A couple of the ugliest pieces of the Theft/Pork bill were, in fact, added back into the final version of the bill in the conference committee (exactly as predicted). Keep in mind these things were added while the Republicans were literally locked out of the room.
· $9 billion for school construction was added back in (originally cut by Nelson-Collins)
· $5 billion increase for the state fiscal stabilization fund (originally cut by Nelson-Collins), making it a grand total of $53.6 billion
· $2 billion for neighborhood stabilization program, money for groups like ACORN
· $1 billion added back for Prevention & Wellness Programs, including STD education
· Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research was added back in, leading Americans down the path towards healthcare rationing (63 patient advocacy groups signed a letter voicing their concerns with this provision)
(BUT, NOT INFRASTRUCTURE)
· Money for highways and bridges was cut by $1 billion from the House-passed level
· Tax relief to help middle class families and small businesses was sharply pared back in order to increase government spending. Public opinion over the last 4 weeks has shown that Americans overwhelming believe tax cuts, and not government spending, are a better way to stimulate the economy.
So, just a few samples of this bill would fund the law-breaking radical Left voter fraud organization ACORN, provide construction for schools that don't need it, and lay the groundwork for nationalized health care. Oh, and they took out the infrastructure spending and cut back the tax cuts. More wonderfulness:· Approximately $75 billion in true tax relief was CUT from the Nelson-Collins package. So, while the overall size of the package may have gotten slightly smaller, the spending actually increased.
And this is an improvement how??The Drudge Report also has the following stories (remember, the Democrats have sworn that there's not a single little bit of pork in there):
Finally, here's what Tom Coburn, Senator from Oklahoma tells us about that nationalized health care bit (he's a practicing physician):
"The health care provisions in the House stimulus bill represent ideological and partisan overreach of epic proportions. It is ludicrous to ask a body that can't track its own spending to determine which medical treatments are best for individual patients suffering from complex diseases. The only reason to fund this project now is to lay the groundwork for establishing a government board that will be empowered to make life and death medical decisions about health care treatments and cost," Dr. Coburn said.
Dr. Coburn explained that both the House and Senate version of the stimulus bill include $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research. Unfortunately, the House language overreaches by permitting the use of that money to make coverage decisions based on cost to the federal government.
"The practice of medicine is about 40 percent art and 60 percent science. A so-called 'comparative effectiveness' formula will replace the professional judgment of doctors and nurses, which is developed over many years, with the political judgments of politicians and bureaucrats. A comparative effectiveness formula will only save money by rationing care and ending lives. Congress is on the verge of enacting the same policy that Great Britain has used to decide, for example, that extending a patient's life for a year isn't worth more than $45,000," Dr. Coburn said.
"Trusting the government to ration care will take away choices and life-saving treatments from sick patients and deny families more time with their loved ones. Doctors and patients should be making decisions based on individual patient conditions and needs. Allowing government to make these decisions would set us on a dangerous path. The unelected staff and career politicians who are negotiating these details have almost zero real world experience in the health care sector. Congress should confess its limited capabilities in this area and debate this issue in the open, not rush through massive policy changes in secret," Dr. Coburn said.
This is bad, bad news. Ask anyone who's lived in a system of nationalized health care before and you'll find out why.Keep dialing. We need as much opposition to this thing as possible. Remember the new 2Cents mantra...
There's my two cents.
Sources:
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/02/acorn-funding-added-back-to-stimulus.html
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmVhMWQ3NzJkZDJlMTg5NjRjMzE1NzUyMGNlZjcwOWI
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/02/12/here-it-is-all-1434-pages-of-the-porkulus-conference-report/
http://www.drudgereport.com/
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/02/dissension_on_t.html
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