But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."
- (D) Nancy Pelosi
That seems like a poorly worded statement, so I looked up the context of the quote.
Looking for it, I found that the search returned almost only soldiers in the right-wing noise machine repeating the quote, by itself out of context with their 'commentary'.
One link had the text of the speech. Reading that, it still seems poorly worded, but not what the right-wing noise machine was implying.
Is the right-wing really saying that Pelosi broke the laws on the content of the bill being available to the public, as they imply?
Are they saying as they imply that she was trying to hide the content of the bill - while giving a speech on the content of the bill? Funny for her to admit her scheme, isn't it?
Because that's not what she was saying, not that you would know that from any of the right-wing noise machine with their 'gotcha' quote.
A little common sense shows that's not what she was saying, but that's asking too much from these audiences.
Heritage, Redstate, Fox, and so on, all did their part for right-wing propaganda.
So, the right-wing audiences largely fell for this.
Here's the quote with a little more context:
We have to do this in partnership, and I wanted to bring up to date on where we see it from here. The final health care legislation that will soon be passed by Congress will deliver successful reform at the local level. It will offer paid for investments that will improve health care services and coverage for millions more Americans. It will make significant investments in innovation, prevention, wellness and offer robust support for public health infrastructure. It will dramatically expand investments into community health centers. That means a dramatic expansion in the number of patients community health centers can see and ultimately healthier communities. Our bill will significantly reduce uncompensated care for hospitals.
Youve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I dont know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, preventionits about diet, not diabetes. Its going to be very, very exciting.
But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy. Furthermore, we believe that health care reform, again I said at the beginning of my remarks, that we sent the three pillars that the Presidents economic stabilization and job creation initiatives were education and innovationinnovation begins in the classroomclean energy and climate, addressing the climate issues in an innovative way to keep us number one and competitive in the world with the new technology, and the third, first among equals I may say, is health care, health insurance reform. Health insurance reform is about jobs. This legislation alone will create 4 million jobs, about 400,000 jobs very soon.
Her point, in my opinion, is that the same right-wing noise machine had created so much 'controversy' that was false about the bill, that once it was passed, people would find that the lies were lies and the terrible things they said wouldn't happen, but rather the good things actually in the bill would happen.
That's a reasonable point, confusingly worded.
Consider an analogy - when Bill Clinton pushed a tax increase on the top 2%, every right-wing commentator made big predictions about the bad things it would do - destroy the economy, plummet productivity, explode the deficit, whatever bad things they could make up - and he could have said the same thing, that there's a lot of made-up 'controversy' and passing the tax cut would show the good things it would do - which is just what happened (by the way, I haven't seen one of hundreds admit they were wrong).
'The proof is in the pudding' is what she seems she was saying, disagreeing with the bill doing what the right-wing noise machine said.
But the right continues on parroting the idiotic out of context version - Pelosi has evil scheme toe destroy the country, hidden in bill, and says she does in speech!
Makes her a good Bond villain, announcing her evil plan. Anyone who parrots this right-wing nonsense should be embarrassed.
Or, people could get that the right has a plan that says 'screw the American people, the only way to get power back for our agenda for the rich is to not let the Democrats get anything done', so that they were almost all going to vote against any health care plan the Democrats could get credit with voters for pretty much no matter what, who cares about the rising costs, the uninsured, and so on, while nit picking the bills to justify this, so that unlike Pelosi, they didn't announce their evil plan.
But wait, they did - there are a number of quotes from Republicans admitting pretty much this approach, in situations they were speaking more generally. Not out of context.
So, righties can pick - Pelosi did some terrible coverup and announced her evil plan in a speech, or they are being propagandized to support the right's agenda for the rich.
Are they that big of suckers? There are people paid to lie to them about the Dems. Why are they paid, by whom? What is that agenda of those funders?
No, just as the same type of people have long fallen for the most basic of televangelist scammers, just as they fell for Ronald Reagan telling them that JFK's Medicare proposals weren't good for the American people's healthcare needs but rather were 'socialism' they should be against, while he was paid by the industry who would profit, and later his 'trickle down economics' and other plans that shifted the nation's economy into a historic change where the rich took a far larger share of the economic growth (nearly all after inflation)...
It's a failure of our democracy, for the monied interests to be able to put out weak propaganda and get the righties to fall for it as fooled citizens.
To let the monied interests buy enough voters to block the programs on behalf of those voters. But that's the behavior on issue after issue of righties.
Give them just enough of a false argument they can repeat it ad nauseum as talking points. See! Pelosi admits there's a hidden agenda to destroy the nation!!
Who is the real enemy of the country? The people who are such weak citizens and those who lie to them, IMO.