JACKSONVILLE — Call it fearmongering if you will, but the ruin of our great nation is staring us right in the face. Already standing on the precipice of calamity due to the last five years of rampant spending and record-setting deficits, the Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress are a whisper (and a few back-alley deals) away from forcing through non-essential healthcare reform and expending further trillions that our country simply does not have to spend.

At a time when Washington needs to be slashing expenditures in the hopes of warding off potential bankruptcy, the big-government liberals at the helm of the executive and legislative branches are preparing to launch us even deeper into the abyss of debt. A healthy dose of fear is appropriate, I think.

During a period of robust growth, President Obama’s universal healthcare plan would still be a bad idea. It adds layer upon layer of bureaucracy without enacting any real cost-control measures. At a time when America is still floundering its way out of the worst economic depression in decades, attempting an expansion of the government of this magnitude is sheer, rabid-progressive lunacy.

Regardless of your own personal views concerning whether the federal government has an ethical responsibility to provide healthcare for its citizens – we cannot afford it at this time. Our spending has already reached an unsustainable level; heaping more on will just hasten our doom. The healthcare reform conversation should end there. Maybe come back and look at it again when our deficit spending doesn’t already threaten to collapse our monetary system.

In the face of dire crisis, pragmatism should rule the day. But in Washington, political point-scoring and ideology will always trump practicality. If only more of our country’s leaders were devotees to the ideology of common sense.

The problem for Democrats is that healthcare reform, once a pet project and now an obsession, has rightly become toxic in the court of American public opinion – which puts their ideology into direct conflict with their finely-tuned sense of political prudence. The latest polls show that a little more than 60 percent of Americans now oppose ObamaCare. It’s difficult to get that many Americans to agree on anything.

Last year they made the grievously flawed decision to make healthcare reform their top priority – despite the evidence of the economy crashing down all around them – and now that all their eggs are in that basket, it would be political suicide to abandon it. Deserting their central political initiative only seven months before the midterm election would be catastrophic for Democrats come Election Day.

But forcing through reform (especially via the misapplication of budget reconciliation) will likewise have grim political consequences in November, as the overhaul itself is unpopular, and utilizing a loophole to circumvent the will of the people will likely make it even more so.

And the idea of resetting reform deliberations for the sake of creating a bipartisan bill was dismissed out-of-hand by the Dems because it flies in the face of both their ideology and their politics. They know most of their favorite left-handed ideas would never make it out of committee were that to happen, and they understand that starting over would still leave them empty-handed on Election Day.

 Regardless of their course of action in the coming months, Democrats are going to find themselves on very shaky political ground in the midterms. So knowing that they are going to take their lumps one way or the other, the progressives have decided to at least get what they want out of the ordeal. They are putting their heads down and are charging forward with a plan that puts them one step closer to the socialized healthcare system they so foolishly covet. Ideology wins.

 Unfortunately, America doesn’t. A Congress which should be undergoing a 12-step program to help them overcome their addiction to spending our taxpayer dollars, is instead about to add at least another $950 billion (and likely much, much more) to a budget already straining to the point of lasting injury. They have fiscally taken leave of their senses. Sure, Republicans will reap the benefits in the upcoming elections, possibly winning back control in one or both houses of Congress in the process, but that’s paltry consolation compared to the damage Obama’s entitlement will wreck on America’s already ailing economy.

 The president and his ilk hope the passing of healthcare reform will earn them a spot in the pages of American history. And so they have unrelentingly made a blind, deaf and deceitful push to pass legislation overwhelmingly loathed by the people they supposedly represent. I’m just praying that their mention in the annals of our great country isn’t found in the last chapter of the book.