What if, in what could be the most important week for the United States Congress since the mid 1960s enactment of medicaid, and the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, a major network evening news program led its broadcast with the story of a golfer who decided to golf again and devoted about ten minutes to that important story?

Could never happen. But we keep slugging here. Earlier this week, we presented President Roosevelt on nearly the eve of World War II reminding Americans that what was at stake was as much about the economic security of our fellow citizens, and their health care, as anything else and then, President Truman, after the war had ended, explaining what needed to be done.

And here we are on the precipice, listening to falsehoods about the bill and having to defend it as not a government takeover of health care, when so many of us believe that a government takeover of health care is the right way to go.

It is as sad as can be that tonight's guest blogger, (the most inspirational of our presidents, at least in this blogger's lifetime), President John F. Kennedy was speaking almost fifty years ago and yet addressed exactly the same garbage about almost precisely the same issue when he mounted the podium in May, 1962:

Now why are we here? What is the issue which divides and arouses so much concern? I will take a case which may be typical, a family which may be found in any part of the United States.

The husband has worked hard all his life and he is retired. He might have been a clerk or a salesman or on the road or worked in a factory, stores, or whatever. He's always wanted to pay his own way. He does not ask anyone to care for him; he wants to care for himself. He has raised his own family, he has educated them--his children are now on their own. He and his wife are drawing social security... i He has a pension from where he worked, the results of years of effort.

Now, therefore, his basic needs are taken care of. He owns his house.... And then his wife gets sick--and we're all going to be in a hospital,
9 out of 10 of us, before we finally pass away, and particularly when we're over 65--now she is sick, not just for a week but for a long time. First goes the [money he saved over a lifetime]--that's gone. Next he mortgages his house, even though he may have some difficulty making the payments out of his social security. Then he goes to his children, who themselves are heavily burdened because they're paying for their houses and they are paying for their sicknesses, and they want to educate their children. Then their savings begin to go.

This is not a rare case. I talked to a Member of the Congress from my own State a week ago, who told me he was going to send his daughter away to school but because his father had been sick for 2 years, he could not do it. And Congressmen are paid...more than most people get.

So therefore now, what is he going to do? His savings are gone--his children's savings, they're contributing though they have responsibilities of their own--and he finally goes in and signs a petition saying he's broke and needs assistance.

Now what do we say? We say that during his working years he will contribute to social security, as he has in the case of his retirement, twelve or thirteen dollars a month. When he becomes ill, or she becomes ill over a long period of time, he first pays ninety dollars...But then let's say he has a bill of fifteen hundred dollars. This bill does not,...solve everything. But let's say it's fifteen hundred dollars, of which a thousand dollars are hospital bills. This bill will pay that thousand dollars in hospital bills. And then I believe that he, and the effort that he makes and his family, can meet his other responsibilities.

Now that does not seem such an extraordinary piece of legislation, 25 years after Franklin Roosevelt passed the Social Security Act.

...

All these arguments were made against social security at the time of Franklin Roosevelt. They are made today. The mail pours in. And at least half of the mail which I receive in the White House, on this issue and others, is wholly misinformed. Last week I got 1,500 letters on a revenue measure--1,494 opposed, and 6 for. And at least half of those letters were completely misinformed about the details of what they wrote.

And why is that so? Because there are so many busy men in Washington who write-some organizations have six, seven, and eight hundred people spreading mail across the country, asking doctors and others to write in and tell your Congressman you're opposed to it. The mail pours into the White House, into the Congress and Senators' offices--Congressmen and Senators feel people are opposed to it.

...

Harry Truman said that 14 million Americans had enough resources so that they could hire people in Washington to protect their interests, and the rest of them depended upon the President of the United States and others.

This bill serves the public interest. It involves the Government because it involves the public welfare. The Constitution of the United States did not make the President or the Congress powerless. It gave them definite responsibilities to advance the general welfare--and that is what we're attempting to do.

And then I read that this bill will sap the individual self-reliance of Americans. I can't imagine anything worse, or anything better, to sap someone's self-reliance, than to be sick, alone, broke--or to have saved for a lifetime and put it out in a week, two weeks, a month, two months.

I visited twice, yesterday and today, in the hospital, where doctors labor for a long time, to visit my father. It isn't easy--it isn't easy. He can pay his bills, but otherwise I would be. And I am not as well off as he is. But what happens to him and to others when they put their life savings in, in a short time? So I must say that I believe we stand about where--in good company today, in halls such as this, where your predecessors-where Dave Dubinsky himself actually stood, where another former President stood, and fought this issue out of Social Security against the same charges.

This argument that the Government should stay out, that it saps our pioneer stock--I used to hear that argument when we were talking about raising the minimum wage to a dollar and a quarter. I remember one day being asked to step out into the hall, and up the corridor came four distinguished-looking men, with straw hats on and canes. They told me that they had just flown in from a State in their private plane, and they wanted me to know that if we passed a bill providing for time and a half for service station attendants, who were then working about 55 to 60 hours of straight time, it would sap their self-reliance....

The fact of the matter is that what we are now talking about doing, most of the countries of Europe did years ago. The British did it 30 years ago. We are behind every country, pretty nearly, in Europe, in this matter of medical care for our citizens.

And then those who say that this should be left to private efforts. In those hospitals in New Jersey where the doctors said they wouldn't treat anyone who paid their hospital bills through social security, those hospitals and every other new hospital, the American people--all of us--contribute one-half, one or two thirds for every new hospital, the National Government. We pay 55 percent of all the research done. We help young men become doctors.

We are concerned with the progress of this country, and those who say that what we are now talking about spoils our great pioneer heritage should remember that the West was settled with two great actions by the National Government; one, in President Lincoln's administration, when he gave a homestead to everyone who went West, and in 1862 he set aside Government property to build our land grant colleges.

This cooperation between an alert and Progressive citizen and a progressive Government is what has made this country great--and we shall continue as long as we have the opportunity to do so.

This matter should not be left to a mail campaign where Senators are inundated, and Congressmen--twenty-five and thirty thousand letters--the instructions go out, "Write it in your own hand. Don't use the same words." The letters pour in 2 or 3 weeks, half of them misinformed. This meeting today, on a hot, good day when everyone could be doing something else, and the 32 other meetings, this indicates that the American people are determined to put an end to meeting a challenge which hits them at a time when they're least able to meet it.

By 1962 we had, of course, television and ABC, which had nothing else to broadcast on Sundays, showed the whole speech, which can be viewed, first here  and then, part two, here.

The whole text is here.

Watching it this morning made a guy want to cry, but as evening falls a better idea comes to mind: pass the damn bill, already.