VIRGINIAN IS TELLING IT LIKE IT ISN'T

by H. N. Burdett

Like him or not -- and what's not to like? -- one thing you've got to admit about House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, is that the kid's got chutzpah.

The clean-cut bespectacled congressman from Richmond, who seemingly epitomizes what every mother would be overjoyed to bring home to Friday night dinner and maybe introduce to her daughter, has been all over the tube telling the Stephanopouloses and Gregorys that the Republicans do too have a health reform plan.

As I was getting my talking heads fix last Sunday morning, this came as such a bolt from the blue, such a revelation of truly Biblical proportions, that I nearly overturned my cup of Earl Grey trying to find the remote to punch up the volume.

For months the Democrats had me fairly convinced that the GOP's sole interest in health care reform is to drive the sharpest stake it can find right through its very heart. The Republican motive for this pending legislative atrocity was surely to protect their pals and patrons in the health insurance business from being put upon by demands that even the most timid moves in the direction of reform might incur -- which indeed may be the best one might reasonably expect from this 111th U.S. Congress.

But, at long last, now we were getting the straight scoop. And from none other than this nice, clean-cut young man from the capital of the Old Confederacy exuding sincerity as he matter-of-factly reminds us that, by gum and by golly, not only do his Republican brethren have a plan, but that it was rolled out way back in July. Coast-to-coast blockbuster news that it was, the story didn't get as much as an harumph from either the Democrats or their craven lapdogs in the liberal media who somehow were constrained from publishing it in Second Coming boldface.

Cantor, whose meteoric rise within his party's ranks after taking his seat in Congress a mere 10 years ago is considered sufficiently awesome that the backroom denizens of the RNC are still figuring out ways to clone him, tells us the GOP plan "is focused very squarely on bringing down costs and health care costs for the American people." And furthermore: "Our House bill is validated by the Congressional Budget Office and will bring down health care insurance premiums."

Zap, take that Nancy Pelosi. And, zap again, you, too, Steny Hoyer. Now both of you, stand up together and take a dose of your own medicine that you and your liberal Democrats dish out when you demagogue the bejeezus out of a matter as gravely serious as health reform. Finally, you are forced to swallow the unvarnished truth as enunciated so crisply by this fine, young son of the south.

And the truth is that the Congressional Budget Office has indeed "validated" the Republican health reform alternative.

As happens time and again, however, the devil once more lurks in the details. What has been validated is that what Rep. Cantor so blissfully pitches as a viable alternative to the Democrats' expensive and devious plot to put private health insurers out of business, is, well, kind of a bubby meisah (a grandmother's tale; no charge for the translation).

You see, the plain fact of the matter is that the GOP plan touted by Cantor -- who, by the way, mothers everywhere should know, is not 27 to 37 years old as he looks, but rather 47 and very much married to the lovely Diane with whom he has three offspring, one in college already, for heaven's sake -- would cover just 3 million of the 52 million Americans expected to be uninsured by 2020.

But the GOP congressional caucus would have us believe that so-called health care reform is a figment of those wild-eyed, tax-and-spend Democrats once again overreaching by trying to do too much at once (which they know they can't do but what the hey, it gets them votes), and not caring beans that it will hit the deserving, backbone of America, salt-of-the-earth filthy rich right where it hurts the most: in their investment portfolios.

The Democrats, who want you to believe they don't have such portfolios, only worn and frayed wallets that are a lot thinner in these trying times, counter claim that it's high time Uncle Sam recognizes that this great land of freedom and opportunity is the only industrialized nation in the world without universal health coverage for its citizens, and that a healthy nation, almost by definition, is a more productive and far happier nation.

That Rep. Cantor can look his fellow Americans in the eye, albeit through the filter of network television, and tell us that his party has a health reform proposal, well, that's more than chutzpah -- it's a performance deserving of, at least, an Oscar nomination. I can't quite figure the category for which it qualifies. Maybe they'll have to come up with a new one for Best Political Performance. A really neat sure box office smash would have Barney Frank and Cantor expounding their opposing interpretations of the Talmud. I, for one, would fork over a few sheckels to see that one.