Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is proving once again the maxim that darkness hates the light. Buried in his massive amendment to the Senate version of Obamacare is Reid’s anti-democratic poison pill designed to prevent any future Congress from repealing the central feature of this monstrous legislation.
Beginning on page 1,000 of the measure, Section 3403 reads in part: “… it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.” In other words, if President Barack Obama signs this measure into law, no future Senate or House will be able to change a single word of Section 3403, regardless whether future Americans or their representatives in Congress wish otherwise.
Note that the subsection at issue here concerns the regulatory power of the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB) to “reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending.” That is precisely the kind of open-ended grant of regulatory power that effectively establishes the IMAB as the ultimate arbiter of the cost, quality and quantity of health care to be made available to the American people. And Reid wants the decisions of this group of unelected federal bureaucrats to be untouchable for all time.
No wonder the majority leader tossed aside assurances that senators and the public would have at least 72 hours to study the text of the final Senate version of Obamacare before the critical vote on cloture. And no wonder Reid was so desperate to rush his amendment through the Senate, even scheduling the key tally on it at 1 a.m., while America slept. True to form, Reid wanted to keep his Section 3403 poison pill secret for as long as possible, just as he negotiated his bribes for the votes of Senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Bernie Sanders of Vermont behind closed doors.
The final Orwellian touch in this subversion of democratic procedure is found in the ruling of the Reid-controlled Senate Parliamentarian that the anti-repeal provision is not a change in Senate rules, but rather of Senate “procedures.” Why is that significant? Because for 200 years, changes in the Senate’s standing rules have required approval by two-thirds of those voting, or 67 votes rather than the 60 Reid’s amendment received. Reid has flouted two centuries of standing Senate rules to pass a measure in the dead of night that no senator has read, and part of which can never be changed. If this is not tyranny, then what is?
I mention this now not only to help readers out with their last-minute Christmas shopping but also to highlight the message of our subtitle: “How the Disciples of Freedom and Equality Helped Foster the Illiberal Politics of Coercion and Control.”
It is one of the underappreciated ironies of our age, I believe, that many who call themselves “liberals” habitually support policies that are distinctly illiberal — often, indeed, are downright coercive — in their effect.
A proper anatomy of this phenomenon would take a book. It might start with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose deficient sense of the reality of other people could never compete with the satisfaction he took in contemplating his own virtue. And it might end with the revolutionary health care bill now wending its way through the U.S. Congress. Of course, the people touting the bill say — perhaps they even believe — that it will be good for Americans and that it will save money. Critics (of whom I am one) say that it will be a catastrophically expensive suite of legislation that will limit choice, impede medical innovation, and degrade the quality and timely delivery of medical care.
Like any ambitious piece of legislation, however, the bill to restructure American health care raises issues that go far beyond its primary purpose. The President touched on this obliquely in his “precipice” gaffe: we are, he said, “on the precipice of achievement . . . that will touch the lives of nearly every American.”
“Precipice,” “threshold,” whatever: he is right, anyway, that if the current bill becomes law it “will touch the lives of nearly every American.” How will it “touch” us? Let me count the ways. Colloquially, first of all, as when we speak of “touching” someone for money. (What easy touches we have all turned out to be!)
But it will touch us in other ways as well. To appreciate one central way in which the bill will touch our lives, consider “Impermissible Ratemaking in Health-Insurance Reform: Why the Reid Bill is Unconstitutional,” the somber essay the eminent legal scholar Richard Epstein has written. (It appears on the web site of PointofLaw.com, but like so much important commentary these days, I came across it here, at Instapundit.) If you read nothing else this holiday season, read this. It is not cheering, exactly, but it is, after its fashion, bracing. For it not only makes good on its subtitle, explaining “Why the Reid Bill is Unconstitutional,” it also lays bare the coercive heart of the bill.
Really, the whole essay is worth reading, but here are a couple of snippets to set your heart beating:
On the one hand, the Reid Bill depends on a combination of huge general tax increases, which is coupled with special levies on industries such as medical-device and pharmaceutical companies. These tax revenues are then used to fund subsidies for large segments of the population in order to allow them to purchase qualified health-care plans that are sold through a set of State Exchanges that the Reid Bill creates. In order to prevent these subsidies from flowing through to the various health-insurance issuers, the Reid Bill imposes extensive obligations on any health-insurance issuer or health-plan provider that wishes to participate within the system in order to keep them from capturing subsidies meant for others. The effect of the subsidies is to increase the level of health care that will be demanded in the United States. The effect of the regulations is likely to be to impose huge costs on various health-insurance companies as they struggle to meet the influx of demand when they are at the outer limit of their capacity.
There are at this point enormous uncertainties about how this entire scheme will play out. My view is that it will prove ruinous on all three fronts. The general public tax increases will be so sharp that it is unlikely that they will generate additional revenues. The subsidies will be so large that the demand for medical services will be left largely unsatisfied, so two consequences are likely. First, an increased queuing for various health care services is to be expected. Second, there will be increased pressure to exclude large groups of people from the system, on the lines of Massachusetts’s recent decision to cut from its system 31,000 legal immigrant aliens (who pay taxes but do not vote).
The boldface is mine. Pour yourself some eggnog, and don’t stint on the brandy. Then look at this:
Furthermore, on the supply side of the market, all health-insurance companies will find themselves in an impossible dilemma. If they decide to offer their health-insurance plans outside the State Exchanges, they will be unable to compete for the subsidized consumers who are only able to spend their tax dollars within the framework of the State Exchanges. Their position will be worse because they shall continue to be subject to all present mandates and regulations that have an impact on their business. Insurers outside the Exchanges also face the likely prospect that they will still be further taxed and regulated to help finance the intolerable burdens that arise under the subsidized insurance supplied within the State Exchange system.
This level of systemic coercion frames the debate about the constitutionality of the Reid Bill. Those parties that do not wish to suffer the Bill’s regulations in order to gain access to a subsidized consumer base are not free to compete in an unregulated market. Direct federal and state government regulation remains a fixed feature of their life. Government regulators at the state and federal levels have both the power and the motive to hit non-Exchange health insurance issuers with a range of taxes and regulations that could quickly make their economic position intolerable.
