SPEAKER PELOSI'S SPENDAPALOOZA

Is this any way to run a household budget? Common sense tells you, when your expenses exceed your income, something has to give. Responsible adults review the cash flow and make adjustments by cutting back their expenses. If not, they are looking bankruptcy square in the face. If this administration keeps going along their chosen path, America will clearly go bankrupt, and one has to wonder if this in their intended outcome.

Recently, we have learned some new alarming lessons such as the Cloward-Piven Strategy and Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, none of which Americans want to believe, but as each day passes, it is becoming more and more apparent.

If we are to save this country, we must stay engaged, we must continue to educate ourselves, and we must band together to speak out in protest of this 'transformation' of the United States of America. Just add up the new bills recapped in this piece. Unbelievable!

More proof is written in the Heritage Foundation, as Miss Nancy (clearly addicted to power) presses for more money, and raising the debt ceiling to roughly $14 TRILLION dollars. Again, our individual household budget would drive us to bankruptcy if our credit card companies did not cut us off, but rather increase our credit line. Complete and total suicide.


Speaker Pelosi’s Spendapalooza
December 11, 2009

Next week Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is expected to attach a provision to the Department of Defense appropriations bill that would increase our national debt limit by $1.925 trillion. This debt limit raise would authorize the U.S. Treasury to borrow as much as $14 trillion, which is 30% higher than the $10.8 trillion limit that was in place when President Barack Obama took office.

Defending the unprecedented size of the debt limit, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told The Examiner: “There is no doubt the debt ceiling will have to be at that level in order to meet our financial obligations at this time next year. This is not creating new debt.” Not creating new debt? Hoyer speaks as though he and his Speaker are completely powerless to control all the federal spending that is driving up “our financial obligations.” In fact, Hoyer’s statement comes on the same day that he and Speaker Pelosi forced through a $447 billion “minibus” spending bill that every single Republican and 28 Democrats voted against.

Filled with 5,224 earmarks, this merged appropriations bill provides an 8% hike in discretionary spending for the third consecutive year since Pelosi took over Congress in 2007. Altogether, discretionary spending has jumped 25% since Speaker Pelosi took the gavel, and Congressional Democrats have spent $561 billion more in discretionary spending than if they had limited federal spending growth to the baseline inflation rate. Despite a $1.4 trillion deficit, appropriations bills passed this year have included:

• A 67% increase for the Environmental Protection Agency’s State and Tribal Assistance Grants;
• A 30% increase for the Corporation for National and Community Service;
• A 9% increase for Amtrak;
• An 8.4% increase for Lawmakers’ Office Allowances; and
• An 8.1% increase for the National Endowment for the Arts.

This is not the budgeting of a Congress even minimally serious about the budget deficit. And each large annual discretionary spending increase becomes part of the permanent discretionary spending baseline. In fact, the steep increases over the past three years have added $1.7 trillion to the 2011-2020 discretionary spending baseline – nearly $1,500 per household annually. In the past year, Pelosi’s House has passed a $700 billion financial bailout and a trillion dollar stimulus, a $1.5 trillion health care expansion, a $200 billion Medicare “doc fix,” and an $800 billion cap-and-trade bill. There is no increase to domestic federal spending that Speaker Pelosi can say “no” to.

It is far past time for responsible leaders in Congress to rein in Pelosi’s profligacy. At a bare minimum, lawmakers should demand that any debt-limit increase also statutorily cap discretionary spending growth at the inflation rate (approximately 2.5 percent annually) for the next decade. Even better, a return to federal spending levels of just a decade ago could go a long way towards solving our debt problem. Heritage’s Brian Riedl explains:

In the 1980s and 1990s, Washington consistently spent $21,000 per household (adjusted for inflation). Simply returning to that level would balance the budget by 2012 without any tax hikes. Alternatively, returning to the $25,000 per household level (adjusted for inflation) that Washington spent before the current recession would likely balance the budget by 2019 without any tax hikes.

QUICK HITS

Speaker Pelosi said yesterday she “would do almost anything” to get Obamacare passed before Christmas.

According to a USA TODAY analysis, while the private sector has shed 7.3 million jobs, the number of federal government workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession.

According to The New York Times, Americans who buy the same health benefits as members of Congress, or buy coverage through Medicare, will have to fork over a large chunk of cash under the latest Senate Democrat health plan.

The Washington Examiner reports that only one fourth of AARP revenues come from membership dues, while the rest come from selling AARP’s name to businesses, including businesses that would benefit from Obamacare, which the AARP has endorsed.

