As another artificial health care deadline approaches, congressional leaders are preparing an unprecedented series of procedural tricks with a single purpose: to usurp the will of the American people and force their unpopular legislation through Congress by any means necessary.  One of the tactics they plan to use inspired Senator Baucus to correctly warn, “this is the way Democracy ends.”

Over the last year, President Obama, Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have misrepresented the health care reform debate as a partisan battle between Republicans and Democrats when it’s actually been a struggle between the American people and a few powerful members of Congress who have stayed willfully out-of-touch.

They have grown less receptive to the grass roots opposition to their designs at every step.  As each milestone is reached, new measures are taken to shut out the public and reject meaningful alternatives.

As deadline after deadline came and went, the architects of government-run health care presented their plans as inevitable.  Yet, at every step, they were met with public outrage that undermined their plans.

It began last August, when the first bill was introduced just as Congress adjourned for the month.  Members had thirty days to hear what their constituents had to say, and while many chose to avoid public meetings, I hosted 16 public listening sessions across the state where I took questions and comments from all-comers.  The Montanans I heard from made it clear that they didn’t want Speaker Pelosi’s 1,000-page government takeover of health care.

After August, Speaker Pelosi learned that giving Americans sufficient time to read and respond worked against her plan.  So she introduced a new bill.  Twice as long, this one created 118 new federal bureaucracies and established a mandate for all Americans to buy government-approved health insurance or risk jail.  The 400,000 word bill spent $2.5 million per word, but did nothing to reign in health care costs.  Speaker Pelosi called a vote before any comprehensive public input could be sought.

But despite their efforts to limit public input, I continued to hear from thousands of Montanans who called my offices, sent me letters and emails or used social media like Facebook and Twitter.  And as the only member of the Montana delegation to keep track of who was for (19%) or against (81%) the bill, it was evident that Montanans opposed this bill.

Ears still ringing from the onslaught of public outrage, the Pelosi machine decided to shut the public out completely, rejecting requests by C-SPAN to cover negotiations.  At the same time Republicans, and our alternatives, were completely eliminated from the process.

It’s clear from the first rounds that the greatest threat to the Speaker’s health care proposals is democracy itself.  While Republicans are currently in the minority in Washington, D.C., we’ve got the American people in our corner, and a minority in Congress plus the American people equals a majority.

Americans want health care reform that lowers costs and increases access.  They don’t want to replace an insurance bureaucracy with a more expensive government bureaucracy, and they don’t want government mandates to buy insurance under the threat of jail.  But that’s the track we’re headed down.

Now is the time for action.  The battle has worn on, and so far the American people have won every round.  But the final round isn’t the time to let down our guard and stop fighting back.  It only takes one misstep for Nancy Pelosi to land a knock-out punch that ends the fight once and for all.  Once that happens, it will be virtually impossible to undo, even if she loses majorities in both Houses of Congress and the White House.

When it comes to health care, we’re talking about matters of life and death, a sixth of our national economy and one trillion tax dollars.  These stakes are just too high to get complacent.  As I promised thousands of Montanans, I will keep fighting for real health care reform that lowers costs and increases access.