From Bachmann's Townhall blog:
As the Boston Globe has reported, tucked into bills in both chambers are provisions funding what Senator Ted Kennedy’s staff calls “Community Transformation Grants.” Essentially, we’re talking about federal funding for bike paths, lighting, jungle gyms, and even farmers markets.
In the House bill, at least the spending is capped -- $1.6 billion per year. The Senate bill leaves the sky the limit – leaving the amount of spending up to the Obama Administration.
While these projects may have merit, they certainly don't belong in a health care reform package. With priorities like this running amok on Capitol Hill, is there any doubt that health care costs will only continue to skyrocket under government-run health care?
Bicycling doesn't promote health?
Bachmann needs to read the story of Scott Cutshall who went from "501 pounds to 232 in under three years, thanks to a special bike, soup for breakfast, and a lot of determination".
Cutshall had just a 50 percent chance of surviving an operation, the doctor guessed, his heart likely to quit under the anesthesia and stress.
Flip a coin. Tails you live. Heads you're dead.
"I hated those odds," he said.
So he ignored the doctor. He didn't flip the coin. He flipped his life instead.
He changed everything. He started eating vegetable soup for breakfast. Hummus on pita was lunch. Dinner was salad and pasta. Every day.
No exception.
And he got a bike, a reinforced custom model built in Minneapolis. It was the only viable type of exercise for someone his size, he said. He started riding every night, at first just around the neighborhood, where he rode after dark. "I was embarrassed to go out," he said.
He started a blog, "Large Fella on a Bike," to document the journey. Cutshall's goal was singular and stubborn: to lose hundreds of pounds of weight by changing his lifestyle and pedaling a bike.
Do or die, he thought.
Plot spoiler: Cutshall did it. In the first four months, riding lots and eating little, 50 pounds fell off. Two months later, another 20 pounds. He could use the scale in the bathroom again.
According to the last post on his blog, Large Fella on a Bike, Cutshall weighed 170.2 pounds.
"Total Loss Since November, 2005: 330.8 pounds"
That sounds like health care to me. |
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