Reply #46: And you're no historian [View All]

Your lack of knowledge or understanding of history is appalling if not predictable. You want to compare Obama and Johnson. Apart from the fact that any number of things make such comparisons silly, let's just take a look at the actual record. Obama has been President for seven months. Health care, while a priority, was relegated to a secondary spot because of the need to deal with the economic crisis first. But in mid July, the House began work on health care legislation and within a matter of two weeks, a bill had been considered and approved by the three separate committees with jurisdiction -- not subcommittees, full committees, thus teeing up the bill for consideration on the floor of the House when Congress reconvenes in September.

Now let's consider the record of the CIvil RIghts Act that you seem to think is an apt comparison. The bill that became the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was introduced by JFK in June 1963, a few weeks after Medgar Evers was shot and killed and not that long after George Wallace had made his famous stand for segregation. The bill went through almost a month's worth of hearings in a House Judiciary Subcommittee before finally being approved, sent to full Committee in October where it was approved. And then it had to go to the rules committee, which tried to bottle it up. It took a discharge petition to finally get the bill out of rules and to the floor in February. So what took the current Congress two weeks to accomplish with respect to the Health Care bill took around eight months in the case of the Civil Rights bill -- and during that time, 200,000 people marched on Washington, four little girls were killed in the Birmingham Church bombing and the President of the United States was assassinated. But go ahead and make your goofy comparison to LBJ.

Oh, and then there is the Senate. The Senate has several bills moving through Committee on health care, with expectation that they will be ready for the floor in September or October -- in the neighborhood of four months. The Civil RIghts Act? Well, Senate committees (Commerce and Judiciary) started holding hearings in July 1963 but nothing really moved in the Senate until the bill was passed by the House in February 1964, whereupon the Senate leadership promptly announced that they were postponing action on the bill until after the Senate considered a tax bill. Then a further delay while a Farm Bill is taken up. Finally, in early March the leadership sought to bring the bill to the floor. A two week filibuster of that motion slows things, but is finally overcome because of the overwhelming republican (that word you find so odd -- bipartisan --) support. A filibuster on the bill ensues, again finally broken in June only because of -- that word again -- bipartisan efforts. The bill passes and after winding back through the House, is signed into law on July 2, 1964 -- more than a year after it was introduced, almost nine months after it was reported out of the House Judiciary Committee.

Yeah, great comparison einstein. Now go away.