Provided by Tea Party Patriots!
PASSION TO ACTION!!
The House voted last week to repeal the CLASS Act – a piece of Obamacare and another unsustainable entitlement – and now it’s the Senate’s turn. Starting Monday, February 6, we started asking all patriots to call the Senate and tell them to bring the CLASS Act Repeal to a vote, and to vote YES! (**See the Passion to Action Add-On at the end of the update!)
Federal Budget
Surplus? No way: Did you know that in January 2007, the CBO published its ten-year budget projections covering 2008 to 2017. This report projected an $800 billion surplus over ten years, including surpluses every year from 2012 to 2017. Four years later, in January 2011, the $800 billion projected surplus from 2008 to 2017 turned into an $8.8 trillion deficit over this same period.
No budget yet: Wednesday, February 8th will mark the 1015th day since the Senate has passed a budget. Just this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, “We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year — it’s done, we don’t need to do it.” The Democrats are trying to say that they passed a budget when the debt ceiling deal was passed – but this is false. Did the debt ceiling deal allow them to continue discretionary spending? Yes. Was it an actual budget resolution? No. Let’s break it down:
“But if what Reid and Schumer are saying is that they’ve followed the law and submitted a budget resolution, then they’re flat-out wrong. The Congressional Budget Act requires the president to submit a budget to Congress by Feb. 1 every year. The Senate Budget Committee is to report a budget resolution to the full Senate by April 1. The House and Senate are to reach agreement on a concurrent budget resolution by April 15. Senate Budget Democrats haven’t submitted a budget since 2009. Here’s why it matters: The Appropriations Committee determines levels of discretionary spending. Approps don’t touch mandatory spending. But mandatory spending constitutes about 60 percent of all federal spending — and mandatory programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security drive our deficits and debt. Without the imposition of budget discipline, these programs grow on autopilot.”
No budget? No paycheck: Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) has introduced a bill called the Budget or Bust Act (HR 3883). This bill would force the House and the Senate to pass a budget or risk not receiving their paychecks! It would also remove the President from the budgetary process and return the power of the purse to Congress completely.
President’s failure: Remember this as well about the President’s failure to offer a budget:
o In just one term, President Obama has missed the budget deadline more than any other President.
o In the 90 years covering FY1923 through FY2013, President Obama is the only President to miss the deadline two years in a row. He is the only President who has missed the deadline in three of the four years of a term. And, he holds the record for the longest delay (at 98 days).
o Since the statutory deadline was extended to the first Monday in February, with the exception of the first budget for a new President, this deadline has only been missed three times: Clinton FY1998; Obama FY2012; and Obama FY 2013.
o The President’s flagrant disrespect for budget deadlines extends beyond the late submissions of his annual budget request. The President is required to submit a Midsession Review no later than July 16 each year. The President is required to submit a Financial Report of the U.S. Government no later than December 15. The President is required to submit a plan to shore up Medicare’s finances within 15 days of a funding warning by the Medicare Trustees. Not once has President Obama adhered to any of these deadlines. Read the full analysis here.
Budget process reform: Two of the budget process reform bills were passed in the House this week. They are:
o HR 3582, The Pro-Growth Budgeting Act of 2012 – This bill would require that for major legislation that CBO prepare an analysis of the effect that the legislation would have on the U.S. economy. This macroeconomic impact analysis would be supplemental information in addition to the official congressional cost estimate of the legislation.
o HR 3578, The Baseline Reform Act of 2012 – Under current law the baseline assumes ever higher spending as discretionary accounts are annually increased by inflation and for a number of other factors. This legislation levels the playing field and removes this pro-spending bias.
o The third budget process reform bill did not come up for a vote this week. No word yet on when it will. It is:
HR3581, The Budget and Accounting Transparency Act of 2012 – This bill increases transparency in federal budgeting by reforming the way certain costs are calculated and requiring that certain costs incurred by the Federal government are included in the budget.
Deficit: The CBO released its annual Budget and Economic Outlook this week, projecting that the federal government’s budget deficit will exceed $1 trillion for the fourth year in a row. With the debt on pace to grow to unsustainable levels in the years ahead, the CBO estimates that economic growth will remain slow and that the unployment rate will exceed 9 percent next year. Key facts from their report:
o Real economic growth is projected to be to 2.2 percent in 2012, falling to just 1.0 percent in 2013;
o The unemployment rate is expected to reach 8.8 percent in 2012, 9.1 percent in 2013, and 8.7 percent in 2014;
o The FY2012 budget deficit is projected to equal $1.079 trillion, the fourth consecutive year with the budget deficit above $1 trillion;
o Total debt is projected to reach $15.99 trillion in 2012, with debt held by the public to eclipse the $11 trillion mark in 2012 (72.5% of GDP);
o Debt held by the public is projected to exceed $15.3 trillion by 2022.
Obamacare
Obamacare snuffs out small business job creation
Catholic bishops vow to fight against 1st Amendment violations
Repeal of the CLASS Act was essential
CBO report shows Obamacare costs rocket out of sight
Crony capitalism & Obamacare lead to job losses
Down with the state exchanges!
Doctors do not support Obamacare
Ramping up for rationing
Education
Union Radicals Harass Teacher Who Dared to Support Governor Walker. A teacher with the courage to speak out: Teachers like LaCroix do not turn against their unions for the fun of it. They do so after years of watching a very political, power-hungry organization suck the life out of public schools and kill opportunities for students. LaCroix is one of those teachers who just want to teach, without the constant distraction of organized labor.
Illegal Immigration
Documentary: TPP North Carolina State Coordinator Mark Hager assisted with the documentary titled, “Invasion: Freedom Under Fire!” about the struggles of American citizens who live along the southern border. If you would like to order a copy, please click here for more information.
Waivermania: Kansas’ Agriculture Secretary is asking the Department of Homeland Security for a waiver so that agricultural businesses in Kansas could hire illegal immigrants. The agriculture businesses and others in the business community are supporting this effort. So far the Obama administration have handed out healthcare waivers and educational waivers. Are illegal immigrant waivers next? When waivers become the law of the land, there is no law.
Alabama too: The Attorney General in Alabama is trying to get the legislature to gut their new, stricter laws dealing with illegal aliens because he doesn’t want to have to go to court to fight for it. The Chamber of Commerce and the agricultural businesses are also supportive of the attempt to gut the laws.
Agenda 21
Redevelopment Reform: Read: "Redevelopment: The Unknown Government" to understand why this is so detrimental to your property rights and fiscal responsibility.
Petition to Speaker Boehner: Tom DeWeese and the American Policy Center created a petition to alert Boehner to the recently passed resolution of the RNC, acknowledging Agenda 21 and vowing to oppose it. Sign here.
RNC Resolution: Many counties across America are jumping all over the RNC resolution. The state of TN and GA have also created resolutions. Start talking to your county commission and Republican party leaders and get your county/state on the list.
Rio 20 years later: It is obvious where this report is leading. More pressure on the US to send more money to the UN.
Must-see video: This is a 30-minute TV interview with Heather Gass from CA. It speaks to what is going on in CA regarding Sustainable Development and Regionalization. This is happening everywhere; it is just further ahead in CA. But these issues are the issues we will deal with in the future if we don't stop the plans now.
Smart meters: American Academy of Environmental Health is calling for a complete and immediate moratorium on the deployment of Smart Meters in California. Smart meters emit continuous radiation and could have serious effects on health. Objectors who are concerned about health and side effects may actually have to pay not to have a smart meter. This is absurd.
More university indoctrination: The "STARS" program is a propaganda program to persuade college kids into believe in the left’s ideas of “sustainability,” social justice, and social engineering.
House of Representatives – what are your thoughts on these bills?
Summaries provided by the RSC
CLASS Repeal: On Wednesday, the House approved H.R. 1173, the Fiscal Responsibility and Retirement Security Act by a vote of 267-159. The bill repeals title VIII of Obamacare, which established the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Program—a national, voluntary long-term care insurance program for purchasing community living assistance services and supports. Title VIII also authorized and appropriated funding through 2015 for the National Clearinghouse for Long-Term Care Information first established in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. H.R. 1173 replaces those appropriated funds for the clearinghouse for 2013 through 2015 ($9 million) with funding subject to future appropriation actions. CBO estimates that enacting the bill will have a budgetary effect of reducing direct spending by $9 million and subsequently increasing spending subject to appropriation by $9 million over the 2012-2021 period.
Welfare Integrity and Federal Pay: Also on Wednesday, the House considered three bills under Suspension of the Rules. The first, H.R. 3567, called the Welfare Integrity Now for Children and Families Act, prohibits TANF funds from being accessed at ATMs in strip clubs, liquor stores, and casinos. In California alone, almost $5 million of TANF benefits were withdrawn from casinos during the three and a half years from January 2007 to the middle of 2010. This provision is enforced by requiring states to report back to the Secretary that they are implementing the provisions of the legislation, or lose 5 percent of TANF funds. The House approved this bill 395-27. The second, H.R. 3835, extends the pay freeze for Members of Congress and federal employees through the end of 2013. This bill passed 309-117. The third, H.Res 496, cuts funding to Congressional committees by 6.4% for this year, except for Appropriations, Armed Services, and Ethics. This bill passed by voice vote.
Pro-Growth Budgeting: Thursday, the House passed H.R. 3582, the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act by a vote of 242-179. The bill requires the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to prepare a supplemental estimate of the macroeconomic impact of any major bills reported by a House or Senate committee—what conservatives usually refer to as dynamic scoring. Under H.R. 3582, a “major bill” would be defined as legislation with any one-year estimated budgetary effect of more than one-fourth of one percent (0.25%) of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in that year. Once it is established that legislation is “major,” CBO would be required to dynamically score the legislation relative to a current policy baseline, which assumes that current tax policies are continued into the indefinite future, much like CBO's alternative fiscal scenario baseline. According to a Budget Committee report, CBO already has the necessary analytical tools and expertise to conduct dynamic scoring. CBO has occasionally provided such reports for certain legislation or policies, though currently this analysis is done on an ad hoc basis, or by request only. Implementing H.R. 3582 would cost about $2 million over the 2012-2017 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts, according to CBO estimates.
