Posts Tagged ‘class’

Democrats Want More Than Your Share Of Your Wages. And More. And More.

May 24, 2010

Are we taxed enough as Americans?  Should we be outraged over the level of taxation?  Read this and tell me why you shouldn’t be.  And explain to me why the Democrats are right in confiscating more and more of Americans’ property, and Republicans are wrong in trying to allow citizens to hold on to more of what they earn:

The Government’s Share Of Your Paycheck
Is Bigger Than Your Share

Hard work is good for you.  It is better for the government.

Here is the scenario:  A musical composer applied for a job with a theatrical production company to write the music and lyrics for a new stage production.  The arrangement was, lyrics and music and all artistic rights in return for a compensation package of $100,000. The composer agreed, thinking this would give him an opportunity to purchase that very special collector’s automobile he had been dreaming about for years and is now available for $95,000.

At the end of his contract the production company was happy with the composer’s work and wrote the promised check to the composer’s financial manager.  Upon the manager’s presentation of the composer’s paycheck, the composer became very angry and retorted “They promised me $100,000 and this check is for only $49,560 what happened to the rest of the money.”

The financial manager replied, “The rest of the money went for taxes.  Your government has determined they are entitled to share in the fruits of your labors.  You were paid $100,000 and that placed you in the federal 28% tax bracket so that left you with $72,000.  Then we had to withhold federal self-employment FICA taxes of 12.4% and medicare taxes of 5.8% and those taxes totaled another 18.2% or $18,200 so that left you with $53,800.  And, the State of Arizona’s share of your labors is another 4.24% or $4,240 so that left you with $49,560.  Here’s your check, go spend it wisely.”

Well, there goes my dream of the special collector’s car so I guess I will have to settle for a new Cadillac that I can purchase in these troubled times for $45,000 and I will have nearly $5,000 left over which will be enough for my wife and me to drive from Phoenix to San Diego in our brand-new car and purchase a cruise on the Mexican Riviera. Wine, dine and sunshine.  Life is good.

Off to the Cadillac dealer and after selecting the model and options and negotiating the price to $45,000 the composer said “I’ll take it.  Hooray!”

The dealer handed the bill to the composer for $49,503.  The composer shouted “What?  We agreed on $45,000.  There goes my cruise”  The Cadillac dealer said “Arizona is entitled to share in the fruits of your labors and their share of your purchase is State, County and City sales taxes of 8.3%, or $3,735 and Registration and License fees of $768 for a total Arizona share of $4,503 and the dealer charges $50 as a documentation fee bringing the total purchase price to $49,553.  Here is a check for $7.00 as change for the $49,560 check you gave us.  Go spend it wisely.”

This might be a true story.  Somewhere in this vast country a similar scenario has happened.

Now, let’s look at the big picture.  A man worked and earned $100,000 and governments took $50,440 right off the top leaving the worker with $49,560 to spend.  When he spent it, governments grabbed another $4,503 in additional taxes.  This is a total of $54,947 (or 55%) of this worker’s earnings.  Plus, do not forget, to have $4.500 left over to pay the state governments their share of his purchase, the worker had to earn $9,000 BEFORE income taxes.  Should you wish to purchase a $45,000 automobile, you must earn $100,000 to do so.

Your governments tax you when you earn money and tax you when you spend money.  And, if you do not spend it, they will tax your estate when you die.  When the George Bush tax cuts expire next year and the Death Tax returns to 55%, your government will have taxed the first 50% when you earned it, and then grab the remaining 50% when you die.

And the Obama Democrats want more!

It never occurs to the government to stop spending.

That’s the way I see it.
July 17, 2009

This is the kind of thing that applies in virtually every sphere under the sun.  Take gasoline taxes.  Did you know that the government takes twice the dollars in gasoline sales taxes than the oil companies do in profits?  And do you know who pays that? You better know, you sucker; because it’s YOU.  The oil companies pass on all the taxes imposed by Democrats to you, the quintessential resident sap.  Every single time the government imposes taxes on businesses, those business pass those taxes on to you in the form of higher prices.

