Its a Dessert Topping, Its a Floor Wax

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell

The New York Times confirmed Friday that in preparation for defending constitutionality of the Obamacare individual mandate in court, an Obama Justice Department legal brief argues that the penalty used to enforce the mandate is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes. Mr. Obama’s own Justice Department further repudiates the President’s earlier statement by noting that the penalty is imposed and collected under the Internal Revenue Code, people must report it on their tax returns, and that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will cost Americans $4 billion a year. Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin told a meeting of progressive activists last month that President Obama “has not been honest with the American people about the nature of this bill. This bill is a tax.”

The fact that the Obama administration and their allies are now admitting the individual mandate is a tax betrays their very real fear that the Supreme Court could find Obamacare’s individual mandate unconstitutional. In the bill itself, Congress identified the Commerce Clause as the source of their authority to force all Americans to buy health insurance. But as our legal team has made imminently clear, the mandate does not purport to regulate or prohibit commerce of any kind. To the contrary, it purports to “regulate”—and penalize—inactivity. If the Supreme Court allows the Obamacare individual mandate to stand, then Congress could do anything it wanted. They could: require us to buy a new Chevy Impala each year to support the government-supported auto industry; require us to buy war bonds to pay for the Iraq and Afghan wars; or force us to eat our vegetables.

Heritage Morning Bell-Healthcare and Rules of Reporting

Red Tape Rising

Just three days after President Barack Obama's health plan was signed into law, AT&T announced that due to an obscure tax change in the bill, the nation's largest telephone company would take a $1 billion hit to its bottom line this quarter. According to health benefits analysts this tax law modification would shave as much as $14 billion from U.S. corporate profits. While it would have been better had these tax losses been made more public before Congress voted, at least these tax charges are transparent and easily quantifiable enough to get noticed by the American people. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the hundreds of new regulations that the federal government will enforce as it tries to implement Obama's redistributionist health agenda.

In addition to the federal government's explicit taxes and spending, Americans are also burdened with a slew of hidden taxes imposed by an ever-increasing number of regulations. More than 50 agencies have a hand in federal regulatory policy, enforcing more than 150,000 pages of rules. Many of these regulations provide needed benefits. Most Americans would agree on the need for security regulations to protect citizens from terrorist attacks, although the extent and scope of those rules may be subject to debate. But each regulation comes at a cost--a "regulatory tax" imposed on all Americans. According to a 2005 study commissioned by the Small Business Administration, the cost of all regulations then on the books was some $1.1 trillion per year.

Worse than the existing size of our country's regulatory burden, is the pace at which it has been growing. Contrary to what most liberals and media elites would have you believe, President George Bush had a decidedly mixed record on regulation. While he should be praised for strengthening the role of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in screening new regulations, by every objectively measurable metric the size and scope of the regulatory state grew significantly under his tenure. And President Bush's last years in office were his worst. In 2008 36 major regulations were enacted by the Bush administration, and in 2009 some $15 billion in new regulatory costs were imposed on the American people.

President Bush doesn't deserve all the blame for that $15 billion in new costs for 2009. About $4.4 billion is attributable to regulations approved by the Obama administration. While that may seem like a significant decrease, it is actually an ominous sign when put in context. Regulatory activity always increases near the end of a presidency and is slower at the beginning. So in President Bush's first year, he enacted only one major rule and he was in his third year in office before the new regulatory costs he inflicted on the American people hit President Obama's one-year $4 billion mark. And that $4 billion does not yet include all the regulations for Obamacare. Or all of the regulations Obama's EPA wants to pass under the Clean Air Act. Or any of the new financial regulations that Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) want to inflict on the American people.

There are some things Congress can do now to help better manage the onslaught of federal regulations. First the authority and scope of OIRA should be protected. Establishing a sunset date for all new regulations would also help. But ultimately things will not change for the better until policymakers exercise the will and resolve to guard against the deluge.

As Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) asked last week: "If Congress can't control what a few mortgage finance bureaucrats do with your dollars, why would anyone trust Congress to control what tens of thousands of bureaucrats will do with your health? ... Should unchecked centralized government be allowed to grow and grow in power ... or should its powers be limited and returned to the people?"

What If I Don’t Buy Insurance?

The only exception I take is the comparison to automobile insurance. It’s NOT the same.

What happens if I don’t buy health insurance?

Under the health care overhaul passed Sunday, most individuals would be required to buy a minimum health insurance policy — just as most drivers today are required to have car insurance. This policy won’t kick in until 2014, however.
After then, if you don’t buy insurance, you would have to pay a penalty on your annual income taxes. The reconciliation bill in the Senate would start with a flat penalty of $695 per member of your household each year. The maximum penalty would be 2.5 percent of your household income. (That’s $1,300 for a family making $52,029 a year, the median household income in 2008.) The penalty would rise with the cost of living in future years.

– Ryan Teague Beckwith, Congress.org

Morning Reads from the DCExaminer

Obama's 'Star Trek': From Mr. Spock to Capt. Kirk
The president's supporters had grown tired of their model of cool logic. They wanted the anti-Spock. They wanted Capt. Kirk -- the impetuous leader who ignores the probabilities because he trusts his gut and has enormous self-confidence.
Obligingly, Obama has been doing his best James T. Kirk imitation since the beginning of the year.

Byron York - Democrats aren't suicidal. They're self-executing
Using the self-executing rule strategy, Democrats could conceivably pass the rule, the Senate bill, and the House reconciliation "fixes" to the Senate bill all in one vote, without a single House member voting for any specific health care measure.

Michael Barone - Tea party brings energy, change and tumult to GOP
The Republicans for the last two decades have been a party whose litmus tests have been cultural issues, especially abortion. The tea partiers have helped to change their focus to issues of government overreach and spending. That may be a helpful pivot, given the emergence of a millennial generation uncomfortable with crusading cultural conservatism.

Byron York - Axelrod threat to GOP: 'Make my day'
Top White House adviser David Axelrod says that if Congress passes the Democrats' national health care bill, it will be politically impossible for Republicans to undo the changes brought by the massive legislation. "I say, Let's have that fight. Make my day," Axelrod said on "Meet the Press." "I'm ready to have that, and every member of Congress ought to be willing to have that debate was well."

Julie Mason - Think Washington is partisan now? Wait until after Obamacare
For Obama, the political calculation boils down to the risk of losing versus the risk of winning and having to deal with the political fallout later. Doubling down and failing on health care would make him look weak heading into midterm elections, and could hurt his party at the polls.

Susan Ferrechio - Democrats lack health care votes, but not bravado
House Democrats this week will embark on one of the biggest political quests in recent history as they attempt to pass a massive health care bill that still lacks the 216 votes needed for passage and faces universal Republican opposition.

They're Coming For Your Healthcare

ALERT: Did you think that, because Barack Hussein Obama has called for a "bipartisan healthcare reform summit" on Feb. 25th that the Democrats were serious about starting over and including the Republicans' ideas in their plans?

WRONG! According to the liberal bastion New York Times, "President Obama will put forward comprehensive health care legislation intended to bridge differences between Senate and House Democrats ahead of a summit meeting with Republicans next week, senior administration officials and Congressional aides said Thursday."

But that's not all they're reporting: Democratic officials said Obama's proposal was being written so that it could be attached to a budget bill as a way of averting a Republican filibuster in the Senate. The procedure, known as budget reconciliation, would let Democrats advance the bill with a simple majority rather than a 60-vote supermajority.

The Key Word Here Is "Trick"

The dimocRATS will pass this monstrosity and then gather at Blair House with their Annointed One and pretend to "work out a compromise" with the dimwitted Republicans. Anyone who doesn't see this one coming all the way from Georgia needs to be digging ditches with a garden trowel for minimum wage.

Dems: Join Us At a Bipartisan Summit After We've Settled on Reconciliation for Health Care
H/T The Hammer

Just a thought for President Obama, but perhaps it is something like this scenario that leads "too many of our citizens [to lose] faith [in] our biggest institutions" including the federal government.