Baseline Reform: Friday, the House approved H.R. 3578, the Baseline Reform Act by a vote of 235-177. The bill removes the automatic annual inflation adjustment from CBO’s discretionary baseline spending projections, thereby removing the automatic assumption that discretionary spending will increase each year. The bill requires CBO to project future discretionary spending “at the level provided for the budget year in full-year appropriations acts,” requiring CBO to use “zero baseline” budgeting for discretionary spending projections. According to a Budget Committee report, current law requires CBO and OMB to assume that discretionary federal spending will continue over the course of the ten-year budget window and increase at the rate of inflation. These requirements added approximately $1.4 trillion in outlays (over ten years) to the discretionary baseline in 2011. This assumption of additional spending in the baseline is a bias toward higher spending. Baseline budgeting also creates the ridiculous Washington scenario where a decrease in a spending increase—one that still allows spending to increase—is called a spending cut. This bill would remove that bias.
The week ahead – what are your thoughts on these bills?
Line-Item Veto: Next week the House is expected to consider H.R. 3521, the Expedited Line-Item Veto and Rescissions Act. According to the Budget Committee, the bill would give the President an important tool to target unjustified spending, while also protecting Congress’ constitutional authority to make spending decisions. This authority would allow the President to specify spending provisions within an appropriations bill, while requiring stand-alone consideration of these rescission proposals by Congress. Legislation implementing the proposed spending cancellations would receive expedited floor consideration and an automatic up-or-down vote in both chambers of Congress. If this bill is enacted, every dollar of savings would be devoted to deficit reduction.
Budget Transparency — Also next week the House is expected to consider H.R. 3581, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act. Among other things, the billwould formally bring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on-budget and require their debt issuance to be accounted for in the calculation of the federal debt; and would require fair value accounting for federal credit programs to appropriately evaluate the level of risk being absorbed by the taxpayers. The bill would also require fair value accounting for federal credit programs. The executive branch and Congress would be required to use “fair value” accounting in calculating the costs of federal credit programs that consider not only the borrowing costs of the Federal government, but also the costs of the market risk the Federal government is incurring by issuing a loan or loan guarantee. This reform would bring federal budgeting in line with private sector cost-estimating practices.
Civilian Property Realignment Act — Next week the House will likely consider H.R. 1734, the Civilian Property Realignment Act. H.R. 1734 is modeled after the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process and would require an examination of federal real property across government, used and un-used, and make decisions based on the best return to the taxpayer. This cost-saving initiative would achieve a reduction in the size of the federal real property inventory through selling or redeveloping underutilized properties, increasing the utilization rates of existing properties, and expediting the disposal of surplus properties. For example, in fiscal year 2009, the federal government spent $1.7 billion in annual operating costs for under-utilized buildings and $134 million, annually, for excess buildings. According to CBO, the bill would save $600 million over five years.
STOCK Act—(THURSDAY, Feb. 9) Also next week the House will likely consider a version of S. 2038, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012. As drafted in the Senate, the bill would amend the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 and the Ethics in Government Act to require the Senate and the House of Representatives to implement an electronic filing system for financial disclosure forms, as well as provide the public with on-line access to that information in a searchable database. The bill also would make clear that Members of Congress, Congressional employees, and federal employees are prohibited from using nonpublic information for personal financial benefit. In addition, the legislation would require more timely reporting of information about financial transactions by Members and staff. The Senate approved S. 2038 yesterday by a vote of 96-3.
**Remember though – this bill may not go far enough**
Senate
STOCK Act: The Senate passed the STOCK Act by a vote of 96-3 on Thursday. If so many of them voted for this bill now, why did it take them so long to figure out that they shouldn’t be trading stock based on information gleaned from their positions? Check out this link that goes over which amendments were accepted and which were rejected. Some of the rejected ones show us how much of a commitment to honesty these members really have (or don’t have).
Possible: Additional legislative items which are possible this work period include: FAA Conference report; Postal reform; Highway bill (current extension expires 3/31/12); and the Payroll Conference report (if completed before the recess).
So-called recess appointments: 40 Senate Republicans have said they will sign on to a court challenge to Obama’s so-called “recess” appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board.
PASSION TO ACTION ADD-ON!
**When you call the Senate offices, urging them to repeal the CLASS Act, take one extra moment to ask them to join in the court challenge against President Obama’s unconstitutional appointments. You’ve already got them on the line, this will only cost you thirty seconds more, but you’ll make a big impact.**
Showing posts with label legislation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label legislation. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Guilty until proven innocent
11/16/11
By Rick Manning — What would you say about a piece of legislation that allows a competitor to cut off the revenue stream to its competition based upon an unproven allegation?
What would you call a piece of legislation that destroys an alleged offender’s business without allowing it to first confront its accuser in a court of law?
What would you call a piece of legislation that allows major corporations with teams of lawyers to intimidate and drive their small competitors out of business due to a baseless claim or even an honest mistake?
Unfortunately, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) calls this legislation H.R. 3261.
Smith’s bill presumes that a website operator who is accused of using someone else’s intellectual property is guilty by immediately cutting off the advertising revenue stream for the site. The legislation coerces Internet advertising companies by holding them harmless in an intellectual property dispute if they cut off the accused’s ad revenues within five days of an allegation.
The allegation doesn’t have to be true, and it doesn’t have to have merit.
It just has to be made, and the ad revenue stream gets cut off out of a sense of preservation by the ad placement company
CONTINUE READING: http://netrightdaily.com/2011/11/guilty-until-proven-innocent/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NetrightDaily+%28NetRight+Daily%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail
By Rick Manning — What would you say about a piece of legislation that allows a competitor to cut off the revenue stream to its competition based upon an unproven allegation?
What would you call a piece of legislation that destroys an alleged offender’s business without allowing it to first confront its accuser in a court of law?
What would you call a piece of legislation that allows major corporations with teams of lawyers to intimidate and drive their small competitors out of business due to a baseless claim or even an honest mistake?
Unfortunately, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) calls this legislation H.R. 3261.
Smith’s bill presumes that a website operator who is accused of using someone else’s intellectual property is guilty by immediately cutting off the advertising revenue stream for the site. The legislation coerces Internet advertising companies by holding them harmless in an intellectual property dispute if they cut off the accused’s ad revenues within five days of an allegation.
The allegation doesn’t have to be true, and it doesn’t have to have merit.
It just has to be made, and the ad revenue stream gets cut off out of a sense of preservation by the ad placement company
CONTINUE READING: http://netrightdaily.com/2011/11/guilty-until-proven-innocent/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NetrightDaily+%28NetRight+Daily%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail
Saturday, March 5, 2011
NCFIRE ACTION ALERT--IMMIGRATION
Below is a list of the immigration bills that have been filed so far in the NC House and NC Senate. I have also included the link to the committee/subcommittee where the bills are now.
Please take a few minutes to contact the members of those committees and ask them to vote on the immigration bills listed.
If we want tougher immigration laws in NC, it's going to take a little work by the people (you). Do not let this opportunity to make a difference pass us by!
Thank you,
James Johnson
President-NCFIRE
North Carolinians For Immigration Reform and Enforcement
http://www.ncfire.info/
www.Facebook.com/NCFIRE
NCFIRE@ncfire.info
NCFIRE Hotline: 1-888-885-0879
(The bill numbers are also links. They take you to the NC General Assembly webpage for the bill itself in case you want to see who sponsored/cosponsored it)
HB11- No Postsecondary Education/Illegal Aliens- Committee on Education- member list: http://ncleg.net/gascripts/Committees/Committees.asp?sAction=ViewCommittee&sActionDetails=House%20Standing_17
HB28- DHHS to Provide Law Enforcement Information- Committee On Judiciary Subcommittee B- member list: http://ncleg.net/gascripts/Committees/Committees.asp?sAction=ViewCommittee&sActionDetails=House%20Standing_30
HB33- State Law to Provide for Acceptable ID's- Committee On Judiciary- member list: http://ncleg.net/gascripts/Committees/Committees.asp?sAction=ViewCommittee&sActionDetails=House%20Standing_29
HB36- Public Contracts/Illegal Immigrants- Committee on Government- member list: http://ncleg.net/gascripts/Committees/Committees.asp?sAction=ViewCommittee&sActionDetails=House%20Standing_32
HB198- Alien Attendance Lapses/Reporting Required- Committee On Education- member list: http://ncleg.net/gascripts/Committees/Committees.asp?sAction=ViewCommittee&sActionDetails=House%20Standing_17
SB179- Failure to Carry or Complete Alien Reg. Docs- Committee On Rules and Operations of the Senate- member list: http://ncleg.net/gascripts/Committees/Committees.asp?sAction=ViewCommittee&sActionDetails=Senate%20Standing_82
SB204- Public Entities & Contractors/Use E-Verify- Filed in the Senate not yet sent to committee
SB205- No Benefits For Illegal Aliens- Filed in the Senate not yet sent to committee
Please take a few minutes to contact the members of those committees and ask them to vote on the immigration bills listed.
If we want tougher immigration laws in NC, it's going to take a little work by the people (you). Do not let this opportunity to make a difference pass us by!