Another thing that is interesting emerges from this paragraph on the states with the highest state income taxes.  The author uses Arizona, presumably because he is from that state.  But Arizona has a measly 4.24% tax rate.  If he wanted to really make his case, he would have used a different state with a higher tax rate:

New Jersey residents paid 11.8%, topping the charts.  New Yorkers were close behind, paying 11.7%, and Connecticut was third at 11.1%.  The top 10 were rounded out by Maryland (10.8%), Hawaii (10.6%), California (10.5%), Ohio (10.4%). Vermont (10.3%), Wisconsin (10.2%) and Rhode Island (10.2%).

What is interesting and informative is every single one of those ten states with the highest tax rates – every single one – is a Democrat state that voted for Barack Obama.

How do liberals define stealing?  If the government seizes my property, just because it has the power to do so, how is that not stealing?  How is it not stealing when the welfare-wanting masses vote to seize the assets of people who obtained their wealth through hard work and sound investment while they were sitting on the couch in front of the boob tube and pissing their money away with compulsive buying?

Another thing that should be pointed out is that Americans – even BEFORE the November 2008 election that gave us Barack Obama to go along with overwhelming Democrat majorities in Congress – believe that higher taxes hurt the economy by reducing both revenues and jobs.

It’s simply amazing how false promises and demagogic accusations have managed to sway people to vote against their values – and for people who will undermine those values.

Benjamin Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”  In voting for Democrat total control, the American people essentially decided to send the United States crashing down.

As much as Democrats shrilly demagogued the Bush spending (which actually WAS outrageous), they are now entirely responsible for spending which utterly dwarfs anything Bush ever dreamed of imposing.

Consider that Obama spent more in just 20 months in office than Bush did in his entire 8 years.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Obama cannot dismiss critics by pointing to President George W. Bush’s decision to run $2.9 trillion in deficits while fighting two wars and dealing with 9/11 and Katrina. Mr. Obama will surpass Mr. Bush’s eight-year total in his first 20 months and 11 days in office, adding $3.2 trillion to the national debt. If America “cannot and will not sustain” deficits like Mr. Bush’s, as Mr. Obama said during the campaign, how can Mr. Obama sustain the geometrically larger ones he’s flogging?

Incredibly, I routinely continue to hear Democrat politicians blame Bush for his spending – which is tantamount to these Democrats admitting that they are hypocrites, liars, and absolute demagogues.

And where does it end?

With the American experiment in a democratic republic going the way of the Dodo bird.

We voted to destroy ourselves by spending ourselves into bankruptcy and economy collapse.  And Obama has been hard at work bringing that “hope and change” about.  And all it takes to understand WHY this outcome is actually “hope and change” is the realization that a great many liberal “intellectuals” have yearned for the destruction of the United States of America for decades.

There’s little question that the anvil will fall on the US economy due to the near doubling of the national debt as Obama adds a projected $9.3 trillion to the $11.7 trillion hole we’re already in.  Obama is borrowing 50 cents on the dollar as he explodes the federal deficit by spending four times more than Bush spent in 2008 and in the process “adding more to the debt than all presidents — from George Washington to George Bush — combined.” And most terrifying of all, Obama’s spending will cause debt to double from 41% of GDP in 2008 to a crushing 82% of GDP in 2019.

What will be the result of all this insane spending, and not very far off? A quote from a CNS News story should awaken anyone who thinks the future will be rosy:

By 2019, the CBO said, a whopping 82 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) will go to pay down the national debt. This means that in future years, the government could owe its creditors more than the goods and services that the entire economy can produce.

This massive spending under Obama and Democrats merely continues a trend that has been going on for decades: when you look at Congress’ spending when Democrats have been in control versus when Republicans have been in control over the last thirty years, you find that Democrat Congresses have accumulated 2.5 TIMES the debt that Republican Congress’ have.

