That cite shows that the health care bill is good for the country? I don’t think these are the droids you are looking for.
How do you ascertain good for the people? Cost effective? I would posit that the only way you ascertain good for the people is by asking the people (therefore the poll)
What is rarely discussed is that some earmarks actually represent useful and cost effective projects. It is eassy to call out the “Bridge to Nowhere” and the “teapot museam”, but earmarks also represent needed roads, bridges, port improvements, etc.
Earmarks are not good or bad any more than a hammer is good or bad… a hammer can be used to drive in nails and build a house, but a hammer can also be used to bash in kittens heads in front of a preschool during recess.
Ok, if you’re going to continue with this fallacious argument, I must pose my question.
More than 60% of Americans supported invading Iraq in 2003. Does that prove that the war was a good idea? That it was good for the US? Is nobody allowed to question that decision since a supermajority of Americans supported an unjustified invasion?
I await your answer.
And in answer to your question: yes, people who want to repeal the health care reform bill are wrong. Those who want to improve it are fine in my book, but those who think that millions of Americans should continue to be without access to affordable medicine are just plain wrong.
Ok, I will indulge you. Scientifically prove to me that the healthcare bill is good.
I don’t think you will find one person stating that they want people without access to health care. Not one. It is how to go about achieving the end result that the debate lies. Improve, repeal and republish or do NOTHING until a suitable alternative can be accomplished. These are all possibilities.
What do Americans now say about the war? We should have withdrawn some years back, IMO. The dubious nature of the war at the time was never in question. As your supermajority hath spoken.
This is just a ludicrous way to determine if a law is good. Among many other things you’re assuming they are well informed about the law and that they are informed about the effects of the law, which is just naive.
It saves us money, it insures more people. Pre-existing conditions will be gone when it’s fully implemented. Lifetime limits on care will be gone.
The legislation itself and the CBO say it. You can read the CBO’s non-partisan economic forcasts at my cite. These are the people that both parties are supposed to go to, to see the economic effects of legislation.
If you don’t understand or believe in having experts look at complex issues then I suppose there is no point trying to convince you of anything. I can’t talk you out of embracing ignorance.
In a democracy, ‘popular’ is ‘good’. The entire idea is based on that assumption. That’s why elections are decided by popular vote rather than some other method. Sometimes the results are less than stellar, but overall two branches of our government automatically assumes popular is good.
Now there are things are bad even if they have massive support. Which is why the third branch is not based on popular = good. It serves as a check to prevent bad things that are popular. However, the courts have little if any influence over things that are good but not popular.
If you want to take the argument that popular does not equal good, that’s fine. There’s certainly a lot of various things to base that claim on, and to a large extent I would agree. But once you take the position government should not be based on popular=good, you’re no longer talking about a form of democracy at all. Which makes that argument rather irrelevant to the US government.
What are Americans going to say in 7 years about the health care reforms?
If you say that Americans were wrong when they supported the war at its outset, and now they are right about saying the war was a mistake, then you have to admit that the alleged majority opposing the health care bill now can also be mistaken.
What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
But in any case, this thread isn’t about health care. It’s about earmarks. And the majority has spoken, as I cited earlier: they want their congressmen to bring earmarks back to their home district. If you say we cannot argue with the majority, then why are you arguing against earmarks?
I would agree that it is a bit naive but unless you want a different form of government, then you rely on popular as a good thing and not so popular as bad.
Didn’t we just have a debate on the ability to choose politicians based upon those who ‘know’ the candidates and issues? Are you now saying that only those who have done all their research should vote?
No. You are wrong.
Please, please, please read the Federalist Papers. You will find that the Framers of the Constitution abhorred subjecting the government to the passing whims of the masses, and therefore sought to have representatives that were somewhat insulated from momentary passions – see “Senate, United States.”
If our system of government is partially founded on the idea that the people may not know what the hell they are talking about, it makes no sense to cite polls as proof of what is good and what is not.
Ok, so in all honesty, we will never know what is good and what was bad until enough time passes, is that right?
If so, how much time needs to be passed to determine whether or not the government has done right by the people?
I have already given to you that health care in some form is good, how to pay for it is in crux.
Earmarks are always going to be popular (aka good) to those who benefit from them. Is this popular support? Which is why I have been strongly advocating the rights of the States to pass those bills (in house, with huge popular support). The problem only arises when the federal government earmarks things designed to buy a State’s vote on an issue the state has no interest in. If the States representative would have voted for the issue anyway (let’s assume it was for the greater good) then the earmark money was just wasted.
I don’t see an upside to earmarks at all.
The good of the country? Justice?
No doubt, but you don’t think earmarks are the only or best way to fund those projects, do you?
Earmarks are making sure that money is invested in infrastructure to improve the future economy of your district. Wisely spent earmarks are wonderful. Billion dollar bridges that serve only an island of 800 people are the height of stupidity. A billion dollar earmark bridge that serves 100,000 people for 100 years might be a great idea.
No, it is not the only way to fund the projects. But the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. What sense does it make to say that Congress must be at the mercy of what the President proposes in his budget as to whether some program or project gets funded or not? That’s turning the separation of powers on its head.
Maybe, maybe not, but I would argue that the rhetoric thrown around has little to do with the earmark process and ways to improve funding of needed projects and more to do with trying to create a bogeyman that sounds a looks good on a Candidate’s website.
Pork is built into the very structure of our system of government, by design. We don’t have 100 senators elected from the country at large; we have two senators for each state, tasked with representing the interests of their state. It’s quite literally their job to do what’s best for their state, and you’d think that the folks who crow the loudest about “states’ rights” would understand that. If you want to get rid of pork, then erase the state lines, and change the job of congresscritters to representing the interests of the nation as a whole.
Representatives interested in funding specific projects should write bills to do so, and submit those bills to debate and vote.
I think it is already their job to advance the interests of the nation as a whole, in addition to the interests of their state. If a project that benefits one state also serves the interests of the nation as a whole, it shouldn’t need to hide from the scrutiny of the whole Congress, nor its author from that of the public.
Others have provided excellent cites on this subject, so in an attempt to diverge as little as possible from the OP, I’ll let them speak for me. You seem to like poll data, so you might be interested in this link - which provides thousands more opinions, across a wide spectrum of polls and politics instead of one, but without much that is conclusive.