Thank you,
James Johnson
President-NCFIRE
North Carolinians For Immigration Reform and Enforcement
http://www.ncfire.info/
www.Facebook.com/NCFIRE
NCFIRE@ncfire.info
NCFIRE Hotline: 1-888-885-0879
(The bill numbers are also links. They take you to the NC General Assembly webpage for the bill itself in case you want to see who sponsored/cosponsored it)
HB11- No Postsecondary Education/Illegal Aliens- Committee on Education- member list: http://ncleg.net/gascripts/Committees/Committees.asp?sAction=ViewCommittee&sActionDetails=House%20Standing_17
HB28- DHHS to Provide Law Enforcement Information- Committee On Judiciary Subcommittee B- member list: http://ncleg.net/gascripts/Committees/Committees.asp?sAction=ViewCommittee&sActionDetails=House%20Standing_30
HB33- State Law to Provide for Acceptable ID's- Committee On Judiciary- member list: http://ncleg.net/gascripts/Committees/Committees.asp?sAction=ViewCommittee&sActionDetails=House%20Standing_29
HB36- Public Contracts/Illegal Immigrants- Committee on Government- member list: http://ncleg.net/gascripts/Committees/Committees.asp?sAction=ViewCommittee&sActionDetails=House%20Standing_32
HB198- Alien Attendance Lapses/Reporting Required- Committee On Education- member list: http://ncleg.net/gascripts/Committees/Committees.asp?sAction=ViewCommittee&sActionDetails=House%20Standing_17
SB179- Failure to Carry or Complete Alien Reg. Docs- Committee On Rules and Operations of the Senate- member list: http://ncleg.net/gascripts/Committees/Committees.asp?sAction=ViewCommittee&sActionDetails=Senate%20Standing_82
SB204- Public Entities & Contractors/Use E-Verify- Filed in the Senate not yet sent to committee
SB205- No Benefits For Illegal Aliens- Filed in the Senate not yet sent to committee
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
How do YOUR legislators score on the AFP Key Vote Alert?
Wed, January 19, 2011 10:09:59
From: Dallas Woodhouse, NC State Director, Americans for Prosperity
Americans for Prosperity Releases Federal Key Vote Scorecard for North Carolina Delegation
Raleigh—The North Carolina chapter of the free market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity (AFP-NC) today is proud to feature the North Carolina federal delegation’s score on its Key Vote Scorecard.
The group rated the top free market votes from the 111th Congress in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House. AFP also included the No Climate Tax pledge in its scorecard for the first time, signifying the importance of the group’s opposition to using the climate change issue as a guise to grow government.
“The record in North Carolina is mixed,” said AFP-NC State Director Dallas Woodhouse. “We are proud of Senator Burr and of Representatives Coble, Foxx, McHenry, and Myrick for their perfect scores. They have shown a real commitment to the free market principals and we applaud them for their efforts. The other returning members from North Carolina have some work to do, and the members that earned an F appear to be hostile to any free market legislation.”
The complete Key Vote Scorecard is available online: http://www.americansforprosperity.org/files/111th_Congress_Scorecard.pdf
The North Carolina delegation earned the following grades:
Senator Richard Burr – A+
Senator Kay Hagen – D-
Representative Howard Coble – A+
Representative Virginia Foxx – A+
Representative Patrick McHenry – A+
Representative Sue Myrick – A+
Representative Walter Jones – B
Representative Heath Shuler – C
Representative Mike McIntyre – C
Representative Larry Kissell – D
Representative G.K. Butterfield – F
Representative Bob Etheridge – F
Representative Brad Miller – F
Representative Melvin Watt – F
Representative David Price – F
Americans for Prosperity® (AFP) is a nationwide organization of citizen leaders committed to advancing every individual's right to economic freedom and opportunity. AFP believes reducing the size and scope of government is the best safeguard to ensuring individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans. AFP educates and engages citizens in support of restraining state and federal government growth, and returning government to its constitutional limits. AFP has more than 1,600,000 members, including members in all 50 states, and 30 state chapters and affiliates. More than 80,000 Americans in all 50 states have made a financial investment in AFP or AFP Foundation. For more information, visit www.americansforprosperity.org
From: Dallas Woodhouse, NC State Director, Americans for Prosperity
Americans for Prosperity Releases Federal Key Vote Scorecard for North Carolina Delegation
Raleigh—The North Carolina chapter of the free market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity (AFP-NC) today is proud to feature the North Carolina federal delegation’s score on its Key Vote Scorecard.
The group rated the top free market votes from the 111th Congress in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House. AFP also included the No Climate Tax pledge in its scorecard for the first time, signifying the importance of the group’s opposition to using the climate change issue as a guise to grow government.
“The record in North Carolina is mixed,” said AFP-NC State Director Dallas Woodhouse. “We are proud of Senator Burr and of Representatives Coble, Foxx, McHenry, and Myrick for their perfect scores. They have shown a real commitment to the free market principals and we applaud them for their efforts. The other returning members from North Carolina have some work to do, and the members that earned an F appear to be hostile to any free market legislation.”
The complete Key Vote Scorecard is available online: http://www.americansforprosperity.org/files/111th_Congress_Scorecard.pdf
The North Carolina delegation earned the following grades:
Senator Richard Burr – A+
Senator Kay Hagen – D-
Representative Howard Coble – A+
Representative Virginia Foxx – A+
Representative Patrick McHenry – A+
Representative Sue Myrick – A+
Representative Walter Jones – B
Representative Heath Shuler – C
Representative Mike McIntyre – C
Representative Larry Kissell – D
Representative G.K. Butterfield – F
Representative Bob Etheridge – F
Representative Brad Miller – F
Representative Melvin Watt – F
Representative David Price – F
Americans for Prosperity® (AFP) is a nationwide organization of citizen leaders committed to advancing every individual's right to economic freedom and opportunity. AFP believes reducing the size and scope of government is the best safeguard to ensuring individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans. AFP educates and engages citizens in support of restraining state and federal government growth, and returning government to its constitutional limits. AFP has more than 1,600,000 members, including members in all 50 states, and 30 state chapters and affiliates. More than 80,000 Americans in all 50 states have made a financial investment in AFP or AFP Foundation. For more information, visit www.americansforprosperity.org
Monday, December 13, 2010
Liberals Leave The Reservation
Any piece of legislation must be both constitutional and improve the condition of the American people. When President Obama and Congressional Republicans first announced their tax deal early last week, our reaction was to hold our noses against its bad elements; on balance, we thought the extension of the current tax rates was laudable. Now, however, the full text of the bill has been released and we see all the bad things that were in the original deal. Meanwhile, liberals in Congress are walking away even from that deal, and are holding the country hostage to their hatred of those they call “the rich.” The tax cut deal, we now know, has been so freighted with liberal special interest tax giveaways that true conservatives cannot support it in good faith.
The blame for this state of affairs will be on the left. Tax rates will go up on all Americans on Jan. 1, hitting a country beset with 10 percent unemployment and a stagnant economy. It’s baffling that, two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left has held fast to its belief that penalizing success will somehow incentivize hard work and produce wealth.
If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid engineer this massive a tax increase in a faltering economy, they will join two Republicans -- Reed Smoot of Utah and Willis Hawley of Oregon -- in the pantheon of economic fools. Before they do so, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid should consider that history has still not forgiven their predecessors for the Smoot-Hawley tariff that led to the Great Depression.
Of course, the pain of an Obama-Pelosi-Reid tax hikes would be somewhat lessened by the fact that they would hopefully be temporary. As Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said on Fox News Sunday yesterday, the first order of business next month for the incoming Tea Party House of Representatives will be to undo the tax hikes the Lame Duck Congress may be about to pass this week. (We would have preferred to have seen that first order of business to be the repeal of Obamacare, but given the circumstances, throttling that unbearable act must move to the second spot.)
We recognize that having taxes go up, and then down, will increase volatility, which never helps businesses, investors and families. It was that concern that led us to be initially open to the extension of the current tax rates, even though it was only for two years and was accompanied by other onerous measures such as a 35 percent death tax. All along we have shared the concerns of such friends as Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who said in a Thursday speech at Heritage that the line "this is the best deal we can get" has been used to justify too many bad deals in the past.
Now that we see what is in the full text of the bill, we have serious reservations even about the original deal. So just to be clear, what The Heritage Foundation wants is a plain extension of the current tax arrangements. Congress should have a straight up or down vote on full extension, including the AMT. It can have a straight up and down vote on the unpaid for unemployment benefits, too, if progressives want that.
If this cannot be had without other hurtful additions, it is time to look forward. The new 112th Congress will have to pass new tax legislation that holds the line against all the other negative provisions of the current deal, such as yet another unpaid-for extension of unemployment benefits (which perversely only help perpetuates long-term unemployment).
Ditto for all the goodies progressives in the Congress are now busily adding, such as subsidies for windmills in California (already in the tax extenders - or you need to say even larger ethanol subsidies). All this came on the back of the extension of stimulus tax credits, which expanded the refundability of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, and created the new refundable American Opportunity Tax Credit.
And, to be sure, including goodies for the whole liberal power base that were already there as part of the annual tax extenders package: the Indian employment tax credit; the railroad track maintenance credit; the seven-year recovery period for motorsports entertainment complexes; the expensing of environmental remediation costs; the deduction allowable with respect to income attributable to domestic production activities in Puerto Rico and the tax incentives for investment in the District of Columbia.
Is there a progressive protected group that hasn’t been laden with pork in this deal?
The new Congress that assembles in January should give enactment of the permanent tax relief top priority. The recently elected conservatives, who will arrive in January with a commitment to cut spending, deficits, debt and taxes, should provide the foundation for building momentum in Congress to make the tax relief permanent. But, of course, in the absence of tax relief, the Pelosi-Reid tax hikes will be in effect, doing their damage to the economy, while the conservatives work to get legislation through Congress to make the tax cuts permanent.
Do they hate successful Americans more than they profess to love the jobless and others who need our help?
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/13/morning-bell-liberals-leave-the-reservation/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
The blame for this state of affairs will be on the left. Tax rates will go up on all Americans on Jan. 1, hitting a country beset with 10 percent unemployment and a stagnant economy. It’s baffling that, two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left has held fast to its belief that penalizing success will somehow incentivize hard work and produce wealth.
If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid engineer this massive a tax increase in a faltering economy, they will join two Republicans -- Reed Smoot of Utah and Willis Hawley of Oregon -- in the pantheon of economic fools. Before they do so, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid should consider that history has still not forgiven their predecessors for the Smoot-Hawley tariff that led to the Great Depression.
