Today, Washington is back to business as usual. Two meetings are taking place that seem to be unrelated, and yet they ultimately have the same problem at the core: government intrusion into the private sector.

Several liberal Congressmen and Senators are in closed-door meetings at the White House, crafting secret deals to prepare for the last push into government-run health care. This legislation, which will have a profound impact on every single American for years to come, is being put together by a handful of big-government proponents, and they don’t want us to know what they are doing.

They told us this would be different. In 2008, when Barack Obama was on the campaign trail, he promised to put health care negotiations on television, on C-SPAN. And yet what we see is more of the same.

Some in Congress are working hard every day to bring this process to light. They know that the American people want our leaders to drop this dangerous course of action, and start over, with real solutions that will preserve our health care system and expand our options for health insurance. One voice you will not find among those who are fighting this battle every day is that of Chet Edwards.

Edwards voted against the House health care bill in the fall, but he hasn’t been standing up to try to stop it since then. Central Texans desperately need a representative who will stand up and fight, speak out, and work for us. This is a pivotal moment in our country, and we have no representation.

Across town, Congress is holding hearings to find a scapegoat to take the blame for the recent financial crisis. They will interview bankers, business leaders, the wealthy, anyone they think is responsible. And they will surely miss the real cause of the financial crisis that erupted in the fall of 2008 and has only grown worse through 2009 and into 2010.

The real cause of the crisis is government intrusion into the private sector. Leaders in Congress pressured lenders, especially those at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to make unsafe loans to prospective home buyers, whose credit or financial situation was less optimal. These companies were bullied by the likes of Barney Frank, working hand in hand with “direct action” groups like ACORN.

As a result, home ownership went up, but soon these mortgages began to default. As these securities had been divided up into segments to mitigate risk, more and more of them began to fail, and those companies who had invested in them ran into problems. The government made it worse in 2008 when they began bailing out selected banks, creating a moral hazard that led other industries and companies to believe the government would bail them out too.

And in 2009 the government obliged, bailing out the auto industry and more banks. They insisted on government control over salaries and picked their favorite car dealerships to survive while others were forced to close. Again and again this Congress has opted for more government intrusion when what they need to do is step back and let the private sector and free market correct the economy.

If we continue on the course we are on with Health Care, how long will it be until Congress convenes hearings to figure out what went wrong with our doctors, medicine, medical research, and personal health care? We know the truth today: it’s time to get government out of private industry and restore our free markets.