Senator Tom Coburn joins to talk about health care and the possibility of “repeal & replace” in the near future, Health Care Jeopardy with Thomas LaDuke, Molly Teichman, and Michelle Moore, and cocktail time with Mike G.
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From Yahoo Finance:
Vice President Joe Biden wants all Americans to know about the roughly $300 billion in tax breaks that were part of the Recovery Act passed last year.
There’s also the issue of whether these tax cuts, in conjunction with the health care reform bill signed last week, represent a redistribution of wealth in America, as many claim.
“It’s a simple proposition to us: Everyone is entitled to adequate medical health care,” Biden says. “If you call that a ‘redistribution of income’ – well, so be it. I don’t call it that. I call it just being fair – giving the middle class taxpayers an even break that the wealthy have been getting.”(Emphasis mine)
Hey Joe, I think everyone’s entitled to a representative government. You don’t mind if we drastically slash your pay, do you? While we’re at it, I think everyone is entitled to organic meats and produce to feed their families. I would love to buy only organic, but the price is so high that I simply can’t do it. I demand a government subsidy. And why am I still getting a water bill each month? Isn’t water a necessity? Of all the things you can’t live without, I’d put water second on the list, right after air. It’s so unfair that I have to pay for water, when it should be a basic human right.
Are you getting the picture, Joe, or should I go on? Or did I just provide you with a whole new list of government programs? That’s a scary thought.
The fact is that people have rights so long as they don’t infringe upon the rights of another person. To say that one person has the right to a service provided by someone else is not fair, it’s insane.
Remember Bart Stupak? He was the “pro-life” House Democrat that caved to peer-pressure and voted for the health care bill along with ten of his cronies. The next day, the bill was signed into law by President Obama. But don’t worry, President Obama signed an executive order that would outlaw federally funded abortions. Except for the fact that that order isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Why would they cave, I wonder? What could be the cost of 11 votes that would tip the scale on the health care bill that has nothing to do with health care? Apparently it costs $3.4 billion.
The 11 House Democrats led by Rep. Bart Stupak who dropped their opposition to health care reform legislation mere hours before the final vote have requested $3.4 billion in earmarks — and one watchdog group wants to know whether the money represents business as usual or political payoffs.
Stupak’s office said there’s absolutely no link between the earmarks and the health care bill’s passage.
Sure. There’s absolutely no link between my happy hubby and my new pair of shoes either. Give and take. Making deals. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. It’s part of being human. But we’re not playing with other people’s money. Democrats are.
From Business Week:
March 26 (Bloomberg) — AT&T Inc. will book $1 billion in first-quarter costs related to the health-care law signed this week by President Barack Obama, the most of any U.S. company so far.
A change in the tax treatment of Medicare subsidies triggered the non-cash expense, and the company will consider changes to the benefits it offers current and retired workers, Dallas-based AT&T said today in a regulatory filing.
Do liberals thinks that businessmen have huge vaults of gold that they swim around in like Scrooge McDuck? That any and all profit they make gets locked away just so that greedy executives can have the pleasure of staring at it, smelling it, touching it?
Um, no. You see, people like to be successful. They like to make their businesses bigger and better. You know, creating those… uh… what were they called again? Oh yeah. Jobs. Didn’t people used to like having those things? I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore, since the government is now going to take care of all of our problems.
Do you know what happens when businesses get heavily taxed, yet don’t see any benefits? They have to make up that cost somewhere. Either with layoffs or by raising the price of their products or services. Or both.
But hey, at least we have free health care now.
At least until the doctors are too taxed to work.
The Democrats have been doing a victory lap this week over their defeat of the Republicans in the battle for health care reform. So weird, I thought the parties were supposed to work together, not duke it out until the bitter end. But I guess all things are fair in love and war, and politics is a bit (or a lot) of both. So a battle it was.
Have I mentioned that the Democrats passed the bill without the majority support of their constituents? Or that not a single Republican voted for it? Or that they resorted to deceitful trickery in the worst ends-justifying-the-means scheme I’ve ever personally witnessed? That’s bipartisanship at it’s best, all right.
But the funny thing about facts — they’re stubborn things. President Obama can say “this bill will reduce the deficit” until the unicorns come home, but it won’t make it any less untrue. The bill is full of twice counted money, doesn’t include the thousands and thousands of government employees that will need to be hired to enforce the darn thing, and it assumes that revenue will continue to increase in the worst economy in a generation just as a massive health care tax is levied upon employers.
The mostly glaringly obvious discrepency is the fact that it includes 10 years of revenue, but only six years of pay outs. What happens in 2020? Do we only get health care in years ending 4-9? So many questions, never any answers.
Congressman John Dingell (D-NY) was on a radio show in Chicago this week, and host Paul Smith asked him why the coverage wouldn’t be implemented until 2014. You know, in light of the urgency with which it was forced upon us unwilling tax-payers.
The telling response (emphasis mine):
“We’re not ready to be doing it. This has been going on for years…The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re passing legislation that will cover 300 million American people in different ways, it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”
Not sure about the rest of you, but I don’t relish the idea of being controlled. Seriously. Ask my husband. Or my dad. I believe his exact words to my new husband at our wedding were, “She’s yours now!”
One of my favorite movie lines ever is from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when Toula’s mom is explaining to her why being the head of the house isn’t everything: “The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants.”
Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t admit that on a blog that feeds into my hubby’s RSS feeder. Oh well, it’s not like it’s a humongous secret. But my point is that I don’t like other people trying to control me. I don’t want them limiting my choices on what kind of food to buy, where to send my kids to school, or whether or not I need a certain kind of health insurance.
Rep. Dingell went on to say:
“Our Republicans have spent a long time not participating, not helping, carping and delaying.”
I don’t know about you, but that makes me proud to be a Republican. They won’t be able to blame us one bit when this ship goes down in flames. And for the record, Dingell-berry, Republicans were shut out of the entire process, aside from a one day *Health Summit* in which the GOP pretty much shredded the bill and wiped the Liberals off the floor with it.
Which reminds me — I need to write another love letter, uh, I mean letter of support to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). He broke down the financial impact so well that President Obama looked absolutely confused. As in, “Huh. That actually made sense. But I wonder if he’s including the money from the cash tree out back? Do I tell him about that or keep it a secret? I better ask Rahm.”
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to have a glass of wine. Before the government takes that away too, for my own good.
People are still protesting in Iran over the sham of an election. People like Neda are dying while protesting. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a huge fan of Musavi. But people should have the right to vote for their leader, and they should not be killed for protesting.
North Korea has nukes, and according to Japan, has plans to fire at Hawaii in early July. I don’t think that those are the kind of fireworks we want on Independence Day.
ABC will air an ObamaCare infomercial tomorrow night, and the Republicans or anyone with an opposing viewpoint is explicitly not invited. So much for unbiased media reporting. They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore.
California is bankrupt, and instead of cutting some massive pork projects, they’re cutting tax exemptions and closing state parks.
Several people were killed in a DC train crash.
And Perez Hilton got punched in the face.
At least one thing in the news this week made me smile!
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