Of course, the pain of an Obama-Pelosi-Reid tax hikes would be somewhat lessened by the fact that they would hopefully be temporary. As Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said on Fox News Sunday yesterday, the first order of business next month for the incoming Tea Party House of Representatives will be to undo the tax hikes the Lame Duck Congress may be about to pass this week. (We would have preferred to have seen that first order of business to be the repeal of Obamacare, but given the circumstances, throttling that unbearable act must move to the second spot.)
We recognize that having taxes go up, and then down, will increase volatility, which never helps businesses, investors and families. It was that concern that led us to be initially open to the extension of the current tax rates, even though it was only for two years and was accompanied by other onerous measures such as a 35 percent death tax. All along we have shared the concerns of such friends as Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who said in a Thursday speech at Heritage that the line "this is the best deal we can get" has been used to justify too many bad deals in the past.
Now that we see what is in the full text of the bill, we have serious reservations even about the original deal. So just to be clear, what The Heritage Foundation wants is a plain extension of the current tax arrangements. Congress should have a straight up or down vote on full extension, including the AMT. It can have a straight up and down vote on the unpaid for unemployment benefits, too, if progressives want that.
If this cannot be had without other hurtful additions, it is time to look forward. The new 112th Congress will have to pass new tax legislation that holds the line against all the other negative provisions of the current deal, such as yet another unpaid-for extension of unemployment benefits (which perversely only help perpetuates long-term unemployment).
Ditto for all the goodies progressives in the Congress are now busily adding, such as subsidies for windmills in California (already in the tax extenders - or you need to say even larger ethanol subsidies). All this came on the back of the extension of stimulus tax credits, which expanded the refundability of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, and created the new refundable American Opportunity Tax Credit.
And, to be sure, including goodies for the whole liberal power base that were already there as part of the annual tax extenders package: the Indian employment tax credit; the railroad track maintenance credit; the seven-year recovery period for motorsports entertainment complexes; the expensing of environmental remediation costs; the deduction allowable with respect to income attributable to domestic production activities in Puerto Rico and the tax incentives for investment in the District of Columbia.
Is there a progressive protected group that hasn’t been laden with pork in this deal?
The new Congress that assembles in January should give enactment of the permanent tax relief top priority. The recently elected conservatives, who will arrive in January with a commitment to cut spending, deficits, debt and taxes, should provide the foundation for building momentum in Congress to make the tax relief permanent. But, of course, in the absence of tax relief, the Pelosi-Reid tax hikes will be in effect, doing their damage to the economy, while the conservatives work to get legislation through Congress to make the tax cuts permanent.
Do they hate successful Americans more than they profess to love the jobless and others who need our help?
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/13/morning-bell-liberals-leave-the-reservation/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Thursday, September 23, 2010
ResitNet.com
Six Health Care Changes That Go Into Effect Soon....(Sept. 22) -- The wait is over
David Knowles Writer
AOL News Surge Desk
(Sept. 22) -- The wait is over.
A new era of health care coverage in America is set to begin this week, when some provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act officially begin to be enforced by law. Many of the changes will be phased in over the next several years, but the debate over whether the legislation is good for the country continues to rage on, especially as the November midterm elections draw near.
President Barack Obama spent much of Wednesday touting the legislation's new "Patient's Bill of Rights," and, via the White House website, attempted to combat what the administration calls lingering "myths" about the new law.
"The Affordable Care Act is already making a difference in the lives of millions of Americans," Obama wrote in a letter posted at Whitehouse.gov. "And starting tomorrow, the Patient's Bill of Rights goes into effect, ending some of the worst abuses of the insurance industry and putting you, not your insurance company, in control of your healthcare."
It will make a difference allright, more expensive premiums, fewer doctors, less choice in health care, Doctors limited in how they care for their patients, higher costs, and long, long waits to be treated or seen by healthcare professionals! ~Lynn
Citing fears over rising premiums, an ever-expanding debt and the expansion of the role of government, some of the president's Republican critics have been calling for a repeal of the legislation.
"You need to understand that in my opinion Obamacare will ruin the best health care system in the world and it will bankrupt our country," House Minority Leader John Boehner said recently on "Meet the Press." (I agree with John)
Setting aside the question of the long-term impact of the new law, Surge Desk outlines the list of the initial changes that will go into effect on Thursday.
1. Insurance companies will no longer be able to deny children coverage for pre-existing conditions. (Note: many companies dropped customers with pre-existing conditions in preparation for this date.)
2. Children of parents with insurance will be allowed to remain covered under those policies until the age of 26.
3. Insurance companies will be forbidden from terminating coverage for any other reason than customer fraud.
4. Insurance companies will no longer be able to cap the amount of benefits and treatment a person can receive in a lifetime.
5. Insurers can no longer charge customers for preventive services like mammograms and colonoscopies.
6. High-risk pools are mandated to cover those who have been denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
GO TO THE LINK AND MAKE YOUR COMMENTS! SUCH AS:
"Looking at #5, re: mammograms being free. Did anyone read today's Sarasota Herald's article on a government Health Services' sponsored study which cites that mammograms are no longer an effective tool for determining breast cancer in females younger than 50? So, now it's free, but the "panels" probably won't permit it for younger women. Statistics can skew anything a person wants them to. This government is co controlling. TIME FOR CHANGE!"
http://www.resistnet.com/forum/topic/show?id=2600775%3ATopic%3A2623302&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_topic
David Knowles Writer
AOL News Surge Desk
(Sept. 22) -- The wait is over.
A new era of health care coverage in America is set to begin this week, when some provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act officially begin to be enforced by law. Many of the changes will be phased in over the next several years, but the debate over whether the legislation is good for the country continues to rage on, especially as the November midterm elections draw near.
President Barack Obama spent much of Wednesday touting the legislation's new "Patient's Bill of Rights," and, via the White House website, attempted to combat what the administration calls lingering "myths" about the new law.
"The Affordable Care Act is already making a difference in the lives of millions of Americans," Obama wrote in a letter posted at Whitehouse.gov. "And starting tomorrow, the Patient's Bill of Rights goes into effect, ending some of the worst abuses of the insurance industry and putting you, not your insurance company, in control of your healthcare."
It will make a difference allright, more expensive premiums, fewer doctors, less choice in health care, Doctors limited in how they care for their patients, higher costs, and long, long waits to be treated or seen by healthcare professionals! ~Lynn
Citing fears over rising premiums, an ever-expanding debt and the expansion of the role of government, some of the president's Republican critics have been calling for a repeal of the legislation.
"You need to understand that in my opinion Obamacare will ruin the best health care system in the world and it will bankrupt our country," House Minority Leader John Boehner said recently on "Meet the Press." (I agree with John)
Setting aside the question of the long-term impact of the new law, Surge Desk outlines the list of the initial changes that will go into effect on Thursday.
1. Insurance companies will no longer be able to deny children coverage for pre-existing conditions. (Note: many companies dropped customers with pre-existing conditions in preparation for this date.)
2. Children of parents with insurance will be allowed to remain covered under those policies until the age of 26.
3. Insurance companies will be forbidden from terminating coverage for any other reason than customer fraud.
4. Insurance companies will no longer be able to cap the amount of benefits and treatment a person can receive in a lifetime.
5. Insurers can no longer charge customers for preventive services like mammograms and colonoscopies.
6. High-risk pools are mandated to cover those who have been denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
GO TO THE LINK AND MAKE YOUR COMMENTS! SUCH AS:
"Looking at #5, re: mammograms being free. Did anyone read today's Sarasota Herald's article on a government Health Services' sponsored study which cites that mammograms are no longer an effective tool for determining breast cancer in females younger than 50? So, now it's free, but the "panels" probably won't permit it for younger women. Statistics can skew anything a person wants them to. This government is co controlling. TIME FOR CHANGE!"
http://www.resistnet.com/forum/topic/show?id=2600775%3ATopic%3A2623302&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_topic
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
AMERICAN THINKER
September 14, 2010
Reaping the Whirlwind
By Lance Fairchok
"They sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind." - Hosea 8:7
"Sooner or later in life, we all sit down to a banquet of consequences." - Robert Louis Stevenson
There is a sense of foreboding rising in this country. It is not the usual pessimism fueled by a sensational press, nor is it surfacing because of the political crisis machine that generates one drama after another by which to manipulate the electorate. It is a feeling of imminent danger fueled by a realization based on evidence so obvious and so startling that the citizenry cannot help but take notice. Our prosperity, our security, and even our safety are fast fading away. Our own president and his party are facilitating our demise.
The signs are everywhere.
Every new piece of backroom congressional legislation chips away at a few more freedoms, undermining our republic by preventing open and honest debate. Behind the scenes, Obama's henchmen wield sledgehammers against free commerce, gun ownership, freedom of speech, and energy. The billions in taxpayer money going to leftist and socialist organizations cement their toxic influence into the very fabric of our government. The corruption and fraud of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are obvious examples, but there are thousands more. Unions, "community organizations," far-left causes, anti-American ideologues, socialist fifth columnists, environmental radicals, open borders fanatics, Mexican irredentist revolutionaries, Islamists, terror-supporters, and professed communists all prosper from Obama's destructive largesse.
The Mexican war with its drug cartels escalates. Brutal massacres and car bombings are killing innocents just miles from our southern states. Surpassing war-torn Iraq, 28,000 have died since 2006. The butchers responsible pass with impunity into our territory. In their own country, they murder police, the press, and innocent citizens. They torture, they behead, they kill the families of their enemies.
Our government stubbornly refuses to stop them and pretends to be working diligently on the problem. It is a lie. They persecute police officers who enforce the law and sue states that attempt to stem the crippling illegal immigrant tide. The jackals that tortured and killed 72 unarmed migrants are already here; the violence we see south of the border will soon follow. Americans will die. Obama does nothing.
Illegal immigrants cost border states billions -- in law enforcement, in social services, in education, and in emergency medical services. Arizona has asked for National Guard troops, the situation has become so untenable. There is little hope the problem will abate. Mexico is so corrupt; any effective countermeasures are undermined before they begin. NARCO dollars buy police, prosecutors, judges, and the army. The poison spreads.
