Well, so much for a bipartisan strategy session on health care. Despite calls from the White House about bringing Republicans to the table to get their ideas into the debate, it looks like Democrats have already decided on a plan to pass their original legislation. Legislation Americans have soundly rejected from coast to coast.

Speaking at the National Health Policy Conference hosted by Academy Health and Health Affairs, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's senior health care adviser Wendell Primus said that Democratic leaders in Congress will implement a legislative "trick" to pass their very unpopular version of health care reform.
 
Mark Tapscott with the Washington Examiner writes that Congress Daily, which originally published the story, is a subscription-only publication, but provided a link to LifeNews.com, which provided these details: 

"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.

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

Why propose a televised, bipartisan meeting on February 25th if the underlying plan has been to pass the Democrats' original health care proposal all along? Well, it's simple. President Obama wants to give the appearance of bipartisan cooperation without really caring at all. It's one PR stunt after another with this White House, and this latest action is a clear assault on the intelligence of the American people.

The Democratic leadership of this Congress and White House simply refuses to take no for an answer when it comes to a government takeover of your health care. They simply refuse to consider any idea being proposed by me or any of my Republican colleagues. Is this the leadership you want in Washington, or more importantly, the leadership you deserve?

Members of the House of Representatives had a no-brainer in front of them today - they should have voted “NO” to raise our debt limit as a nation by $1.9 trillion to a whopping $14 trillion. Instead of looking at ways to restrain their spending - like most Americans are doing right now - Congress has decided to saddle more federal debt to the backs of American workers. My constituents are strapped enough as it is and that's why I voted no on this irresponsible measure. A vote to raise the national debt limit without significantly reigning in spending is Washington at its worst. 

Nearly $4 billion dollars could be made available to ACORN or other similar organizations in President Obama’s 2011 fiscal year budget proposal, released this week. Through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Community Development Block Grant program will have $3.99 billion to award to state and localities, who in turn can pass the money to ACORN or other groups.

According to Matthew Vadum writing for The American Spectator, they would be part of a “good old-fashioned graft, an area in which ACORN has great expertise.”

The article also references the Manhattan Institute’s Steven Malanga, who called the Community Development Block Grant program, “America’s worst urban program.” He noted that the money “it has lavished on poor neighborhoods has had little impact, because nothing in the funding formula requires grantees to show that they’re actually improving things. Few ever ‘graduate’ from the program, having achieved their mission. Instead, the funding spigot stays open, year after year.”

As the President’s budget is debated, it is imperative ACORN’s corrupt actions are not forgotten to ensure they are not made eligible for any of the nearly $4 billion in Community Development Block Grants.

President Obama said this morning upon the release of his $3.8 trillion budget proposal:

We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences; as if waste doesn't matter; as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money; as if we can ignore this challenge for another generation. We can't.

Unfortunately, the budget sent to Congress for the 2011 fiscal year does not support the President’s rhetoric.

President Obama claims to make tough cuts in his proposal while still addressing unemployment and funding for national defense, but his budget forecasts a record-breaking deficit of $1.6 trillion. This startling deficit is 10.6 percent of our country’s gross domestic product.  Not good.

Included in the President’s budget are calls for a new jobs bill – with the price tag of $100 billion dollars. The President claims spending money will ease the 10 percent jobless rate. We can look to the $787 stimulus package, passed last February, to see money is not the solution we need.

As Americans watch their own wallets, they likewise want to see true fiscal responsibility from the President. Sadly, this administration will “continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences; as if waste doesn’t matter,” affecting generations to come.

Today on this annual Holocaust Memorial Day, we pause to remember all those tragically lost in the Holocaust. In this horrible blemish on our world’s history, millions were persecuted and put to death. We also must take time to remember the survivors of the Holocaust who are forever affected by the nightmare of those events. Their strength to carry on and expose the atrocities of the Holocaust is to be commended.

This Holocaust Memorial Day marks the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the largest Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz. On January 27, 1945 the Soviet Army entered the camp, near the prewar German-Polish border, and freed the remaining prisoners. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum it is estimated at least 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz alone, with a total of 1.3 million people deported there between 1940 and 1945.

We must let today serve as a reminder of what evil dictators can do when they go unchecked. We also must remain aware of what is being said against our nation and against our allies around the world. Never again can a tyrant or dictator be allowed to seek the destruction of human life like was witnessed in the Holocaust.

In a game-changing announcement two days before President Obama’s State of the Union address, the White House has called for a freeze in discretionary spending in 2011. As a constant advocate to rein in government spending, I am pleased that President Obama has publicly acknowledged the need to cut spending—unfortunately, he does not seem to take the task too seriously.

President Obama’s announcement comes only after he increased 2010’s spending levels by 13 percent.  Announcing a freeze after first increasing your budget is like touting one’s fiscal restraint when they have cut up maxed out credit cards.   Even if spending is frozen or reduced in the 12 annual appropriation bills, that does not guarantee emergency measures, similar to the so-called stimulus bill will not be introduced and in-turn, be added to the deficit.

