Townhall.com The Blogspot for Political, Conservative and Republican Blogs and Bloggers

First, it is important to make a distinction between the number released earlier today and what is happening in reality.  Don’t let the 10.2% figure fool you.  Out in the real world, unemployment is 17.5%.  The figure released by the Department of Labor does not include those individuals who have given up on finding work or those who are underemployed, such as individuals working part time but looking for full-time work. 

Meanwhile, back in D.C., Nancy Pelosi and President Obama are intent on passing legislation on global warming and health care which analysis has shown will kill jobs and only exacerbate our current economic woes.

When roughly 1/5^th of the American population is unemployed or unable to find full-time work, why is the President and Speaker intent of making work harder to find for even more Americans?

You will remember that President Obama’s economic advisors indicated that with the passage of the so-called ‘stimulus package,’ unemployment levels would not exceed 7.8%. Now, as we stare down the face of unemployment levels of 10.2%, it begs the question, Mr. President, where are the jobs?

Factoid of the Day: The Pelosi government run health care plan creates a new 2.5% tax on all medical devices not sold through a retail establishment. That means a new 2.5% tax on everything from wheelchairs and hospital gowns, to artificial organs. And that lowers health care costs how?

Tea Party: Yesterday on Capitol Hill, we Republicans held a press conference on the west front of the Capitol to oppose the Pelosi Health Plan.  The “Tea Party” people seized on this as an opportunity to express the grass roots opposition to what the Wall Street Journal has called the worst bill since World War II. They started sending their e-mails just a few days ago.

And boy did they deliver.   I would estimate that there were 25,000 people in the crowd all chanting “kill the bill; kill the bill.” There are those on the left who would dismiss this movement as a bunch of kooks and fringe players. They do so at their peril.  I talked to corporate CEOs, Doctors, an investment banker with an MBA, and many other educated people of accomplishment. I would not they say they are angry, but rather, they are filled with resolve. No one paid them to be here, and it should be noted that this event was at 12:00 noon on a Thursday. They just do not want this country to follow the path of collectivism that Pelosi and Obama espouse.  They know it doesn’t work,  and I agree with them.

Another interesting thing to note, is that there is no office for the 'Tea Party.'  In fact, there is no centralization at all. It is completely organic, spontaneous, and organized only through the Internet.  It is just individuals making an individual decision to fight for freedom without any central direction or control, which I might add, is exactly the opposite of how Obama and Pelosi think health care (and many other things) should work.  This movement really is emblematic of the power and dignity of the individual over the power and control of the collective.

And it is that individual choice and right that we are fighting for.  Here is a picture I took of the crowd from my vantage point on the steps of the Capitol.  If you would like to see more photos, log onto my facebook page by clicking here .  The crowd was stretched out over such a wide area that I could not even begin to capture it all without a fish-eye lens, which I don’t have. But hopefully you will get the flavor.

As of this moment, the Democratic leadership still does not have enough votes to pass the bill. Tomorrow, the President will travel to Capitol Hill to meet with Democrats and try to talk enough of them into voting for it. They have scheduled a vote for Saturday, after the President works it some more.

Factoid of the day: President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.

– Quote from an Associated Press Report on overstating of stimulus job creation by the White House. 

Pelosi Health Care Update: Last night at 10:07 PM Eastern time, Speaker Pelosi released the latest version of her health care plan. This version added 42 pages to make the total bill now a whopping 2,032 pages. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) had pledged to have the final bill in print for 72 hours before it is voted upon. That means that the soonest the bill could be brought to a vote on the House floor is 10:07 PM on Friday night.

But by all accounts, they have not yet cajoled the necessary 218 votes to ensure the bill’s passage. It also appears clear that they may make more changes to the bill in order to secure more votes before Friday night or Saturday. But they have also been clear that they will not wait until 72 hours after any further changes.

Yesterday, I spent some time in a “bill reading room” set up by Republicans to read the bill. In between floor speeches and committee votes, I randomly picked 3 sections of the bill to read. Each one was instructive. Here’s what I learned that I had not before known about the bill in just a short reading:

1. The bill contains a section called “Individual responsibility.” It is less than 20 words long. It merely refers to a section in the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. But immediately following, is a section called “employer responsibility.” It goes on for many sections and pages. We will never control health care costs as long as people are disconnected from the choice, cost, and quality of the services they receive. This bill moves people farther away.