The president of the party in power invites the party out of power to a televised, bipartisan summit to have a "substantive discussion" about health care while the leaders of his own party are simultaneously scrambling to pass an already-finished version of health-care legislation through reconciliation, making the "substantive discussion" the president wants to have rather irrelevant:

"In comments reported by Congress Daily, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s top health care aide Wendell Primus admitted top Democrats have already decided on the strategy to pass the Senate's pro-abortion, government-run health care bill.

"Primus explained that the Senate will use the controversial reconciliation strategy that will have the House approve the Senate bill and both the House and Senate okaying changes to the bill that the Senate will sign off on by preventing Republicans from filibustering.

“'The trick in all of this is that the president would have to sign the Senate bill first, then the reconciliation bill second, and the reconciliation bill would trump the Senate bill,' Primus said...

“'There's a certain skill, there's a trick, but I think we'll get it done,' he said."

A trick indeed. Is it Halloween already?

Morning Must Reads from DCExaminer

Washington Post -- Obama lists financial rescue as 'most important thing' of his first year

New York Times -- Plan to Move Guantánamo Detainees Faces a New Delay
Greg Craig has been booted and the Governor of Illinois is all fired up about the economic development potential of housing al Qaeda members in his state, so the whole “close Guantanamo” thing is back on track, right.

Not so much.

Wall Street Journal -- Businesses Brace for Health Bill's Costs
Companies are trying to extract some concessions in the final mash up of President Obama’s health plan and an army of lawyers and accountants are studying the plans so far to make the right plays once the legislation passes: which benefits they can cut, which benefits they must add, whether to start firing workers.

New York Times -- Thousands May Incorrectly Be Using Stimulus Tax Breaks
The problem with targeted tax incentives is that just as the government hopes to elicit very specific responses, fraudsters are given very specific targets.Writer Lynnley Browning tells us that the first-tie homebuyers tax continues to be a font of fraud and error, with half-a-billion dollars being siphoned off by those who haven’t met the criteria.Browning explains how a big part of the problem are the blizzard of phony tax identification numbers, a hot commodity in the illegal immigrant community.

Heritage Morning Bell - Healthcare

The Six Key Issues the House Must Cave On Before Obamacare Becomes Law

President Barack Obama attempted to downplay differences between the House and Senate bills telling American Urban Radio Networks yesterday: “The Senate and the House bills are 95 percent identical. There’s five percent differences, and one of those differences is the public option. This is an area that has just become symbolic of a lot of ideological fights. As a practical matter, this is not the most important aspect to this bill.” We’ll let President Obama fight with his base abut how important a strong public option is to health reform, but a government run plan is just one of six key differences between the House and Senate bills:

Soak the Rich or Tax Everybody:
The Senate bill relies heavily on a new excise tax on high cost health plans: a 40 percent tax on plan exceeding $8,500 for an individual and $23,000 for a family. The AFL-CIO and SEIU both call this a tax on working families. The Senate bill also includes a new premium tax on all insurers and the CBO confirms that the cost of this tax will be passed on to all Americans with private insurance. The House bill depends on a heavy new income tax targeted at top-earning taxpayers and small businesses. The 5.4 percent tax on individuals with incomes above $500,000, and on families with incomes above $1 million, is structured in a way that over time more and more Americans will be hit by this tax and small business owners would be particularly affected.

Employer Mandate Penalties:
The Senate bill imposes a $750 penalty per worker on employers of 50 or more who are not covered by the federally approved package of health benefits. The Senate mandate has other strange consequences. If an employer offers coverage, but an employee is eligible by virtue of income to qualify for taxpayer subsidies and entry into the state-based health insurance exchange, the employer is also penalized. In other words, employers are penalized for hiring people at the poverty level, even if they offer health insurance. The House bill imposes a direct requirement on employers to offer federally-qualified health care coverage to their employees or pay a payroll tax on a sliding scale up to 8 percent. Both the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses have come out against the bills.

