I Can Feel It Comin’ in the Air Tonight

This was my song with my high school boyfriend, Tom. We had a lot of funny habits together, like an obsession with meerkats. Tom and I dated for two years — junior and senior year — and it was one of the best, most stable relationships I’ve ever had. One of my high school teachers even told me the other teachers were envious of us because our relationship was so well-adjusted. At any rate, today, things are … different. Let’s just say Tom and I are still friends, but he’s gone in a different direction in terms of the people he dates. Their abs are much more ripply.

The reason I tell you all this? Because the song is what I’m feeling about parity. Oh yeah … it’s on its way. You can feel it in the bailout tonight. From the Wall Street Journal:

Enter the bailout bill. It could be the last major piece of legislation passed by Congress this year, the AP says. And it gives Congress a chance to get the mental health parity bill on the President’s desk to be signed into law — provided the House of Representatives passes the bailout bill this time around. …

Sen. Ted Kennedy, who has worked on mental health parity for a decade, was the lone senator not to cast a vote on the bailout legislation. He missed it due to his continuing battle with brain cancer.

That’s the saddest thing. Kennedy has worked like a dog on this legislation. You can’t imagine his impact.

Alli Katz directed me today to a different site, that said not only is parity included in the bailout, it is the bailout. And poor Paul Wellstone isn’t here to see it!

From the American Prospect’s Ezra Klein:

In one of those odd moments where congressional procedure delivers a roundhouse punch to common sense, the Senate Bankruptcy Bill will actually be…The Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007. Here’s why: Tax bills have to originate in the House of Representatives. But the current thinking is that the Senate should pass a bailout bill to increase pressure on the House. So they needed to find some piece of legislation that had already passed the House but had not yet passed the Senate. Hence the mental health parity bill, named in honor of Paul Wellstone, who made mental health issues a major cause during his time in the Senate. What they’ll do now is basically add the whole bailout bill to the text of the Wellstone bill. As Justin Fox says, “because, you know, Paul Wellstone would totally have been in favor of bailing out Wall Street.”

It is a bit ironic. Though Wellstone would not have been serene about the damage the possible damage if the bill did not go through. It’s really pretty hard to say where he would’ve come down, or what he would’ve forced into the final legislation. It’s a sad shame that we’ll never know.

liz | 2:03 PM | Uncategorized