With exceptions, most of our Senators and Representatives are working diligently to devise a healthcare reform that will meet the needs of Americans, including Americans without current health insurance. To appreciate this, it is important to step back for an appropriate perspective.

During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama touted healthcare reform as his highest priority. The current system was unmanageable - it devastated families, rendered businesses non-competitive in the global marketplace, and was devouring more and more of our GDP every year. Obama proposed to change the current system by instituting a strong public option that would reduce excessive costs through competition, and guarantee coverage for all Americans - coverage they could never lose.

As president, Obama has not changed his view, but his vision encountered a huge obstacle around the time of the election - an impending collapse of the American economy. His first priority, once in office, became the restoration of our economic health. With his urging, Congress passed a $787 billion stimulus package. Along with most economists, the President expected two results from this. The first was that an infusion of money would stimulate job creation over the next two years, slowing and ultimately reversing unemployment, and providing consumers with the wherewithal to re-energize businesses at the heart of our economic growth. This is good. The second would be a major increase in the federal deficit that would last for years. This is bad.

Faced with the unwelcome deficit component of the stimulus, the Congress, much of the public, and many economists have insisted that outside of the stimulus, it would be dangerous to further magnify the deficit in any large measure - in other words, anything else would have to be paid for.

Enter the public option for healthcare reform. Almost all healthcare experts conclude it would greatly reduce the growth of healthcare costs - an urgent necessity. However, the savings would accrue to consumers, while the costs would be charged to the government. Even though the savings would substantially outweigh the costs, they would not appear on the federal balance sheet. Some mechanism was therefore necessary to defray the costs so as not to further inflate the federal deficit.

Legislators have been scrambling to identify cost-saving measures, and many have been proposed. Even in aggregate, however, they would not fully pay a public option bill estimated in the trillion dollar range. This leaves only one other practical option to complete the balance - an increase in taxes.

Our representatives in Congress do not aspire to martyrdom. They understand that tax increases are never popular, even in prosperous times, and all the less in times of economic difficulty. Except when failure to enact increases would be potentially catastrophic for our nation's future, they would not even countenance tax increases during a recession. It is striking, therefore, that an enormous effort is now underway to find tax increases that can be imposed on those who can afford them, and which would suffice to cover the remaining costs of a public option. These include suggestions to tax high end health insurance benefits, to increase income taxes on higher bracket individuals, to impose "sin taxes" on alcohol or sugary drinks, and a variety of other measures.

The final mix is uncertain, but while not courting martyrdom, these Representatives and Senators are displaying a fortitude and moral integrity worthy of their office in their willingness, on this particular issue, to take political risks for the nation's benefit. They do not always deserve this accolade, and some don't deserve it now, but many do. In turn, they deserve our commendation, our support, and among those who can afford it, some of our tax dollars.