Individual Mandate Penalties:
The Senate bill requires individuals to purchase a government approved plan or pay a $750 penalty, beginning in 2014. The tax penalty, indexed for inflation, would increase over time. The House bill requires individuals to pay a penalty of 2.5 percent of their income, depending on the size of their income, for not obtaining federally-approved health care coverage.

Weak or Strong Public Plan:
The Senate bill establishes a new set of “multi-state” private health plans sponsored by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) — the agency that administers the federal civil service — that would compete against private health plans in the state based exchanges that are mandated by the provision of the Senate bill. In contrast, the House bill includes an explicit public plan.

Medicaid Expansion:
The left may complain that there is no government-run option in either bill, but both the House and Senate bill accomplish over half their additional health insurance coverage through Medicaid expansion. The Senate bill would require states to expand their Medicaid programs to cover all Americans up to 133 percent Federal Poverty Level. The House bill would require states to expand their Medicaid programs to 150 percent FPL, the same level suggested in earlier versions of the Senate HELP Committee bill. Both Democrat and Republican Governors are against this state budget-busting welfare expansion.

Taxpayer Funded Abortion:
The President promised that there would be no federal funding for abortion. In the House bill, by virtue of the Stupak-Pitts amendment, there is a genuine firewall between federal funding and abortion coverage. In the Senate bill, by virtue of the agreement between Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE), there is no such firewall. For the “pro-life” forces on both sides of the aisle, the Nelson language appears to fall short of the House language.

These are all major policy differences that go to the core of the Obama health care plan. For each option, choosing one version over the other will have huge consequences for the American people. But since Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) have threatened to veto the bill if any significant changes are made by the House in conference, it is most likely the Senate will prevail on every issue. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) might even just save herself and the leftist majority in the House the embarrassment and pass the Senate bill as is.

After all, the Obama administration wants a bill, any bill, and doesn’t really care what is actually in it.

Senate Healthcare Bill

Family Security Matters

A Fact a Day Keeps Senate Health Care Away...
The Washington Post has picked up on something we reported a few weeks ago, which is that most of the provisions in the Senate bill don't take effect until after 2014. "Measured against the promises of President Obama... the [health care] bill the Senate begins debating this week could be setting Americans up for disappointment: Some of the main reforms would not take place for several years, and even when they do... the bill does too little to make sure they would be enforced." There are plenty of reasons why Democrats are delaying the "benefits" of the bill that they have long promised. If they postpone the biggest provisions of the bill, it gives taxpayers a false sense of security about the bill's cost. The longer they delay the most expensive entitlements, the lower the price tag will seem.
On the Senate floor yesterday, Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) finally admitted what we've known all along--that his bill will cost as much as $2.5 trillion. "Health care reform, whether you... start in 2010 or 2014... it is still either $1 trillion or $2.5 trillion, depending on where you start..." Of course, it's no coincidence that President Obama will be facing reelection in 2012, so the potential failures of the bill wouldn't be fully known until two years later. But liberals shouldn't worry too much about raising money for the plan; the major provisions that tax and fine Americans begin as soon as the bill passes.

They're Allowed To Lie-They're democrats

And since we know that going in, we know how to act.

Family Research Council
Harry Reid's Shell Game

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's health care bill wasn't exactly popular in the House, but sources say it's even more disliked in the Senate. So much so that Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has scrapped the idea of using PelosiCare as the shell for his legislation. Instead of making H.R. 3962 his vehicle for debate, the Majority Leader will try to put some distance between his version of reform and Pelosi's.

Under the U.S. Constitution, tax and revenue-raising bills (like health care legislation) have to originate in the House. Fortunately for Sen. Reid, it doesn't specify which tax bill. To comply, the Majority Leader can take up a House-passed bill--any bill as long as it's a tax bill--gut the text and insert his own. Of course, that implies that Sen. Reid actually has health care language, which, as of this morning, he didn't. His plan is still being hatched in the leadership's top secret meetings.