Drug cartels control swaths of U.S. territory. Instead of action, Arizona got signs.
... the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has placed 15 signs along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 that links San Diego with Phoenix and Tucson warning travelers of drug cartels and human trafficking operations.
"DANGER - PUBLIC WARNING, TRAVEL NOT RECOMMENDED," read the signs placed along Interstate 8. "Visitors May Encounter Armed Criminals and Smuggling Vehicles Traveling at High Rates of Speed. Stay Away From Trash, Clothing, Backpacks, and Abandoned Vehicles."
A couple of weeks ago, thirty National Guard troops showed up for border duty; Arizona asked for three thousand. In a move designed to fail, administration talking heads can now claim there is Guard support for border enforcement. It is another trick, another betrayal of a beleaguered state, and normal operations for our anti-American president and his cabal of "progressive" academics.
Obama's exploding national deficits are sucking the lifeblood from our economy. In the name of "social justice," they deconstruct what has taken generations of sacrifice and toil to build. We spend what we do not have like a drunk on a binge. When that horrendous bill is due, our children and grandchildren will pay in a far less significant America than we know today.
Every jobs report is a "surprise" of increasing unemployment, the real level of which is around 22 percent, not the 9.5-percent fiction the Obama administration touts. Great-Depression levels of unemployment do not support the "recovery summer" propaganda. Teen unemployment is at levels above 25 percent as adults take jobs traditionally filled by teens. Americans are not fooled by the government spin; they see the evidence every day.
They see empty stores, shuttered gas stations, small businesses closing shop. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "... 4.3 million businesses with 19 or fewer employees closed during the fourth quarter of 2007 through the fourth quarter of 2008." The numbers are now much higher, though exact numbers have become strangely difficult to find. If bank closures are any indicator, Mom & Pop businesses are in deep trouble. Loans to small businesses have dropped by 40 billion dollars. The lifeblood of American commerce, small business employs half of all workers in the country. They are the source of the innovative energy that once made our economy so exceptional. Once Obama's and the Democrats' new taxes and hidden "fees" kick in after 2011, the problem will explode. Ideology never runs an economy well, but it does blind its true believers to the consequences of their actions.
But it gets much, much worse.
Iran now has a viable nuclear program. With the support of Russia and North Korea, they claim their reactors are for purely peaceful purposes. The Obama administration has tried to convince Israel it will be at least a year until a nuclear weapon can be produced. Obama's Nuclear Proliferation Czar, Gary Samore, tells us, "We think that they have roughly a year dash time" and "[a] year is a very long period of time," kicking the problem down the road -- a road that grows shorter each passing day.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad frequently talks of wiping Israel off the map. He is a fanatic who takes the Quran's injunction to kill Jews very seriously. If we are to believe his own words, he plans to do just that, through Hezbollah, through Syria, and eventually with a nuclear weapon. Whether Israel or the United States will be the first target is a coin toss. We will be attacked. It is just a matter of time.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/reaping_the_whirlwind.html
Reaping the Whirlwind
By Lance Fairchok
"They sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind." - Hosea 8:7
"Sooner or later in life, we all sit down to a banquet of consequences." - Robert Louis Stevenson
There is a sense of foreboding rising in this country. It is not the usual pessimism fueled by a sensational press, nor is it surfacing because of the political crisis machine that generates one drama after another by which to manipulate the electorate. It is a feeling of imminent danger fueled by a realization based on evidence so obvious and so startling that the citizenry cannot help but take notice. Our prosperity, our security, and even our safety are fast fading away. Our own president and his party are facilitating our demise.
The signs are everywhere.
Every new piece of backroom congressional legislation chips away at a few more freedoms, undermining our republic by preventing open and honest debate. Behind the scenes, Obama's henchmen wield sledgehammers against free commerce, gun ownership, freedom of speech, and energy. The billions in taxpayer money going to leftist and socialist organizations cement their toxic influence into the very fabric of our government. The corruption and fraud of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are obvious examples, but there are thousands more. Unions, "community organizations," far-left causes, anti-American ideologues, socialist fifth columnists, environmental radicals, open borders fanatics, Mexican irredentist revolutionaries, Islamists, terror-supporters, and professed communists all prosper from Obama's destructive largesse.
The Mexican war with its drug cartels escalates. Brutal massacres and car bombings are killing innocents just miles from our southern states. Surpassing war-torn Iraq, 28,000 have died since 2006. The butchers responsible pass with impunity into our territory. In their own country, they murder police, the press, and innocent citizens. They torture, they behead, they kill the families of their enemies.
Our government stubbornly refuses to stop them and pretends to be working diligently on the problem. It is a lie. They persecute police officers who enforce the law and sue states that attempt to stem the crippling illegal immigrant tide. The jackals that tortured and killed 72 unarmed migrants are already here; the violence we see south of the border will soon follow. Americans will die. Obama does nothing.
Illegal immigrants cost border states billions -- in law enforcement, in social services, in education, and in emergency medical services. Arizona has asked for National Guard troops, the situation has become so untenable. There is little hope the problem will abate. Mexico is so corrupt; any effective countermeasures are undermined before they begin. NARCO dollars buy police, prosecutors, judges, and the army. The poison spreads.
Drug cartels control swaths of U.S. territory. Instead of action, Arizona got signs.
... the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has placed 15 signs along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 that links San Diego with Phoenix and Tucson warning travelers of drug cartels and human trafficking operations.
"DANGER - PUBLIC WARNING, TRAVEL NOT RECOMMENDED," read the signs placed along Interstate 8. "Visitors May Encounter Armed Criminals and Smuggling Vehicles Traveling at High Rates of Speed. Stay Away From Trash, Clothing, Backpacks, and Abandoned Vehicles."
A couple of weeks ago, thirty National Guard troops showed up for border duty; Arizona asked for three thousand. In a move designed to fail, administration talking heads can now claim there is Guard support for border enforcement. It is another trick, another betrayal of a beleaguered state, and normal operations for our anti-American president and his cabal of "progressive" academics.
Obama's exploding national deficits are sucking the lifeblood from our economy. In the name of "social justice," they deconstruct what has taken generations of sacrifice and toil to build. We spend what we do not have like a drunk on a binge. When that horrendous bill is due, our children and grandchildren will pay in a far less significant America than we know today.
Every jobs report is a "surprise" of increasing unemployment, the real level of which is around 22 percent, not the 9.5-percent fiction the Obama administration touts. Great-Depression levels of unemployment do not support the "recovery summer" propaganda. Teen unemployment is at levels above 25 percent as adults take jobs traditionally filled by teens. Americans are not fooled by the government spin; they see the evidence every day.
They see empty stores, shuttered gas stations, small businesses closing shop. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "... 4.3 million businesses with 19 or fewer employees closed during the fourth quarter of 2007 through the fourth quarter of 2008." The numbers are now much higher, though exact numbers have become strangely difficult to find. If bank closures are any indicator, Mom & Pop businesses are in deep trouble. Loans to small businesses have dropped by 40 billion dollars. The lifeblood of American commerce, small business employs half of all workers in the country. They are the source of the innovative energy that once made our economy so exceptional. Once Obama's and the Democrats' new taxes and hidden "fees" kick in after 2011, the problem will explode. Ideology never runs an economy well, but it does blind its true believers to the consequences of their actions.
But it gets much, much worse.
Iran now has a viable nuclear program. With the support of Russia and North Korea, they claim their reactors are for purely peaceful purposes. The Obama administration has tried to convince Israel it will be at least a year until a nuclear weapon can be produced. Obama's Nuclear Proliferation Czar, Gary Samore, tells us, "We think that they have roughly a year dash time" and "[a] year is a very long period of time," kicking the problem down the road -- a road that grows shorter each passing day.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad frequently talks of wiping Israel off the map. He is a fanatic who takes the Quran's injunction to kill Jews very seriously. If we are to believe his own words, he plans to do just that, through Hezbollah, through Syria, and eventually with a nuclear weapon. Whether Israel or the United States will be the first target is a coin toss. We will be attacked. It is just a matter of time.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/reaping_the_whirlwind.html
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Obamacare
The Obamacare Disaster Escalating
By Peter Ferrara on 8.18.10 @ 6:10AM
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/08/18/the-obamacare-disaster
Forthcoming for public release shortly will be my extensive study of the Obamacare legislation, “The Obamacare Disaster: An Appraisal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (Heartland Policy StudyNo. 128, The Heartland Institute, August 2010), available shortly at the Heartland Institute website. Following Nancy Pelosi’s dictum that we will have to pass it first to know what’s in it, I personally slogged through the thousands of pages of this legislative atrocity for the study, as well as thousands of pages of supplemental materials such as government, think tank and media reports.
The bottom line is that you will lose your health care under this legislation, if not your job, your country as they bankrupt America, and maybe ultimately your life or the life of a loved one. All that to make dreamy, emotionalized, liberals happy, even though many of them are not happy because the socialism in the bill is not overt enough. Moreover, the promises made to the American people to pass the bill are shown in the study to be thoroughly false. This pattern of calculated deception, however, did not fool the American people, only members of Congress, many of whom will now pay with their jobs as a result.
But the study is not all gloom and doom. It thoroughly explains the Patient Power reforms that should replace it when it is repealed, drawing on the broad scholarship of the Patient Power movement and its intellectual leaders, such as John Goodman, Grace Marie Turner, Sally Pipes, Merrill Mathews, and Greg Scandlen, among others. It consequently serves as a guidebook for the grassroots Tea Party activists who will lead the long-term crusade for Health Care Liberation.
