Freedom Line Blog

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:

• Medicaid Global Payment System Demonstration Project.

• Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program.

• Interagency Working Group on Health Care Quality.

• Community-Based Care Transitions Program.

• Patient Navigator Program (Are patients going to need a program to “navigate” health care reform?).

• Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (rationing).

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.

“Nothing to see here, folks…  Move along.”

That was the convenient and laughable conclusion of a self-serving ACORN-supported investigation.

You remember ACORN…  It recently became famous for being caught red-handed on hidden video on multiple occasions and at multiple sites sharing advice on how to use government largess to engage in child prostitution.  Well, ACORN’s executives hired former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to investigate.  The conclusion?  “We did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff involved.  In fact, no action, illegal or otherwise, was ever taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers.”

Other than dispensing advice for all the world to see with their own eyes, that is.

Tellingly, ACORN and Mr. Harshbarger refused to admit how much his law firm was paid for his “investigation.”  ACORN’s CEO Bertha Lewis conveniently demurred, saying that its board would have to determine at some later date whether to disclose that amount.

Perhaps that’s a subject for the next undercover investigation…

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

Today’s version of the Washington Post’s “The Fix” blog notes that Sarah Palin gave a radio interview over the weekend where she seemed to leave the door open to a third party presidential run in 2012.  This could potentially be politically disastrous for the GOP come Election Day.

Under present circumstances, Palin probably doesn’t have a strong enough coalition to take the GOP nomination. What she does have, however, is an intensity of support that would likely lead many of her supporters to follow her out of the Republican Party’s presidential fold.  Given the schismatic tendencies that the Tea Party movement has begun to show, Palin could also potentially have a much more organized, coherent base than most independent candidates.

This prospect is just one more impetus for a Republican coalescence before the next presidential race.  From Theodore Roosevelt to Ross Perot, the legacy of strong third-party candidates has tended to be creating murder-suicide pacts with the candidate that they’re ideologically closer to.  If Sarah Palin bolts the GOP in 2012, she may end up spending two election cycles in a row being blamed for Barack Obama’s presidency.

‘Tis the season for consumer spending, and no collection of humanity does it better than the U.S. Congress. According to the Associated Press, here are a few of the itemized gifts being wrapped at taxpayers’ expense:

• Huge increase in foreign aid coupled with an 18 percent cut to a program that helps states with cost of incarcerating criminal illegal immigrants

• Reinstituting a needle exchange program in the District of Columbia

• Eliminating the D.C. voucher program that allows less fortunate students to attend prestigious schools

• Another $2.5 billion for high-speed rail programs added to the $8 billion provided in the stimulus package

Oh yeah; the omnibus spending bill is going to fund nine cabinet agencies whose fiscal year budgets began back on October 1st. As usual, timing is everything…

So said Vince Lombardi. The same question could be hurled at the Obama White House for its latest transgression against common sense. First there were the inane gifts of American classic DVDs to the British Prime Minister that weren’t compatible for viewing in England. Then the Queen received an I-Pod with pictures of places she’d been. There were bows to Arabian autocrats and a diminished Japanese emperor. Next came the quixotic firing of Greg Craig. A couple of news cycles ago the social secretary neglected to post a guest list at a security checkpoint. Now it comes to light that the Obamas originally wanted a non-religious Christmas this year. And as if looking to pick yet another unnecessary fight, there will be no formal receiving line for media members looking for an official photograph with the President of the United States.

Really? These aren’t calculated jabs to please certain political allies. They’re just stupid. What’s more, they indicate either a pettiness of character or disregard for the image of the American presidency. Those in the White House should care that they are projecting sophomoric caricature of people in power. As the new administration’s first year draws to a close, its public relations blunders reflect a White House that looks much more like Spamalot than Camelot.

HT: reason.tv

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez on “Climategate.”

View more of Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website.

The Obama Administration increasingly resembles an oceanliner captain who stubbornly responds to iceberg alarms by shifting to full speed ahead.

Ignoring recent news of declining global temperatures and the Climategate scandal that has shaken global warming activism to its core, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday declared carbon dioxide a “dangerous pollutant.”

That’s right – the gas that we all exhale and that plants inhale is suddenly a toxin.

The political cynicism behind this maneuver is obvious.  Barack Obama and climate change alarmists (notice, by the way, how they dropped the term “global warming” when the temperature data became too inconvenient) know that passing draconian carbon cap-and-tax legislation in the foreseeable future is nearly impossible.  Consequently, they have used the EPA to arrogantly shove their agenda through, or at least as a threat to Senators and big business lobbyists that the alternative to Congressional cap-and-tax is even worse.

Fortunately, the EPA’s reckless, mindless and arrogant maneuver will be challeneged in court.  But in the meantime, we’re left to wonder whether there’s any limit to the destructive efforts the Obama White House will shove down Americans’ throats in order to placate the extremist left wing.

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

A new Rasmussen Reports poll out today shows that if the Tea Party movement was an organized political party it would poll second nationally (at 23%, 13 points behind the Democrats).  Many reports on the numbers play up the growing influence of this grassroots force on the right, but that may miss the bigger point: Republicans came in third in the poll, with only 18% supporting the GOP.

