It's The End Of The Week, And ObamaKennedyDeathCare Is Edging Closer To Reality

I know, it's a gloomy thought, but it's reality, so we've got to deal with it.  The first step is getting informed, and you're in the right place for that!  Let's get to it!

First, let's tackle abortion.  I don't need to say much, because this video says it all:

More details about the various committee votes and amendments can be found here, along with the latest report showing that support for abortion has fallen to its lowest level in years (47%).  This is clearly an issue about which much of the country is concerned, and the Democrats are being blatantly dishonest about their plans.


One of the most interesting things to watch has been the defection of seniors.  Traditionally a Democrat stronghold, seniors have been fleeing the Democrat party since the first ObamaKennedyDeathCare bills began to be made public.  They know that they will bear the biggest brunt of the health care rationing that will inevitably come under such a plan -- not to mention the $500 billion in Medicare cuts currently being proposed -- and are expressing a whole lotta' dissent and displeasure about it!  The response from Obama?  A bailout, and an attempt to buy them off:

There will be no cost of living increase for more than 50 million Social Security recipients next year, the first year without a raise since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975.

Blame falling consumer prices. By law, cost of living adjustments are pegged to inflation, which is negative this year, the government said Thursday, because of lower energy costs. Social Security payments do not go down, even when prices drop.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, is pursuing a different way to boost recipients’ income. On Wednesday, President Barack Obama called for a second round of $250 stimulus payments for seniors, veterans, retired railroad workers and people with disabilities.

The payments would match the ones issued to seniors earlier this year as part of the government’s economic recovery package. The payments would be equal to about a 2 percent increase for the average Social Security recipient.z

Haven't we yet learned that bailouts never work?  Also, is $250 really the price for which most seniors will sell themselves?  I can't imagine.  And besides, where is all that money coming from?  It's yet another redistribution gig, taking taxpayer money from one group of people (you and me) and giving it to another, purely for political purposes.  And Obama isn't even making an attempt to 'pay for it'.  Thanks for that, Mr. President.


But there's more.


Five different Congressional committees have passed some version of ObamaKennedyDeathCare.  Right now, the Dem leadership is smashing all of those into one cohesive bill that will eventually be voted upon by both the House and Senate.  Given the hideously unethical and irregular way in which all of this has been accomplished, however, the bill is essentially being written behind closed doors by just a couple of Democrat leaders.  As such, there is pressure being brought to bear to make sure to include the public option, which was stripped out of a least one of the five initial 'bills'.  Doing this will create some inevitable problems with various groups supporting it, but rest assured that the Dem leadership will stop at nothing to get it done.


And it keeps getting worse.  Now they're having to resort to outright thievery:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Democratic Leadership are meeting, as you read this, behind closed doors with White House staff . They are trying to cut and paste the complex provisions of the Senate Finance Committee health bill (the Baucus Bill) and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions bill ( the Kennedy-Dodd bill). They want to produce an overhaul of one sixth of the economy under federal control that is somehow coherent and yet not add “one dime,” as President solemnly promised, to the deficit.



The Senate leaders know that when they cobble all of this together they are going to have a big problem making the numbers come out right. So, fellow citizens, they are contemplating a classic shell game: Hide the increased spending under the shell of different bills. For example, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) is proposing separate legislation (S.1776) that would repeal the Medicare payment update formula (one of the more bizarre Congressional administrative pricing creations), and the result would be a $247 billion increase Medicare spending by $247 billion. For the Senate leaders, it’s a neat little way around the public appearance of aggravating the already enormous “deficit problem” They raise ten year health spending by $247 billion, but keep it out of the Senate health bill. That way, they’ll be able to claim, with sort of a straight face, that the Senate’s final product, crammed with additional spending, is still “deficit neutral.”

It’s like maxing out on the company credit card. Then, to show the accountants that one is not running up debt on the card, one simply goes out and buys a new credit card. Then, continue to run up more debt on the new one. How convenient.

More:

In other words, the “comprehensive” Baucus plan isn’t comprehensive at all, but a cherry-picking summary that ignores the rate increase Democrats plan to offer.  Combined, that would put the Senate version of ObamaCare at over $1.1 trillion and cause it to increase the federal deficit.  Interestingly and hardly coincidentally, this only came to light after the Finance Committee asked for CBO scoring on Baucus’ summary.

