Actuary denies delaying report

The Chief Medicare Actuary, Richard Foster, called "completely inaccurate" a report that the Department of Health and Human Services buried a report on health care in the days before a crucial vote.

"Consistent with the Office of the Actuary's longstanding independent role on behalf of Congress, we did not seek approval or clearance from HHS (or anyone else) before issuing our analysis," he said in response to a question from POLITICO.

The report in the American Spectator has gained some traction on the right, but First Read's close look at the timeline suggests the report would have been unlikely to make it out in time for the passage of the legislation.


Foster backs up that reporting, and his denial carries a good deal of weight: He's an independent figure who testified, damagingly, in 2004 that the Bush Administration had -- in not dissimilar circumstances -- delayed the publication of a report on the cost of the Medicare prescription drug plan; last year, he delivered a report on Medicare cuts that sharply challenged the Obama Administration's claims that they were holding senior citizens harmless in health care legislation.


Regardless of whether the report was buried and delayed or not, the report CONFIRMS many people's belief that President Obama and the Democrats purposely misled the American public about the true cost of Healthcare Reform legislation! This issue is not right vs., left, liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican; it is an issue of TRUTH, HONESTY, and CORE VALUES. How many professional politicians in our country adhere to those items? When Republicans held power in both house of Congress and the White House, they were no better at being honest with America than Democrats are now. The true ambition of both parties is to maintain the power, not the interest of the people. 

Healthcare Reform Fact Check...

President Obama, in his joint address to congress, made the following statements, concraditing his own previous statements about Healthcare Reform (or is that Healthcare Insurance Reform):


9/9/09 "We are the only democracy -- the only advanced democracy on Earth -- the only wealthy nation -- that allows such hardship for millions of its people.  There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage."


8/15/09 "You are absolutely right. I can't cover another 47 million people for free. I can't do that. We're going to have to find money from somewhere."


In a span of three weeks, the President lost nearly 15 million uninsured people, what happened to them?


9/9/09 "The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies — subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care. … So don't pay attention to those scary stories about how your benefits will be cut… That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare."


9/23/09 WASHINGTON – Congress' chief budget officer on Tuesday contradicted President Barack Obama's oft-stated claim that seniors wouldn't see their Medicare benefits cut under a health care overhaul.
 
The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, told senators that seniors in Medicare's managed care plans could see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance Committee.


9/9/09 "First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future.  (Applause.)  I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.  And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize."


7/19/09 CBO chief testimony to congress on Healthcare Reform costs, "Although the House plan to cover the uninsured, for example, would add more than $1 trillion to federal health spending over the next decade, according to the CBO, it would trim about $500 billion from existing programs -- increasing federal health spending overall. " 


Latest Rasmussen polls show 43% of americans favor the reform legislation in Congress now, 59% oppose it. Theses numbers have remained constant since July despite all the speeches and appearances by the President to get his points across. The fact is MOST Americans do nto trust the President or Congressional leaders on Healthcare reform!

Are there any Democrats that do not Flip-Flop on Values?

 
 

Obama to Restart Terror Tribunals for Guantanamo Bay Detainees - This after he decried President Bush's use of them...

 
 

Obama Moves to Bar Release of Detainee Abuse Photos - This after he previously said he would not oppose the release - Now he has the ACLU pissed at him!

 
 

Saying his administration will be "looking forward," Barack Obama suggested he won't pursue criminal charges against national security officials accused of committing crimes in President Bush's war on terror.

Then President Barack Obama left the door open to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations, saying the United States lost "our moral bearings" with use of the tactics.

 
 

Pelosi first accuses the Bush Administration of torture and abuse... and supports prosecution of advisers who wrote legal memos validating the abuse... Now it turns out she knew about it all the time, and never objected until now! Looks like the spider got caught in her own little trap! With any luck this scandal will bring her down, or at least force her to vacate the leadership role in the House!

 
 

Dick Durbin... the guy that compared our troops to the Nazis, Pol Pot, and Stalin in one sentence on the floor of the Senate. 

