The Man Who Wrote The Health Care Bill/Just Your Average Communist

Born in 1948, Robert Creamer is the husband of Democrat Rep. Jan Schakowsky. He formerly served as executive director of the Illinois Public Action Fund (where his wife was the program director), and subsequently as a leader of Citizen Action/Illinois. He was also a lobbyist for George Soros’s Open Society Institute. Today Creamer heads the Strategic Consulting Group, a political consultancy whose list of clients includes ACORN, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the AFL-CIO, the United Steelworkers Union of America, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and dozens of other leftist or Democratic Party state organizations.

Pursuant to an FBI investigation, Creamer in 2006 was indicted for bank fraud and tax evasion. During his trial, he received some 200 letters of support from such notables as Richard Durbin, Carol Browner, Jesse Jackson, and David Axelrod. Creamer ultimately was sentenced to five months in federal prison plus eleven months of house arrest. Upon his sentencing, he publicly pledged: “For the rest of my life I will continue to do whatever I can to work for social and economic justice.”

While incarcerated -- or on “forced sabbatical,” as he called it -- Creamer wrote a 628-page political manual titled Stand Up Straight! How Progressives Can Win (published in 2007). In the Acknowledgements section of the book, Creamer stated that his political views had been deeply influenced by “the legendary community organizer” Saul Alinsky.

Stand Up Straight! advanced the notion that the Democratic Party could win a permanent majority in Congress by doing the following:

passing a national health care bill, thereby turning more people into wards of an ever-expanding government, and of the party that works to grow government; and
• giving amnesty to all illegal immigrants, thereby creating, virtually overnight, a large new constituency of Democratic voters.

The author conceded that his desire “to reshape the structure of one-sixth of the American economy” (i.e., the health care sector) was contingent upon the Democrats being able to control 60 votes in the U.S. Senate, and upon the election of a “progressive Democrat” to the White House -- conditions that could, in Creamer's estimation, be achieved by the year 2009. Notably, his book was effusive in its praise of then-Senator Barack Obama.

Creamer's book advocated a “public plan” that would guarantee every U.S. resident's “right” to health care; this plan eventually would serve as a model for the “public option” in subsequent legislative proposals by Congressional Democrats.

In addition, Creamer laid out a “Progressive Agenda for Structural Change,” which included a ten-point plan to set the stage for implementing universal health care:

• “We must create a national consensus that health care is a right, not a commodity; and that government must guarantee that right.”
• “We must create a national consensus that the health care system is in crisis.”
• “Our messaging program over the next two years should focus heavily on reducing the credibility of the health insurance industry and focusing on the failure of private health insurance.”
• “We need to systematically forge relationships with large sectors of the business/employer community.”
• “We need to convince political leaders that they owe their elections, at least in part, to the groundswell of support of [sic] universal health care, and that they face political peril if they fail to deliver on universal health care in 2009.”
• “We need not agree in advance on the components of a plan, but we must foster a process that can ultimately yield consensus.”
• “Over the next two years, we must design and organize a massive national field program.”
• “We must focus especially on the mobilization of the labor movement and the faith community.”
• “We must systematically leverage the connections and resources of a massive array of institutions and organizations of all types.”
• “To be successful, we must put in place commitments for hundreds of millions of dollars to be used to finance paid communications and mobilization once the battle is joined.”

“To win,” added Creamer, “we must not just generate understanding, but emotion—fear, revulsion, anger, disgust.”

Beyond the narrow specifics of health care, Creamer in his book advocated the “democratization of wealth” in America and “progressive control of governments around the world.”

Creamer also identified immigration as an issue that “will have an enormous impact on the battle for power between the progressive and conservative forces in American society.” He said:

“If the Democrats continue to stand firmly for immigrant rights, the issue will define immigrants’ voting loyalties for a generation. If we are successful, a gigantic block of progressive votes will enter the electorate over the next 15 years—a block that could be decisive in the battle for the future.”

Mirroring his approach to health care, Creamer stressed the importance of persuading religious leaders to lobby, on moral grounds, in favor of amnesty and expanded rights for illegal aliens.

On November 24, 2009, Creamer attended a White House state dinner -- along with high-level Obama advisors like Andrew Stern and David Axelrod -- despite the fact that ex-convicts are usually barred from such events.

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