To Do or Not to Do

(with apologies to Will Shakespeare and encouragement to indecisive folk everywhere)

To do or not to do, that is the question;
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous markups,
Or to take arms against two thousand pages,
And by opposing end them? To block, obstruct,
To filibuster; and by our “nay” to say we end
The earmarks and the thousand grievous wrongs
That bills are heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To block, obstruct,
To kill, accomplish nothing; aye, there’s the rub:
For if the bill should fail, what good may come
When we have spent a hundred years disputing
Must give us pause; there’s the respect
That makes calamity of such poor health.


For who could bear the world’s most dismal system,
The claims denied, beloved who died,
The insolence of private rationing,
When they themselves might better ending make
With simple passage? Who’d bear the shame
Of thirty million left without a lifeline,
But that the dread of unintended outcome,
The consequence that solons can’t foresee,
The undiscover’d error from whose blame
No Congressman recovers, subverts the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus caution does make cowards of us all;
And thus the public good of legislation,
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of doubt,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

If Scarecrow Cheney had but half his brain,
He would know that this is dithering.
We are Americans, not pallid Danes!
When things don’t work so well, we fix them later.
Paul Krugman sees; he’s got it right.
So pass the bill and stop the whinging!

P.S. Apologies also to the Danes, who have a decent health-care system.

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