In remarks first expressed on the Senate floor late Tuesday and then re-read verbatim on Thursday evening, Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, read the report of an FBI agent who described treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

One knowledgeable official familiar with the memo cited by Durbin as well as other memos said the FBI agent made no such allegation. Now the possibility arises that he fabricated most of the "FBI memo" he quoted in his now-infamous Senate speech.

Barney Frank, who is openly gay, had a relationship with Herb Moses, an executive for the now-government controlled Fannie Mae. Frank was and remains a stalwart defender of Fannie Mae, which is now under FBI investigation along with its sister organization Freddie Mac, American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG) and Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH) – all recently participants in government bailouts. But Frank has derailed efforts to regulate the institution, as well as denying it posed any financial risk.

Frank served on the House Banking Committee for 10 years. The committee is the primary House body which along with the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) has jurisdiction over the government-sponsored enterprises.

 
 

"If I'm corrupt, it's because I take care of my district." -Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) Known for directing earmarks to companies and institutions run by family members, his questionable ethics are public knowledge to the extent that he doesn't even bother trying to cover them up.

Murtha is a crook, and if the House Democrats were really serious about fighting corruption, they would have expelled him from the caucus when the first definitive corruption stories broke. The fact that he is continuing to use his position to benefit family is disgraceful, but more disgraceful is that he is getting away with it.

He is a symbol of the greed and waste of the old boy's network Washington that Obama promised to take down... which brings us back to Obama campaign promises!

Budget deficits since 2000.

Given that President Obama has already quadrupled the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. Assuming he could "halve" it by the end of his first term, we would still have a deficit twice what it was when he took office four years earlier! Not only does President Obama's budget fail to reduce deficits "overnight", his budget actually moves them in the opposite direction. President Obama's budget would:

• Permanently expand the federal government by nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over 2007 pre-recession levels;
• Borrow 42 cents for each dollar spent in 2010;
  
• Leave permanent deficits that top $1 trillion in as late as 2020;
  

President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. 
President Obama would add another $1 trillion.


President Bush began a string of expensive financial bailouts. 
President Obama is accelerating that course.


President Bush created a Medicare drug entitlement that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade.
President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new government health care fund.


President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. 
President Obama would double it.


President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs.
President Obama has already increased this spending by 20 percent.


President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. 
President Obama would continue that trend.


President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008.
(Setting aside 2009, for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt),
President Obama's budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.

Companies come forward with impact of Obamacare...

Dallas-based AT&T said in a regulatory filing yesterday it would record $1 billion of costs. “As a result of this legislation, including the additional tax burden, AT&T will be evaluating prospective changes to the active and retiree health-care benefits offered by the company,” 

New York-based Verizon, the second-largest U.S. phone company, told employees in a note shortly after the law was signed that the tax will make a drug subsidy less valuable to employers like Verizon and so “may have significant implications for both retirees and employers.”

Moline, Illinois-based Deere, the world’s largest maker of farm machinery, said on March 25 that the new health-care law would increase its expenses by $150 million this fiscal year.

Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of bulldozers and excavators, expects to record a charge of about $100 million in the first quarter of 2010, reflecting new tax liabilities on retiree drug benefits.

Medtronic has just announced that the new Obamacare taxes on its products could force it to lay off 1,000 workers. What do those guys do? Well, they develop products such as the recently approved pacemaker that's safe for MRI scans or the InterStim bladder control device. So that's a thousand fewer people who'll be working on new stuff.

A dire warning from Bay State medical-device companies that a new sales tax in the federal health-care law could force their plants “This bill is a jobs killer,” said Ernie Whiton, chief financial officer of Chelmsford’s Zoll Medical Corp., which employs about 650 people in Massachusetts. Many of those employees work in Zoll’s local manufacturing facility making heart defibrillators.

“We could be forced to (move) manufacturing overseas if we can’t pass along these costs to our customers,” said Whiton.

The cost to companies of the landmark U.S. health-care overhaul continued to mount Wednesday as Boeing Co. said it will take a $150 million charge against first-quarter earnings because of tax changes in the legislation.