In the meantime, a cluster of Democrats are making their intentions known on the bill's abortion ban. One of them is President Obama. The same man who said, "No one is pro-abortion," is proving to be the most rabid supporter of it in White House history. According to his staff, the President is so violently anti-life that he may be willing to kill his biggest domestic policy goal if it doesn't force Americans to pay for
the slaughter of innocent unborn children. If that's not "pro-abortion," then what is?

David Axelrod, the President's senior advisor, broke the news that the White House wants to break with more than 30 years of tradition and introduce taxpayer-funded abortion in health care. To do it, they'll have to strip the Stupak amendment which passed in the House with overwhelming support from both parties.

Today, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), the amendment's author, told FoxNews that the White House had better brace for a fight. "They're not going to take it out," Stupak said, "If they do, health care will not move forward"--a prediction that Sens.
Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) are prepared to back up.

"We won fair and square... That's why Mr. Axelrod's not a legislator. He doesn't really know what he's talking about... The majority has spoken. Most people agree--do not use public funds for abortion," Stupak said. "You're not going to summarily start dismissing amendments which the majority of the House of Representatives wanted because some person, David Axelrod or [whoever], doesn't like it."

Government Enforced Compliance

Obamacare is government-by-coercion, not consent.
Examiner Editorial
"Welcome to America, land of the formerly free, and home of citizens covered by a nationalized health care system crafted by the same government that can't care for American Indians on their reservations or deliver swine flu shots on time."

That American citizens should be fined or even put in federal prison for refusing to purchase government-approved health insurance is as un-American as any idea we can imagine. But such a mandate is the very heart of the bill written behind closed doors by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her privileged pals. If their bill is approved by the House tomorrow, we will be a big step closer to the day when everybody gets their health care insurance through the government or from an approved insurer offering policies that meet meticulously detailed specifications contained in thousands of pages of federal regulations.

Heritage Morning Bell - Healthcare

The Public Option Is Neither Public, Nor An Option

When Mike Myers’ Linda Richman character would get a “little faklempt” on the Saturday Night Live skit Coffee Talk, she would give the audience a topic to discuss while she composed herself, like: “The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Discuss.”

If Linda were still hosting her show today, she could as accurately say about today’s health care debate: “The public option is neither public, nor an option.” Let’s discuss.

For the leftist base of the Congressional majority, the creation of a government-run health insurance company has been the defining issue of the health care debate. So, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has explained numerous times that: “The thinking on the public option has been that it gives consumers more choices and it helps keep the private sector honest because there’s some competition out there.” But is this true? Would the public have more choices if a government run health insurance company was created?

Five different organizations and offices have made predictions of how many Americans could end up enrolled in the public option, including: The Lewin Group, the Congressional Budget Office, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Urban Institute, and Health Systems Innovations Network. They all tell a similar story: the number of Americans that end up in the government run plan will greatly depend on who is allowed to buy into it, and how much they have to pay.

The Lewin Group–an independent health care analysis firm–was the first to estimate the impact of creating such a new public plan, when University of California at Berkeley professor of political science Jacob Hacker worked with them to create a model health plan for the Economic Policy Institute.

The left loved the numbers Lewin produced for Hacker’s plan, but they immediately turned on Lewin and began attacking its credibility once Lewin analyzed the actual legislation in the House.What so angered the left was Lewin’s finding that if the government-run plan were open to all employers, 103.4 million Americans would find themselves with government run insurance, including 88.1 million Americans who would lose their current employer-sponsored private coverage. What angered the left so much about this finding was that it exposed the fact that there is very little “optional” about the public option.

Those 88.1 million Americans would not be the ones choosing the public plan. Instead, it would be their employers who decided to discontinue their current private coverage, leaving the 88.1 million Americans no choice but to enroll in the government plan.

The latest version of Obamacare in the House “fixes” this problem by severely limiting who the government can enroll in the government plan. Under the new bill, only employers with 25 employees or fewer are allowed to enroll in the plan in year one (2013), in year two (2014) individuals and employers with 50 employees or fewer become eligible, and in year three (2015) employers with at least 100 employees become eligible.