The twin burdens of Professor Epstein’s essay are to show 1) the coercive nature of what he calls “the Reid bill” that is on the cusp of being passed by the Senate and 2) to show why, as a point of law, several aspects of the bill raise serious questions about its Constitutionality. I think Professor Epstein makes a powerful case, though I have my doubts about whether a Constitutional challenge would be successful. Still, it is worth understanding the case and it is worth reminding ourselves why the Constitution is important. The Constitution was framed in order to enshrine certain rights and to protect people from capricious interference from the state. The larger question we face, larger even than the fate of this obscene piece of legislation, is to what extent the state still respects the provisions of the Constitution that its servants have sworn to uphold. Richard Epstein has outlined a devastating case. What happens next?
Last edited by vector7; December 23rd, 2009 at 18:49.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
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We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
They still need to merge the House Bill and the Senate Bill yet.
But they most certainly will.
The Feds will soon have more power to influence our lives and rob from the American people.
We are no longer the richest Country in the world. We are in debt up to our ears. We can not afford to allow the den of thieves in DC to force this upon the American people. We are the biggest debtor. I hear folks say, 'we are the richest Nation in the world and we should provide HC for our people'. We are broke dumbasses. We can not afford this. We need to get spending under control. Debt is the threat.
Last edited by Beetle; December 24th, 2009 at 14:37.
Beetle - Give me liberty or give me something to aim at.
A monster lies in wait for me A stew of pain and misery But feircer still in life and limb the me that lays in wait for him
Hey liberal!
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You can't handle the truth!
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Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.
The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors' own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.
It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration's claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.
The IBD/TIPP Poll was conducted by mail the past two weeks, with 1,376 practicing physicians chosen randomly throughout the country taking part. Responses are still coming in, and doctors' positions on related topics — including the impact of an overhaul on senior care, medical school applications and drug development — will be covered later in this series.
Major findings included:
• Two-thirds, or 65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan. This contradicts the administration's claims that doctors are part of an "unprecedented coalition" supporting a medical overhaul.
It also differs with findings of a poll released Monday by National Public Radio that suggests a "majority of physicians want public and private insurance options," and clashes with media reports such as Tuesday's front-page story in the Los Angeles Times with the headline "Doctors Go For Obama's Reform."
Nowhere in the Times story does it say doctors as a whole back the overhaul. It says only that the AMA — the "association representing the nation's physicians" and what "many still regard as the country's premier lobbying force" — is "lobbying and advertising to win public support for President Obama's sweeping plan."
The AMA, in fact, represents approximately 18% of physicians and has been hit with a number of defections by members opposed to the AMA's support of Democrats' proposed health care overhaul.
• Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they "would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement" if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.
More than 800,000 doctors were practicing in 2006, the government says. Projecting the poll's finding onto that population, 360,000 doctors would consider quitting.
Internal Revenue Service agents already try to catch tax cheats and moonshiners. Under the proposed health care legislation, they would get another assignment: checking to see whether Americans have health insurance.
The legislation would require most Americans to have health insurance and to prove it on their federal tax returns. Those who don’t would pay a penalty to the IRS.
That’s one of several key duties the IRS would assume under the bills that have been approved by the House of Representatives and Senate and will be merged by negotiators from both chambers.
The agency also would distribute as much as $140 billion a year in new government subsidies to help small employers and as many as 19 million lower-income people buy coverage.
By Phil Galewitz and Christopher Weaver, Kaiser Health News Internal Revenue Service agents already try to catch tax cheats and moonshiners. Under the proposed health care legislation, they would get another assignment: checking to see whether Americans have health insurance.
The legislation would require most Americans to have health insurance and to prove it on their federal tax returns. Those who don't would pay a penalty to the IRS.
That's one of several key duties the IRS would assume under the bills that have been approved by the House of Representatives and Senate and will be merged by negotiators from both chambers.
The agency also would distribute as much as $140 billion a year in new government subsidies to help small employers and as many as 19 million lower-income people buy coverage.
In addition, the IRS would collect hundreds of billions of dollars in new fees on employers, drug companies and device makers, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Some critics of the health bill question whether the IRS, which has struggled in recent years with budget problems, staffing shortages and outdated computer systems, will be up to the job of enforcing the mandate and efficiently handling the subsidies.
"It's hard to see how the IRS could take on the huge responsibility it would be given under pending health care legislation without some real glitches, or worse," said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. He voted against the bill, as did every other Republican senator.
The CBO estimated the IRS would need $5 billion to $10 billion in the first decade to cover the costs of its expanded role. The IRS' annual budget is currently $11.5 billion.
Neither the House nor Senate bill includes funding for the IRS, but money could be added by House and Senate negotiators.
The IRS already has trouble meeting its primary duty: collecting taxes. By the IRS's own estimates, it failed to collect about $290 billion in taxes in 2005, the latest year for which data are available.
Pete Sepp, spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union, an IRS watchdog group, says the IRS might be the "logical" agency to enforce the mandate, "but that doesn't mean things will go smoothly."
'Social engineering'
Howard Gleckman of the Urban Institute, an economics and social policy think tank, sees the IRS' proposed new role as a part of a historical pattern. "We are always asking the IRS to do all kinds of social engineering," he said, such as tax credits for new homeowners and renewable-energy companies.
In one of the biggest examples of using the tax code to achieve a social goal, Congress shifted much of its effort to help the poor in the 1990s from direct spending to the Earned Income Tax Credit, an IRS-run program that pays rebates to low-income working people to offset taxes.
In 2005, more than 22 million people claimed the credit, resulting in more than $40 billion in payments, a Treasury Department inspector general found last year. The audit found $11.4 billion in improper payments in 2005 — about 28 cents of every dollar paid out.
Grassley has called the program "rife with fraud and abuse." John Dalrymple, a former IRS deputy commissioner, said the tax-credit program — despite its flaws — demonstrates that the IRS has the experience to handle the new subsidy program.
Under the health care legislation, the IRS would determine who qualifies for the insurance subsidies. Those subsidies would apply to people with incomes up to four times the federal poverty level, which is $43,320 for an individual and $88,200 for a family of four. The government would pay insurance companies to help individuals buy policies on the new exchanges. The exchanges, a central feature in both bills, would be a sort of marketplace where small businesses and individuals who don't get employer-sponsored coverage could shop for health plans.
To meet the mandate, Americans would have to provide proof of insurance coverage with their annual tax returns. The mandate would begin in 2013 under the House bill; 2014 in the Senate bill.
The penalty in the Senate bill for not having coverage would start in 2014 at $95 or 0.5% of an individual's income, whichever is greater. It would rise to $750 or 2% of annual income in 2016, up to the cost of the cheapest health plans. The House bill penalty would be up to 2.5% of an individual's income up to the cost of the average health plan.
