In the aftermath of the attempt on the part of President Obama to address on a bipartisan basis the urgent need for health care reform, the stone wall he encountered by those who want to throw out the present bill and start from scratch prolongs the real suffering of the poor who are denied access to affordable insurance and treatment. I am angered by these mostly Republican delaying tactics. I want to respond by taking issue with some partisan stumbling blocks that underlie the situation.

First, I would call attention to the constant drumbeat from Congressional Republicans that the American people want what the Republican Party says they need. They don¹t want to remember that the majority of the American people en masse have elected a Democratic president who offered hope and change. This demonstrated a complete rejection of the disastrous eight-year Republican administration, which served its predominantly corporate contributors and took our nation to war under false pretenses!

Then, following defeat by an articulate, young, black Democrat, Republicans simply showed themselves to be poor losers, who in their entrenched legislative and judicial positions, have shown a total absence of open-mindedness or usefulness to the American people they claim to serve.

This arrogant generation of conservatives in government may go down in history not only as propagators of politically motivated negativity but as advocates of a failed presidency for a duly elected president in the first few months of his office.

Elizabeth Goldsborough, Owings Mills

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