Today’s Flickr Photo
On Fort Lauderdale beach in Florida. Flickr photo by ticktockdoc.
If you read one thing today . . .
Politico’s David Rogers sat down with outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and talked about the highlights of her term — passing health care legislation and financial reform.
“We came here to do a job, and we did the job. … Those two issues, Wall Street reform and health care, were two that changed the leverage for the American people. Whether you were a consumer or a patient, the leverage is now with you. And that, for me, is why I am a Democrat: to have the leverage to be with the average person.”
There’s some denial to be sure. In the course of an interview, Pelosi repeatedly spoke of her ranking Democrats as committee “chairmen” when they won’t be in the new Congress. Four years of restrictive rules on House debate seem a lost memory: “I’m thoroughly agnostic. If Republicans have a good idea, let’s go with it.”
And by her reckoning, little or nothing about November’s losses can be attributed to the enactment of health care reform.
“If we had never passed the bill, we would still have had these losses. We were told a year ago: ‘If you’re anywhere near 10 percent unemployment, there’s no chance you can hold the majority.’”
“Nothing compares — in anything I have ever done — with passing the health care bill.”
Overheard:
Someone should really do something about those damn environmentalists and their need to protect us from companies that want to pollute our air and water. Have no fear, Rep.-elect Bill Flores (R-Texas) is here and he’s ready to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency. Think Progress has a snippet from his appearance on something called the Tea Party Internet Radio:
I can tell you the House as a whole, the Republicans in the House as a whole want to get the EPA shut down on these bunny trails that’s going down that are throwing people out of work — particularly the way it’s abusing Texas. And I think that Texas can count on getting some relief from the EPA within the first few months of this Congress because they really have gone overboard.
Even if health care is seriously de-funded by the Republicans, the passage of the ACA has the potential to change American culture significantly. It really is hard to be considered the greatest country in the world when 1 in 10 citizens is without reasonable access to health care and 60% of personal bankruptcies are due to the costs of health issues.