According to a new report, climate change criminals have pocketed almost 5 billion Euros by manipulating Europe’s carbon trading “market.”

THE 'COSTS' of MEDICAL CARE

As most Americans deal with the sting of Saturday night, they are gearing up to fight again. A battle was lost, based on deceit known as the Stupak amendment, already showing signs of being reversed, and the ink isn't even dry.

In his pitch before the House vote Saturday night, Obama warned Democrats: “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit [Democratic voters] and it will encourage the extremists.”

So now the commander-in-chief refers to his fellow Americans as extremists, teabag, anti-government citizens. Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks states:

We are far ahead of where we should be given the power Democrats have over America. But as we like to say at FreedomWorks: Government goes to those who show up. You have run to the sound of the guns, time and again in this most important fight over the future of America. Let's finish the battle, and bury the idea of government-run health care once and for all.

If you have any doubt that we can stop this, remember:

• We kept them from passing the bill in July before anyone could read it.

• We let them know what we thought about Washington all month long in August.

• We marched on the Capitol by the hundreds of thousands on September 12 and kept them from passing a bill for another month.

• We spent October calling, writing, and visiting our Congressmen to tell them to say no to ObamaCare and stopped them for another month.

And on Saturday we forced Pelosi to claim passing a bill with broad bi-partisan opposition was victory. It was not.

We can not afford to let up now. In addition to making your voice heard, I ask that you consider making a contribution to help fund the next wave of attack as we try to reach a million freedom loving citizens to take action in the coming weeks. Please click here if you are in a position to help us.

We fight because we know that no matter how many times the power grabbers in Washington deny it, a trillion dollar health care entitlement means health care will cost us more and will increase the deficit. And we know Washington controlled health care means poorer quality health care.

It boggles the mind how something that affects every fiber of our lives was not put to a vote of the people. How is it that a handful of politicians, each with their own agenda [not being for the people, but for themselves], can make such a monumental decision on our lives.

Are we not protected by the Constitution and the Declaration from this kind of tyranny? Hopefully, there will be challenges against these underhanded actions by our Congress. This is all part of a strategy to destroy freedom as we know it.

In light of this weekend's actions by our House of Representatives, this piece by Thomas Sowell seems appropriate, considering he wrote it before these autrocious actions by the House:


The ‘Costs’ of Medical Care, Part IV
By Thomas Sowell, November 6, 2009

What is so wrong with the current medical system in the United States that we are being urged to rush headlong into a new government system that we are not even supposed to understand, because this legislation is to be rushed through Congress before even the Senators and Representatives have a chance to read it?

Among the things that people complain about under the present medical care system are the costs, insurance company bureaucrats' denials of reimbursements for some treatments and the free loaders at hospital emergency rooms whose costs have to be paid by others.

Will a government-run medical system make these things better or worse? This very basic question seldom seems to get asked, much less answered.

If the government has some magic way of reducing costs — rather than shifting them around, including shifting them to the next generation — they have certainly not revealed that secret. The actual track record of government when it comes to costs — of anything — is more alarming than reassuring.

What about insurance companies denying reimbursements for treatments? Does anyone imagine that a government bureaucracy will not do that?

Moreover, the worst that an insurance company can do is refuse to pay for medication or treatment. In some countries with government-run medical systems, the government can prevent you from spending your own money to get the medication or treatment that their bureaucracy has denied you. Your choice is to leave the country or smuggle in what you need.

However appalling such a situation may be, it is perfectly consistent with elites wanting to control your life. As far as those elites are concerned, it would not be "social justice" to allow some people to get medical care that others are denied, just because some people "happen to have money."

But very few people just "happen to have money." Most people have earned money by producing something that other people wanted. But getting what you want by what you have earned, rather than by what elites will deign to allow you to have, is completely incompatible with the vision of an elite-controlled world, which they call "social justice" or other politically attractive phrases.

The "uninsured" are another big talking point for government medical insurance. But the incomes of many of the uninsured indicate that many — if not most — of them choose to be uninsured. Poor people can get insurance through Medicaid.

Free loading at emergency rooms — mandated by government — makes being uninsured a viable option.

Within living memory, most Americans had no medical insurance. Even large medical bills were paid off over a period of months or years, just as we buy big-ticket items like cars or houses.

This is not ideal for everybody or every situation. But if we are ready to rush headlong into government control of our lives every time something is not ideal, then we are not going to remain a free people very long.

Ironically, it is politicians who have already made medical insurance so expensive that many people refuse to buy it. Insurance is designed to cover risk. But politicians have mandated that insurance cover things that are not risks and that neither the buyers nor the sellers of insurance want covered.