Massachusetts as a model
In 2007, Massachusetts became the first state to enact a health insurance mandate and lowered the percentage of uninsured residents from 7% to 4%.
State residents are required to report their health insurance status on a special form they attach to state income tax returns. Insurers provide statements to policyholders confirming coverage and report that data to the state Department of Revenue.
The state tax agency did not get extra staff or money for enforcement and has not had serious difficulties gathering the information, spokesman Robert Bliss said. In 2008, more than 96% of tax filers provided proof of coverage. Only 1.3% of filers, or about 45,000 residents, were assessed a no-coverage penalty of up to $1,068.
The "vast majority" of Massachusetts residents who pay the penalty are self-reported, Bliss said.
Bliss said the fact that the department had 18 months to get ready for the state's insurance mandate was "enormously important" in making sure it was ready to handle the assignment. That bodes well for the IRS, which would have three to four years to get ready under the bills.
Despite concerns over whether IRS will be up to the job in the health bills, Gerard Anderson, health policy professor at Johns Hopkins University, said: "The IRS seems like the only logical enforcement mechanism."
Galewitz and Weaver report for Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service and a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-partisan health care policy research organization. Neither KFF nor KHN is affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
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We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
Comments
Jan 6, 2010 5:52 PM (8 hrs ago) By ERICA WERNER, AP
President Barack Obama signaled to House Democratic leaders Wednesday that they'll have to drop their opposition to taxing high-end health insurance plans to pay for health coverage for millions of uninsured Americans.
In a meeting at the White House, Obama expressed his preference for the insurance tax contained in the Senate's health overhaul bill, but largely opposed by House Democrats and organized labor, Democratic aides said. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private.
House Democrats want to raise income taxes on high-income individuals instead and are reluctant to abandon that approach, while recognizing that they will have to bend on that and other issues so that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., can maintain his fragile 60-vote majority support for the bill.
Pelosi and four committee chairmen met with the president Wednesday as they scrambled to resolve differences between sweeping bills passed by the House and Senate.
The aim is to finalize legislation revamping the nation's health care system in time for Obama's State of the Union address early last month.
Despite the dispute over the payment approach, Pelosi, D-Calif., emerged from the meeting expressing optimism.
"We've had a very intense couple of days," Pelosi said. "After our leadership meeting this morning, our staff engaged with the Senate and the administration staff to review the legislation, suggest legislative language.
I think we're very close to reconciliation."
Congressional staff members stayed at the White House into the evening to continue work and a conference call of the full House Democratic caucus was scheduled for Thursday.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. ."
We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
"Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be..." --John Adams Government & Politics
After much bribery and arm-twisting, the Senate managed just before Christmas to pass its version of ObamaCare by a 60-39 vote (amazingly, without a single GOP "aye"). Now, the bill heads for conference deliberation televised by C-SPAN, just as the cable channel offered and Barack Obama promised numerous times.
Or not.
Democrats let slip this week that there would be no typical conference committee on the competing House and Senate versions of the health bill, as "leaders" opted instead for private negotiations with "key" congressmen and senators, none of whom is Republican. Once an agreement is reached, each legislative chamber will vote again and send the unified bill to the president.
Without a conference committee, a rule requiring public access to the conference report for at least 48 hours before a vote would conveniently not apply. That means even more liberty-stealing treachery can be slipped into the bill with little notice. Funny how the "public option" doesn't mean that the public gets to know what's in the bill.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) nevertheless had the gall to declare, "There has never been a more open process for any legislation in anyone who's served here's experience." In response, Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto mocked, "Has a more false or awkwardly worded statement ever come out of anyone who has served as speaker of the House's mouth?"
In spite of Democrats' best efforts at "transparency," there are many extra-special things that we actually do know about the bill. For example, on page 1,020, the Senate bill states: "It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection." In other words, the bill creates an eternal law by prohibiting future elected Congresses from making changes to this subsection.
What's in the subsection in question? The infamous "death panel" -- the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB), whose objective will be to "reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending" (read: to ration health care).
Meanwhile, the bill contains what amounts to a marriage penalty worth $2,000 or more in insurance premiums each year. The Wall Street Journal explains, "The disparity comes about in part because subsidies for purchasing health insurance under the plan from congressional Democrats are pegged to federal poverty guidelines.
That has the effect of limiting subsidies for married couples with a combined income, compared to if the individuals are single."
Finally, Obama signaled this week that he's willing to break another campaign promise: The "no tax increases on the middle class" pledge.
He threw his support behind the Senate's tax on higher end "Cadillac" insurance plans, something unions and House Democrats oppose.
The more the public learns about this continuing saga, the more vigorously opposed they become to "reform." No wonder Democrats want the process to remain secret.
The BIG Lies
"We will have a public, uh, process for forming this plan. It'll be televised on C-SPAN.... It will be transparent and accountable to the American people." --Barack Obama, November 2007
"That's what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process." --Barack Obama, January 2008
"[T]hese negotiations will be on C-SPAN..." --Barack Obama, January 2008
"We're gonna do all these negotiations on C-SPAN so the American people will be able to watch these negotiations." --Barack Obama, March 2008
"All this will be done on C-SPAN in front of the public." --Barack Obama, April 2008
"I want the negotiations to be taking place on C-SPAN." --Barack Obama, May 2008
"[W]e'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who is, who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies." --Barack Obama, August 2008
"We will work on this process publicly. It'll be on C-SPAN. It will be streaming over the Net." --Barack Obama, November 2008
Democrat 'Constitutional Scholars' at It Again
When questioned several weeks back about the constitutional authority for ObamaCare, Obama's publicist, Robert Gibbs, issued this disclaimer: "I don't believe there's a lot of -- I don't believe there's a lot of case law that would demonstrate the veracity" of questions about constitutional authority. Ah, yes, "case law." That's code for amending our Constitution by judicial diktat rather than via its prescribed method as stated in Article V.
This week, Gibbs reiterated, "I do not believe that anybody has legitimate constitutional concerns about the [health care] legislation."
Furthermore, when asked where the authority to mandate that Americans buy health insurance -- that they be forced under penalty of fine or imprisonment to engage in a particular commercial enterprise -- is located in the Constitution, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) answered, "Well, I would assume it would be in the Commerce clause of the Constitution. That's how Congress legislates all kinds of various programs."
Congress too often uses this clause to do whatever it wants to do (the legislative target might, just might, some day engage in interstate commerce, don't you know,) but this incorrect interpretation certainly doesn't make this legislation constitutional.