2. In another section of the bill, I only went a few pages before encountering an entirely new “private right of action.” A “private right of action” is an opportunity to file a lawsuit on the basis of federal law. This particular new lawsuit opportunity would be for employees to sue employers if they don’t like their health care choices. There are many more such new litigation opportunities in this bill. It is universally (except of course for Pelosi and her minions) acknowledged that lawsuit abuse is driving up health care costs through direct costs as well as “defensive medicine”  by tens of billions of dollars annually. However this bill not only contains no lawsuit reform, it actually will make the problem far, far worse.  The trial lawyer lobby, however, must be very happy.

3. There is a 5.4% surtax on incomes over $500,000. This is just a “soak the rich” tax to partially pay for socialized medicine. But interestingly, the tax applies to adjusted gross income, not to taxable income. That means if you make $500,000 and give it all to charity, you will still pay a surtax of $27,000 even though you have no net income. I am not aware of any other provision of the tax code that applies the tax on gross income, rather than taxable income.

It just gets worse and worse and worse.  We will keep up the fight. I hope you will too.

Yesterday in response to my post on the Greeneyeshade Blog, a reader made a very observant and pithy comment that I wanted to share with the rest of you:

“So, let me make sure I get this correct…We're going to pass a health care plan written by a committee, whose head says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, signed by a president that also hasn't read it, and who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's nearly broke.

What possibly could go wrong?”

I also want to draw your attention to a new tool that House Republicans are using in the debate on Speaker Pelosi’s government takeover of healthcare.  This website allows you to scrutinize the 1,990 pages of Pelosi’s bill right along with Members of Congress.  I think you will find it particularly useful. See the link below.

http://healthcaretruth.amplify.com/

Lest there be any doubt about whether the new Pelosi Health Care Bill is more costly, more controlling, and closer to socialism than the previous iteration, here is your fact of the day:

You may remember that the ‘original’ health care bill introduced before the August recess, H.R. 3200, would have created 53 separate bureaucracies, commissions, boards etc... The new Pelosi Bill, which the House may vote on as early as this week creates a whopping 111 new boards, bureaucracies, commissions, and programs….wow….if this isn’t a massive government intervention into our health care system, I don’t know what is.

Today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal has a scathing editorial of the legislation introduced by Speaker Pelosi. It notes the creation of a new ‘Health Choices Commissioner’ that will decide “essential benefits” which all insurers will have to offer. This sounds like something straight out of Aldous Huxley’s, A Brave New World or George Orwell’s, 1984.

Thanks to the House Republican Conference, I have included a list of names of these proposed new bureaucratic entities along with the corresponding page numbers.

Click Here to Read all 1,990 pages.
Read More...

Speaker Pelosi and President Obama are determined to socialize medicine and to permanently put 1/6th of the American economy in complete control of the government. But the American people don't want that, not a single elected Republican in Congress wants that, and a significant number of elected Democrats don't want that.

Pelosi needs to get 218 Democrats to vote for her bill. That means she can lose 39 Democrats, but no more. She is keeping Democrats in town "working" because she wants to keep trying to convince them to vote for her bill. She also knows that if they go home, most of them will hear the opposite message from their constituents. So, she keeps us all in town with busy work so that she can keep using carrots and sticks to get the votes for her awful bill. Don't underestimate the power of the Presidency and the Speakership to convince Members of Congress to vote their way.

And just what is in this bill? Well, having had it for only a short time, I can't tell you everything. But here are a few facts you may find interesting:

- It is 1990 pages long.
- It has about 400,000 words. That is 5 times the length in words of the Torah.
- It contains a government-run "option,” which will effectively not be optional over the next 5-8 years.
- It spends over $1 trillion. That amounts to over $2.2 million per word.
- It uses the word "shall" 3,429 times. So, 3,429 times it compels someone to do or not do something.
- But one place where it uses the word "may" is in reference to whether Members of Congress "may" join the government run system. So, much of the public will be forced onto the government-run system but we in Congress will not. (Do what I say, not what I do)
- It increases taxes on small business, wealthy individuals, all medical devices (including wheelchairs, bandages, and such), people who save for their own health care costs through health savings accounts, payroll taxes and anyone who does not buy health insurance.
- It authorizes government funding of abortions, which is not allowed under current federal law.
- Any state that has a limit on attorney's fees or punitive damage awards in malpractice cases (like California) must change that law to remove all limits or the state loses federal money under the bill. (blatant trial lawyer provision)
- And that's just the beginning.

This week is D-day week for this bill. You will receive updates from me during the week as news progresses.

I sincerely hope that all of us together can persuade at least 40 reasonable Democrats that there are much better ways to reform health care than this monstrosity.

