Reply #188: While the POTUS may

[billh58]

have a de facto and partisan "leadership" role in suggesting, lobbying for (or against), and making speeches about, any given piece of legislation, he or she has absolutely no Constitutional role in the Legislative process. The Founders made absolutely sure that the position of POTUS would never become a unilateral seat of power, even though some Republicans (and apparently some on the Far Left) would like to change that.

Dubya's "leadership" consisted of a rubber-stamp Congress, and when that changed he went back to the Neoconservative concept of a Unitary Executive with the issuance of Executive Orders and the excessive misuse of "signing statements."

As has been pointed out, many Democratic Presidents and Congress members have attempted to introduce some form of Universal Health Care for all Americans, and none of them have ever gotten to the point of an up or down vote by Congress.

For those who believe that "all, or nothing" is the only honorable thing to consider in the debate about Health Care Reform, I wonder if they would have viewed the almost toothless Emancipation Proclamation the same way. Although President Lincoln issued the EP as an Executive Order under his "war powers" authority as the CIC, it offered little initial relief for the majority of slaves in America. It would take another 100 years and countless lives for slaves and their descendants to see the full benefits of that small first step toward social equality. And, believe it or not, the battle for full social equality for ALL Americans is not over yet.

Hopefully, like Social Security (which also started as a small step) Universal Health Care will enjoy a much shorter trip to full fruition than did the Civil Rights journey in this nation. You can thank a Liberal Democrat for almost ALL social progress in the USA since the Great Depression. Big Business and Big Money can thank the Neoconservative Republicans (and the DLC DINOs) for anti-Labor, anti-Middle Class, anti-education, anti-fair taxation, and anti-Equality legislation which made them obscenely wealthy.