Ex-Exterminator Espouses “Culture of Life”

Following the high-profile death of Theresa Schiavo, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay announced that, after unusually cordial discussions with House Minority Leader Nancy Schiavo, Senate Majority Leader Frist and Minority Leader Reid, a broad consensus had finally been reached on a variety of issues resulting from the high-profile (and unsuccessful) efforts to intervene in the legal case which, having determined that Ms. Schiavo’s own intention was to have all medical treatment including having a feeding tube withdrawn, resulted in her death yesterday morning.
DeLay said that the “culture of life” had to mean a general respect for life. Specifically, DeLay said “A country as rich as ours that spends nearly 16% of its national income on health care can afford to make sure that the primary care given to an agricultural worker’s children is the same top-notch care that I can expect from my taxpayer-paid plastic surgeon and dermatologist.
“Indeed, it is a moral imperative that our unacceptable national levels of infant mortality and life expectancy, neither of which is anywhere near its rightful place of best in the world (which is what we pay for) be improved dramatically, for all Americans.
“I have, therefore, introduced a series of bills in the House (and Majority Leader frist assures me that he will also introduce these bills in the Senate) which will
*Increase the minimum wage by $1 per hour each year until 2010, after which the minimum wage will be indexed to rise at the same rate as social security benefits increase
*Mandate that a portion of that minimum wage increase be applied to a minimum health care plan for all Americans working more than 250 hours per quarter, so that no hard-working American need ever again fear being uninsured
*An extension of the Medicaid program to include all Americans receiving unemployment insurance benefits, all children not otherwise insured by their parents, and all Americans earning less than 1,000 times the hourly minimum wage per year
*A “Marshall Plan” for disease eradication, with goals of eliminating AIDS, cancer, malaria and the world’s top ten diseases by 2025, including trebling the funding for the National Institutes of Health and other research efforts
*A lifting of restrictions on stem cell research to include embryonic research as long as the embryos were not created expressly for this purpose
*The establishment of an office of family planning within the Department of Health and Human Services whose mission is to reduce the number of abortions through aggressive dissemination of birth control education, prophylactic and medical devices
*A national default “living will”, that would provide that the presumption of every patient was to receive the full panoply of medical care available to them, unless they specifically opted out via a standardized, witnessed document that specifically enumerated their care preferences.”
DeLay said that he strongly believed that America as a nation greatly valued a “culture of life”, and that he didn’t mean that as a code-word to abuse and ostracize women who wanted abortions, but in its literal sense. DeLay said that he expected quick passage of the bill “lest Terri’s demise at the hands of liberal judges be in vain”, and he said he was sure the President would sign these measures, which would be known as the All Purpose Responsibility In Lifestyle Federal Omnibus Oversight Law, just as soon as he got back from Crawford, and Karen Hughes had a chance to explain it all to the President using a specially prepared briefing and coloring book.