What if Ted Had Lived?

[babylonsister]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-19/what-if-dad-had-lived/full/

What if Ted Had Lived?

by Adam Clymer

On the eve of the dramatic health-care vote, Rep. Patrick Kennedy talks to Adam Clymer about how his late father Teddy would have handled the “toxic” climate—and the legacy the two helped create.


The last Kennedy in Congress was reluctant to talk about how success for his father’s great cause might be just a day away as his career in the Capitol was coming to an end. “I’m not ready,” said Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, “to count your chickens before they are hatched.”

When the House finally holds its vote, now slated for Sunday, and—as Democrats now expect—paves the way for Obama to sign health-care reform into law, how would Ted Kennedy feel about the historic moment?

“Well, first of all I think this moment would have, I think, arrived a lot sooner,” Patrick replied. “Toxicity and vitriol of the environment” would have been diminished. “He loved the people and he loved the process. I think that he would have been more effective in terms of people being willing to work together across party lines.”

Rep. Kennedy wanted to talk about measures his father had passed, and one on which they worked together. He cited the community health center legislation that was Ted Kennedy's first health-care legislation in 1965, the children's health insurance law of 1997 where Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch led the way. and the mental-health parity law of 2008. That last measure, the signal legislative achievement of his own career, had been a cause of his father's, too, but it only became law after Ted Kennedy's brain tumor kept him from speaking and voting in the Senate.

The mental-health parity regulations issued a few days ago by the Labor Department, the Rhode Island congressman said, show how wrong people are who argue against comprehensive health-care legislation by saying the federal government cannot accomplish anything good in this area.

more...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-19/what-if-dad-had-lived/full/

[begin_within]

1. I certainly hope Teddy would have spit on this ridiculous corporate welfare giveaway,

and renounced his former support of Obama as well.

[emilyg]

5. +1

[customerserviceguy]

2. Very simply

there wouldn't have been an election in MA that brought Scott Brown to the US Senate. There would have been a conference committee, and both the Senate and the House would have to vote on the compromise reached there.

We have no way of knowing exactly how that would have worked out.

[BeatleBoot]

3. I think they all will be shining down on us tomorrow

The whole lot.

[DFLforever]

4. The Senate might have produced a better bill.

They didn't have anyone of his legislative caliber to steer a bill through the Senate...and as Leahy said, they didn't have anyone with his talent to work across party lines.

[Walk away]

6. If Teddy came back and walked on water he couldn't have moved a puke to....

do the decent thing and vote for HCR.

[DFLforever]

7. Sadly, you're probably right.

I had a brief dream of a better world...

[Walk away]

8. You have a rich fantasy life.....

Too bad it isn't real.