The Government Takeover of Health Care
Contrary to President Obama’s rhetoric, the Obamacare legislation involves precisely the thorough government takeover of health care. It creates 159 new bureaucracies, agencies, boards, commissions, and programs to rule over health care in America. Government authorities are empowered to tell doctors and hospitals what is quality health care and what is not, what are best practices in medicine, how their medical practices should be structured, and what they will be paid and when. Government authorities will mandate exactly what health insurance with what benefits workers and employers must buy, and the Act imposes tax penalties on them if they do not comply. Government authorities will dictate to insurance companies exactly what health insurance they must sell, to whom they must sell it, and what they can charge. Obamacare even redistributes premium income among insurers under a new “risk adjustment” mechanism.
But this is just the beginning. As in everything President Obama is doing, it lays the groundwork for much more thorough government control and compulsion over time, primarily through bureaucratic landmines involving grants of regulatory authority that will explode when the bureaucracy thinks it can get away with it politically. Among the biggest targets here will be doctors and hospitals, which over time will become complete vassals of the regulatory, bureaucratic state Obamacare establishes.
Higher Health Care Costs
President Obama promised while campaigning for his health reform legislation that it would reduce the “growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government,” in particular by reducing the cost of health insurance by $2,500 per family. But the Obamacare legislation will have just the opposite effect, sharply increasing health costs for families, businesses, and government.
Higher costs for government start with the expansion of the Medicaid entitlement, which was already slated to cost $5 trillion over the next 10 years. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates that Obamacare will increase Medicaid enrollment by 24 million new beneficiaries by 2015, adding an additional $410 billion in further federal costs for the program over the next decade alone.
Obamacare increases costs for the federal government further by adopting a massive new health insurance entitlement program for families earning up to four times the poverty level. In 2014, this new program will be providing $3,000 in taxpayer funds to families making $95,000. By 2018, almost $5,000 will be going to families making $102,000. CBO estimates that these subsidies will cost taxpayers an additional $457 billion over the first six years alone, through 2019. The Chief Actuary of Medicare estimates the total cost of this new entitlement will reach over $500 billion over the first six years. This is only the beginning, as this program will ultimately cost far more than now projected.
This is a massive increase in welfare extended to middle and upper-income families, irresponsibly added on top of the runaway, financially intractable entitlement promises we have already made. But Obamacare then adds a third new entitlement program, for long term nursing home care.
For the rest of us, Obamacare will sharply increase insurance costs. That starts with the mandates forcing everyone into comprehensive insurance coverage specified by the government, which will maximize the incentives for overconsumption of health care, to be paid for through the insurance. Then there are all of President Obama’s free new benefits now mandated, such as coverage for alcohol and drug abuse rehab, mental health services, preventive care, maternity benefits for single males and postmenopausal adults, and the elimination of all lifetime limits and caps. Free mandatory benefits raise health insurance costs.
Additional regulatory burdens will further increase costs. The guaranteed issue requirements force insurers to issue new policies to anyone who applies regardless of how sick they are, and the community rating requirements prohibit charging them more because of their illnesses. These requirements, which are just like forcing fire insurers to issue new policies to applicants whose houses are already on fire when they call, at regular rates, raise the costs of health insurance sharply for everyone else.
Two new taxes on health insurance, the Cadillac tax for supposedly high value insurance that will apply to more and more plans every year, and another tax on all health insurance from the start, will add nearly $100 billion to health insurance costs over the next 10 years alone. Then there will be sharply increased cost shifting to private health insurance due to the massive expansion of Medicaid to 24 million more people, and the more than massive Medicare cuts discussed below, as doctors and hospitals try to recoup their enormous losses by charging more to privately insured patients.
Counting just some of these cost increases, one study concludes that under Obamacare a typical family health insurance policy costing $12,300 today will cost $17,200 by 2013, $21,300 by 2016, and $25,900 by 2019. Another study concludes that insurance costs for young (up to 40) and healthy workers will double and triple in many cases.
These cost increases have already begun. But expect the liberal/left to insist that the soaring insurance costs caused by Obamacare prove that the public option, or even more overt socialized medicine, was needed after all. They will seek to prohibit the necessary premium increases, as in Massachusetts, and will be glad if that forces private insurers out of business.
Death Panels
While the liberal/left hides behind literal clowns mocking Sarah Palin for raising the issue of death panels under Obamacare, the legislation as passed documents the essential reality of the charge.
The recently released Annual Report of the Medicare Board of Trustees reveals that the Medicare payment rates for the doctors and hospitals serving seniors will be cut by 30% over the next 3 years. By 2019, those Medicare payment rates will be lower than under Medicaid. The Chief Actuary for Medicare reports that ultimately under Obamacare Medicare payment rates will be only one third of what will be paid by private insurance and only half of what is paid by Medicaid, where the poor often can’t find access to essential care.
Still further Medicare cuts adopted in the Obamacare legislation add up altogether to $818 billion over the first 10 years of full implementation, 2014-2023, and $3.223 trillion over the first 20 years, 2014-2033, for Medicare Part A (HI) alone! Adding in the cuts for Medicare Part B brings the total to $1.048 trillion over the first 10 full years, and $4.95 trillion over the first 20 full years. Eventually, as documented in the government’s own reports, Medicare Part A is cut by 60% per year, Part B by 43%!
These draconian cuts for doctors and hospitals providing the health care to seniors under Medicare were the basis for the CBO score repeatedly cited by President Obama that Obamacare would actually reduce the deficit while expanding or adopting three entitlement programs. This doesn’t even include the further cuts to Medicare Advantage, the private alternative to Medicare which nearly 25% of seniors have chosen for their Medicare coverage because it gives them a better deal, and the further automatic Medicare cuts to be adopted by the unelected, appointed, bureaucrats at the Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board under Obamacare.
Such draconian Medicare cuts would create havoc and chaos in health care for seniors. Doctors, hospitals, surgeons and specialists providing critical care to the elderly such as surgery for hip and knee replacements, sophisticated diagnostics through MRIs and CT scans, and even treatment for cancer and heart disease will shut down and disappear in much of the country, and others will stop serving Medicare patients. If the government is not going to pay, then seniors are not going to get the health services, treatment and care they expect. Indeed, the Medicare Chief Actuary reports that even before these cuts already two-thirds of hospitals were losing money on Medicare patients. Health providers will either have to withdraw from serving Medicare patients, or eventually go into bankruptcy.
Apparently, President Obama’s concept of spreading the wealth includes sacking the Medicare system on which America’s seniors have come to rely for highly beneficial medical care, in favor of others who the Obama/Pelosi/Reid progressive vision deems more worthy.
As the government clamps down on private insurers as well as on payments from Medicare and Medicaid, the incentives for essential investment to maintain current facilities, expand and open new ones, and invest in and build out new innovations and breakthroughs, will be eviscerated. Investment in human capital as well as physical capital in health care will plummet, as doctors and other professionals increasingly flee health care. This effective decline in the supply of health care in the face of increasing demand will mean even higher prices and costs.
The study further explains how several provisions of Obamacare give insurers, doctors, and hospitals incentives to deny and ration health care to patients. A central component of the traditional high standard of living in America has been the best, most advanced, cutting edge health care in the world. No more. Obamacare is part of the declining standard of living for America.
America’s Coming Bankruptcy
When he was campaigning for Obamacare, President Obama insisted on national television that the mandate to buy insurance was not a tax. Now that it has passed, his lawyers are in court arguing that it is constitutional because it is a tax.
The mandate to buy insurance is economically, though not legally, indistinguishable from a tax. Even with the budget-crushing new entitlement subsidies in the Act, the insurance will be quite expensive, ranging up to 2 percent of income for people at 133 percent of poverty to 9.8 percent of income for people at 400 percent of poverty. That is like a new payroll tax, breaking two Obama pledges, since it applies just as well to those making less than $250,000 a year.
The study recounts at least 13 tax increases in Obamacare, adding up to at least $500 billion over the first 10 years, not counting the mandates. But that won’t begin to cover all of the spending involved in Obamacare, adding up to more than $2.4 trillion over the first 10 years of full implementation, from 2014 to 2024, and $5.3 trillion over the first 15 full years.
That will further explode the deficit and national debt by at least $2 to $3 trillion over the next 20 years. A major fallacy of the CBO score of Obamacare is that it assumes that only 19 million workers will qualify for the new Obamacare health insurance subsidies described above. In fact, as former CBO Chief Douglas Holtz-Eakin explains, under the incentives Obamacare provides employers to dump their health coverage, at least 43 million are likely to qualify. It could be 2 to 3 times as many, exploding original cost projections beyond imagination. The study explains other factors that will cause higher Obamacare spending and deficits. This would only follow the Medicare precedent, which was originally projected in 1965 to cost $12 trillion by 1990. But when 1990 came, it cost $109.7 billion, 9 times greater.
Patient Power v. Government Power
America does need to ensure that it maintains a health care safety net assuring that no one suffers due to lack of essential health care. But that can be accomplished without any of the big-government components of Obamacare. Indeed, done right, it can be accomplished while expanding the power and control of workers and patients over their own health care and actually reducing rather than enlarging government’s role in health care.
That would begin by repealing all 159 new bureaucracies, agencies, boards, commissions and programs created by Obamacare, and the rest of the legislative atrocity, reducing taxes and spending by the amounts described above, and the federal deficits and debt by at least $2 to $3 trillion over the next 20 years.
The next step would be to block grant Medicaid back to the states following the model of the hugely successful 1996 reforms of the old AFDC program. That would greatly benefit the poor, freeing them from the Medicaid ghetto to enjoy the same health insurance as the middle class. That would include the choice of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), maximizing patient power and control, and market incentives to control costs. Medicare should be reformed to empower all seniors with a Medicare Advantage choice, including the highly beneficial HSAs.
A true health care safety net ensuring essential health care for all can be achieved with state high risk pools, and consumer choice tax credits, ensuring affordability and access to health insurance for everyone. The study explains as well market consumer protection laws prohibiting insurance company fraud, and deregulation enabling a national market competition to truly control costs.
Because of all of the problems created by Obamacare, the misshapen legislation is just the beginning, not the end, of the battle to reform health care policy in America. Obamacare is so fundamentally wrong-headed that it takes us in the opposite direction of the essential reforms that are needed. Perhaps such a disastrously wrong step was necessary to draw the public’s attention to the true patient power reforms that would liberate health care in America.