Also Wednesday, fellow aerospace company Lockheed Martin Corp. estimated that it will take a $96 million charge because of the health-care legislation and expects the charge to reduce per-share earnings by 25 cents in the first quarter.

The firms became the latest in a string of companies to reveal charges tied to retiree prescription costs since President Obama signed the health bill into law last week.

3M, $90 million; 

AK Steel, $31 million; 

Valero, $20 million. 

General Electric Co., the world’s biggest maker of jet engines, power-plant turbines and locomotives, said today it doesn’t anticipate taking a charge tied to the health-care law.

All in all, the Wall Street Journal estimated a $14 billion haircut for these corporations.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Dems-fear-honest-Obamacare-accounting-89466462.html#ixzz0jkiisES6

Quote from one of our Founding Fathers

This goes a long way to explain why the Obama administration has NO problem trampling out constitutional rights: "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other" - John Adams

Privilege of a Few

Have you seen the commemorative certificate being distributed by Organizing for America? It is being given out to supporters who helped pass this landmark legislation. The certificate reads: "We achieved the dream of generations -- high-quality, affordable health care is no longer the privilege of a few, but the right of all." 

How can they say the Privilege of a Few when 85% of all Americans are covered by private or employer provided insurance? Are the typical, in the street level, supporters of this Obamacare healthcare reform really that gullible, naive, and ignorant to believe healthcare is really a privilege of the rich and famous?

Income Redistribution

Have you seen the comments by several prominent Democrats about the real thrust behind Obamacare? VP Joe Biden, Senator Max Bascus, Howard Dean, and an economics columnist from the New York Times have all touted the fundamental provision of the recent healthcare legislation… Income Redistribution! 

Our illustrious Vice President (King of the Gaffes) stated on March 31^st: "It's a simple proposition to us: Everyone is entitled to adequate medical health care," Biden says. "If you call that a 'redistribution of income' -- well, so be it. I don't call it that. I call it just being fair -- giving the middle class taxpayers an even break that the wealthy have been getting." 

Senator Max Baucus, on March 25^th told reporters: Health reform is "an income shift," Democratic Sen. Max Baucus said on March 25. "It is a shift, a leveling, to help lower income, middle income Americans." Baucus explained "the maldistribution of income in America has gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind." Baucus promised, "will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America."

Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, 2004 Democratic Presidential candidate, and former head of the DNC said on CNN the health bill was needed to correct economic inequities: "The question is, in a democracy, what is the right balance between those at the top ... and those at the bottom?" Dean said during an appearance on CNBC. "When it gets out of whack, as it did in the 1920s, and it has now, you need to do some redistribution. This is a form of redistribution."

The New York Times, the liberal economics columnist David Leonhardt called Obamacare: "the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago."

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Obamacare-was-mainly-aimed-at-redistributing-wealth-89725302.html#ixzz0jxREuwRd 


Now this really should not be a surprise to anyone who was listening and doing their own research, but many of you were blindly led like sheep, believing all the altruistic talking points about healthcare reform. Does this not disturb any of you enough to take action and vote these people out before they destroy our country?

Un-Presidential comments made by President Obama!!!

March 2009 During the taping of the Jay Leno show, President Obama compares his bowling skills to Special Olympic competitors, ""It's like -- it was like Special Olympics or something," Obama says.:

July 2009 President Barack Obama "says police in Cambridge, Mass., acted "stupidly" this week when they arrested Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates,"

March 20101 You turn on the news, you’ll see the same folks are still shouting about there’s going to be an end of the world because this bill passed. (Laughter.) I’m not exaggerating. Leaders of the Republican Party, they called the passage of this bill “Armageddon.” (Laughter.) Armageddon. “End of freedom as we know it.”

So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there any -- (laughter) -- asteroids falling or -- (applause) -- some cracks opening up in the Earth. (Laughter.) It turned out it was a nice day. (Laughter.) Birds were chirping. Folks were strolling down the Mall. People still have their doctors.

How immature is the President?

