Dear Editor,
Quoting from a recent news release by National News, our New York State Senator Schumer just now admitting his grave error. Schumer said he told fellow Democrats in the lead-up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act that it was the wrong time to pass the law.
“People thought – and I understand this – lots of people thought this was the only time to do this, it’s very important to do. And we should have done it. We just shouldn’t have done it first,” he said.
“We were in the middle of a recession. People were hurting and saying, ‘what about me? I’m losing my job. It’s not health care that bothers me. What about me?’ About 85 percent of all Americans were fine with their health care in 2009, mainly because it was paid for by the government or their employer, private sector. So they weren’t clamoring. The average middle-class voter, they weren’t opposed to doing health care when it started out, but it wasn’t at the top of the agenda.”
He went on to say that he blamed the push for the Affordable Care Act so early in Obama’s first term for the rise of the tea-party movement, which destroyed the Democratic majority in the House in 2010 and went on to – along with a number of other missteps by the federal government, including implementation of the law – oust the Democratic majority in the Senate as well as seen this year, 2014.
Apparently the Democrats are trying to mend their fences leading up to 2016. But taking words from one other infamous State Senators, “At this point, what difference does it make?” Schumer is still partisan and continues to vote on keeping it and votes against amendments in the house to modify it.
Florence Alpert
Candor, N.Y.