By Peter Ferrara on 8.18.10 @ 6:10AM
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/08/18/the-obamacare-disaster
Forthcoming for public release shortly will be my extensive study of the Obamacare legislation, “The Obamacare Disaster: An Appraisal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (Heartland Policy StudyNo. 128, The Heartland Institute, August 2010), available shortly at the Heartland Institute website. Following Nancy Pelosi’s dictum that we will have to pass it first to know what’s in it, I personally slogged through the thousands of pages of this legislative atrocity for the study, as well as thousands of pages of supplemental materials such as government, think tank and media reports.
The bottom line is that you will lose your health care under this legislation, if not your job, your country as they bankrupt America, and maybe ultimately your life or the life of a loved one. All that to make dreamy, emotionalized, liberals happy, even though many of them are not happy because the socialism in the bill is not overt enough. Moreover, the promises made to the American people to pass the bill are shown in the study to be thoroughly false. This pattern of calculated deception, however, did not fool the American people, only members of Congress, many of whom will now pay with their jobs as a result.
But the study is not all gloom and doom. It thoroughly explains the Patient Power reforms that should replace it when it is repealed, drawing on the broad scholarship of the Patient Power movement and its intellectual leaders, such as John Goodman, Grace Marie Turner, Sally Pipes, Merrill Mathews, and Greg Scandlen, among others. It consequently serves as a guidebook for the grassroots Tea Party activists who will lead the long-term crusade for Health Care Liberation.
The Government Takeover of Health Care
Contrary to President Obama’s rhetoric, the Obamacare legislation involves precisely the thorough government takeover of health care. It creates 159 new bureaucracies, agencies, boards, commissions, and programs to rule over health care in America. Government authorities are empowered to tell doctors and hospitals what is quality health care and what is not, what are best practices in medicine, how their medical practices should be structured, and what they will be paid and when. Government authorities will mandate exactly what health insurance with what benefits workers and employers must buy, and the Act imposes tax penalties on them if they do not comply. Government authorities will dictate to insurance companies exactly what health insurance they must sell, to whom they must sell it, and what they can charge. Obamacare even redistributes premium income among insurers under a new “risk adjustment” mechanism.
But this is just the beginning. As in everything President Obama is doing, it lays the groundwork for much more thorough government control and compulsion over time, primarily through bureaucratic landmines involving grants of regulatory authority that will explode when the bureaucracy thinks it can get away with it politically. Among the biggest targets here will be doctors and hospitals, which over time will become complete vassals of the regulatory, bureaucratic state Obamacare establishes.
Higher Health Care Costs
President Obama promised while campaigning for his health reform legislation that it would reduce the “growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government,” in particular by reducing the cost of health insurance by $2,500 per family. But the Obamacare legislation will have just the opposite effect, sharply increasing health costs for families, businesses, and government.
Higher costs for government start with the expansion of the Medicaid entitlement, which was already slated to cost $5 trillion over the next 10 years. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates that Obamacare will increase Medicaid enrollment by 24 million new beneficiaries by 2015, adding an additional $410 billion in further federal costs for the program over the next decade alone.
Obamacare increases costs for the federal government further by adopting a massive new health insurance entitlement program for families earning up to four times the poverty level. In 2014, this new program will be providing $3,000 in taxpayer funds to families making $95,000. By 2018, almost $5,000 will be going to families making $102,000. CBO estimates that these subsidies will cost taxpayers an additional $457 billion over the first six years alone, through 2019. The Chief Actuary of Medicare estimates the total cost of this new entitlement will reach over $500 billion over the first six years. This is only the beginning, as this program will ultimately cost far more than now projected.
This is a massive increase in welfare extended to middle and upper-income families, irresponsibly added on top of the runaway, financially intractable entitlement promises we have already made. But Obamacare then adds a third new entitlement program, for long term nursing home care.
For the rest of us, Obamacare will sharply increase insurance costs. That starts with the mandates forcing everyone into comprehensive insurance coverage specified by the government, which will maximize the incentives for overconsumption of health care, to be paid for through the insurance. Then there are all of President Obama’s free new benefits now mandated, such as coverage for alcohol and drug abuse rehab, mental health services, preventive care, maternity benefits for single males and postmenopausal adults, and the elimination of all lifetime limits and caps. Free mandatory benefits raise health insurance costs.
Additional regulatory burdens will further increase costs. The guaranteed issue requirements force insurers to issue new policies to anyone who applies regardless of how sick they are, and the community rating requirements prohibit charging them more because of their illnesses. These requirements, which are just like forcing fire insurers to issue new policies to applicants whose houses are already on fire when they call, at regular rates, raise the costs of health insurance sharply for everyone else.
Two new taxes on health insurance, the Cadillac tax for supposedly high value insurance that will apply to more and more plans every year, and another tax on all health insurance from the start, will add nearly $100 billion to health insurance costs over the next 10 years alone. Then there will be sharply increased cost shifting to private health insurance due to the massive expansion of Medicaid to 24 million more people, and the more than massive Medicare cuts discussed below, as doctors and hospitals try to recoup their enormous losses by charging more to privately insured patients.
Counting just some of these cost increases, one study concludes that under Obamacare a typical family health insurance policy costing $12,300 today will cost $17,200 by 2013, $21,300 by 2016, and $25,900 by 2019. Another study concludes that insurance costs for young (up to 40) and healthy workers will double and triple in many cases.
These cost increases have already begun. But expect the liberal/left to insist that the soaring insurance costs caused by Obamacare prove that the public option, or even more overt socialized medicine, was needed after all. They will seek to prohibit the necessary premium increases, as in Massachusetts, and will be glad if that forces private insurers out of business.
Death Panels
While the liberal/left hides behind literal clowns mocking Sarah Palin for raising the issue of death panels under Obamacare, the legislation as passed documents the essential reality of the charge.
The recently released Annual Report of the Medicare Board of Trustees reveals that the Medicare payment rates for the doctors and hospitals serving seniors will be cut by 30% over the next 3 years. By 2019, those Medicare payment rates will be lower than under Medicaid. The Chief Actuary for Medicare reports that ultimately under Obamacare Medicare payment rates will be only one third of what will be paid by private insurance and only half of what is paid by Medicaid, where the poor often can’t find access to essential care.
Still further Medicare cuts adopted in the Obamacare legislation add up altogether to $818 billion over the first 10 years of full implementation, 2014-2023, and $3.223 trillion over the first 20 years, 2014-2033, for Medicare Part A (HI) alone! Adding in the cuts for Medicare Part B brings the total to $1.048 trillion over the first 10 full years, and $4.95 trillion over the first 20 full years. Eventually, as documented in the government’s own reports, Medicare Part A is cut by 60% per year, Part B by 43%!
These draconian cuts for doctors and hospitals providing the health care to seniors under Medicare were the basis for the CBO score repeatedly cited by President Obama that Obamacare would actually reduce the deficit while expanding or adopting three entitlement programs. This doesn’t even include the further cuts to Medicare Advantage, the private alternative to Medicare which nearly 25% of seniors have chosen for their Medicare coverage because it gives them a better deal, and the further automatic Medicare cuts to be adopted by the unelected, appointed, bureaucrats at the Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board under Obamacare.
Such draconian Medicare cuts would create havoc and chaos in health care for seniors. Doctors, hospitals, surgeons and specialists providing critical care to the elderly such as surgery for hip and knee replacements, sophisticated diagnostics through MRIs and CT scans, and even treatment for cancer and heart disease will shut down and disappear in much of the country, and others will stop serving Medicare patients. If the government is not going to pay, then seniors are not going to get the health services, treatment and care they expect. Indeed, the Medicare Chief Actuary reports that even before these cuts already two-thirds of hospitals were losing money on Medicare patients. Health providers will either have to withdraw from serving Medicare patients, or eventually go into bankruptcy.
Apparently, President Obama’s concept of spreading the wealth includes sacking the Medicare system on which America’s seniors have come to rely for highly beneficial medical care, in favor of others who the Obama/Pelosi/Reid progressive vision deems more worthy.
As the government clamps down on private insurers as well as on payments from Medicare and Medicaid, the incentives for essential investment to maintain current facilities, expand and open new ones, and invest in and build out new innovations and breakthroughs, will be eviscerated. Investment in human capital as well as physical capital in health care will plummet, as doctors and other professionals increasingly flee health care. This effective decline in the supply of health care in the face of increasing demand will mean even higher prices and costs.
The study further explains how several provisions of Obamacare give insurers, doctors, and hospitals incentives to deny and ration health care to patients. A central component of the traditional high standard of living in America has been the best, most advanced, cutting edge health care in the world. No more. Obamacare is part of the declining standard of living for America.
America’s Coming Bankruptcy
When he was campaigning for Obamacare, President Obama insisted on national television that the mandate to buy insurance was not a tax. Now that it has passed, his lawyers are in court arguing that it is constitutional because it is a tax.
The mandate to buy insurance is economically, though not legally, indistinguishable from a tax. Even with the budget-crushing new entitlement subsidies in the Act, the insurance will be quite expensive, ranging up to 2 percent of income for people at 133 percent of poverty to 9.8 percent of income for people at 400 percent of poverty. That is like a new payroll tax, breaking two Obama pledges, since it applies just as well to those making less than $250,000 a year.
The study recounts at least 13 tax increases in Obamacare, adding up to at least $500 billion over the first 10 years, not counting the mandates. But that won’t begin to cover all of the spending involved in Obamacare, adding up to more than $2.4 trillion over the first 10 years of full implementation, from 2014 to 2024, and $5.3 trillion over the first 15 full years.
