Nice use of Thomas. I had forgotten about this bill, most likely due to the news media showing me some shiny new thing in a different direction while they hid t

Nice use of Thomas. I had forgotten about this bill, most likely due to the news media showing me some shiny new thing in a different direction while they hid this one under the rug. But if I'm not mistaken (which I'm more than happy to admit I may be in this case), many of the ideas in this bill were eventually moved into the current Senate bill and the just passed House bill. But to be honest, the legal documentation is so voluminous and it's a moving target such that I can't keep track of all this. So I may be mis-remembering. The size is certainly a bug. I would say that it's also bad thinking to think that none of the Republican proposals didn't find their way into the present legislation. I think that there were some good ideas put up by the Party that the Democrats also latched onto pretty fiercely. They claimed it was for bi-partisanship, but I think it's more to appear that they owned all the ideas in this debate. >(Further, I'd point out that as a minority, "obstructionism" is pretty much their job. The idea that this is evil rather suspiciously dates to January of this year, for mysterious reasons.) I pretty much agree with you on everything you wrote here except for this and that the obstructionist agenda was purely of the media's making. I think it's a matter of semantics. "Obstructionism" can be one of a number of things. It can be pure stonewalling and obfuscation, or it can be a presentation of alternatives. The Republicans in this case were relatively transparent, on my plane trip today I saw no less than 20 Republican backed advertisements against "Health Care Reform" -- unqualified. Some of the advertisements asked questions that made absolutely no sense "will it guarantee I can keep my provider?". Well, lady-acting-like-a-concerned-citizen, I've got news for you, you have no guarantee of that now! And several other examples. Now the GOP may have been taking a two pronged approach, addressing both senses of "obstructionism", but considering that the agenda I heard came from the GOP itself via paid advertisements and spokespeople/heads of the party like Steele, there really wasn't much made of the alternatives. I would say it was an 80/20 effort.