What folks said in my four town halls was akin to what others have been repeating at gatherings all across America. In Clarkesville, I was asked why so many expensive bills – like Obamacare - are being rapidly pushed through Congress. They have concerns that big mistakes will be made if health care reform is rushed through so quickly. I could not agree more.

We have seen hurried mistakes with the recent bank bailouts, the so-called “stimulus,” and cash for clunkers, because they were rammed through Congress with little or no debate. Health care reform impacts a very large part of our economy and our daily lives. Doesn’t Congress owe it to Americans to have an open and meaningful debate that produces a plan supported by a large bipartisan majority? I think it does. But that’s not what the President and Democrat leaders in Congress are doing.

America’s health care system needs reform. But it does not need to be transformed into a government-run program. Bureaucracies simply do not cut costs, and they have never increased efficiency. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to turn my family’s health care over to the same system running the Post Office. With a $7 billion operating loss this year alone, even the President admits that, “If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.” Unfortunately, Obamacare would hand over control of the health care system to likely the same system failing at the USPS.

Other constituents, in Augusta, asked about health care costs and portability. As a medical doctor, I have seen these problems first hand, and I believe that we must work to lower health care costs, allow folks the opportunity to shop for health care plans across state lines, and the ability to take their health insurance with them when they switch jobs. But instead of reinventing the wheel and placing bureaucrats in direct control of a huge part of our lives, we should institute meaningful market-based reforms that will lower costs across the board and allow doctors to provide care to the neediest patients.

In the United Kingdom, their health care bureaucracy (NHS) has become the 3rd largest employer in the world – just behind China’s Red Army. But a big bureaucracy certainly hasn’t helped. Aside from its unbearable budget, earlier this year, an investigation of an NHS hospital in Staffordshire found dehydrated patients forced to drink water from flower vases, accident victims left untended for hours, clinical judgments being made by receptionists and the unnecessary deaths of between 400 and 1,200 patients. When questioned, both Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Health Secretary Alan Johnson issued an apology on behalf of the government bureaucracy.

We must lower health care costs and make coverage available to more people, but we must not sacrifice our freedom, our principles, or our children’s future for a new government bureaucracy. Please join me and millions of other Americans in stopping Obamacare in its tracks, and instead working together to make health care more affordable and accessible for all Americans.

However, the President signed the trillion dollar stimulus bill into law without adequate congressional or public scrutiny. You’d think $1 trillion would buy you time and a better debate — particularly considering that the heavy price tag will be paid for by future generations who do not have a voice in the discussion. Are liberals so fiscally jaded that that the “T” in trillion no longer sounds alarms?

Today, President Obama has the opportunity for redemption by keeping another promise to the American people: veto bills containing earmarks. In Oxford, Mississippi, then Candidate Obama said, “Absolutely we need earmark reform. And when I’m President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.” I urge President Obama to keep his promise to reduce wasteful pet projects by vetoing the massive spending bill, loaded with nearly 8,000 earmarks, that the House passed and the Senate is considering. Following this Administration’s failure to keep their promise of transparency during consideration of the stimulus, it is critical for the President to keep his word on earmarks and veto this pork-plagued bill.

Now is the time for the policies of this Administration to reflect, or at least resemble, their rhetoric. We all must work together with the President to deliver immediate relief for families and put America on a path towards economic recovery. However, I am troubled that promises made are not being kept. While I want to work together for solutions, I’m going to sound the alarm on provisions that move America towards socialism and burden hardworking families.

Yesterday, I was proud to introduce the Sanctity of Human Life Act that defines life as beginning at fertilization with the creation of a human zygote. As a physician, I understand the medical and scientific truths that life begins at conception. I also understand that the entire abortion debate rests on the decision of when life begins. That’s why my bill, among other things, says unequivocally that, at the moment of fertilization, a human life begins and must be protected by law.

As James Madison wrote in Federalist 39, the form of our government must be reconcilable with the fundamental principles of the revolution. First among those principles is the right to life. If a nation will not protect the most innocent of human beings, what will it protect?

Concerned citizens and lawmakers must keep this fundamental principle in mind as we work fervently to protect the rights of the unborn. When I was a full-time doctor, I served on a board of directors for a crisis pregnancy center in the inner city of Atlanta which fought to save the babies of underprivileged moms. Now, as a United States Representative, I am using the tools my constituents have blessed me with to protect life and give Constitutional protections to the innocent unborn.

My bill, the Sanctity of Human Life Act, gives Republicans and Democrats alike who cherish life an opportunity to protect and defend the innocent and most defenseless among us.