Galliher called last Sunday a sad day for America and Alabama when the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Senate’s version of health care reform and its own bill to amend it. Galliher said that despite protests by rank and file Americans from Washington to Florida, Democrats in Congress ignored their concerns.
“When something is reformed, it generally means it is improved upon,” Galliher said. “But in the case of health care, Congress didn’t merely fix what was wrong. It went way out of bounds by creating new layers of bureaucracy, mandates and regulations on individuals and businesses. What Pelosi and Co. did amounts to performing brain surgery on someone with a migraine headache. The effects of this bill will have an enormous negative impact on the economy of the country at a time when businesses, families and retirees are struggling to make ends meet.”
Galliher stated that the Tenth Amendment provides that, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
“In order for our proposal to become law, the people would have to ratify it at the ballot box,” Galliher said. “The bill is House Bill 498, assigned to the House Health Committee. As a member of the Health Committee, I have asked Chairman Mike Millican to give it a hearing as soon as possible.” Millican is a Democrat from Hamilton, Ala.
Galliher said he and Ward are two Alabama lawmakers fighting back against the excesses of this Congress.
“First, it was bailing out, at taxpayers’ expense, big corporations for failing their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders,” Galliher said. “Second, it was a multi-billion dollar cap and trade bill to make the country ‘greener’ and save energy. And now, third, it is an overhaul of health care disguised as reform when, in fact, it is the government-run delivery of medicine, who pays for it and how it’s paid.
“Many of us in Alabama feel as though we have had this health-care reform package shoved down our throats,” Galliher said. He called the new law “Obamanation” and equated it with infringement of gun rights and religious freedoms, and federal imposition of unfunded costs to states. “And now this called health-care reform is what has led me and other fellow Alabamians along many other states, to reaffirm the definitions and intent of the 10th Amendment,” he said.
Galliher said his bill would allow the citizens of Alabama to have a direct say in whether they want federally mandated and controlled health insurance.
“In addition to increasing costs for hospitals and healthcare providers, the Obama Health Care Plan will also increase health care costs, and will dramatically increase individual insurance premiums,” Galliher said. “There is no way this bill can be implemented without raising taxes and raising insurance premiums. I am fully convinced that the Obama Health Care Plan will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and pushes us over the brink to bankruptcy,” he said.
“This is a very punitive bill to the elderly on Medicaid/Medicare and again, it will be the average middle-income American who will have to foot the bill for all of this mess. We need to affirm our right to govern our own matters in arenas such as this. I fully believe that is what our forefathers had in mind,” Galliher said.
“We may only be two legislators in Alabama, but we are not giving up on the wisdom of the people.”
