The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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March 6, 2010

Your View: Pork barrel politics are not the answer

Wayne Comstock, North Mankato

— House leader Nancy Pelosi is calling for her Democratic House members to drink the sacrifice Kool Aid and vote for a bloated, unfair and flawed health care bill that the majority of Americans presently oppose.

Many cost saving changes and improvements to existing insurance problems could pass both houses and be implemented now. Some of those problems are health care insurance portability, preexisting conditions and allowing insurance companies to compete across all state lines.

Addressing Medicare fraud and meaningful tort reform should follow.

Medicaid coverage for the uninsured poor is essential. Medicare and Medicaid are presently destined to bankruptcy and they need major reform. This legislation should not be slopped together in the present multi-thousand page, catch-all bill. But instead of dealing with this legislation in logical steps, the Congress has been blatantly bogged down by partisan political egos and questionable back room dealing. They have ignored historical legislative procedures that have produced successful bipartisan legislation in the past.

When we vote for our representatives we expect them to be representatives to Washington, D.C., not representatives from Washington, D.C. We also expect them to exercise fiscal responsibility and rigorously uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Blindly following the dictates of flippant political party leadership is irresponsible.  Both political parties have become extremely partisan and dysfunctional. Many representatives brag and drag home pork-barrel project dollars that dig us deeper into an unsustainable national debt. Representatives are often cheered on by local officials that just don’t get it.

Pork barreling should not get our representatives off the hook for poor performance. Expanding temporary pork barrel jobs and public jobs just dig us deeper into debt.

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