Read those numbers closely; with Republicans and Tea Partiers divided, Democrats win (a lesson learned in the congressional race in the New York 23rd).  Thus, if the right hopes to regain political traction it’s going to have to create a fusionist project between the mainstream GOP and the “mad as hell and not going to take it any more” Tea Party movement.

A possible prescription for this kind of Republican renaissance improbably shows up this week’s edition of Newsweek, courtesy of Howard Fineman, whose columns usually tend toward EZ-Bake liberalism.  However, in a piece entitled “Is There a Doctor in the House?”, Fineman perceptively notes that the GOP could do a lot worse than straightening its spine through Ron Paul’s example:

… The GOP needs to study Ron Paul, and learn. No one has better captured the sense of Main Street outrage over secret insider deals and Wall Street bonuses. No one has been more consistent about sticking to core conservative values—including the one that says the government shouldn’t spend more money than it takes in. If the GOP is going to appeal to independent voters, it has to confront its own corporate allies. “Republicans need to find a populist edge again,” says Craig Shirley, the author of Rendezvous With Destiny, a new account of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign. “Reagan spoke to the guy who thought he was being screwed by big business, by big government, by the big media.” The good doctor, of all people, is showing Republicans the way. What they need is a candidate who embodies the spirit of Ron Paul. Just so long as it isn’t Ron Paul.

There’s a lot of sense in Fineman’s diagnostic (along with this, a sign of the apocalypse).  On foreign policy, Paul is still peddling ideas long ago discredited by Charles Lindbergh and Bob Taft.  But on the domestic side, his compass is truer than most of the GOP.  When the Republican Party isn’t rooted in notions of small government and individual liberty, it tends towards existential drift.  And we all know where that leads.

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.

Remember when then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said that while Obama’s likening himself to Martin Luther King, Jr., was nice, it was really President Lyndon Johnson who changed civil rights from a rhetorical dream into legislative reality?  As usual, Clinton was criticized for speaking truth in public.  But her observation – and comparison – still rings true today.

Flash forward to President Obama’s remarks to Senate Democrats on Sunday.  While his midday sermon was long on admonishments to find common ground, it didn’t give any direction on how on to find it.  The lack of setting down definitions or benchmarks for success, or even support for moderates needing a safe harbor during tough re-election campaigns, indicates that Obama has no clue how to line up 60 votes in his own caucus.  LBJ never seemed to have that problem.  Hillary Clinton’s recognition of this indicates she may have learned more from her failures as First Lady health czar than Obama has over a lifetime of risk aversion.

This is a trend.  Since at least his time in law school, Obama has studiously avoided even the appearance of a paper trail.  He’s also managed to spend a decade as an elected legislator without authoring a single consequential piece of legislation.  Simply put, the man doesn’t know how to horse trade, cajole, and get a bill on his desk for signature.  One wonders how much less effective he’d be without a majority in both chambers.

With all the attention devoted to health care reform this fall it is little wonder that the federalization of the college student loan system is getting scant notice. As the Wall Street Journal points out, there is a quiet takeover occurring of the student loan market that, if successful, would eliminate private lending companies from competing with the federal government’s alternative.

The typical tale of a free-speech controversy on campus involves administrators landing on some poor undergrad who violates political correctness. But in this story the administrators have been afraid to speak as the Department of Education pressured them to drop private lenders and embrace the department’s own Direct Lending (DL) program. The pending bill, which has passed the House but is stalled in the Senate, would ban private lenders from making federally guaranteed loans after July 1, 2010.

Congress has already enacted regulations in recent years to discourage making loans without a federal guarantee. And many lenders have quit the business. Now the White House and Democrats like California Rep. George Miller want to go further and convert students from private loans largely backed by the taxpayer into government loans made and serviced by government and backed by the taxpayer. Think of this as a prelude to how Congress will rig the rules for any public option in health care.

Sound familiar? It gets worse. Even though the bill requiring a private loan be backed by a federal guarantee is not yet law, the Department of Education (DOE) is already contacting schools to make sure they are in compliance. Thankfully, there is still time to contact your senator while the upper chamber considers amending the House bill to allow private lenders to stay in business. If nothing else, tell them you support the free market, because it’s the only thing supporting Congress’ spending addiction.

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

The nation’s unemployment rate dipped slightly last month, and Barack Obama predictably trumpeted this seemingly-postitive “trend.”

Unfortunately, we can’t pop the champagne corks just yet.

A one-month decline isn’t a “trend” (the unemployment rate has dipped slightly in recent months only to resume its increase, and remains high), and the longer-term prospect of improvement under current leadership is troubling.  As noted by The Wall Street Journal’s Mark Gongloff, the nation still shed 125,000 jobs last month.  Additionally, the portion of unemployed Americans on permanent layoff reached an all-time high of 55.1%, a record 9.3 million remain underemployed, over one million have abandoned the workforce altogether and employers “show little inclination to rehire, even though the recession has supposedly been over for five months now.”

The bottom line is that unlike previous recessions, there is a much dimmer light at the end of the tunnel due to the ominous prospect of new healthcare burdens, skyrocketing deficits, a weakened dollar, draconian carbon cap-and-tax burdens, tax increases, more federal regulations and bald negation of common-law contract rights by the government.  Until Obama, Reid and Pelosi smell the coffee and recognize the gloom that they’re casting over the nation’s economy and employment picture, the prospect of dramatic rebound remains thin.

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.