Freedom Line Blog

The Senate Finance Committee has posted all 564 proposed amendments to Chairman Baucus and President Obama’s health care bill.

• Summary of 180 amendments concerning the delivery system for health care  — here.

                    Actual text of above amendments — here.

• Summary of the 284 amendments dealing with “exapanding coverage” — here.

                    Actual text of above amendments — here.

• Summary of the 100 amendments dealing with financing — here.

                    Actual text of above amendments — here. 

The Tax that Isn’t a Tax Because President Obama Isn’t a Liar, and Even if He Were, He Wouldn’t Lie About Something Like Taxes on the Middle Class, Except to Stop Global Warming, Which May or May Not Be Real, Depending On Who Is Lying About that

Declan McCullagh reports at cbsnews.com:

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

“A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says that the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year.  At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.”

The documents were obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

During his speech to a joint session of Congress this evening, President Obama will again endorse the idea of a government-run public health insurance option.  This, according to some staffers in Congress and despite the public outrage against it.

In doing so, many insiders have hinted that while Obama will make a soft endorsement of the controversial provision, he is also likely the hedge his bets to leave open the possibility for further negotiations with Congressional moderates. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the other hand continues to insist that a public health insurance option must be part of any final bill in order for it to pass in the House of Representatives.  Pelosi continues to get a lot of heat from progressives in her caucus (as many as 100 of them), who claim they will vote “No” on any bill that doesn’t include the government-run public option.

After a heated August recess on the health care issue, the Kabuki Dance that the President performs tonight should be interesting.  As Congressman Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, stated this morning, “The American people have spoken. Tonight we’ll see if Washington is listening.”

We’re not holding our breaths.

Despite the uproar, President Obama today is delivering his much-anticipated speech to the nation’s school children from Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia.  But as pointed out by Byron York today in the Washington Examiner:

[W]hen President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush’s speech — they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.

Then House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt complained at the time that “The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president.”

And, according to Mr. York:

Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and legality of Bush’s appearance. On October 17, 1991, Ford summoned then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and other top Bush administration officials to testify at a hearing devoted to the speech.

Read Byron York’s entire article here.

From Politico:

President Barack Obama will address a joint session of Congress on health care reform in prime time on Wednesday, Sept. 9, a senior official tells POLITICO.

Obama will receive House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at the White House the day before for a previously scheduled sit-down.

The last time a president addressed a joint session of Congress that wasn’t a State of the Union, or the traditional first address by a new president, was Sept. 20, 2001, when President George W. Bush spoke on the war on terrorism following the 9/11 attacks. …

Read the full story here.

How opposed is Senator Charles Grassley to the current version of health care reform being debated in Congress?  So much so that he’s raising money based on his opposition to Obamacare.

Senator Grassley, once a leader in bipartisan talks, is now raising money and protecting his right flank by informing his constituents that the current version of the Obamacare would “turn over control of your health care decisions to a federal bureaucrat.”

Although there is no doubt that our health care system needs reform, Grassley’s revelation comes as somewhat welcome news, because it has been reported that Democrats are seeking to bypass traditional Senate rules and force “reform” through budget reconciliation, a process that does not require 60 votes.

However, Senator Judd Gregg, one-time Obama administration advocate, is now leading the fight against these tactics.

The Almanac of American Politics arrived at our offices today, and with it, a handy little chart on page 1699.

The typical refrain is that the GOP is the party of big-money country club types and Democrats are the party of the little-guy.  As stereotpyical as these labels might be, numbers from the 2008 election tell a strange story.

The Almanac broke down the zip codes in the U.S. by total amount of political contributions.  For example, zip code 10021, which resides in the upper-east side in New York City, contributed over $21 million during the 2007-08 cycle.  Of that amount, over 72% went to Democrats.

This was a typical refrain from the chart.  The six most prolific donor zip codes during the last cycle were all from New York City and all gave big money to Democrats, a total of over $44 million.  That’s $44 million from literally a few square miles on Manhattan Island.  Of the 25 most prolific zip codes, only 3 favored Republicans over Democrats.

More proof of the drastic change in certain demographic groups toward the Democratic Party is evidenced in recent election data.  According to the Almanac, President Obama won 52% of the vote for those reporting income over $200,000 in 2008, even though the President promised to raise income taxes for anyone making over $250,000.

To put that figure in perspective, John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee, received only 35% of the vote for individuals reporting over $200,000 in income.  This  18% jump in high-earners and a massive amount of cash from New York City and California helped propel President Obama to the White House.