In a speech during his around the country "Sell the Healthcare Legislation, President Obama mocked Republican references to life in America, as we know it, coming to an end... Armageddon, as it were. He joked how after he signed the bill, he looked out the window for a meteor shower to destroy us. While I firmly believe the passage of this legislation will change America drastically, and not for the good, I do not subscribe to comparing it to Armageddon, but at the same time I think the President of the United States mocking the opposition, especially in the face of overwhelming anger by the American public, over healthcare shows a high degree of immaturity on his part. It coincides with his public rebuke of the Supreme Court during his State of the Union speech. He is entitled to his opinion, but he degrades the Office of the Presidency with his remarks!

Liberals Democrats attack basic tenant of American Life... Free Speech!

As companies in America come forward and announce their projections of the impact of Obamacare on their companies, the economy, and thus Americans in general, they are being assailed and attacked by the left.

Rep. Henry Waxman is summoning the CEO's of these companies to appear before Congress with evidence of their statements. Seems sort of ironic, since the proponents of this healthcare bill never had to provide credible proof of their outrageous statements on deficit reduction, lowering premiums, and outrageous profits by health insurance companies. Now they want to censor those who speak out about the true cost of Obamacare.
AT&T, Deere CEOs Called by Waxman to Back Up Health-Bill Costs - BusinessWeek

Obama still does not hear America!

In Iowa this week to trumpet the benefits of the legislation, President Obama said, "We made a promise. That promise has been kept."


"From this day forward, all of the cynics, all the naysayers -- they're going to have to confront the reality of what this reform is and what it isn't," the president said. "They'll have to finally acknowledge this isn't a government takeover of our health care system."

I say the future will tell us the truth!

In the words of Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the influential Finance Committee.

As Democrats tout the moral underpinnings of the federal health care system overhaul -- ensuring health care coverage for nearly all Americans -- one senator appeared to go off message when he said the legislation would address the "mal-distribution of income in America."

After the Senate passed a "fix-it" bill Thursday to make changes to the new health care law, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the influential Finance Committee, said the overhaul was an "income shift" to help the poor.

"Too often, much of late, the last couple three years, the mal-distribution of income in American is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy and the middle income class is left behind," he said. "Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America."

Life after Obamacare?

The next step in the incremental process by President Obama and the Democrats is a European style Value Added TAX (VAT).


The President and Congressional leaders know that this monstosity of a Healthcare Reform law is not going to be paid for with $500 Billion in savings to Medicare... despite all their claims otherwise. That is what they told us to get the bill passed. EVERY European country with Universal Healthcare, has a VAT. It is a HUGE revenue source to the centralized Federal government, and it is coming BEFORE the benefits start being paid out in 2014!


Here are some of  the highlights of the European VAT:

• a general tax that applies, in principle, to all commercial activities involving the production and distribution of goods and the provision of services.
• a consumption tax because it is borne ultimately by the final consumer. It is not a charge on businesses.
• charged as a percentage of price, which means that the actual tax burden is visible at each stage in the production and distribution chain.
• collected fractionally, via a system of partial payments whereby taxable persons (i.e., VAT-registered businesses) deduct from the VAT they have collected the amount of tax they have paid to other taxable persons on purchases for their business activities. This mechanism ensures that the tax is neutral regardless of how many transactions are involved.
• paid to the revenue authorities by the seller of the goods, who is the "taxable person", but it is actually paid by the buyer to the seller as part of the price. It is thus an indirect tax.

Now do not think for a moment the VAT will replace the current Income Tax system. The VAT will be an additional tax on the consumer... we are talking about an additional 20% tax on retail purchases. Some items, could be excluded, like food. In addition, there is likely to be a threshold where persons earning below the line, get a tax credit so they are not unduly burdened with this new tax.


Down the road also, the Democrats will be looking to confiscate all private retirement plans... 401k, IRA, ROTH, 529, Pensions, etc. Why would they do this you ask? What better way to bail out the about to be bankrupt Social Security program? Not Possible, you say! No politician would have the cajones to impound your retirement money? 


Really, the same politicians who nationalized healthcare, took over 2 US Automakers,  hired a Pay Czar to regulate salaries! Really? The lawmakers in Washington proved with the healthcare reform bill, that while most Americans agree reform is needed, but do NOT like this flavor of it, they do not care what the constituency wants!

