Has Sanity Prevailed?

Image credit: Found it here

Has sanity prevailed, or is this just a reprieve? The New York Times reports today, with what I think might actually be an ironic poke at the Senate:

With no clear path forward on major health care legislation, Democratic leaders in Congress effectively slammed the brakes on President Obama’s top domestic priority on Tuesday, saying they no longer felt pressure to move quickly on a health bill after eight months of setting deadlines and missing them.

Democrats Put Lower Priority on Health Bill

After all, it's a lot of work to take a good idea and turn it into something that even its firmest supporters would have to back away from. That's what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Senate accomplished in those eight months, with some "help" from the Obama Administration.

Quotes from both Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi indicate that they haven't given up hope of passing something. The language they use suggests that they plan to base that something on either the House or Senate version of the bill. I'm not excited about the House bill, but it might be redeemable in a sane universe. The Senate bill is beyond redemption, and even in this crazy parallel universe I find myself in lately, it may be beyond the ability of the corporate whores in Congress to resurrect it.

The NYT article indicates that they're going to try to take the issue up again in February.

At least for now, we can rest a little easier knowing that, as bad as things are, the government isn't going to try to make them worse.

In the interest of fairness, I'll have to give a shout out to Rep. Raul Grijalva, who, along with his Progressive Caucus, have received some rather merciless criticism here in the past for being largely useless in stopping this travesty from happening. They stood firm, and made it possible for something better to happen. If my criticism helped that process along in any way, I'll happily do it again.