Good morning breakfastpoppers. Today is Wednesday, July 15, 2009 and President Obama wants us all to be in a hurry, so today's breakfast will be store bought. Let's all take a few minutes to run to the nearest deli, supermarket or convenience store and grab a muffin and a cup of coffee. We'll meet back here in a bit and discuss the latest fiasco that Congress and the Administration is foisting upon us. It might be a good idea to pick up some Tums while you're at it, because we may not have enough time to adequately chew our breakfast. It may be hard to swallow.

...POP...House Democratic leaders have come up with a plan to satisfy and meet the deadline that President Obama has imposed upon them. He wants a health care reform bill passed before Congress goes into recess in August.  Sounds like a tall order to me, given the broad scope of such a massive undertaking, but the House has come up with something and we all may be in a heap of trouble.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that, once again, the bill is about 1,100 pages long. Thus far, no one has read it which is the way they do business in Washington these days. It can probably pass the House without being read because, let's face it , "the devil is in the details". Why waste time in thoughtful discussion when the President wants immediate action and Congress wants to go on vacation.

In the next few weeks, we will be assaulted with 30-second television ads on health care. We will be listening to the sad and compelling stories of private citizens who have had very bad experiences with our present system. One can only hope that we will also be given examples of people whose lives were destroyed by government run systems, but if we do it will have to come from sources outside the government. This administration doesn't believe in fair play. Tell the people only what you want them to hear and you will have your way with them. I don't know about you but I hate being treated like a moron and I don't appreciate being given the bum's rush when it comes to matters that will impact my life. Regardless of protestations to the contrary, if this overblown punitive bill passes,  we will end up with a single payor government run health care system. You can take that one to the bank. Under the House Democrats' plan, the federal government will guarantee that every person will have access to affordable insurance. They will accomplish this by demanding that individuals and employers get and provide insurance coverage. If they fail to do so, the government will impose serious penalties. The rich will be taxed heavily to pay for the poor. Personally, I thought we did that already, but now it will be worse. Employers who fail to provide coverage would be penalized with a tax equal to 8 percent of worker's wages. Sounds like a job killer to me.  Individuals who decide not to avail themselves of coverage would be penalized as well. They would have to pay 2.5 percent of their incomes as punishment.

The most astounding part about this bill is that the total cost of such an undertaking would conservatively be around $1.5 trillion over a ten year period. Ridiculous, irresponsible, impossible and outrageous are only a few of the words I can come up with to describe this fiasco.

Fire up the printing presses, baby, we need a few more trillion.