There has been a lot of talk in the media (here, here and here) about how Herbert Hoover was a great miser and should have spent his way out of the economic downturn like Obama is attempting to do.  The myth might be as old as Hoover’s administration: Hoover was a free-market Republican who let Americans suffer instead of attempting government intervention.

False.  It’s hard to believe that a quick search through our own budget data proves that Hoover was more of Keynesian, someone who spent plenty and raised taxes in his vain attempt to “prime” the U.S. economy toward a resurgence.

Reviewing budget numbers from the White House’s own budget, we see that Hoover drastically increased the size and scope of government.  When Hoover arrived in the White House in 1929, he inherited a surplus of $734 million (back when that was real money).  After he left in 1933, the surplus turned into a $2.6 billion deficit.

Of course, some of this decline was due to lower revenues as a result of the depression, but looking at the outlays during his tenure and you’ll see a massive increase in the size of the federal budget, partly with the help of a Republican Congress as well.  From 1929 to 1933, Hoover increased federal outlays from $3.1 billion to approximately $4.6 billion, a 48% increase. From 1931 to 1932, outlays surged 30%.  Yes, Hoover was a real miser, a free-market fiend who hated spending the money of hard-working taxpayers.

To put Hoover’s 48% increase in perspective, progressives often assailed President Bush as a free-market disciple who refused to spend money on levies, the poor, or the uninsured.  During Bush’s tenure, estimated federal outlays surged 57%, even more than Hoover and LBJ’s Great Society (approximately 50%).

So, the next time you hear someone say that a runaway free-market caused the Great Depression and our current crisis, just remind them that Bush made LBJ look like Uncle Scrooge and Hoover drove federal expenditures faster than President Clinton.  Old rumors die slowly but this is one that needs to end now before we continue to perpetuate even more big-spending government boondoggles.

The extreme Left, led by Former Dem Party Chairman Howard Dean, is up in arms over the Administration’s hint that it may willing to forgo a government-run public insurance option in an attempt to strike a deal on health care reform.  And it appears the Deaniacs are having an impact.

CNN is reporting that White House Aide Linda Douglass has sent out a written statement making clear the President still supports the “public option.” 

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The White House sought to reassure jittery supporters Monday that President Obama is not abandoning the fight for a public health insurance option.

President Obama “believes the public option is the best way” to reform health care, a White House aide says.

The assurance came amid a media firestorm ignited over the weekend by administration officials seeming to indicate a willingness to drop such an option in order to secure congressional approval of a health care reform bill.

“The president has always said that what is essential is that health insurance reform must lower costs, ensure that there are affordable options for all Americans, and it must increase choice and competition in the health insurance market,” White House aide Linda Douglass said in a written statement.

“He believes the public option is the best way to achieve those goals.”

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made headlines this weekend when she signaled that the Obama Administration is open to dropping the so-called “public option” from legislation to overhaul heath care in an effort to reach a compromise.   Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday, Sebelius said the public option “is not an essential element” of President Obama’s plan for health care reform.   

Almost immediately, the media’s attention turned its focus to “insurance cooperatives,” or co-ops,  as an alternative to a public option.   Don’t be fooled!

As Michael Tanner at the CATO Institute points out, “Government-run health care is government-run health care no matter what you call it.”  Tanner writes:

The health care “co-op” approach now embraced by the Obama administration will still give the federal government control over one-sixth of the U.S. economy, with a government-appointed board, taxpayer funding, and with bureaucrats setting premiums, benefits, and operating rules.

The markets don’t like the odds of President Obama’s health care bill passing by the end of this year.  The market gives it just over a 35% chance of success.

At his town hall meeting in Portsmouth, NH yesterday, President Obama again bragged about the AARP’s support of his plan for government-run health care.  The President proudly proclaimed to his hand-picked crowd of supporters:

We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors.

Obama added,

AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare.

But hold the phone, folks.  According to the Associated Press and Fox News, AARP’s chief operating officer Tom Nelson moved quickly to correct the record, saying, “indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.”  That forced White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to backtrack, claiming that the President didn’t mean to mislead the American people.

AARP has been under heavy fire for appearing with Obama on numerous occasions in the last several months seemingly in support of the President’s health care plan — and by extension, the various plans being pushed by Congressional Democrats.  But with support among seniors  dwindling, it is no surprise the AARP is now seemingly looking for an out.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey released yesterday shows that a whopping 56% of those over age 65 are opposed, and 46% of senior citizens are strongly opposed.

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