Unanswered Questions Abound on Health Insurance Exchanges By Joshua Rhett Miller - FOXNews.com

One of the key components of President Obama's health care overhaul mandates the creation of state-run health insurance exchanges, which will enable consumers to compare benefits and prices of competing plans. But some key questions remain to be answered before they are up and running in 2014.

The exchanges are expected to create a more affordable marketplace for individuals and small businesses to buy health insurance by offering plans with different tiers of comprehensive coverage -- bronze, silver, gold and platinum -- in a transparent, comparative system. Individuals earning less than about $43,000, or less than $88,000 for a family of four, will qualify for subsidies. Insurers, in turn, will no longer be allowed to charge higher rates based on health conditions, and they will be required to spend up to 85 percent of premiums on medical care rather than salaries.

The basic premise, according to Judy Solomon, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, is that "insurers are competing for members on the basis of price and quality rather than on the basis of getting the people who are healthiest and have the lowest risk."

To be successful, Solomon said, the exchanges should limit the number and variety of plans and require each insurer to cover a wide range of people with varying levels of health costs.

But with "varying levels of enthusiasm" among states, Solomon said it remains to be seen how quickly some will establish their exchanges.

"There's myriad questions that have to be answered," she told FoxNews.com. "There's a ton of work to be done over the next three and a half years to get these ready to go." Among those questions is exactly how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will oversee and regulate these entities, as well as how they will vary from state to state. Theoretically, each state could offer drastically different options.

For example, a large state like Texas could potentially offer many more coverage choices than, say, Vermont, where officials may ultimately decide to create regional exchanges with neighboring states to offer more choices to consumers.

"I think we'll see a lot of variation," Solomon said. "There's a lot of work to be done at the federal level in terms of regulatory powers and direction to the states." A spokesman for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius did not immediately return a request for comment.

Mike Tanner, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank, said he expects states to approach the exchanges in one of two ways -- either as a pooling purchasing mechanism or as a regulatory function.

"The danger is that is goes beyond that and becomes a hyper-regulatory body," Tanner told FoxNews.com, referring to the potential of an insurer being blocked from an exchange depending on the services or benefits it offers.  "It's hard to say exactly how this is going to work in practice."

Alan Weil, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy, called for a "better sense" of the kind of infrastructure, resources and money needed to create and maintain the exchanges. "We need a better sense of what it's going to take to do these," Weil said. "The good news is there's time to learn the answer to that." Weil called on HHS officials to define precise expectations of the exchanges, which Obama himself said he'll use to purchase insurance if he's in his second term in 2014. 

"We can assume that HHS will at some point define more precise regulations as to their expectations of these plans," Weil said.  "It's reasonable to expect that HHS will expand on those ideas and say, 'This is the kind of thing you need to be doing if you're running an exchange.'"

And while the exchanges are designed to "significantly" reduce administrative and overhead costs associated with health care, Weil said just because they're created doesn't mean consumers will come.

"Building a shopping mall does not bring people in automatically with their checkbooks ready to buy," he said. "It all sounds good on paper but you've got to do the work. At the end of the day, people are going to have to make their choice. That's a lot more complicated than setting up an exchange and saying people have to buy."

Another little gem about Obamcare comes to the surface...

Nancy Pelosi told us they would have to pass the bill before we would know what was in the bill... true to her word, we are now being told about certain provisions as they come to light, including one that exempts certain Congressional staff. Staffers who work for committees or leadership offices, rather than specific representatives, (Nancy Pelosi has two staffs, one for her role as Speaker, and one for her role as a representative form Ca.) are specifically exempt from the mandates imposed by health care reform to enroll in government provided health care reform plans.

This loophole for leadership staffers could impact thousands of Hill employees. There are 16 active leadership offices in the House and 26 in the Senate, according to the government transparency website LegiStorm. Some are small, with just a few employees. Others are much larger; Speaker Nancy Pelosi paid 54 employees a total of $1.1M in the last quarter of '09, while House Min. Leader John Boehner paid his 26 staffers a total of $721K in the same quarter. (Credit to Mark Whittington)

Obama Administration Tries to Fix Gap in Health Care Benefits for Children

WASHINGTON -- Hours after President Obama signed historic health care legislation, a potential problem emerged. Administration officials are now scrambling to fix a gap in highly touted benefits for children. 

