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Payola to the victim special interest groups. Democrats are seeking to fund backdoor Universal Health Care by expanding Medicaid (one of those 'creeping entitlements' Barack Obama once mentioned) to cover those on unemployment insurance. $150 billion for 'the children'. We conservatives know what the Democrats want: a social welfare nation; one unencumbered with the troubles of capitalism. But seldom do we see it spelled out on the front page of the New York Times..

WASHINGTON — The stimulus bill working its way through Congress is not just a package of spending increases and tax cuts intended to jolt the nation out of recession. For Democrats, it is also a tool for rewriting the social contract with the poor, the uninsured and the unemployed, in ways they have long yearned to do.

With little notice and no public hearings, House Democrats would create a temporary new entitlement allowing workers getting unemployment checks to qualify for Medicaid, the health program for low-income people. Spouses and children could also receive benefits, no matter how much money the family had.

In addition, the stimulus package would offer a hefty subsidy to help laid-off workers retain the same health plans they had from their former employers.

Altogether, the economic recovery bill would speed $127 billion over the next two and a half years to individuals and states for health care alone, a fact that has Republicans fuming that the stimulus package is a back door to universal health coverage.

This stimulus package ($825,000,000,000) is simply socialism disguised as economic relief; cod liver oil given disguised as koolaid. But to Democrats, nothing could be sweeter.

Most of the aid is billed as temporary. But Republicans fear that states would get hooked on it, just as they might grow accustomed to a big increase in federal aid to education, also included in the bill.

Democrats said the current economic crisis did not allow time for public hearings on the legislation.

Who needs public hearings, anyway? You heard Obama: "I won". That gives him and the Democrats all the leash they need to implement their previously (somewhat) restrained desires to create France with two coasts, never mind the costs.

Sure, to the victor and all of that, but spending this much money without hearing from almost half the nation is, well, crazy. This end-run around the public will not serve to correct our financial problems; what's more, this infusion of new money will fuel that inflation monster what's lurking just a few quarters away.

Please, call your representatives and denounce this liberal stimulus package. Even if you are a Democrat, as an exercise, try to call and slow this monster. Your call won't make any difference. To paraphrase another headstrong leftist bent on economic change of the marxist sort, "The Debate is OVER." This matter is not open for discussion.

“It’s like an alcoholic at the end of the night when the bars close,
and the solution is to open the bar for another hour,” Mr. Hess said.

Even for Democrats, that should be a scary thought.