In other words, the vast majority of Americans will not be eligible to enroll in the allegedly “public” plan. Worse still, even the poorest Americans are specifically denied access to the new government plan. The bill does expand Medicaid eligibility to 150% FPL but it also appears to deny access to those who are “eligible” for Medicaid.

This simply gives the false impression that poor people will get a choice of better care under this bill. The reality is all they get is a chance to join the substandard government-run Medicaid plan.

With these restrictions, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that under the current bill (H.R. 3962) only 6 million people would enroll in the government plan. The Lewin Group has not analyzed H.R. 3962, but did estimate earlier that if a public plan was only open to employers with no more than 20 employees, 21 million people would enroll. The difference between the two numbers comes largely from the fact that the CBO estimates that the public plan would have higher, not lower, premiums than private plans.

Since the left in Congress has chosen to make the public option the defining issue of the health care debate, millions of Americans are set to be sorely disappointed if Obamacare passes and they suddenly learn that they are not eligible for the so-called public option they have been sold.

The scariest part of Obamacare, however, is that the legislation also empowers the new Health Czar to unilaterally rewrite the regulations so that the public option can turn into President Barack Obama’s dream of “Everybody in, Nobody out” government run health care.

There's An Idea At the Bottom, After You Read Boehner's Statement

Boehner Statement on Sen. Harry Reid's "Opt-Out" Plan

GOP Leader: “Will Democrats allow states to opt out of the job-killing tax increases, unfunded mandates, and Medicare cuts for American seniors?”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) made the following statement today in response to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s announced “opt- out” plan for a government takeover of health care:
“Whether you call it a public option, an opt-out, a trigger, or a co-op, the fact is all of these proposals put us on the path to government-run health care. Forcing Americans off of their current health coverage and onto a government-run plan isn’t the answer, but that’s exactly what the Democrats’ plan would do.
"This 'public option' is only one of the problems with this legislation. Will Democrats allow states to opt out of the job-killing tax increases, unfunded mandates, and Medicare cuts for American seniors? We don’t need to give states the option of skipping one portion of this big-government scheme, we need to scrap it and start over on bipartisan reform that lowers cost and expands access at a price we can afford – that’s what the American people want, and what they deserve.”

I guess the question should be, will Senators sign up for the same plan they are cramming down our throats? Will Congress "opt-out" of this monstrous restriction of basic American rights?

Proposed: An Amendment to the Constitution of the United States:
"Congress shall make no law that applies to any citizen of the United States that does not apply equally to all US Senators and Representatives and Congress shall make no law that applies to any US Senator or Representative that does not apply equally to all citizens of the United States . All existing laws and regulations that do not meet these criteria shall be declared null and void!"

You Can Support the Constitution or Democrat Healthcare

BUT NOT BOTH

Government

"At the heart of the American idea is the deep distrust and suspicion the founders of our nation had for government, distrust and suspicion not shared as much by today's Americans. Some of the founders' distrust is seen in our Constitution's language such as Congress shall not: abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, violate and deny. If the founders did not believe Congress would abuse our God-given rights, they would not have provided those protections.

After all, one would not expect to find a Bill of Rights in Heaven; it would be an affront to God. Other founder distrust for government is found in the Constitution's separation of powers, checks and balances and the several anti-majoritarian provisions such as the Electoral College and the requirement that three-quarters of state legislatures ratify changes in the Constitution.

The three branches of our federal government are no longer bound by the Constitution as the framers envisioned and what is worse is American ignorance and acceptance of such rogue behavior. Look at the current debate over government involvement in health, business bailouts and stimulus packages.

The debate centers around questions as whether such involvement is a good idea or a bad idea and whether one program is more costly than another. Those questions are entirely irrelevant to what should be debated, namely: Is such government involvement in our lives permissible under the U.S. Constitution?

That question is not part of the debate. The American people, along with our elected representatives, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, care less about what is and what is not permissible under our Constitution. They think Congress has the right to do anything upon which they can secure a majority vote, whether they have the constitutional or moral authority to do so or not."

