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

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/

Throughout the health care debate, President Barack Obama repeatedly promised the American people that his health care plan “will help bring our deficits under control in the long term.” The problem is that the White House could not get the Congressional Budget Office to cooperate. Throughout the summer the CBO issued report after report showing that the versions of Obamacare working their way through Congress all added to the deficit.

First, CBO found that the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) bill would increase the deficit by $1 trillion. Three weeks later, the CBO released a report on a revised bill showing HELP 2.0 only raised the deficit by $597 billion. The House then got a little clever and tried to game the CBO scoring system by phasing in the major spending of their bill over time, but even that maneuver left them with $245 billion added to the deficit in the first ten years (with crippling deficits to come as the entitlement spending ramped up in the out years).

Enter Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-MT) who was determined to manipulate the CBO’s scoring system as best he could and deliver a deficit neutral version of Obamacare. After months of working directly with CBO staff, Baucus scored a victory for Obamacare yesterday when the CBO released a preliminary analysis purporting to show that the Baucus bill would reduce deficits by a total of $81 billion over the next decade. The New York Times awarded Baucus with the headline that the White House has been searching for since the debate first began: “Health Care Bill Gets Green Light in Cost Analysis.” But this headline and the accompanying article are fundamentally dishonest. As the Politico reported yesterday: “While the media and lawmakers often shorthand a CBO letter as a “score” or “cost estimate,” today’s CBO letter is neither. Because the bill is still in “conceptual,” or layman’s terms, CBO’s letter today was a “preliminary analysis.” For it to be an official cost estimate, the bill has to be translated into legislative language.”

Indeed, the CBO went to great pains to emphasize this fact in their letter to Congress: “CBO and JCT’s analysis is preliminary in large part because the Chairman’s mark, as amended, has not yet been embodied in legislative language.” But this isn’t even the most deceptive part of what the left in Congress is trying to pull on the American people. Not only does the Baucus bill not even really exist, just a Vapor Bill filled with conceptual language, it is about to be completely thrown out the window when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) merges it with the deficit busting HELP bill to move it to the Senate floor.

Then the real deception begins. Majority Leader Reid will then move to proceed on a House passed TARP tax bill, completely gut it, and insert his version of Obamacare. After the Senate passes the bill it will go to the House where if it is approved without amendment, it can then proceed directly to President Obama’s desk for signing. Throughout this whole time, the White House and the left in Congress will be using headlines like the one from the New York Times this morning to claim that Obamacare will reduce the deficit. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Baucus bill is the only version of Obamacare to get anything close to a deficit neutral nod from CBO and even that is done through creative deception. When it is combined with these other bills, Obamacare is certain to become an even greater budget buster once again. But the left’s entire strategy is to move fast so that a true CBO cost estimate of what Congress is actually voting on never happens.

Conservatives are fighting to make sure this deception is not perpetrated on the American people. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) has introduced legislation that would change Senate rules to require a 72-hour waiting period and an official CBO cost estimate before the Senate was allowed to consider any legislation. If President Obama’s promises to the American people about ethics and transparency mean anything, then he should insist that Congress take its time and allow for a full CBO scoring of health reform.

The Government won’t be involved in medical decisions – This is wrong. The bill actually contains an organization to do exactly this, called the "Health Choices Administration not to mention Medicare and Medicaid already do this on their own. The reason for this is that everyone cannot have everything in this type of program and therefore the government must ration care. Section 141 & 142 of H.R. 3200

The financial system was on verge of collapse when he took office – This is patently and verifiably wrong. The financial system was in fact on the verge of collapse in October 2008; however by the time he took office on January 20, 2009 the system had already stabilized. This is not to say the economy was fine, it wasn’t, there is and continues to be much work to be done, but President Obama knows better than to take credit for something he didn’t do.

Prior to his taking office the economy wasn’t producing any good paying jobs - According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States was experiencing positive monthly job gains for a total of 50 out of 52 months between September 2003 and December 2007. Bureau of Labor Statistics

If you have insurance you will be able to keep it – The House version of the legislation has an explicit clause that says that if you lose your insurance in some way shape or form, those who currently have private coverage will not be able to change it, those who lose their job, leave a company, or work for themselves will not be able to buy individual healthcare plans from private providers. IBD Editorial July 15, 2009

The current system subsidizes insurance companies – It’s actually the other way around. Private insurance subsidizes those on Medicaid and Medicare, any Doctor, hospital, or medical group could not survive if they took only Medicare and Medicaid payments from the federal government. The Congressional Budget Office has testified that Medicare already pays doctors 20 percent less than private health plans; hospital reimbursement rates are “as much as 30 percent lower.”

It will not be paid for by middle class taxpayers – If you don’t buy ‘acceptable’ health insurance individuals will receive a tax increase of 2.5%(Page 167), in addition to taxes on small business that will hit everyone, this doesn’t even account for the fact that there aren’t enough rich to pay for it. According to the Tax Foundation, the top tax rate will raise to more than 50% in 39 states.

Slows the growth of medical costs – The Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Doug Elmendorf recently said that there is no evidence that it will reduce costs and may increase them. MSNBC – CQ – July 16, 2009

In terms of the deficit, we reduced spending by 2.2 trillion - We’ve actually increased spending by trillions of dollars since President Obama took office. The United States has set course under the leadership of President Obama to double the national debt in 5 years and triple it in 10. CBS News – February 26, 2009

Public option will provide some competition – Currently there are over 1,300 medical insurance plans available in the United States, the problem is that you can’t buy them across state lines. In California for instance, it would be wonderful if we could buy medical plans in any of the 50 states. All Republican plans include it, and the plan I am supporting the Patient’s Choice Act.

Healthcare is the biggest contributor to the deficit – Lately the biggest contributor to the deficit is actually President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid. It is true that government healthcare plans are a major cost to the government. Yet, if the President believes that current healthcare programs are the biggest factor in the deficit, then how can he think that expanding and creating more of these plans and program will help the deficit?