We are traveling down the wrong road

Just over four months ago Congress passed and President Obama signed the healthcare bill into law. Our nation needed healthcare reform but this law has got to be unconstitutional and is carrying us down the wrong road.

The new law infringes on every American’s right to do what they please regarding healthcare. It forces us to buy health insurance whether we want it or not or face a penalty in the form of a fine. Our nation was not founded upon a government that forces its own citizens to purchase something against their will or face a penalty.

To some folks being forced to purchase health insurance doesn’t sound too bad. But what if the government forced you to buy vitamins or to join a gym or to tell us that we cannot eat BBQ because it might be unhealthy? If the courts uphold the law there will be no limit to what the government will be able to mandate what we Americans do.

This new healthcare law is not only detrimental to our freedoms as individuals but to our businesses as well, especially to small businesses. The mandate not only will bring on higher taxes but more paperwork which will increase the cost of starting and running a successful small business. There are a few provisions that could help a small business but the overall effect will do much more harm that good.

A law that does harm to small businesses harms the entire nation and the working people because small businesses provide many good paying jobs. This healthcare law was rushed through Congress and the legislative process while paying little attention to the Constitution. It will cause the loss of jobs and force some small businesses to close their doors.

The National Federation of Businesses, along with twenty or more states, is doing all it can to get this legislation overturned and protect our freedoms through a lawsuit against the new healthcare law.

Freedom from mandates issued by a central government authority that forced the people to behave or act in certain ways was what we won as a nation on Independence Day over 234 years ago. We do not need to let a liberal Congress and a liberal President lead us toward socialism which will eventually take away many freedoms that the Declaration of Independence provided us with.

There are many reasons we Americans should sound the alarm in addition to the healthcare bill. The United States Congress should pass an immigration bill similar to the one approved in Arizona, the financial industry needs more regulation, our economic policy needs drastic changes and we need to be sure our goals in Afghanistan and Iraq are the correct ones. However, thus far our political leaders with the majority vote have done little to correct most of our problems.

It will take skilled political leaders to overcome the many issues our country faces today and skilled politicians are very rare. We all need to remember that we cannot leave it up to our politicians alone to bring this country back where it should be. They bear the principal responsibility but we all must share in it. Most of our problems exist because we allowed them to by not electing the right public officials.

Again, our political system is where it is today by electing the wrong public officials and it will continue to crumble in our faces if we do not support and elect those officials in November who will search for solutions to the many challenges they will face once in office. Simply put we cannot continue to travel the road we are on if our nation is to survive.