And did they attempt to split the bill so that Baucus could claim to have actually saved money?  Not exactly:

In the Senate, the immediate impact of a two-bill approach is to slice $10.7 billion from the cost of the health care bill that cleared the Finance Committee bill, money that could then be spent on other priorities.

This is an extraordinarily dishonest maneuver by Democrats.  I could go back to their 2006-8 rhetoric about “open and honest government” and “transparency,” but this goes beyond hypocrisy.  Stabenow, Reid, Baucus, and their colleagues have conspired to lie to the American public about the true cost of this health-care overhaul.  There simply is no other interpretation possible.  Baucus submitted a summary with reimbursement rates he knew would be false to gain favorable CBO scoring, while his colleagues changed the reimbursement rates via legislative sleight-of-hand.

This shows precisely how desperate they are to gain control over YOUR health care decisions!


But, amazingly, they're not done yet...!  Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid is trying to slip this second cherry-picked bill through extremely quickly, and has already scheduled a vote over it for Monday afternoon.  You might want to call your Senators -- and Mr. Reid -- before then.


But, there are two more critical pieces of information that came out today, and they are both huge.  First is that the Democrats are laying the groundwork for actually using reconciliation (here, here) to pass ObamaKennedyDeathCare:

House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) held a hearing this morning to certify that H.R. 3200 — the main House Obamacare bill which was the subject of all the town hall rage in August — has met all requirements to pass as a “budget reconciliation” measure.

Under reconciliation, the bill can be passed by a simple majority vote in the Senate — just 51 votes — and will be given preferential treatment on the House floor as well. The Dems have apparently invoked the “nuclear option” to shut out Republicans and ensure the bill is passed before the end of the year.

The bill certified for “reconciliation” is the Ways & Means version of H.R. 3200 that was passed out of committee before the August break, and before it was read aloud at town hall meetings across the country and blasted by voters across the country.

This is a clear sign that they know they don't have the popular support, nor the votes from their own party to pass it legitimately.  Thus, the despicable subterfuge.


Finally, Harry Reid slipped up today and admitted the true cost of ObamaKennedyDeathCare while pooh-poohing tort reform:

$2 trillion??  $2 trillion??  What happened to deficit neutral?  What happened to Obama's pledge -- ha ha! -- to not raise the deficit one dime with this legislation?  Hot Air has more:

...the actual scale for the CBO analysis is ten years, not each year.  That scale follows the Congressional stage-setting of costs over the next ten years for ObamaCare in order to determine the impact on the deficit.  With that in mind, remember too that the $54 billion is what the CBO expects in deficit savings, not overall savings to the health-care industry, which is what the Senate and the House claim they’re trying to accomplish.  The overall savings come to at least $110 billion over that same period, perhaps as high as $135 billion, or about 0.5% of the entire cost of the industry — which may still be a small percentage, but is significant in terms of actual money spent.  It would come to over $1000 per family in the first ten years.

For that matter, a comprehensive tort reform bill would save money in other industries as well, but the CBO hasn’t scored that yet.

As for doing the math, Reid appears to have two problems with it.  One is just the Beltwayitis that renders Senators and Representatives incapable of understanding that $54 billion is a lot of money, especially in savings to a ballooning deficit.  The more pressing political problem is his math on the Baucus plan.  Max Baucus sold this plan on the premise that it only costs $829 billion and that it would not inflate the deficit.  Others, such as Cato, have pegged the cost at $2 trillion, which would make it a huge deficit multiplier.  Reid seems to admit exactly this in his statement here.

I'd say there's no 'seems' about it - that's precisely what he did!

And while we're at it, I'd like to remind the Senator that it was just days ago that Democrats were triumphantly broadcasting the fact that ObamaKennedyDeathCare would 'reduce the deficit' by $80+ billion dollars.  Um...if we're talking about a $2 trillion bill, is $80 billion really that much different than $54 billion?  By my calculator, it's about 1% more.  That 1% is apparently makes all the difference!


Everything about this is wrong.  The cost, the methodology being used, the demonstrable results...all of it.  This is got to stop, and that will only happen if the American people flood their Senators and Congresspersons' offices with angry calls and e-mails demanding it stop.  We've got to persuade those Democrats that it is worse for them to commit political suicide and implement ObamaKennedyDeathCare than to stand against it and keep their jobs.  Start dialing.



There's my two cents.