Happy Birthday, Baroness Margaret Thatcher!

Update: The Senate Finance Committee just passed the Baucus bill by a vote of 14-9. As expected, Olympia Snowe voted with the Democrats.
Today I join the open thread at Big Government, Finding Dulcinea, and LOTUS in wishing Margaret Thatcher a happy 84th birthday.  These sites do an excellent job of paying tribute to the Iron Lady, who served the United Kingdom with distinction as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990.  She was a significant influence on my conservative education, and continues to inspire me today.  She was the first and only woman to serve as Prime Minister of The United Kingdom, and she surprised, delighted and frustrated her constituents with her toughness, fearlessness, and plain speech.  These qualities seem painfully lacking in our elected leaders today.

I was struck by a Thatcher quote submitted by commenter the Q on Big Government.  Here it is:

"To me, consensus seems to be: the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that need to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner ‘I stand for consensus’?"

This perfectly describes the current health care debate going on today in Congress.  No one believes that the government can effectively administer a national health care system.  Everyone wants some type of reform. Evidence clearly suggests that health care costs could be significantly reduced by passing some type of tort reform, but the trial lawyers own the DNC, so it only receives meaningless lip service from the President and the Democratic majority.

Today the Senate Finance Committee will vote on (and almost certainly pass) a health care bill which none of its members have read.  This will be reconciled with another bill from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, which I doubt any of its members have read.  The Heritage Foundation has exposed a "secret plan" whereby the combined legislation will be inserted into H.R. 1586, an absurd tax bill that has already passed the House, and sent for a full vote by the Senate.  If the "nuclear option" is used. That will be it.  Game over.  The President will sign it and it will be the law of the land.

If you have an ounce of energy or a spare minute of time, please call your Representatives and Senators and voice your opposition and outrage at this cataclysmic boondoggle today.