Politico – Lieberman Says No to Medicare Buy-In
WSJ – Senators Doubt Medicare Compromise
The Weekly Standard – Reid’s Medical Malpractice
Clive Crook – Trust Public on Climate Change
AP – Dems Plan $2 Trillion Debt Hike
The Hill – Senate Passes $1.1 Trillion Spending Bill
NY Times – McCain Raises Senate Voice
Washington Times – Obama Secrecy
Federal Debt: $12.117 trillion
In the never ending succession of bad legislation coming out of Congress, the Democrats added another one to the list today.
By a 223-202 vote, the House passed the “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009.” Twenty-seven Democrats joined every single Republican to oppose the legislation.
The bill is a hodgepodge of more regulations, higher taxes and new government. After Sarbanes-Oxley, Congress thought it had effectively ended the debate over financial regulations. For Congress, it’s never too late to re-regulate.
You can read the Congressional Research Service summary of the legislation here.
Here is the CBO’s cost estimate of the bill.
Jonah Goldberg – Global Warming as a Political Tool
Red State – Congress and College Football?
Atlanta Journal-Constitution – Stimulus III is More of the Same
Washington Examiner – Life Insurers Lobby to Save Death Tax
Washington Times – Tip of the ClimateGate Iceberg
WSJ Editorial – Compromise is Worse Than the Public Option
Reason – Health Care Debate Reveals Nasty Liberal Tendency
Washington Post – Medicare Compromise Could Lead to Single-Payer
Federal Debt: $12.104 trillion
No, the munchkins didn’t proclaim this, but the liberal Huffington Post did.
The supposedly good news (for Republicans, libertarians, Whigs, patients, taxpayers and moderate Democrats who like their current office space) was reported today by Ryan Grim. He noted sarcastically, “The public health insurance option died on Thursday, December 10, 2009, after a months-long struggle with Senate parliamentary procedure. The time of death was recorded as 11:12 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.”
Apparently Nancy Pelosi read the political tea leaves and noticed that voters simply won’t tolerate a government-run public option. When questioned, it took Pelosi about two-hundred words to essentially say that the House would accept the Senate “compromise” to drop the public option in exchange for lowering the eligibility age for Medicare enrollment.
But make no mistake. This is no cause for celebration.
Some Democrats are actually excited, hoping that expanding an already financially strapped Medicare system will pave the way for a true single-payer socialized system. Indeed, as Brian Faughnan of RedState.com noted earlier today, the idea is actually the brain child of Howard Dean, who proposed a similar plan during his 2004 presidential bid. And why is Dean, who is a strong proponent of a single-payer system and has been critical of his fellow Democrats for not going far enough in their efforts to put the government in charge of your health care, supportive of this so-called compromise? As Faughnan writes:
The reason Dean likes this compromise – the reason he proposed this compromise – is that he would rather have the government bureaucracy in charge of people’s health care plans than private insurance companies. That’s one point of view. Some may agree with it; others not. But it seems the real value of this proposal to Dean is that it ‘moves the ball’ toward a single-payer health care system.”
Moderate Senator Olympia Snowe Discussing Health Care Reform:
Every line and every word in this 2,000-page document matters. . . When it comes to the subject at hand, the most consequential health-care legislation in the history of our country and reordering $33 trillion in health-care spending over the coming decade, surely, we can and must do better.
Washington Examiner – Failed States: Daylight in Michigan
Michael Barone – Expanding Government Power
Karl Rove – Can the GOP Retake the Senate in 2010?
George Will – Playing Politics with the Fed
Politico – Public Option Dream Fading
WSJ – Obama Accepts Nobel Prize
Red State – The Necessary GOP Civil War
The Hill – Net Neutrality Would Hinder Free Speech
Federal Debt: $12.099 trillion
Though Democrats might be using phrases like “deficit neutral” or “budget neutral,” there is no doubt that the current Senate health care bill will greatly expand the size and scope of government.
In fact, the 2,074 pages of text create more than 70 new government programs.
