[Originally posted on Wednesday, Nov. 18, at RedState.com. Vote has now been schedule for 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 21]
A defining moment is coming in this year’s health care debate.
Yesterday, Democrat leaders announced they may soon bring Harry Reid’s new health care bill to the Senate floor in an effort to grant the President’s wish for a government takeover of our nation’s health care by Christmas. This is in spite of the fact that 99 senators have never seen Reid’s new bill that was written in secret. Reid even hinted he may rush to a vote before the bill’s been public for 72 hours, as even Democrats have demanded.
To begin debate on this new version of Obamacare, Reid will play a shell game. He needs 60 senators to “vote to proceed” to an unrelated piece of legislation, and once he clears that hurdle he will strike that bill’s text and insert his new health care bill. But don’t be fooled by senators that will say they oppose a government takeover but just wanted to allow debate on health care, they are not being honest.
The simple fact is this: Any senator that votes to proceed to the Reid-Obama bill is voting for a government takeover of health care...
Late Wednesday night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) released his own version of a health care bill that if passed will raise taxes, increase premiums, cut Medicare and lead to health care rationing. It's imperative that freedom-loving Americans everywhere raise their voices in opposition to this bill. It truly represents a government takeover of health care.
The Associated Press reports that a stunning $98 BILLION in taxpayer money was WASTED by the federal government during the 2009 fiscal year (which ended in October). This is an increase of $26 billion over last year. Government has grown so big federal agencies can't keep their books balanced. Roughly $36 billion of the total is due to questionable Medicare payments alone.
Among the reported waste, according to AP:
Agriculture: $4.3 billion in improper payments, or 5.9 percent of total department spending. Much of it was in the food stamp, federal crop insurance and school meals programs.
Defense: $849 million, or 0.5 percent.
Education: $599 million, or 2.1 percent.
Health and Human Services: $55.1 billion, or 9.4 percent. That included improper payment rates of 7.8 percent and 15.4 percent in the Medicare fee for service and Advantage programs, respectively...
Sen. DeMint goes "On the Record" with Greta Van Susteren to discuss the "pink slips" being sent to Capitol Hill and the ongoing health care battle in the Senate:
Recently, Sen. DeMint introduced a "Term Limits for All" bill that would serve as an amendment to the U.S. Constitution if it were to gain enough support in Congress and among the American people. The bill would finally put an end an era of permanent politicians on Capitol Hill by limiting House members to three terms, and senators to two. So far Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Kay Baily Hutchison (R-Texas) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) have signed on as cosponsors of the bill.
“Some say only long-serving, seasoned elites have the skills to lead the people, but that’s exactly what we have today and how do you think it’s working out for us?” said DeMint in a press release. “It wasn’t the ‘people’ who gave us a $12 trillion debt, an IRS tax code seven times longer than the Bible, over 1,700 departments of the federal government, trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, $100 trillion long-term shortfall in Social Security and Medicare, the Wall Street and auto bailouts, and the pending health care takeover."
[The "Term Limits for All' bill] is, uniquely, one of the most radical proposed changes in American politics in decades, and the reestablishment of one of the oldest conservative traditions of the American political culture, with roots deep in the colonial era.
They called it “rotation in office” in colonial days. It was so widely held that nobody batted an eye when Thomas Jefferson proposed term limiting members of the Continental Congress. The limits were needed, Jefferson said, “to prevent every danger which might arise to American freedom by continuing too long in office the members of the Continental Congress...
For the time being, it appears that President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have given up on keeping their promise to pass a cap-and-trade bill into law by the end of the year. All this in preparation for the much-talked-about U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark next month. However, this doesn't mean people should relax about the issue. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the shame of having much to present at the summit might energize Obama and his liberal Democrats in Congress to try and jam this down America's throat before it gets pushed off any further.
Over the weekend Mr. Obama bowed to reality and admitted that little of substance will come of the climate-change summit in Copenhagen next month. For the last year the President has been promising a binding international carbon-regulation treaty a la the Kyoto Protocol, but instead negotiators from 192 countries now hope to reach a preliminary agreement that they'll sign such a treaty when they meet in Mexico City in 2010. No doubt.
The environmental lobby is blaming Copenhagen's pre-emptive collapse on the Senate's failure to ram through a cap-and-trade scheme like the House did in June, arguing that "the world" won't make commitments until the U.S. does. But there will always be one excuse or another, given that developing countries like China and India will never be masochistic enough to subject their economies to the West's climate neuroses. Meanwhile, Europe has proved with Kyoto that the only emissions quotas it will accept are those that don't actually have to be met.
Late Saturday night the House voted to pass 220-215 to pass Speaker Nancy Pelosi's "ObamaCare" proposal. Her version increases taxes to European-high levels while cutting Medicaid and destroying the public insurance market. Last week, The Wall Street Journaldeclared it the "worst bill ever" and this week WSJ details the many problems the bill creates:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi defied policy logic and public opinion late Saturday night, ramming through the House a nearly 2,000-page health-care leviathan that counts as the biggest expansion of the federal government since the New Deal. As President Obama likes to say, this was a "teachable moment" about our current government.
The vote was 220 to 215, with 39 House Democrats joining all but one Republican in opposition. Mrs. Pelosi had to cajole and bribe her way to the magic 218, and the list of her promises must be stacked to the ceiling.
The lone Republican, Joseph Cao, represents a Democratic-leaning Louisiana district and extracted a promise that Mr. Obama would increase Medicaid payments to his state, and even then he only voted after Democrats had already hit 218. Let no one suggest this was the "bipartisan" health reform that Mr. Obama has long promised.
The bill is instead a breathtaking display of illiberal ambition, intended to make the middle class more dependent on government through the umbilical cord of "universal health care." It creates a vast new entitlement, financed by European levels of taxation on business and individuals. The 20% corner of Medicare open to private competition is slashed, while fiscally strapped states are saddled with new Medicaid burdens. The insurance industry will have to vet every policy with Washington, which will regulate who it must cover, what it can offer, and how much it can charge...
This week the House considers a health care plan put forth by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The bill increases spending by TRILLIONS, guts private Medicaid, expands Medicare, raises taxes to European-levels, and takes over private insurance.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.
In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.
Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal coverage." The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country's fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity...
Today, all 40 Republican senators wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) asking that in the interest of full transparency, as promised by President Obama, that he immediately release the new Senate Democrat health care bill to the American public.
Hon. Harry Reid
Majority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Mr. Leader,
On Monday, you announced that you had sent health care legislation to the Congressional Budget office (CBO). As you know, this legislation will have a profound impact on the lives of every American, including the next generation who will be forced to pay for it. Our national debt stands at nearly $12 trillion, with a deficit of $1.4 trillion. The health care bill will likely be more than 1,000 pages long and is the single most important legislation we will consider and debate this year in Congress.
With an issue this large and complex, we need full transparency at every stage in the legislative process. President Obama was elected, in part, on his promise to bring greater transparency to the workings of the federal government. The American people and every member of Congress should be allowed to read the bill that was sent to CBO. The bill should be made available for taxpayers to read and learn how the federal government is spending their money. We are writing to request that you immediately make all materials sent to CBO publicly available on the internet.