George Mason economics professor Walter E. Williams

DMV Style Healthcare..Oh Goody Goody

Congress needs to be reminded of their severely limited powers.

"The construction applied ... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power ... ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument." --Thomas Jefferson

Federalist Digest/Patriot Post
Government

"The most revelatory passage in the so-called 'plain English' version of the health care bill that the Senate Finance Committee approved on Tuesday (without ever drafting the actual legislative language) says that in the future Americans will be offered the convenience of getting their health insurance at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

This is no joke. If this bill becomes law, it will be the duty of the U.S. secretary of health and human services or the state governments overseeing federally mandated health-insurance exchanges to ensure that you can get your health insurance at the DMV. You will also be able to get it at Social Security offices, hospitals, schools and 'other offices' the government will name later.

Page 19 of the committee's 'plain English' text says:

'The Secretary and/or states would do the following: ... Enable customers to enroll in health care plans in local hospitals, schools, Departments of Motor Vehicles, local Social Security offices, and other offices designated by the state.' This is the bill's most revelatory passage because it sublimely symbolizes the bill's true aim: a government takeover of the health care system.

You do not get food at the DMV. You do not even get auto insurance at the DMV. But under what The Associated Press inaptly calls the Finance Committee's 'middle-of-the-road health care plan,' you will get health insurance at the DMV."

--columnist Terence Jeffrey

Get The Public Focused on the Issues

Will 2010 voters recall cloture vote? Not if GOP can help it
By: Hugh Hewitt
Examiner Columnist
October 13, 2009

Turning the Saturday mic over to LeMieux is just the latest evidence the GOP national leadership doesn't understand the seriousness of the vote ahead and the urgent necessity of conveying to the public that the Senate's cloture vote -- the vote on whether to end debate, which requires 60 ayes to pass -- is everything in this struggle to preserve American medicine. They don't get the first thing about how to encourage the public, which is already against Obamacare, to communicate that opposition effectively.

If media explosives had been the objective, give the ball to Sarah Palin and let the cameras roll.

Even a few years ago, before the rise of new media, Beltway types could be forgiven for their condescension concerning the great masses of American voters. Sophisticated consultants and long-serving incumbents could tut-tut about the public never understanding what a cloture vote meant.

But they understand now, or could, if their attention was focused on this looming key vote. Getting the public focused on the vote and its importance is possible, but it will take real effort and a sustained, consistently delivered message made by effective spokesmen to whom the mainstream media and new media alike will pay at least some attention.

And that will require a GOP that is serious about communicating every day, including Saturday.

Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.

What We Have Coming on Healthcare Legislation

Posted on FreedomWorks Grassroots: Florida Group

We have been unsuccessful in stopping the Senate bill in the Finance Committee, and frankly actually accomplishing much except to drive their deliberation under the cover of darkness. Baucus has not produced a written bill, and only a 20+ page description of their intent. The actual bill may take two or more weeks to actually draft.

Nonethless, Reid is going to move forward consolidating the 4 Senate bills into one bill, including the Kennedy version which does contain a Public Option and closely follows the ACORN Driven House Bill HR3200.

Expect Reid to produce a combined bill, looking more like the Kennedy bill than the Baucus bill= by mid next week and to call for a Senate vote on it immediately irespective of the bill not actually being written. He'll try to cobble the votes together in order to get it to conference. We have a major battle looming at this time and we need to get our act together and press every member of Congress to kill the House and Senate Bill. The Blue Dogs are our best hope in teh Hosue and we need to get our grass roots all over these Reps, plus a huge national fax campaign to strengthen their willingness to vote no.

A Tax By Any Other Name

A tax is a tax is a tax is tax. No matter how its spun, its still a freaking tax.

Tax: A Required Contribution or Fee Levied by a Government
George Stephanopoulos, former senior advisor to Bill Clinton, on ABC's "This Week" grilled the President on how his health care overhaul would raise taxes on the middle class. The President tried to dance around the issue-- just as he has done on numerous occasions regarding abortion funding in the health care bill.