Quote of the Week
"America's founders intended the federal government to have limited powers and that the states have an independent sovereign place in our system of government. The Obama/Reid/Pelosi legislation to take control of the American health-care system is the most sweeping and intrusive federal program ever devised. If the federal government can do this, then it can do anything, and the limits on government power that our liberty requires will be more myth than reality." --Wall Street Journal op-ed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Liberty University School of Law professor Kenneth Blackwell and American Civil Rights Union senior legal analyst Kenneth Klukowski
This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award
"I think it was a mistake to take health care on as opposed to continuing to spend the time on the economy." --Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE)
After being bribed with $100 million in Medicaid savings for his state in a "cash for cloture" deal, Nelson provided the 60th Senate vote for health care. We're glad he's come around, but talk about too little too late.
This Week's 'Braying Jenny' Award
"We want our final product -- as I'm sure everyone in the House and Senate would agree -- to insure affordability for the middle class."
--Nancy Pelosi, whose main dilemma with the middle class is whether to use a Phillips or a flathead...
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
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We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
GLENN: Let me, let me show you Senator Harkin, a talk he gave on healthcare that if this doesn't show you that everything we have told you and warned you about and you've been warning all your friends about is absolutely correct, I don't know what is. Listen to the language. There's about 20 minutes of meat in about two minutes here. Listen to this.
HARKINS: What this bill does is we finally take that step. As our leader said earlier, we take that step from healthcare as a privilege to healthcare as an inalienable right of every single American citizen. And as I said before, this bill is not complete. I've used the analogy of a starter home in which we can add additions and enhancements as we go into the future but like every right that we've ever passed the American people, we revisit it later to enhance and build on those rights, and we will do that here surely.
GLENN: Stop. Now, let's go back at the beginning. Let's take this step by step. Go ahead. Start they beginning.
HARKINS: What this bill does is we finally take that step. As our leader said earlier, we take that step from healthcare as a privilege to healthcare as an inalienable right of every single American citizen.
GLENN: Stop. Okay. First of all, our leader. What our leader has said to us is that we're going to take this final step here. We're taking the step of creating an inalienable right. Specific language, an inalienable right. Let's first of all, where's that language from?
STU: Sure he just made it up. People say inalienable all the time.
GLENN: Where's that language from? Declaration, Declaration of Independence. Give me the line. We hold these truths to be self evident, right?
PAT: Yeah.
GLENN: Go ahead.
PAT: We hold these truths to be self evident.
GLENN: That all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Among those rights, yeah, are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. So let's go back to that language. All men are created equal and endowed, meaning given automatically granted certain all men are endowed by their creator certain inalienable rights. This is so simple that the line right before it is we find these truths to be self evident. This truth is so self is so common sense that it is self evident, meaning you don't need anybody to point it out.
STU: You need no other evidence other than what it is.
GLENN: You need no evidence. You don't need anything. You could be in a room and you'd be like, yep, that's self evident. That makes sense.
STU: That's a great phrase.
PAT: Something everybody knows.
GLENN: We find these truths to be self evident that all men are endowed
STU: Are created equal.
GLENN: Are created equal and endowed by their creator. With certain inalienable rights. Now, that's important to understand. Because he used this language. He used inalienable rights. We have taken it and made it an inalienable right. This is Senator Harkin making, declaring himself and the government God. Our creator. Rights no longer come from the creator. They come from congress. They come from Washington. This is the end of the American Constitution. This is the end or the beginning, I should say the last, the last piece of turn the engine on, of fundamental transformation of the American system. Once they tell you without fear that they can create inalienable rights, the whole system is upside down. Let's continue to listen. Because there's more. Continue.
HARKINS: As I said before, this bill is not complete. I've used the analogy of a starter home in which we can add additions and enhancements as we go into the future.
GLENN: Stop.
PAT: How many times have we said that?
GLENN: How many times have I told you, now listen, what we've got here in one statement is almost everything that we said last year, true. We told you last year they're not paying attention to the Constitution, that they are going around the Constitution, that none of this is constitutional to do. We have told you that they are taking power. It doesn't matter what's in the bill. What matters is the structure. They must change the structure and then they'll do whatever they want. This is what he has just said. We create rights, not God. We give man listen. This is why this is important. Man is endowed by certain inalienable rights by the creator. If that is not true, then your right to free speech, your right to carry a gun, to protect yourself, for the Fifth Amendment, to reasonable search, to all rights that you have that are protected in the Constitution, God which is now Washington, the god of rights, those that can create rights can also deem other rights not good enough for you. If I may point out Arianna Huffington where she said just recently that she understands a person's right to free speech but there should be some sort of system for the free speech of people like Glenn Beck. Well, if they can create, can they not take it away? This is why the structure, I have told you before you must not allow them to pass any of this because once they do, they've got their starter home. Everything that we told you could come, would come, will come. Because they'll just add additions. They'll just tweak it here and there. Go back.
HARKINS: But like every right that we've ever passed to the American people
GLENN: Stop. Do you hear, do you hear what he's saying? He is either under some grand disillusion grand illusion, he is either or he's part of creating it. He doesn't understand our system. For every right that we have created or passed for the American people. That's not your job!
STU: Creator, he's saying what we have created, and he's the creator.
GLENN: Do you hear this?
PAT: Uh huh. As you mentioned, he's putting himself in the creator position. In congress.
GLENN: In the 1930s with FDR the American people were tied enough to history, the founders and the Constitution. Remember it was really the people out of Columbia University under Woodrow Wilson and under the direction of Woodrow Wilson and then into the almighty Harvard where they started dismantling our founders, their views and our Constitution. It took a few years for that to really kick in. Well, we're there now to where they believe that the American people are so disconnected from the founders and what the Constitution actually means that they can come out and say these things, that they are creating rights! And no one in the media will even ask Senator Harkin any questions on this. I can guarantee you. If they do, it will be one he'll dismiss it, he will give it some flippant answer and he'll move on. This is huge.
So they have the starter home. What else?
HARKINS: We revisit it later on to enhance and build on those rights. And we will do that here surely.
GLENN: It is a starter home with unlimited property. Because remember we're also finding out this year, you don't really have a right to own property if those who are creating rights need that property.
