This morning just after 7 AM EST, the United States Senate passed, again on a straight party-line vote, President Barack Obama’s health insurance bill. Originally scheduled for a 9 PM vote tonight, the bill’s Senate passage is a welcome Christmas gift for a beleaguered White House. However, as the First Family jets off for Hawaii, the American people, liberals, moderates, and conservatives are all saying this bill is closer to a lump of coal in their stocking than real health care reform.
The American Public Does Not Want This Bill: When the American people first turned their attention to President Obama’s health care plan, bare majorities of the American public told pollsters they supported his health care reform plan. But as the debate wore on, and the American people looked past the rhetoric and examined the details of Obama’s proposal, support for the legislation steadily declined. By mid July, more Americans opposed than supported the plan. Now that the House and Senate have both approved separate versions of the bill, strong majorities of Americans now oppose Obama’s plan.
The Left Does Not Consider This Bill Real Reform: We have already documented the strong opposition figures like former-Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have to what has come out of the Senate. But now powerful members of the House of Representatives, Democrats with actual votes in Congress, are also voicing their strong objections to the Senate bill. House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) wrote on op-ed for CNN yesterday including: “[U]nder the Senate plan, millions of Americans will be forced into private insurance company plans, which will be subsidized by taxpayers. That alternative will do almost nothing to reform health care but will be a windfall for insurance companies. Is it any surprise that stock prices for some of those insurers are up recently? … Supporters of the weak Senate bill say ‘just pass it — any bill is better than no bill.’ I strongly disagree — a conference report is unlikely to sufficiently bridge the gap between these two very different bills. It’s time that we draw the line on this weak bill and ask the Senate to go back to the drawing board. The American people deserve at least that.”
Moderates Are Disgusted by This Bill: Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), who voted for the House version of Obamacare after getting Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to take taxpayer funding of abortion out of the bill, tells National Review Online: “This shouldn’t be a bill where you use hush money. This isn’t an appropriations bill where you try to get the best projects for your state. … I’ve spoken with a half-dozen members in the last 48 hours, and they’re all really concerned with the Senate bill. We all agree: We’ve lost our objective with health care. Where you live should have nothing to do with the quality or cost of your coverage.”
Conservatives Want Real Reform: Detailing the increased health costs, the trillions in new spending, the billions in new taxes, the loss of Americans’ current health insurance, and the damage it would do to our national debt, Heritage’s health care team concludes their analysis of the Senate bill: “The Senate bill would impose enormous costs on the American people, totaling at least $2.5 trillion for the first 10 years. After the first 10 years, as costs escalated, Congress would need to impose additional major tax increases and impose major cuts in benefits to pay for this health care agenda. The American people want and need health reform, but the Senate bill is clearly not what they have in mind.”
Do not let this Christmas Eve Senate disaster get you down. There is still hope Obamacare will be stopped. The White House is already downplaying expectations, telling selected media outlets that negotiations between the House and Senate over their major policy differences may slip into February. Considering the House is not back in session till January 12th, the Senate till January 18th, and that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) will need at least a weak to score the bill, the American people will have plenty of time to educate themselves further. So take heart: today’s Christmas Eve vote may just be Obamacare’s high water mark.
Quick Hits:
- Nebraska Gov. David Heineman (R) says Nebraskans are so disgusted with Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-NE) Obamacare sellout, that he is saying: “The federal government can keep that money.”
- To protect the President from accusations of failure, the White House is saying Obama never campaigned on the public option even though it was prominently featured in his campaign literature.
- In a yet-to-air interview with PBS President Obama suggests that conservative resistance to his policies harm democracy.
- Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist and progressive activist Jane Hamsher are ‘calling for an investigation into Rahm Emanuel’s activities at Freddie Mac, and the White House’s blocking of an Inspector General who would look into it.”
- Based on President Barack Obama’s campaign promise to end marijuana raids, and Attorney General Eric Holder’s promise to follow through on that promise, a San Diego pot dealer is defending drug trafficking charges by claiming “Obama entrapped me.”