In fact, he seems to have failed to garner support from his own party. According to The Hill, several House Democrats immediately rejected the idea. Citing that this change may actually hurt the economy, Congressional Democrats would rather see the White House spend more federal dollars than less. In the slight chance Congress actually follows the President’s suggestions, only $250 billion will be saved in 10 years. That’s less than half the amount of the so-called stimulus package and less than one-third the cost of the Democrats’ health care legislation.  

It is not too late. Only a fraction of the stimulus funds have actually been spent and health care seems to be all but dead in Congress.  I welcome the President’s spending freeze, but I challenge the Administration not to stop there. If the President is serious about controlling our national debt, he needs to readdress his agenda and stop pushing a national energy tax or government take-over of health care.  

I wish I could be surprised that the report on ACORN requested by Democratic Reps. Barney Frank and John Conyers of the Congressional Research Service is a mere gloss over of the tainted group. Matthew Vadum, at BigGovernment.com, reports on the recently published CRS Report calling it “an incompetent whitewash” and saying:

“apparently Congressional Research Service employees are as good at research as ACORN employees are at registering voters.”

In a press release issued by Frank and Conyers, they cite a finding by CRS of:

“no instances of individuals who were allegedly registered to vote improperly by ACORN or its employees and who were reported ‘attempting to vote at the polls.’”

We know this is not the case.

Registered in two counties by ACORN, Claudel Gilbert of Reynoldsburg, Ohio pleaded guilty to voting in a county in which he did not live, and voting twice; both felonies.

Unfortunately, this is not the lone example.

Vadum cites the instance of Darnell Nash who was registered to vote nine times by ACORN.

For a group who has received so many federal dollars over the years, more complete research should have been done. Instead of doing real leg work, CRS researchers plugged some terms into a computer program to result in news articles regarding ACORN.

I certainly wish the next review of ACORN, expected to be released by the Government Accountability Office, will provide more information about the actual actions of ACORN. Maybe one government organization will be serious about cracking down on the corruption which abounds in the group.

If the 2.7 millions jobs that have been lost since the so-called stimulus was signed into the law did not convince you that government spending does not correlate into economic growth, take a look at this story from the Associated Press: Stimulus Cash Doesn't Create Local Jobs:

“A federal spending surge of more than $20 billion for roads and bridges in President Obama's first stimulus has had NO EFFECT on local unemployment rates, raising questions about his argument for billions more to address an ‘urgent need to accelerate job growth.’ An Associated Press analysis of stimulus spending found that it didn't matter if a lot of money was spent on highways or none at all: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless. And the stimulus spending only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, the analysis showed.”

Yet, President Obama wants to pass a second stimulus calling for billions of dollars of more spending. When will the President and Democrat leadership learn that spending money we don’t have isn’t always the remedy to fix whatever problem confronts us? When will they get the hint? Republicans have put forth a better way to give our families the relief they need that will turn our economy around.

Yesterday I mentioned that the Obama Administration and Democrat Congressional leaders plan to meet behind closed doors to reconcile their two differing versions of health care reform. So much for President Obama’s pledge to make the entire health care reform process open and transparent. In fact, C-SPAN has asked Congressional leaders to reconsider their thinking and allow the network to air the full proceedings.

As it turns out, providing an open and transparent negotiation process isn’t the only broken promise.  The Senate’s version includes a significant tax increase on the middle class that comes in the form of increased taxes on “Cadillac” insurance plans. Democrats attempted to label these insurance plans “Cadillac” in order to give the impression that people with these types of plans are wealthy. The problem for Democrats is that a large segment of folks with these plans are hard-working American families.

Fox News reports.

The Senate bill raises the biggest chunk of its new revenue through a 40 percent tax on so-called Cadillac health insurance plans -- plans that cost more than $23,000 per family.  And that tax, critics say, will trigger a series of changes that will result in billions of dollars in new taxes on the middle class over the next decade.

First, the tax will hit plans widely used by middle-class employees. The majority of workers with the high-value plans are union members and state government employees who are not considered wealthy, even though Obama advisers like to say the tax is aimed at benefits enjoyed by the likes of Wall Street bankers.

‘A lot of those folks that have Cadillac plans have Chevy wages. And that's what makes it, has made it, somewhat controversial and a real issue of contention,’ said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy with the non-profit think tank Third Way.

And according to the New York Times:

The tax would apply to nearly 20 percent of all workers with employer-provided health coverage in the country, affecting some 31 million people. Within six years, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, the tax would reach a fifth of all households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 annually. Those families can hardly be considered very wealthy.

All eyes will be on these health care negotiations in the coming weeks, and I hope Democrat Congressional leaders reverse course and allow these negotiations to be viewed by the public. They’ve already locked Republicans out of these critical negotiations. They shouldn’t do the same to the American public.

This week both the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal reported that there’s a good chance the Democrats will bypass a formal conference committee to hash out the differences between the House and Senate health care bills and instead, create a final bill out of the public eye and behind closed doors.

Since both chambers passed two different bills, negotiators must work to pass one uniform bill before it can be sent to the President for his signature. Votes in both the House and Senate were extremely tight and several issues must be reconciled before final passage including abortion, taxes, cuts to Medicare, and the public option. It appears the Democrats wish to do this outside of public scrutiny to speed up the process in hopes of getting it done and signed into law before the President makes his State of the Union speech. This is far from Mr. Obama’s pledge to keep the health care reform process open and transparent.