Sarah Palin: The Pelosi Bill Was Rammed Through on Saturday, But Sunday’s Here

We’ve got to hold on to hope, and we’ve got to fight hard because Congressional action tonight just put America on a path toward an unrecognizable country.

The same government leaders that got us into the mortgage business and the car business are now getting us into the health care business.

Despite Americans’ decisive message last Tuesday that they reject the troubling path this country has been taking, Speaker Pelosi has broken her own promises of transparency to ram a health “care” bill through the House of Representatives just before midnight. Why did she push the 2,000 page bill this weekend? Was she perhaps afraid to give her peers and the constituents for whom she works the chance to actually read this monstrous bill carefully, if at all? Was she concerned that Americans might really digest the details of a bill that the Wall Street Journal has called “the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced”?

This out-of-control bureaucratic mess will be disastrous for our economy, our small businesses, and our personal liberty. It will slam businesses at a time when we are at double-digit unemployment rates – the highest we’ve seen in a quarter of a century. This massive new bureaucracy will cost us and our children money we don’t have. It will rob Americans of more of our freedom and further hamper the free market.

Make no mistake: we’re on course to have government commandeer one-sixth of our economy. The people who gave us Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now want to run our health care. Think about that.

All of us who value the sanctity of life are grateful for the success of the pro-life majority in the House this evening in its battle against federal funding of abortion in this bill, but it’s ironic because we were promised that abortion wasn’t covered in the bill to begin with. Our healthy distrust of these government leaders made us look deeper into the bill because unfortunately we knew better than to trust what they were saying. The victory tonight to amend the bill and eliminate that federal funding for abortion was great – because abortion is not health care. Now we can only hope that Rep. Stupak’s amendment will hold in the final bill, though the Democratic leadership has already refused to promise that it won’t be scrapped later.

We had been told there were no “death panels” in the bill either. But look closely at the provision mandating bureaucratic panels that will be calling the shots regarding who will receive government health care.

Look closely at provisions addressing illegal aliens’ health care coverage too.

Those of us who love freedom and believe in open and transparent government can only be dismayed by midnight action on a Saturday. Speaker Pelosi’s promise that Americans would have 72 hours to read the final bill before the vote was just another one of the D.C. establishment’s too-common political ploys. It’s broken promises like this that turn people off to politics and leave them disillusioned about the future of their country.

But despite this late-night maneuvering, many of us were paying close attention tonight. We’ll keep paying close attention. We need to let our legislators in Washington know that they still represent us, and that the majority of Americans are not in favor of the “reform” they are pushing. After all, this is still a country “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” We will make our voices heard. It’s on to the Senate now. Our legislators can listen now, or they can hear us in 2010. It’s their choice.

- Sarah Palin