President Barack Obama yesterday hosted yet another health care pep rally to shore up liberal support for his health care bill. Obama’s “rally” followed Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) latest capitulation to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) health care demands, whereby Reid removed a Medicare expansion that Lieberman had initially supported. From the Roosevelt Room, Obama claimed Democrats were “on the precipice of an achievement that’s eluded congresses and presidents for generations.” But hours later, former Governor and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told Vermont National Public Radio:
This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. And, honestly, the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill and go back to the House … You have the vast majority of Americans want the choices, they want real choices. They don’t have them in this bill. This is not health care reform and it’s not close to health care reform.
Later on MSNBC’s Countdown, Dean further responded to President Obama’s claims that “You talk to every healthcare economist out there and they will tell you that whatever ideas are — whatever ideas exist in terms of bending the cost curve and starting to reduce costs for families, businesses and government, those elements are in this bill.” Dean told guest host Lawrence O’Donnell: “There is no cost control of any substance. … You’re going to be forced to buy health insurance from a company that is going to take on average of 27% of your money … and there is no choice about that. If you don’t buy that insurance you are going to get a fine.”
The President’s own the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS) agrees with Dean and contradicts Obama. CMMS found that the Senate bill, instead of bending the cost curve down, actually drives health care costs up, adding $234 billion to national health expenditures. But the President’s fantastic claims did not end there. Obama then asserted: “And in terms of deficits — because we keep on hearing these ads about how this is going to add to the deficit — the CBO has said that this is a deficit reduction, not a deficit increase. So all the scare tactics out there, all the ads that are out there are simply inaccurate.”
But the President leaves out this all important caveat in the CBO’s report: “In the subsequent decade, the collective effect of its provisions would probably be small reductions in federal budget deficits if all of the provisions continued to be fully implemented.” But nobody believes that all of the provisions in the bill will be fully implemented. For example, the Senate bill includes a 20% cut in the payments Medicare sets for doctors. Nobody believes these cuts will be allowed to happen. By changing just that provision, Obamacare ends up adding $196 billion to the deficit in the first 10 years and $765 billion in the second decade.
The American people already do not trust President Obama’s health care claims. Just today, the Washington Post released a poll finding that 51% of adults oppose Obamacare, with 40% in strong opposition. Meanwhile only 44% support the bill with only 25% feeling strongly about it. Digging deeper we find that 66% of Americans believe Obamacare will increase the federal budget deficit, 53% believe it will cause their own health care to cost more, 55% believe it will increase the country’s health care costs overall, and 50% believe it will not improve their quality of care. These findings echo an earlier CNN poll which found that 61% of Americans opposed Obamacare, with 79% believing it would add to the deficit and 85% believing it would raise their taxes.
It has become obvious to any American following the debate that President Obama has adopted a get-a-deal-at-any-cost mentality that puts a higher priority on the political victory of passing any bill over the policy substance of what is actually in the bill and how it would effect the American people. As Dean told O’Donnell last night: “You can’t vote for a bill like this in good conscience. … It costs too much money. It isn’t health care reform. It isn’t even insurance reform.”
Quick Hits:
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) told Politico yesterday, “I’m not on the bill. I have spoken with the president and he knows they are not wrapped up today. I think everybody understands they are not wrapped up today and that impression will not be given.”
Iran announced today that it has successfully test fired an upgraded version of its Sajjil-2 two-stage missile which has a range of about 1,200 miles and can reach Israel and southeastern Europe.
The Obama administration has agreed to let Citigroup and other companies large banks forgo billions of dollars in tax payments in exchange for paying back taxpayer bailout money.
Despite the current recession and record deficits, taxpayer funded travel by Congress has jumped 70% from 2005.
Liberals in Congress introduced legislation that would provide amnesty to all illegal immigrants in the United States as of December 15th, 2009, yesterday.