Now, I would love to hear from somebody a serious conversation, how that's not accurate. How what I just said to you is some sort of conspiracy. When you have a senator who has taken an oath to protect the Constitution and yet he doesn't even seem to understand the Constitution. When you have a senator who believes that he has the power to create rights wholesale and then not only create the right but have it that there are different kinds of rights, there are starter rights that later transform into new rights, bigger rights, more powerful rights. Whoa. Whoa. That's quite a different concept than our founders had. Is it the same concept that your neighbors have? We'll make this available in audio, put this in the newsletter today. You should ask them, what is, what is your understanding of rights, where they come from? At least in the 1930s include this as well at least in the 1930s they tried to build a Second Bill of Rights. They tried to actually tell the American people we have grown so far, we need a Second Bill of Rights that would include healthcare. No, no. They look at the American people as so stupid that they really believe that you don't understand that government doesn't create rights. Only God and tyrants create rights.
Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010
Unions tentatively struck a deal Tuesday to exempt collectively bargained healthcare plans from a tax on high-cost plans expected to be used to help raise revenue for the healthcare overhaul.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern and United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger met with House Speaker Pelosi Tuesday, a day after labor leaders met at the White House to express their opposition to the excise tax.
House and Senate Democratic leaders are to meet with President Obama this morning at the White House to discuss health care. House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel said he hopes there could be an agreement on the excise tax as early as today after the White House meeting, but then conceded: "That's stretching the word `hope.' "
Exempting collectively bargained plans would appease unions that often offer expensive health plans in lieu of higher wages. The deal could also help Obama avoid breaking his promise not to tax those earning less than $200,000. Obama recently expressed a preference for the excise tax.
The excise tax could further be tweaked to ensure Obama's promise is kept for non-union workers as well.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., said she plans to hold a briefing today to remind negotiators that CEOs of non-union companies also are against the tax.
Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the deal was not enough to bring him on board to support the excise tax on high-cost plans.
"It's setting up a divide-and-conquer situation here where some people are going to feel they're paying for other people, and they're all working," Grijalva said. "That politically is possibly the most dangerous thing Democrats can do is create that division."
House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter indicated leadership was already working on a compromise with the Senate on its excise tax language.
"Even before today when they all met, we were talking about some kind of way we can come to an agreement on changes and maybe somehow we can pay for it other ways," Slaughter said.
Leaders have discussed raising the threshold on the Senate's excise tax to affect higher cost plans -- and potentially make up the revenue gap with an expanded Medicare payroll tax, beyond what is already in the Senate overhaul bill, that could increase the rate and for the first time apply to investment income as well as wages.
Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., said leadership has talked about an expanded Medicare payroll tax.
"But it was only mentioned in the context of these are some of the things that are on the table," he said. "And there was this evolving idea of making the tax only apply to non-earned income," such as dividends.
Slaughter said she did not expect to reach a deal on a final overhaul bill this month. "It will probably be February now when we get finished with it," she said.
Meanwhile, Republicans who say they are upset over the continuing closed-door nature of the talks are planning to file a discharge petition today to force a House vote on a resolution requiring public access to the House-Senate negotiations on the health reform bill.
The "Sunshine Resolution" was introduced by Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., in October. He and Minority Leader Boehner will file the petition.
"With so much at stake, any conference committee or meetings held to determine the content of sweeping national health care legislation should be held in full public view, not behind closed doors," Buchanan said in a statement Tuesday.
by Anna Edney, with Billy House contributing
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Last edited by vector7; January 19th, 2010 at 19:10.
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AP:BOSTON) A panicky White House and Democratic allies scrambled Sunday for a plan to salvage their hard-fought health care package in case a Republican wins Tuesday's Senate race in Massachusetts, which would enable the GOP to block further Senate action.
The likeliest scenario would require House Democrats to accept a bill the Senate passed last month, despite their objections to several parts.
Aides worked frantically Sunday amid fears that Republican Scott Brown will defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in the special election to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy's seat. A Brown win would give the GOP 41 Senate votes, enough to filibuster and block final passage of the House-Senate compromise on health care now being crafted.
House Democrats, especially liberals, viewed those compromises as vital because they view the Senate-passed version as doing too little to help working families. The House passed its own version last year, and members assumed it would be reconciled with the Senate bill and then sent back to both chambers for final approval by the narrowest of margins.
A GOP win in Massachusetts on Tuesday would likely kill that plan, because Republicans could block Senate action on the reconciled bill.
The newly discussed fallback would require House Democrats to swallow hard and approve the Senate-passed bill without changes. President Barack Obama could sign it into law without another Senate vote needed.
House leaders would urge the Senate to make some changes later under a complex plan requiring only a simple majority, but it's unclear whether that could happen.
The plan is problematic. House liberals already are bristling over changes the Senate forced upon them earlier, and some may conclude that no bill is better than the Senate bill. Meanwhile, some moderate Democrats may abandon the health bill altogether after seeing a Republican win Kennedy's seat in strongly Democratic Massachusetts.
Still, "the simplest way is the House route," a White House aide said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity because Democrats have not conceded the race to Brown.
If Coakley wins, final passage of a House-Senate compromise is not guaranteed but seems likely.
But even as Obama campaigned for Coakley in Boston Sunday, top aides furiously weighed options if she loses. They include:
_Acting before Brown is sworn in. Congressional and White House negoatiators could try to reconcile the House and Senate bills quickly and pass them before Brown takes office. A firestorm of criticism would follow, but some Democrats say it would be better than having no bill.
_Seeking a Republican to cast the crucial 60th Senate vote. Some Democrats hope Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, might do this, but others seriously doubt it.
_Start over and pass a new, scaled back health bill using a complicated process that requires a simple majority of 51 Senate votes. Several Senate aides said this was unlikely.
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Democrats were coalescing Tuesday around a plan to force the Senate’s version of health-care reform through the House if Republican Scott Brown wins the Massachusetts Senate seat.
“The Senate bill clearly is better than nothing,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Maryland Democrat, to reporters at the Capitol.
Hoyer said it would be feasible to pass the health-care bill through the Congress in the next 15 days, which is how much time it might take to seat Brown if he defeats Democrat Martha Coakley in Tuesday’s special election.
Hoyer did not say specifically that Democrats in Congress intended to take the Senate bill and pass it through the House without any changes, but knowledgeable Democrats said that is the most likely path forward for them.
President Obama’s State of the Union speech, once imagined as the moment when Democrats would celebrate the passage or imminent passage of health care, now will be used as a rallying point to calm skittish Democrats who will fear that voting for health care could be signing their own political death warrants, one source close to the administration said.
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By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer – 41 mins ago
WASHINGTON – The top House Democrat says giving up on a health care bill isn't an option.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday, "I don't see that as a possibility...we will have something."