Obama made better coverage for children a centerpiece of his health care remake, but it turns out the letter of the law provided a less-than-complete guarantee that kids with health problems would not be shut out of coverage. 

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday. 

A look at the numbers...

We know that, where the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is concerned, their hands are tied pretty snug when it comes to looking at the numbers. They are required to evaluate the information submitted to them, and not allowed to do independent research to confirm claims. Both Republicans and Democrats have used this to their advantage on their legislation and denounced it when it is in the opposition's favor. For example, in the Healthcare Reform debate, Democrats submitted criteria that included 10 years worth of revenue gathering, to pay for 6 years of benefits paid out. They also included double counting monetary benefits. Like taking $500 Billion out of Medicare fraud, waste , and abuse, using it to increase the solvency of the Medicare program. At the same time they claim to use this same $500 Billion  to reduce the deficit over the next ten years. Now, the reality of the government saving that much money on Fraud, Waste, and Abuse is a subject for another post. Suffice it to say this money is one half of the claimed deficit reduction.

The CBO determined that using the 6:10 formula, the program would cost $940 Billion over the first ten years. But wait, we are going to collect $940 Billion over ten years, we are going to pay it out over six years. Divide 6 into $940 Billion and that puts the cost of the program at $156.67 Billion a year, not $94 Billion as claimed.

So now that we now the true cost per year is $156.67 Billion, if you extrapolate that over 20 years, it is going to cost $3.13 Trillion. These numbers also do not include the cost of the "doc" fix for Medicare that congress has been postponing for years, and now we are to believe they are going to suddenly include it? This fix adds another $357 Billion (subsidy for doctors) to the deficit each year, and grows larger every year. Added to the $156.67 Billion, we now stand at over $500 Billion a year, not $94 Billion.

President Obama said in a recent (FOX, I think) interview... (paraphrase) Whoa, you cannot add the "doc" fix to the cost of my reform bill, it has been there for years and is a separate issue... to an extend he is correct! But, he also made claims early in the process that the doctor fix for Medicare was going to be part of the reform bill, and therefore he has to take ownership of the cost. Regardless of how long it has been getting kicked down the road, if it is going to be enacted, the money is coming out of the same pockets... your and mine!

Rumor has it the Democrats plan to raise that money, not on the rich (you know over $250,000 income), but with a VAT Value Added Tax, or National sales tax on everything you purchase.

more to come...

Reform Battle Goes Beyond Congressional Races

The reform battle starts with the Governor's office in your state. It extends to your local state governments. The Federal government is intruding on State's rights. One of the very goals of our founding fathers when they laid the groundwork for our form of government with the Constitution.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/politics_nation/2010/03/reform_battle_goes_beyond_cong.html

The Health Vote and the Constitution

Here is an article from the Wall Street Journal on the Constitutionality of the Helathcare Reform process:

The Health Vote and the Constitution—II The House can't approve the Senate bill in the same legislation by which it approves changes to the Senate bill.

Michael W. McConnell: The Health Vote and the Constitution—II - WSJ.com

L. A. Times article on Congress Healthcare benefits

One of the things President Obama kept saying in speeches on healthcare reform, is that after this passes, we would have the same healthcare Congress has... guess what, it is not true!

Congress' own healthcare benefits: membership has its privileges - Los Angeles Times http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/02/nation/na-congress-benefits2

Repeal Obamacare petition

Click on the following link, if you would like to see Obamacare repealed: 
http://apps.facebook.com/vote_no_obamacare/?feed

November 2010 Elections

My new favorite quote: "What I hope is that the Democrats take a beating at the ballot box and rethink their contempt for those mouth-breathing illiterates in the electorate. I hope Obama gets his wish to be a one-term president who passed health care... ...But because politicians shouldn't feel that the best route to electoral success is to lie to the voters, and then ignore them." - Megan McArdle