That will further explode the deficit and national debt by at least $2 to $3 trillion over the next 20 years. A major fallacy of the CBO score of Obamacare is that it assumes that only 19 million workers will qualify for the new Obamacare health insurance subsidies described above. In fact, as former CBO Chief Douglas Holtz-Eakin explains, under the incentives Obamacare provides employers to dump their health coverage, at least 43 million are likely to qualify. It could be 2 to 3 times as many, exploding original cost projections beyond imagination. The study explains other factors that will cause higher Obamacare spending and deficits. This would only follow the Medicare precedent, which was originally projected in 1965 to cost $12 trillion by 1990. But when 1990 came, it cost $109.7 billion, 9 times greater.
Patient Power v. Government Power
America does need to ensure that it maintains a health care safety net assuring that no one suffers due to lack of essential health care. But that can be accomplished without any of the big-government components of Obamacare. Indeed, done right, it can be accomplished while expanding the power and control of workers and patients over their own health care and actually reducing rather than enlarging government’s role in health care.
That would begin by repealing all 159 new bureaucracies, agencies, boards, commissions and programs created by Obamacare, and the rest of the legislative atrocity, reducing taxes and spending by the amounts described above, and the federal deficits and debt by at least $2 to $3 trillion over the next 20 years.
The next step would be to block grant Medicaid back to the states following the model of the hugely successful 1996 reforms of the old AFDC program. That would greatly benefit the poor, freeing them from the Medicaid ghetto to enjoy the same health insurance as the middle class. That would include the choice of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), maximizing patient power and control, and market incentives to control costs. Medicare should be reformed to empower all seniors with a Medicare Advantage choice, including the highly beneficial HSAs.
A true health care safety net ensuring essential health care for all can be achieved with state high risk pools, and consumer choice tax credits, ensuring affordability and access to health insurance for everyone. The study explains as well market consumer protection laws prohibiting insurance company fraud, and deregulation enabling a national market competition to truly control costs.
Because of all of the problems created by Obamacare, the misshapen legislation is just the beginning, not the end, of the battle to reform health care policy in America. Obamacare is so fundamentally wrong-headed that it takes us in the opposite direction of the essential reforms that are needed. Perhaps such a disastrously wrong step was necessary to draw the public’s attention to the true patient power reforms that would liberate health care in America.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Senate Bill S510
Senate bill on homegrown food equals homegrown tyranny
August 14th, 2010 4:51 pm
.The Obama regime and Democrats in Congress want to prevent citizens from growing, sharing, trading, or selling homegrown food. Senate bill S510 would make such activity illegal. Such legislation amounts to homegrown tyranny, yet another example of how this government has declared war on the citizens.
Read the story: http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-national/senate-bill-on-homegrown-food-equals-homegrown-tyranny
August 14th, 2010 4:51 pm
.The Obama regime and Democrats in Congress want to prevent citizens from growing, sharing, trading, or selling homegrown food. Senate bill S510 would make such activity illegal. Such legislation amounts to homegrown tyranny, yet another example of how this government has declared war on the citizens.
Read the story: http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-national/senate-bill-on-homegrown-food-equals-homegrown-tyranny
Friday, July 16, 2010
House Democrats Insert Gay Rights into Immigration Debate
House Democrats Insert Gay Rights into Immigration Debate
By Jake Gibson
Published July 15, 2010--FoxNews.com
WASHINGTON -- House Democrats are trying to broaden support for immigration reform by reaching out to the gay and lesbian community with a provision in immigration legislation that would allow gay and lesbian Americans to bring foreign partners home to the United States.
Under current law, American citizens and other legal permanent residents can get a green card or immigrant visa for a spouse or immediate family members living abroad. However, the same rights do not extend to same-sex couples living in the country.
During a news conference on Capitol Hill Thursday, Democratic Reps. Jerrold Nadler of New York, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and Mike Honda of California, among others, urged Congress to pass the Uniting American Families Act as part of a comprehensive immigration reform package this year.
"Right now too many same-sex, binational couples face an impossible choice," said Gutierrez, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee, "to live apart or to break the law to be with partners, their families and children."
“Government should never engage in purposeless, gratuitous cruelty and we should stop it," Nadler said.
With no support from the GOP, the comprehensive immigration bill introduced by Gutierrez last December has stalled in the House. Republicans say this legislation won't help.
"These are creative people who just have the wrong philosophy," said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, a member of the immigration subcommittee. "It's an alliance designed to grant amnesty."
"It tries to redefine traditional marriage. I can't support that," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told Fox News. "If they're looking to truly reach out to conservatives and Republicans and do something in a bipartisan way, this isn't it."
The legislation appears to be part of an effort to strengthen support on the left, rather than the right, by targeting a constituency that has yet to be heard from in the immigration debate -- the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgendered community.
"Last time around the pro-immigration side took us for granted. ... It is crucial to shore up the support of real genuine progressives who will pick up the phone and call their representatives," said Rachel Tiven of Immigration Equality, an organization that describes itself as one fighting for equal immigration rights for the LGBT community as well as HIV positive immigrants and their families.
Last month in Arizona, Phoenix' gay chamber of commerce urged national gay rights groups not to boycott the state over its impending immigration law that allows a crackdown by local police on illegals, saying the decision would hurt gay-friendly businesses. Proposed comprehensive immigration reform legislation in Congress is in part a reaction to criticism that the federal government has not done enough to resolve illegal immigration in the country.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/15/house-democrats-insert-gay-rights-immigration-debate/
By Jake Gibson
Published July 15, 2010--FoxNews.com
WASHINGTON -- House Democrats are trying to broaden support for immigration reform by reaching out to the gay and lesbian community with a provision in immigration legislation that would allow gay and lesbian Americans to bring foreign partners home to the United States.
Under current law, American citizens and other legal permanent residents can get a green card or immigrant visa for a spouse or immediate family members living abroad. However, the same rights do not extend to same-sex couples living in the country.
During a news conference on Capitol Hill Thursday, Democratic Reps. Jerrold Nadler of New York, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and Mike Honda of California, among others, urged Congress to pass the Uniting American Families Act as part of a comprehensive immigration reform package this year.
"Right now too many same-sex, binational couples face an impossible choice," said Gutierrez, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee, "to live apart or to break the law to be with partners, their families and children."
“Government should never engage in purposeless, gratuitous cruelty and we should stop it," Nadler said.
With no support from the GOP, the comprehensive immigration bill introduced by Gutierrez last December has stalled in the House. Republicans say this legislation won't help.
"These are creative people who just have the wrong philosophy," said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, a member of the immigration subcommittee. "It's an alliance designed to grant amnesty."
"It tries to redefine traditional marriage. I can't support that," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told Fox News. "If they're looking to truly reach out to conservatives and Republicans and do something in a bipartisan way, this isn't it."
The legislation appears to be part of an effort to strengthen support on the left, rather than the right, by targeting a constituency that has yet to be heard from in the immigration debate -- the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgendered community.
"Last time around the pro-immigration side took us for granted. ... It is crucial to shore up the support of real genuine progressives who will pick up the phone and call their representatives," said Rachel Tiven of Immigration Equality, an organization that describes itself as one fighting for equal immigration rights for the LGBT community as well as HIV positive immigrants and their families.
Last month in Arizona, Phoenix' gay chamber of commerce urged national gay rights groups not to boycott the state over its impending immigration law that allows a crackdown by local police on illegals, saying the decision would hurt gay-friendly businesses. Proposed comprehensive immigration reform legislation in Congress is in part a reaction to criticism that the federal government has not done enough to resolve illegal immigration in the country.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/15/house-democrats-insert-gay-rights-immigration-debate/
Monday, July 5, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Grassfire Nation Update: Congress is set to pass the "Dodd-Frank Act"
This week, Congress is set to pass the "Dodd-Frank Act" -- the latest 2,000+ page government makeover/takeover of our society.
National Review notes that the bill is aptly named after two of the leading causes of the financial crisis that precipitated the legislation -- noting that Frank led the push to extend home ownership to (quoting Frank) "people who might not on their own in a market situation be able to afford it" and rejected warnings of a housing market collapse. Dodd called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "one of the great success stories of all time" -- a success that has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
A citizen comment on a Wall Street Journal article on the Wall Street bill perhaps summed things up the best: "Another reason to throw the bums out."
Time to Flip This House 2010
Grassfire's "Flip This House 2010" campaign is designed to do just that -- but we need your help.
http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?u=29303&PID=22513281
Government takeover of the financial sector
The Dodd-Frank Act amounts to nothing less than a massive government takeover of the financial sector.
Here's how the Wall Street Journal describes the bill:
"In the name of responding to a crisis, the bill greatly increases the power of politicians and regulators without addressing the real causes of that crisis."
Even worse - it took over 2,000 pages and more than a year of backroom dealings that the main architect of the bill doesn't really know what the bill will do!
After claiming the bill marks a "great moment," Dodd then said... "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works."
It is actually very clear how this works. The Statists are once again seizing control of the economy and the people are left with one recourse... FLIP THIS HOUSE!
http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?u=29303&PID=22513281
National Review notes that the bill is aptly named after two of the leading causes of the financial crisis that precipitated the legislation -- noting that Frank led the push to extend home ownership to (quoting Frank) "people who might not on their own in a market situation be able to afford it" and rejected warnings of a housing market collapse. Dodd called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "one of the great success stories of all time" -- a success that has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
A citizen comment on a Wall Street Journal article on the Wall Street bill perhaps summed things up the best: "Another reason to throw the bums out."
Time to Flip This House 2010
Grassfire's "Flip This House 2010" campaign is designed to do just that -- but we need your help.
http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?u=29303&PID=22513281
Government takeover of the financial sector
The Dodd-Frank Act amounts to nothing less than a massive government takeover of the financial sector.
Here's how the Wall Street Journal describes the bill:
"In the name of responding to a crisis, the bill greatly increases the power of politicians and regulators without addressing the real causes of that crisis."
Even worse - it took over 2,000 pages and more than a year of backroom dealings that the main architect of the bill doesn't really know what the bill will do!
After claiming the bill marks a "great moment," Dodd then said... "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works."
It is actually very clear how this works. The Statists are once again seizing control of the economy and the people are left with one recourse... FLIP THIS HOUSE!
http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?u=29303&PID=22513281
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