The Hubris of Representative Government
By Mark Sump

How arrogant to think that our elected representatives should know more than the collective knowledge of the voting public. How arrogant to suggest that we should pass a comprehensive health reform package rather than just the parts of the plan that are more popular.

Well, there we go! Let’s do that! Let’s pass a law that says an insurance company cannot deny coverage to someone with pre-existing conditions. Problem solved! Now no one will need to pay those outrageous insurance premiums until they know they’re sick. Think of how much money that will save us all.

Come to think of it, those lottery rules suck too. Let’s sell the lottery tickets after the winning numbers are announced. And what about Harry Reid’s home state where gambling is so popular. Imagine how much more popular black jack would be if you could bet after all the cards are played.

The reality is that if we are going to have a health insurance system that is affordable and fair at the same time, everyone has to be covered. It won’t work any other way.

U. S. Government is not and never was designed to work according to just what is popular. That’s right. Our elected officials should have a better understanding of the facts behind a piece of legislation than the 300 million other people who haven’t read the CBO report or even knows what a CBO is. Our system of representative government was established to elect smart people to make hard choices on our behalf. They should know more than the rest of us.

We should not assume that popular opinion is right. Just over a year ago the notion of widespread change in our health care system was soaring in popularity. A year before that Barack Obama was opposed to the mandated health insurance coverage that Hillary Clinton favored. Now it is obvious to him and anyone genuinely following this health care debate, that if you want to force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions you have to force everyone to pay into the system. In order to force everyone to pay into the system you have to subsidize those individuals who can’t afford to pay into the system. Once everyone is in the system, insurance premiums will become more affordable, but only if you have true competition for those insurance dollars. Therefore, you have to break up the monopolies that these huge health insurance companies are allowed to hold under the current law.

This is what we’re talking about. These are the facts. People who prefer to govern by popular opinion don’t need these facts. The idea of forcing people to buy insurance is unpopular. The idea that we would subsidize people to pay for health insurance they can’t afford is unpopular. The idea that insurance companies should be regulated is unpopular. The problem is that we have to do all of these things if we want health insurance to be affordable and fair to everyone.

Anyone who professes we can have incremental change short of doing all of these unpopular things at once is not doing their job. The job of our elected officials is to be smart and make tough decisions.

The next thing on the public agenda is going to be even tougher, yet no less important. Climate Change is very real and will require tough decisions no matter how unpopular. Some will say that this winter’s record snow fall in the Northeast is proof that climate change is fiction. The fact is that January was the warmest January on record worldwide. The fact is that we are pouring 90 million tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere every day. The fact is that we are headed to the edge of a cliff and very soon we will no longer be able to stop before the abyss.

Even if we choose to ignore the fact of global warming, there is no ignoring the fact that we are transferring billions and billions of dollars to countries that are funding hatred toward us. We are funding Iran’s nuclear arms program. We are funding radical, fundamentalist schools throughout the Middle East who are teaching an entire generation of Muslims that we are evil and must be destroyed.

Knowing any of these facts, why on earth would anyone elected to represent our interests suggest that we do nothing to move us toward a more verdant future? And yet, there are elected officials who scoff at a Climate Change bill as an unnecessary tax brought on by liberal elitists. Public opinion is already being moved toward this notion and away from the facts that make such a bill necessary.

Smart, responsible people know the facts. Doing nothing is easy, but doing nothing is seldom right. I hope that the majority of our elected officials will embrace the hubris of representative government and make the tough choices. This is your job. It is not your job to ignore facts and do nothing.