The California Democrat said today's health care system is financially unsustainable, and it's not in the American character to allow tens of millions of citizens to go uninsured.
Pelosi didn't say whether the final bill will be the sweeping overhaul sought by President Barack Obama, or smaller-scale legislation that accomplishes only some of his goals. Democrats were on the verge of passing far-reaching legislation, but the loss of a Massachusetts Senate seat has cost them the 60-vote majority needed to deliver.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional leaders are taking health care legislation off the fast track as rank-and-file Democrats, wary of unhappy midterm election voters, look to President Barack Obama for guidance in his State of the Union address.
House and Senate leaders said Tuesday they need time to determine the best way forward on health care in the wake of last week's special election loss in Massachusetts, which cost Democrats their filibuster-proof Senate majority.
Obama is not expected to offer a specific prescription in Wednesday night's speech, but Democrats want to hear him renew his commitment to the health care overhaul he's spent the past year promoting as his top domestic priority.
It is now badly adrift, and lawmakers want to stop talking about the divisive topic and move on to jobs and the economy, the issues they say preoccupy their constituents.
"The president effectively will hit the reset button (Wednesday) night, after which we'll have a matter of weeks, not months to get this right," said Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.
"We're reaching the point where our momentum is clearly stopped already," Weiner said. "If we're going to do this, I think we have to do this soon."
Not so, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
"We're going to find out how to proceed," Reid told reporters Tuesday. "But there is no rush."
The House and Senate separately passed 10-year, nearly $1 trillion bills last year to remake the nation's medical system with new requirements for nearly everyone to carry health insurance and new regulations on insurers' practices. Negotiators were in the final stages of reconciling the differences between the two measures before last week's GOP upset in the race for the Senate seat long held by the late Edward M. Kennedy.
Democrats acknowledge that opposition to the health care remake in Washington helped spark the Massachusetts revolution.
Democrats now have four options for moving forward, said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer: no bill; a scaled-back measure designed to attract some Republican support; the House passing the Senate bill; or the House passing the Senate bill, with both chambers making changes to bridge their differences.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has ruled out passing the Senate bill with no changes, and no Democrats are publicly advocating abandoning the effort altogether, though Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, a leader of conservative House Democrats, said some conservative Democrats would prefer to do just that.
The option attracting the most attention is for the House to pass the Senate bill with changes. Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 Democrat, told reporters Tuesday he thinks the House could do so if lawmakers get rid of provisions like special Medicaid deals for Louisiana and Nebraska and dial back a tax on high-cost insurance plans opposed by labor unions.
But two centrist senators threw up a roadblock to the approach, because it would require using a special budget-related procedure to go around Republican opponents in the Senate, a calculated risk sure to inflame critics on the political right. Sens. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., who both face re-election this year in Republican-leaning states, said they would oppose taking that step.
The strategy requires only 51 votes to advance, but Senate leaders may not be able to round up the support. Even if they do, final action could stretch into late next month or beyond. And a number of Democrats sounded Tuesday like health care was the last thing they wanted to be dealing with.
"If someone's losing their house, lost their job, the last thing they care about is their next door neighbor's health care," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "Health care isn't the No. 1 issue on their minds. If it's not the No. 1 issue on my constituents' minds, it's not the No. 1 issue on my mind."
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The White House on Monday released a nearly $1 trillion health care overhaul bill that will block extreme insurance premium increases in a new, likely last attempt to revive President Obama's top reform priority on Capitol Hill.
The bill, largely modeled on the legislation that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve, was written so that it can pass Congress by traditional means or pushed through the Senate under "reconciliation," a complicated procedural tool that circumvents a filibuster by the Republican minority.
The bill's release comes four days ahead of Mr. Obama's bipartisan, televised health care reform summit, where Republicans had hoped to restart the health care bill negotiations from scratch or suggested they would oppose Mr. Obama's plan. But the White House dismissed that notion on Monday, arguing that too much work already has been done.
"The president believes we've done a lot of very good work on health reform over the last year, and starting from scratch doesn't make sense," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said. "However, we are coming to this meeting with an open mind to additional ideas, and we hope the Republicans will do the same."
Almost immediately after the White House made public Mr. Obama's preferred plan, Republicans were dismissing the bill as nothing more than what congressional Democrats tried to pass before.
"The president has crippled the credibility of this weeks summit by proposing the same massive government takeover of health care, based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected," House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said. "This new Democrats-only backroom deal doubles down on the same failed approach that will drive up premiums, destroy jobs, raise taxes and slash Medicare benefits."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said the plan includes "positive elements" from the House and Senate bills, but she did not immediately endorse the Obama plan.
"I look forward to reviewing it with House members and then joining the president and the Republican leadership at the Blair House meeting on Thursday," she said in a statement.
White House officials said they believe the approximately $1 trillion, 10-year plan will be fully paid for and say they are ready to make tweaks if the Congressional Budget Office -- the nonpartisan budget monitor -- says otherwise.
Mr. Pfeiffer called the legislation, posted on whitehouse.gov Monday morning, "the opening bid of the health meeting" and challenged Republicans to post their own bill online. A year ago, Mr. Obama said he wanted to leave the details of the health plan up to Congress. But the effort stalled last month with Republican Scott Brown's surprise win in a Massachusetts special Senate election, stripping Democrats of their 60th vote in the Senate and sending the health bill to Congress' back burner.
Mr. Pfeiffer said the president's bill was "informed" by the House-Senate negotiations that took place up until Mr. Brown's election. The two chambers were trying to reconcile two very different versions of the bill when Mr. Brown's victory upset their calculations.
The legislation addresses a number of concerns Democrats had with the two bills -- it eliminates special funding for Nebraska's Medicaid expansion, dubbed the "Cornhusker kickback," in favor of more funding for all states, for instance. The original provision was added to woo centrist Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, but Mr. Nelson said later he was merely hoping to get more funding for all states and not a special benefit for Nebraska.
The plan includes more generous tax subsidies than the Senate's bill originally had. It also reduces the Senate's tax on high-cost insurance plans, a proposal that faced harsh criticism from House Democrats and labor unions. Some of the lost revenue will come from a new Medicare payroll tax on non-wage income from the nation's top earners.
The federal government would be able to block or reduce extreme insurance premium hikes under the new plan. Mr. Obama has criticized insurance companies for unfairly springing massive price increases on customers -- such as Anthem Blue Cross's recent announcement that premiums could go up 39 percent for California policyholders.