Those of you who read this blog, know that I enjoy posting the occasional political cartoon, and I stumbled across this one this week by Walt Handelsman that is particularly appropriate. The scariest goblins this Halloween are government run health care, the national energy tax, and taxes to pay for more bureaucracies that spend more of your money.

Yesterday marked the last day of Fiscal Year 2009.  I think it is prudent to take a look back at this year in federal spending…

According to CBO, the federal government ran a $1.4 trillion deficit through the first 11 months of FY 2009.  Revenues are down, expenditures are up, and the federal government will borrow 43 cents for every dollar it spends in FY 2009.

The national debt now stands at $11.77 trillion, a 35.8% increase since Democrats took control of Congress in 2007.  To provide a frame of reference, this 33 month period has racked up more debt than the total debt accumulated by the federal government from 1789 to1989….In FY 2009 alone, the federal government ran up $1.75 trillion of debt.

Since the non-stimulating stimulus package became law, Speaker Pelosi, Harry Reid, and President Obama have not curbed their spending habits.  There is no question that Republicans foolishly abandoned their fiscal conservative roots during the past 8 years, but since taking over Congress, Democrats have turned a projected ten-year $800 billion surplus into a projected deficit of $7.8 trillion over the same period of time.  For you bean counters out there, that is an $8.6 trillion deterioration of the nation’s budget outlook in the 33 months since Democrats took control of Congress.

These numbers are staggering…they speak for themselves.

As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by Presidents’ Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government – I don’t.”

However, actions speak louder than words and President Obama has been the vanguard of bigger government, making now routine incursions into virtually every level of private life from student loans to health care. The point here is simple, as the government grows, liberty declines, and inevitably the taxpayer and the rest of the economy suffer.

As Ronald Reagan once said:

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs – once launched – never disappear, Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this Earth.”

In the past, I have highlighted various egregious boondoggles or flat out silly expenditures by the federal government, it’s been a while since I last blogged, but here is one boondoggle that I stumbled upon recently.

The stimulus bill, widely touted by the current Administration and Democratic leadership of the House and Senate, was supposed to ostensibly make the recession shorter and shallower.  Unfortunately it has done neither.  Despite unemployment levels near 10% you will be able to take comfort knowing that Washington D.C. was recent the recipient of $2.8 million in stimulus funds from the United States Forest Service for ‘wildland fire mitigation.’  Yet, D.C. doesn’t have any national forests and furthermore hasn’t seen a wildland-scale fire since 1814 when the British burned the Capitol during the War of 1812.  So the obvious question is, ‘where is this money going?’

Well, $2.7 million will be going to Washington Parks and People a non-profit that enhances and restores public parks. 

According to the organization it has:

Sponsored the Marvin Gaye Festival, which includes live musical performances.

Sponsored the Season in Seven Celebration and Tree Lighting

Chaired the International Urban Parks Alliance Forum, the premier forum for parks advocates.

When asked about the grant, they were surprised as anyone to be getting the grant saying, “[W]e do not know anything beyond the information we saw on the web site.”

This is disappointing, but further proof that the President’s stimulus package was both ill-conceived and not truly designed to be stimulative.

Past performance: With the benefit of hindsight, one can criticize some of Bernanke’s moves and statements during his first term. Certainly, he can be criticized for not identifying the depth of last year’s crisis sooner, among other things. But virtually none of us foresaw the severity of the crisis or offered a solution that would have prevented it. Bernanke’s swift and decisive action contributed to saving the economy from what would have been acomplete collapse last October. He has done a good job so far and we should let him seethe jobthrough back to a normal economy.

Continuity: Markets hate uncertainty, this is particularly true now. Continuing Bernanke’s Chairmanship until January 2014 gives the markets some confidence that monetary policy will be consistent and measured towards the Fed’s mission of growth with low inflation.

No Debt Monetization: This is probably the single most positive sign from the Bernanke reappointment. The federal debt and deficits are huge, unsustainable, and a major risk to future economic growth. Not to mention, it continues togrow. One way to deal with these problems is to “monetize” the debt. That means that the Fed would print money and buy all the new debt issues from the Treasury rather than sell them in the marketplace. Whenever any government has done this on any meaningful scale, it has resulted in uncontrolled inflation and a precipitous decline in the value of the currency. Bernanke has been clear that he thinks this is disastrous economic policy, and he is entirelycorrect. But it can be a politically easy way out of the mess without raising taxes or cutting spending. But it can’t be accomplished without the Fed Chairman’s 'OK.' Make no mistake; the debt/deficit is still a huge problem. But by reappointing Chairman Bernanke, one of the worst ways to deal with it appears to be off the table. I would also argue that without debt monetization, future inflation prospects are muted somewhat.