," says pollster Scott Rasmussen. "But we do know that people overwhelmingly believe it will lead to an increase in middle class taxes, and we do know that people are concerned that it will hurt their own quality of care, so I think their gut instincts point in that direction."

By talking openly about redistribution, Baucus and others have gone seriously off-message. Democrats knew there was no way they could ever sell a national health care bill to a skeptical public by basing their case on income inequality.
That's one reason they went to such lengths to argue -- preposterously, in the view of most Americans -- that the bill could cover 32 million currently uninsured people and still save the taxpayers money.

After Baucus' statement, I asked a Democratic strategist (who asked to remain nameless) whether fighting income inequality was one of his goals in supporting the legislation. Never, he said. "That's what the tax code is for."

"It was not to take something away from rich people, it was to provide something to people without coverage," he continued, making a distinction between striving for universal coverage and seeking to redistribute income. But he quickly saw that Democrats talking about redistribution could be politically damaging, echoing the controversy that erupted when candidate Obama famously told Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher that "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

" 'Redistribution' is an easy charge to make," the Democrat said. "I'm not surprised that it's an argument critics make; what I'm surprised at is that Democrats are making it."

This week the DNC group Organizing for America offered a commemorative certificate to supporters who helped pass the health care bill. The certificate said, "We achieved the dream of generations -- high-quality, affordable health care is no longer the privilege of a few, but the right of all."

The privilege of a few? It is widely accepted that about 85 percent of all Americans have health care coverage, and the overwhelming majority are happy with it. There's simply no way anyone could plausibly claim that health coverage is the privilege of a few.

And yet that is the bedrock belief of some who supported the health care makeover. So it's no wonder that we're hearing about health care as the redistribution of income. Of course, we're only hearing it after the bill has passed.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Obamacare-was-mainly-aimed-at-redistributing-wealth-89725302.html

Read: Senate Finance Committee Votes Against Government-Run Health Insurance Plan