| Having blocked online access to its editorial content for years, the Omaha World-Herald took the extraordinary step of featuring two recent editorials on health care reform on its website. They were evidently hoping for the widest possible readership to have a greater impact on the most important Congressional debate in decades.
However, what was truly extraordinary about these editorials was how completely they exposed the World-Herald's shameless partisanship and right-wing extremism. They make no attempt at balance. They contribute nothing but a litany of Republican talking points crafted, refined, and repeated with only one purpose in mind - to kill health care reform. The World-Herald is also being quite transparent in how it hopes to achieve that goal - by targeting its criticism squarely at Senator Ben Nelson.
Exhibit A:
World-Herald editorial: Just say 'no' to Reid health care plan (11/20/2009)
Sixty votes will be needed to send Sen. Harry Reid's health care proposal to the Senate floor for debate. Sen. Ben Nelson, one of the most closely watched swing votes, should vote no.
Why? Because Reid's proposal, like that approved in the U.S. House, would place immense burdens on small and medium-sized rural hospitals in the Midlands. It would not prevent further steep increases in health care costs. It would, however, shunt billions in new costs onto state governments. And its budget savings at the federal level depend on empty, misleading promises of fiscal discipline that Congress has shown it's utterly incapable of fulfilling....
Those considerations need to occupy the very forefront of Sen. Nelson's thinking as he ponders how to vote on the proposal. Is he more worried about making sure that the vital interests of Nebraska are protected, or about pleasing Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi?
There ought be no question about what the proper answer should be...If Nelson can't make the case right now that rural Nebraska would be safe under the Reid legislation, then he should not vote to allow it to go forward.
Otherwise, congressional procedures would likely produce an ultimate result that - regardless of the senator's possible "no" vote at the end - would deliver a terrible blow to Nebraska communities. That is the kind of result from which a state finds it hard to recover. The same can be said of a lawmaker's reputation.
If anything, it's the reputation of the Omaha World-Herald that shouldn't recover from such a one-sided hatchet job against the health care reform effort. Ben Nelson has been commendably consistent in his recognition of the dysfunction in the health care system that is bankrupting America's businesses and terrorizing America's families - even in rural Nebraska. The World-Herald turns a blind eye to millions of travesties and tragedies, suggesting that partisanship would be the only possible motivation for Nelson's allowing this debate to proceed.
Thankfully, Ben Nelson didn't give in to the World-Herald's implied threat against his "reputation." The day after the above editorial ran, Nelson cast the 60th vote to allow the health care debate to proceed. Just in time for the start of that debate on Monday of this week, the World-Herald returned with the following editorial (Exhibit B) that is much more explicit in its threat against Nelson's political career:
World-Herald editorial: Be wary, Midlanders, of health care proposals (11/30/2009)
The overpromising that supporters are making for the current health care proposals in Congress is breathtaking. Policy-making on such a colossal scale of complexity and expense unavoidably involves difficult choices. Yet many supporters act as if these proposals don't involve serious uncertainties or shortcomings - let alone budget concerns. The more that supporters describe the situation as problem-free and blissfully budget-friendly, the more that Midlanders should be wary.
America needs to tackle the health care issue, but with legislation that is affordable and practical rather than fiscally irresponsible and heavy-handed. The current legislation needs to be scrapped and a more moderate approach adopted....
As the Senate takes up its consideration of the Reid proposal, it's important to underscore, again, the significance of the Senate's voting procedures. Sen. Ben Nelson, the senior senator from Nebraska, voted on Nov. 21 to send the health care reform bill to the Senate floor for debate. Nelson was one of 60 senators voting to do so. Nebraskans should know that Sen. Nelson was in a position to prevent this bill from getting to the Senate floor, as all 60 votes were needed.
At least once more and perhaps several additional times during the Senate debate, a "cloture" vote will be taken. That means 60 votes are needed to allow the bill to move forward. In such situations, Sen. Nelson will have the opportunity to stop the health care legislation, and he should.
Voting against the bill at the very end of the process, when only 51 votes would be needed in the Senate, would have no real meaning. Given the numbers in the Senate, the only "no" vote by Nelson that would have any real-world effect on the legislation is an earlier "no" vote, during cloture situations.
Nebraskans should make note of all votes that Sen. Nelson will cast on this measure. He has already voted once to move this bill toward passage. He has more opportunities, with the cloture vote or votes being the most critical. The senator should be held accountable for all of them, not just the last one.
In other words, the all-powerful World-Herald will blame Ben Nelson and hold him personally responsible if this legislation is signed into law. The World-Herald doesn't give a damn about Nelson's long history of avoiding obstruction and allowing straight up-or-down votes. The message is clear - if Ben Nelson doesn't kill health care reform, the World-Herald will work to kill his political career should he run for re-election in 2012.
Of course, at least in this second editorial there is some acknowledgement of a health care "issue" that America "needs to tackle." But, for all the editorial's fretting over the "uncertainties" of reform, it's the certainty of how much higher health care costs will spiral without reform that reveals the World-Herald's selective and shallow thinking. They also neglect that the last time health care reform was "scrapped," it took fifteen years of costly inaction to build the political will to get us where we are today.
The World-Herald also conveniently imagines that proponents of reform are just blissfully ignorant of its costs. Of course, those in desperate situations are going to come at the issue from a different place than those who are (momentarily) faring better under the status quo. There's also a world of difference in how people can reasonably balance so many competing concerns in the struggle for quality, access, affordability, and long-term sustainability in our health care system. But, the World-Herald cares nothing for such balancing. They just want health care reform killed, and they want Ben Nelson to be the man who kills it!
That's the ultimate irony of the World-Herald's editorial assault. They complain about the "overpromising" of health care reform without acknowledging their own role exaggertaing and overhyping its inevitable costs.
The World-Herald willfully poisons the well of public opinion and pollutes the minds of readers. They make veiled threats against an elected official. They're scared of debate by the U.S. Senate - and now scared of an honest discussion on their own editorial page. Such fear! Such pathetic fear of change! It's all they have. The city of Omaha, and the state of Nebraska deserve so much better. |
