“We’re not campaigning anymore.”  That’s what President Obama said to Senator McCain when the senator complained about the health care process during yesterday’s summit.

I was saddened that the president didn’t take this more seriously. I wish he would have said: “You’re right, Senator McCain. The American people deserved a better process than what they got. And that’s why I wanted to hold this summit to see if we couldn’t start over.”

But anytime anyone is defensive, it’s a sign that he doesn’t really get it.

No, the president’s health care plan isn’t unpopular because he didn’t explain it well enough or because he didn’t package it well enough. It’s unpopular because it’s not a good plan and because it was produced by a bad process.

The country understands that. Too bad the president doesn’t.

A funny thing happened on the way to passing the stimulus package. Congress can’t convince itself to pass it:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/08/congress.economy/index.html

It seems that the more people keep looking at this bill, the less they like it.  As previously stated on this blog, I support passing a stimulus bill.  Just not this one. The problem with this stimulus bill is that it doesn’t have enough stimulus but it leaves a big bill for our kids and grandkids to pay.  Here is how John McCain described it:

“We need to spend money on infrastructure and on other programs that will immediately put people to work. But this is not it.”

No, it’s not. What’s worse, it may end up hurting our economy more than it helps.  According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office:

“…the long-term effect of that much government spending over the next decade could ‘crowd out’ private investment, lowering long-term economic growth forecasts by 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent by 2019.”

It’s not too late for Washington to do the right: scrap this bill and start over. We need a bill that will mean dollars for our economy and will make sense for our future.

-Randy Hill