In various states, medical insurance must cover the costs of fertility treatments, annual checkups and other things that have nothing to do with risks. What many people most want is to be insured against the risk of having their life's savings wiped out by a catastrophic illness.

But you cannot get insurance just for catastrophic illnesses when politicians keep piling on mandates that drive up the cost of the insurance. These are usually state mandates but the federal government is already promising more mandates on insurance companies — which means still higher costs and higher premiums.

All this makes a farce of the notion of a "public option" that will simply provide competition to keep private insurance companies honest. What politicians can and will do is continue to drive up the cost of private insurance until it is no longer viable. A "public option" is simply a path toward a "single payer" system, a euphemism for a government monopoly.

Read more of Thomas Sowell here

CBO DEALS ANOTHER CRUSHING BLOW TO GOVT RUN HEALTHCARE

Pelosi, Obama & Emanuel are pushing to get Government Run Healthcare through the House this week, BEFORE the break. The obvious rush to ram this down America's throat is in light of the crushing blow dealt by the CBO -- again.

Grassfire.org has a fax form with sample text, and a list of names, phone & fax numbers:

http://www.grassfire.org/1122/offer.asp?Ref_ID=2652&CID=122&RID=21410589

The onslaught of disapproval by the American people has had a tremendous effect, so don't stop now. The Heritage Foundation explains the CBO's new finding:


CBO Deals Another Crushing Blow to Obamacare

For the second time in less than two weeks, the independent and non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has dealt a crushing blow to President Barack Obama’s health care plans. First, on July 17th, CBO director Doug Elmendorf sent a letter to House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY), explaining that, in direct contradiction to President Obama’s promise that his health plan would not add “even one dime to our deficit over the next decade,” the House health plan would actually increase the budget deficit by $239 billion over ten years.

Reeling from this setback, the White House then put all of its cost-containing reform eggs in one basket: a massive transfer of power from Congress to the Executive branch in the form of an “Independent Medicare Advisory Council” (IMAC) that would be “the equivalent of a federal health board determining how health care was rationed for all seniors.”

But as draconian as that solution would be, the CBO again refused to toe the White House line. In a letter to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Elmendorf writes:

The proposed legislation states that IMAC’s recommendations cannot generate increased Medicare expenditures, but it does not explicitly direct the council to reduce such expenditures nor does it establish any target for such reductions. … As proposed, the composition of the council could be weighted toward medical providers who might not be inclined to recommend cuts in payments to providers or significant changes to the delivery system. … In CBO’s judgment, the probability is high that no savings would be realized … CBO estimates that enacting the proposal, as drafted, would yield savings of $2 billion over the 2010–2019 period.

Just $2 billion! That would leave the House bill still $237 billion short of meeting Obama’s promise to not add a dime to the deficit over the next ten years. Put another way, that $2 billion in savings is two tenths of one percent of what Obama wants to spend on health care over the next ten years. Now Democrats are pushing back against the CBO, claiming the official score keeper just doesn’t understand how wonderful their cost containment schemes really are. One senior House leadership aide told The Hill: “At CBO, they are accountants, but we still have to make our case. They are doing their thing and we are doing ours.”

Now Americans may ask just how accurate is the CBO when scoring the costs of health care reform? Does the CBO have a track record of underestimating how much new health care entitlements will cost? Or is the CBO too conservative and often over estimates new health care spending? Scholars at the CATO Institute went back and compared past CBO estimates on health care to actual spending numbers and found:

When Medicare was launched in 1965, Part A was projected to cost $9 billion by 1990, but ended up costing $67 billion. When Medicaid’s special hospitals subsidy was added in 1987, it was supposed to cost $100 million annually, but it already cost $11 billion by 1992. When Medicare’s home care benefit was added in 1988, it was projected to cost $4 billion in 1993, but ended up costing $10 billion.

History clearly shows that the costs of new heath care entitlements are routinely underestimated. And what would American be getting for their $2 billion in savings from IMAC? The Washington Post’s David Broder wrote yesterday:

But Congress will have to decide if it is willing to yield that degree of control to five unelected IMAC commissioners. And Americans will have to decide if they are comfortable having those commissioners determine how they will be treated when they are ill.

Huge cost estimates that are likely underestimated in exchange for a federal health board deciding the terms of your personal health care is not the reform people were expecting. But more importantly, if the Obama administration can’t trust a federal office to properly score their bill, how is it they trust a similar office to decide which medical treatments you receive?