The legislation also would require all Americans to carry health insurance, with exceptions for the poor and help in the form of tax break for the middle class. It would set up state-based insurance exchanges from which consumers would purchase their coverage.
As was the case in both the House and Senate bills, the White House legislation also would ban insurance company practices such as denying customers for pre-existing conditions.
• Kara Rowland contributed to this report.
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After a brief period of consultation following the White House health reform summit, congressional Democrats plan to begin making the case next week for a massive, Democrats-only health care plan, party strategists told POLITICO.
A Democratic official said the six-hour summit was expected to “give a face to gridlock, in the form of House and Senate Republicans.”
Democrats plan to begin rhetorical, and perhaps legislative, steps toward the Democrats-only, or reconciliation, process early next week, the strategists said.
After the summit, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid planned to take the temperature of their caucuses.
“The point [of the summit] is to alter the political atmospherics, and it will take a day or two to sense if it succeeded,” the official said.
Positive statements by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) of late “are early signs the environment is already shifting a little in favor of revisiting health care.”
Democrats plan to take up the president’s comprehensive, $950 billion plan — referred to on the Hill as “the big bill.” The alternative would be a smaller — or “skinny” — bill that would provide less coverage and cost less. But that would amount to starting the complex process over.
“It’s probably the big bill or nothing,” said a top Democratic aide. “If we don’t get the big bill, I am sure some will push for a skinny bill.”
An e-mail from a House Democratic leadership aide gives a sense of the party’s post-summit message.
“The president walked into a room filled with the entire House Republican Conference. There were no preconditions, his only request was that it be open to the press so that the American people could see the exchange,” the aide e-mailed. “He answered every question with a thoughtful, comprehensive response. He spoke for over an hour and discussed substantive policy issues.
“The president never once worried about it being a trap. He didn’t cry about the room set-up. His conduct reflected someone who was confident in his ideas, respectful of the other side, and not afraid to debate important issues. ... Some Republicans have insulted the summit by calling it a set-up or a taxpayer-funded infomercial. Now we learn they have spent several weeks organizing a rapid-response operation.”
A House Republican aide said this would be the party’s post-summit message: "Americans want to scrap the Democrats' massive bill and start over with clean sheet of paper to work on step-by-step, common-sense reforms that lower health care costs."
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WASHINGTON - President Obama ended Thursday's daylong White House summit with a bang, threatening to pass health care reform without Republican support if a bipartisan agreement remained out of reach.
President Barack Obama gestures at the Blair House in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010, as he renewed his efforts for health care reform while meeting with Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders. (AP)
WASHINGTON - President Obama ended Thursday's daylong White House summit with a bang, threatening to push for passage of health care reform without Republican support if a bipartisan agreement remained out of reach.
"If we're unable to resolve differences over health care, we will need to move ahead on decisions," he said, alluding to using reconciliation, a controversial maneuver that prevents a GOP filibuster by requiring only 51 votes to pass legislation.
Obama added that if voters are unhappy with results, then "that's what elections are for."
Obama thanked the three dozen lawmakers who participated in the summit, though the meeting didn't appear to bridge the differences between the two parties.
Republicans remained adamant that their incremental approach reflected the will of the people and wouldn't break the bank while Democrats insisted that sweeping health care reform was the only way to fix the system.
Yet Obama held out hope that the two parties could find common ground.
"I thought it was worthwhile for us to make the effort," he said in his closing remarks. But he rejected the Republican argument to use a step-by-step approach.
"It turns out that baby steps don't get you where you need to go," he said. "If we saw significant movement, not just gestures, then you wouldn't need to start over because everyone here knows what the issues," he said. "We cannot have another yearlong debate on this."
Republicans opened the summit by urging Obama to "start over" on health care reform and to renounce an unusual move to sidestep a GOP filibuster.
Democrats responded by repeatedly highlighting several points of agreement on health care reform with the GOP in an effort to show that it made no sense to start over again. They also cast the reform they want as critical to tackling an issue that is even more pressing to many Americans -- the struggling economy.
Yet Democrats were unable to overcome the points of disagreement that prevented a bipartisan breakthrough.
Early on in the summit, the president clashed with Republicans over whether his health care proposal, which is modeled after the Senate version that passed on Christmas Eve, would lower premium rates.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said the Congressional Budget Office, which is the official scorekeeper on Capitol Hill legislation, noted that premiums will rise in the individual market under the Senate bill.
Obama shot back that Alexander's claim was "not factually accurate," arguing that premiums would go down 14 to 20 percent for families who keep their same coverage.
"What the Congressional Budget Office says is that because now they've got a better deal, because policies are cheaper, they may choose to buy better coverage than they do right now," Obama said.
"That might be 10 to 13 percent more expensive than the bad insurance they had previously."
The heated exchange set the tone for a meeting that Democrats dominated by speaking for most of the morning session, according to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who at one point noted that Democrats had spoken for 56 minutes compared to 24 minutes for Republicans.
But Republicans used their limited time to repeatedly slam the Democratic health care bill, with a harsh critique coming from Sen. John McCain, Obama's opponent in the 2008 presidential race.
McCain blasted the steps Democrats have taken over the past year to advance the legislation, including striking backroom deals with the drug manufacturing lobby, and other arrangements that favored certain states with reluctant Democratic senators.
"I hope that would be an argument for us to go through this 2,400-page document, remove all the special deals for the special interests that favor the few and treat all Americans the same ... so that they will know that geography does not dictate what kind of health care they would receive," McCain said.
Obama told McCain that they're no longer campaigning.
"The election is over," Obama said.
"I'm reminded of that every day," McCain said with a laugh.
Throwing diplomacy to the wind, House Minority Leader John Boehner came out swinging during the second half of the summit, telling Obama that he believes the Democratic version of health care reform would "bankrupt our country" and is a "dangerous experiment."
"We may have problems in our health care system but we do have the best health care system in the world by far and having the government take over health care... is a dangerous experiment with the best health care system in the world that I don't think we should do."
Boehner echoed his GOP colleagues in urging Obama to scrap the bill and start over. The Ohio Republican criticized elements of the bill when it was his turn at the microphone during Obama's health summit Thursday.
Boehner rejected proposed tax increases and said $500 billion in projected Medicare savings should be used to keep the program solvent. He said requiring people to buy health insurance is unwise and possibly unconstitutional, and fining employers that don't provide their workers with health coverage would drive up unemployment.
Obama dismissed Boehner's criticism as "the standard talking points that Democrats and Republicans have had for the last year."