Among the highlights/low-lights:
Full list here.
Proving that Congress can “walk and chew gum at the same time,” the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted to ban NCAA Division I football from holding a “national championship” unless it’s the product of a playoff system. What!?
Sadly, during the voice vote there was only one enthusiastic “No” vote from John Barrow (D-GA).
Congress loves power, and this vote is a perfect example of how everything, no matter how trivial (sports), is supposedly under their domain. ‘Mandating that everyone get health insurance? We can do that. Controlling all political speech? We run this show! Mandating how college football players spend their postseason? Sure, we watch college football and we personally prefer a playoff system.’
Republicans and Democrats deserve equal criticism. The legislation is actually sponsored by Republican Joe Barton (TX). Of course, if Texas had gone to the national championship game last year, then some representative from Oklahoma would have cried foul and tried to change the system.
Today’s vote is just one example of the blind arrogance exhibited by our representatives on a daily basis. Power is king on the Hill.
It seems that Congress is little different from high school social politics. Everyone travels in cliques (known as caucuses); everyone wants to be popular (leader, chairman or even President) and there are plenty of scandals involving drugs and cheating.
I guess in this metaphor that makes voters the parents of Congress. It’s a shame that throwing Congress out of office every two years is the only punishment voters can inflict upon their “honorable” representatives. (At what point are we allowed to stop calling them honorable?)
You can read the bill, H.R. 390 “The College Football Playoff Act,” here. Here is the markup information from today’s hearing.
Washington Times – Why a Jobs Summit?
National Review Online – The New New Deal
Rep. Bob Barr – The GOP Purity Test
Politico – Coakley Takes Kennedy’s Seat in MA
The Hill – Dems Claim Agreement on Public Option
Jonah Goldberg – Big Business Democrats
Bloomberg – Some Jobs May Never Return
Reason – CBO: The Budget Gatekeeper
Federal Debt: $12.096 trillion
George Will – The Country is Uneasy
Thomas Sowell – Jobs or Snow Jobs?
The Hill – Another Stimulus?
Politico – Public Option Deal Takes Place
Fox News – Senate Leader Compares GOP to Supporters of Slavery
Human Events – Department of Almost-Free Enterprise
National Review Online – Climate of Doom
Atlanta Journal Constitution – World Peace First, Global Tax Next
Federal Debt: $12.091 trillion
In a time of record deficits, most taxpayers would assume that sharks wouldn’t be on the radar of most U.S. Senators.
Well, meet Senator John Kerry (D-MA), who has introduced S. 580, The Shark Conservation Act of 2009. Not that we don’t all love Shark Week, but the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just estimated that the cost of S. 580 is a cool $5 million over the next five years alone.
To be fair to Senator Kerry, the bill does have several GOP cosponsors, but apparently they are all happy to continue Washington’s merry spending frenzy at a time when the nation is still mired in record deficits and high unemployment.
That seems to be the solution from Senate Democrats seeking to broker a political path toward government-run health care.
With the public option running low on support, Senate Democrats are now floating a plan that would lower the age for Medicare enrollment to as low as 55.
According to Senate Democrats, even though Medicare has $89 trillion in long-term unfunded liabilities, adding a few million patients to the ledger shouldn’t be a problem. Brilliant thinking.
More of CFIF on health care here.
The Senate, currently debating health care, held a rare Sunday session. Beyond the normal bloviating, Senators did take at least one consequential vote.
John Ensign (R-NV) introduced an amendment that would have limited trial lawyer contingency fee amounts in medical malpractice cases. Predictably, the amendment was overwhelmingly voted down, 32-66.
It appears that the trial lawyer lobby remains strong in the Senate.
Politico – Chances Shrink for Public Option
Newsweek – Is Ron Paul the GOP Savior?
Washington Examiner – Draining the Democratic Swamp
Kansas City Star – The GOP Senate Fight in Kansas
The Hill – ClimateGate Hasn’t Swayed Swing Votes
WSJ Editorial – CEOs and ObamaCare
Bloomberg – Obama to Rally for Health Care
Bjorn Lomborg – Global Warming and Mt. Kilimanjaro
Federal Debt: $12.086 trillion
No surprises here … the U.S. spends more money than it collects. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released its monthly budget review and it’s not pretty.