However, he can't dance away from this fact, either. Politico reports today that page 29 of the bill introduced Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont), says: "The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax." President Obama has developed a serious credibility problem as Factcheck.org, Politifact.com, and now Politico have reported on the President's misleading statements on his health care bill.

However, the American people can't be misled so easily. They instinctively know that imposing new taxes or involuntary payments (mandates) combined with massive
spending will only further burden families and the next generation of Americans.

I've said this before, and I will keep on saying it until someone shoots me:

THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY TO FORCE YOU TO BUY ANYTHING UNLESS YOU GIVE IT TO THEM!!!!!!!

ERISA - do you know what it means?

Neither did I. And the powers that be don't want you to know either. Have you seen how these "health care" bills are written? Or the existing regulations?

During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was in charge. All power was based on God's approval. And only the priesthood could read Latin....
Similarly, the mullahs do the same thing in the muslim world. The Koran is in Arabic. And only the imams read Arabic.....

Now, power seeking entities seek control over your lives. Insurance companies, governments, lobbyists, etc, all want to control and guide your choices.

William Tucker at The American Spectator explains it all:

But let's get back to my original point, which is that liberals speak a different language when they talk about healthcare. Here's what the Brookings Institution recommends for resolving the problem:

• Link "meaningful use" health IT [Information Technology] bonuses to achieving better results as part of systems of quality measurement, quality improvement, and care coordination.

• Create interoperability and provider communications standards, with a focus on filing priority gaps in standards for practical exchange.

• Fund technical support programs to ensure providers adopting health IT have access to comprehensive support for overcoming implementation challenges.

• Create an entity [that means a federal government panel] to allocate CER [Comparative Effectiveness Research] based on the expected value of the evidence to be developed, including the national burden of disease and the likelihood that the research will lead to real improvements in care.

• Emphasize areas of medical uncertainty, public health interventions, and broad provider practice patterns and the policies that influenced them.

I don't know about you but most of these sentences sound like the kind you compose with refrigerator magnets. What in god's name are they talking about?

Now I know what the answer will be. "You don't have the expertise to know what they're talking about." I'm sure that's true. There must be a level of non-profit, policymaker executive authority at which this all jargon makes sense.

But that's the whole point. None of this is supposed to be comprehensible to ordinary individuals. It's not written for people who take part in the system. It's written for people who see the major players as chess pieces to be moved around the board.

Obama wants us all to have choice. Apparently, through ERISA, unions, large corporations, and the self insured, perhaps 90% of the insured, already have choice. Governments don't like that.

Go read the rest.

Cross posted at RedState

Its NOT about Health Care. Its about POWER.

What is it that the Left promises?

Yes, I know, but free energy from unicorn farts IS mythical. Well, then again, so is most of what the Left says is mythical.....but I digress.

The Progressives promise more efficient government services. The Progressives promise that the government will help you. The Progressives promise that THEY will save you through the power of this or that government scheme.

The Conservatives (not necessarily the GOP) want the government to return to its Constitutional role of leveling the playing field for its citizens so that they may freely pursue their dreams. The Conservatives want the government to only referee, not be in the game.

Mark Steyn nails it: (emphasis mine)

Since January, his successor has used the economic slump as a pretext to "reform" health care. Most voters don't buy it: They see it as Obama's "war of choice," and the more frantically he talks about it as a matter of urgency the weirder it seems. If he's having difficulty selling it, that's because it's not about "health." As I've written before, the appeal of this issue to him and to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank et al is that governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture — one in which elections are always fought on the Left's issues and on the Left's terms, and in which "conservative" parties no longer talk about small government and individual liberty but find themselves retreating to one last pitiful rationale: that they can run the left-wing state more effectively than the Left can. Listen to your average British Tory or French Gaullist on the campaign trail, pledging to "deliver" government services more "efficiently."

Any Republican that cooperates with this madness DESERVES to lose his/her seat. Any "conservative" Democrat that cooperates with this madness also deserves to lose their seat or be exposed for the lickspittles that they are.


Cross posted at RedState.