"And that doesn't drive us to an agreement on issues," the president said, adding that Boehner's argument "based on my analysis, just isn't true."
Up until those sharp exchanges, both political sides had maintained a mostly diplomatic tone. But the high-stakes summit exposed deep political fault lines neither side was sure could be straddled.
"We have a very difficult gap to bridge here," Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, said in reference to Democrats' stalemated legislation to extend coverage to more than 30 million people who are now uninsured. "We just can't afford this. That's the ultimate problem."
Obama said both parties should focus on areas they agree on, like reducing health care costs, and areas where they disagree -- "and at the end of that process then make an honest assessment about whether we can bridge these differences."
"I don't know yet whether we can," the president said. "My hope is that we can. I'm going to be very eager to hear and explore how we might do so."
The summit began with Republicans urging Democrats to hit the reset button on health care reform.
Democratic leaders argued back, saying it was too late to start over and claiming that most Americans want health care reform now.
A new poll, however, shows that Americans are more concerned about the nearly 10 percent unemployment rate than they are about health care reform.
Forty-six percent of Americans say creating jobs should be the government's top priority, according to a Zogby International-University of Texas Science Center poll. Only 18 percent said health care reform was the top issue on their list.
But Thursday's summit at Blair House was called for a bipartisan discussion of health care, and Republicans took the opportunity to tell the president to his face that he should start from scratch and go "step by step" in reducing health care costs.
"We believe we have a better idea," Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn, told the president in his opening remarks for Republicans, arguing that his party represents the views of a great number of Americans who oppose the Democratic approach.
"This is a car that can't be recalled and fixed, and we ought to start over,"Alexander said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected Alexander's call for a promise from Democrats that they wouldn't use reconciliation -- a controversial procedural move that would pass a bill with a simple majority of 51 votes -- to push their health care plan through alone.
Reid said that reconciliation -- often called the "nuclear option" -- isn't the only way to pass the health care overhaul. But he added that Republicans can't pretend it's never been used before to push a bill through. Reid said Republicans are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts, in the health care debate.
Leaving the site during a lunch break, Obama was asked by waiting reporters if he thought the debate was engendering a lot of interest across the country.
"I don't know if it's interesting watching it on TV," he responded. But Obama also said, "I think we're establishing that there are actually some areas of real agreement. And we're starting to focus on what the disagreements are."
"If you look at the issue of how much government should be involved," he said, "the argument that the Republicans are making really isn't that this is a government takeover of health care but rather that we're ensuring the ... We're regulating the insurance market too much. And that's a legitimate philosophical disagreement."
Polls show Americans want their elected leaders to address the problems of high medical costs, eroding access to coverage and uneven quality. But the public is split over the Democrats' sweeping legislation, with its $1 trillion, 10-year price tag and many complex provisions, including some that wouldn't take effect for another eight years -- after Obama has packed up and left the White House.
Fox News' Dominique Pastre, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. ."
We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
'Obama, looking incongruously glamorous in a crisp white shirt and blue tie - like Jamie Foxx chairing a convention of Pittsburgh cement contractors - gave an Oscar-worthy performance as the Concerned Listener'
Warning: watching American politicians argue about healthcare can be seriously damaging to your health. Symptoms may include migraines, extreme fatigue and sudden violent urges. In the event of exposure to competing statistics — regarding "donut holes", "HMO deductibles", "reconciliation devices" or suchlike — seek immediate medical help.
The public affairs television channel C-Span 3 might as well have put such a message at the bottom of its screen yesterday as it broadcast President Obama’s epic six-hour "bipartisan" debate on US medical reform.
Of course, by the usual standards of C-Span programming — which can induce sleep faster than an IV drip of propofol — the summit was the equivalent of a bikini mud wrestling contest. You half expected the picture to shake as the camera operator struggled to compose himself.
For the rest of us, however, it was mainly an opportunity to see how many conciliatory-looking poses Obama could strike while listening to his Republican opponents explain why the entire first year of his administration has been a gigantic waste of time, and why the telephone directory-sized health Bills produced by both the Democrat-controlled House and Senate should be fed into a shredder the size of Connecticut, before they . . . well, no one seems to know exactly what these vast pieces of legislation would do.
Except that it won’t be good, because the US Congress generally only does expensive and complicated.
The President’s first challenger of the morning was the Republican charmer Lamar Alexander, a whiskey-voiced Senator from Tennessee.
“We want you to succeed, because if you succeed, our country succeeds,” he told Obama, before adding, a few moments later, that want he really wanted, more than anything, was for the President to fail.
Or, as he put it: “This [healthcare reform] is a car that can’t be recalled and fixed . . . we ought to start over.”
Throughout all this, Obama, looking incongruously glamorous in a crisp white shirt and blue tie — like Jamie Foxx chairing a convention of Pittsburgh cement contractors — gave an Oscar-worthy performance as the Concerned Listener.
He listened with his chin raised and his eyes narrowed. His listened with his head resting quizzically in one hand. He listened while scribbling furiously in his notebook. Indeed, it was only when one of his own allies began to speak — the purple-suited Nancy Pelosi, famed for her left-wing politics and fondness for private jets — that Obama’s camera-talent abandoned him, and he allowed himself to be filmed with his middle finger creeping over his lips, as if urging Ms Pelosi to shut the hell up and take the next Gulfstream back to California.
His frustration was understandable. After all, for a while, it seemed as though Senator Alexander might be getting the upper hand, and the viewer began to wonder if Obama’s gambit — to bore America into submission while getting another opportunity to look handsome on television — was about to blow up in his face.
But then Alexander made the fatal mistake of claiming that even Congressional Budget Office thought Obama’s healthcare reform plan would result in more expensive health insurance premiums.
Quite the opposite, interjected Obama, suddenly in his legal scholar element: the Budget Office said that premiums would fall, which would then inspire middle class families to purchase better, more expensive insurance policies. “This is an example of where we’ve got to get our facts straight,” he chided, in the tone you might use while encouraging a toddler to eat all his peas.
Alexander attempted a flustered response, before declaring that he would like to submit his rebuttal in writing at a later date, instead of “arguing in public”. Obama, now sounding like the leader that has been mostly absent from the White House for the past year, declined the offer. “I’d like to get this issue resolved before we leave today, because I don’t believe I’m wrong,” he said.
For the Democrats, it was a long overdue moment of victory. Whether anyone in America was still awake to witness it, however, was another matter.
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. ."
We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
Re: Mandating health Insurance... now
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