Through the first two months of FY 2010, the federal deficit is already $292 billion. For perspective (based on my shoddy math skills), if you placed that money ($1 bills) end-to-end, it would stretch from the Earth to the Moon 115 times (placed end-to-end the deficit is over 27 million miles and the distance from the Earth to the Moon is only 238,857 miles).
That’s a long sad debt train. In addition, that debt train could also carry you to Venus, which is only 23.7 million miles from Earth (at its closest).
This would be a big deficit for a single year, but unfortunately the government has ten more months of taxing and spending left. Year-to-date, this deficit figure is $11 billion more than the shortfall from last year. Not good.
The deficit from the month of October alone was $176 billion. The CBO projects another $115 billion deficit for December.
As the report noted, “Excluding outlays for the TARP and net cash infusions for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, however, spending in 2010 rose by $51 billion (or 10 percent).”
Sooner or later, 269 people (218 in the House and 51 in the Senate) will be elected to Congress who actually care about reducing spending and cutting the deficit.
In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses “Climategate” and the costly agenda of global warming alarmists.
U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan seeks to destroy the fundamental principle that “[the] Constitution creates a Federal Government of enumerated powers”, judging by her brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case of U.S. v. Comstock. The government’s brief demonstrates just how expansive she views federal power under the Constitution.
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank in Washington, D.C., is challenging a federal criminal statute on the grounds that Congress acted without constitutional authority when it passed the law.
Cato and other challengers in Comstock argue that the federal government cannot use the Necessary and Proper Clause in Article 1 §8 of the Constitution to justify any and all federal action. The government, on the other hand, argues that the Necessary and Proper Clause and the Commerce Clause in §8 allow the government to enact a range of federal criminal statutes, even if such laws are typically the province of state power.
Of course, by the government’s logic, if the Commerce Clause works to authorize a broad array of criminal laws, then what can’t the government do? Since the government deems almost any human action to “substantially affect interstate commerce,” then there is nothing that evades federal power. For example, in this argument audio clip, the government claims federal power is virtually limitless.
The Supreme Court has (unfortunately) already held that growing excess wheat for private consumption falls within the Commerce Clause, and that growing marijuana for private consumption falls within the federal purview as well. (Justices Scalia and Kennedy sided with the government in the latter case.)
As the Cato Institute argued in its brief, “Neither the Necessary and Proper Clause nor the Commerce Clause is a permissible footing for the Act and, therefore, the Act is unconstitutional. As this Court recognized almost 150 years ago, ‘[no] graver question was ever considered by this court, nor one which more nearly concerns the rights of the whole,’ than the Government’s unconstitutional assertion of power against its own citizens.”
Elena Kagan, in the government’s reply brief, countered, “A commitment under Section 4248 [the act in question] is justified by the Necessary and Proper Clause in combination with whatever enumerated power or powers supported the federal prosecution and custody of the individual in the first instance.”
By June of next year, we’ll learn if the Court would prefer returning to “first principles.” It could actually limit Congress’ expansive use of Article I § 8, or the justices could continue to allow unbridled federal action whenever the government deems it politically expedient.
Click here for the Cato brief. For the government’s brief, click here. For CFIF on the Constitution, click here.
WSJ Editorial – Sarbanes-Oxley on Trial
New York Times – Many Doctors’ Groups Oppose Health Bill
The Hill – Senators Want to Force Congress into Public Plan
National Review Online – The GOP Purity Test
The Weekly Standard – ObamaCare’s Ugly Math
David Broder – Democrats Living Dangerously
Politico – Have the Greens Failed?
David Harsanyi – We-Don’t-Want-to-Talk-About-It-Gate
Federal Debt: $12.073 trillion
The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.
Clive Crook on the ClimateGate Global Warming Scandal.
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