Which is why Rep. Eric Cantor was right when he said:

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Minority Whip) on ABC’s “This Week”:
“If you look at the kind of deficit that we’ve incurred over the last three years that the Democrats have been in control of Congress, 60% of the overall deficit from the last ten years has occurred in that period. And frankly with the incurrence of the debt, we’ve seen very little result. That’s why we think we ought to choose another way.”

But we didn’t go the Republican way: we went the Democrats’ way.  And it should be rather obvious by now that it was the WRONG WAY.

And so the day is soon coming when Americans will be called upon to support massive tax increases such that the United States has never seen in its entire history, or else go completely broke and go the way of Greece.  But of course it will have been high government taxation and even higher government spending that broke us to begin with.

Liberals are going to continue to steal from the classes that they demonize – as befits the “from-each-according-to-his-ability-to-each-according-to-his-need” communists they quintessentially are – and they will continue to steal from generations yet unborn (at least those whom they haven’t murdered in their abortion mills) until there is nothing left of this nation but a hollowed-out shell.

And don’t think for a second that that isn’t exactly what many liberals – including many Obama friends and members of the Obama administration – want.

It’s coming for you, average American.  Liberals are presently demonizing the rich and demanding that they pay more and more and more.  But there aren’t enough rich people to pay these skyrocketing debts.  And so they’re going to start going after your wealth.  Do you know that even the poorest Americans have far more than most “citizens of the world”? When will you be told to pay YOUR share the way the rich have already been called upon to pay far more than theirs?

That’s right, craven average American liberal.  Pretty soon, the Democrats won’t be taxing the other guy; they’re going to come after YOU.  Not only because Democrats have spent too much to count on the wealthy to pay the load, but because the same argument that justified stealing the wealth of the rich in America is the identical same argument that will justify stealing YOUR wealth from YOU.  Just as the rich have far more than the average American, the average American has FAR more than the average Zimbabwean, who lives on less than $100 a year.  And the day is coming when you’re going to be taxed up the wazoo according to your own morally idiotic argument that you used to seize the wealth of your fellow Americans.

It will mean the destruction of American in every way, shape, and form, but at least I’d be able to see the look on the faces of all the people who thought that it was fair to force the top 50% of taxpayers to pay more than 97% of the taxes so that the other half can get off completely free and live like parasites.

I want to see the look on your faces when “the President of the world” starts going after what you’ve saved for yourselves and your children.  And many of you will have to demonstrate what collocate hypocrites you’ve been all along when you try to protect your assets from a government seizure of wealth that finally went too far for your comfort by going after you.

We don’t have much more time, Americans.  We will either vote these Democrats out, and rid ourselves from the menace of liberalism once for all, or we will economically implode.  And Democrats who will have brought that implosion into being will seek to use that implosion to impose the socialist society they’ve always dreamed of.

ObamaCare Increases Health Cost By $311 Billion While Threatening Access To Care

April 23, 2010

Just in case you didn’t catch it, it’s official: ObamaCare was packaged and sold entirely based on lies.

CMS Study Shows Health Care Law Increases Costs–$311 Billion in 10 Years
By Tom White, on April 23rd, 2010, at 11:43 am

US Senate Morning Briefing

Last night, the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released his long-awaited report on the Democrats’ health care spending bill. The report states, “[W]e estimate that overall national health expenditures under the health reform act would increase by a total of $311 billion during calendar years 2010-2019. . . .” This was an assessment that was requested by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell prior to the final votes on health care in the House, but CMS told Republicans that they couldn’t complete an analysis in time for the vote. Given the report’s findings, it’s easy to see why Democrats decided to rush ahead with a vote before the report could be completed.Reporting on the CMS analysis last night, the AP wrote, “President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law will increase the nation’s health care tab instead of bringing costs down, government economic forecasters concluded Thursday in a sobering assessment of the sweeping legislation. A report by economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department said the health care remake will achieve Obama’s aim of expanding health insurance — adding 34 million Americans to the coverage rolls. But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president’s twin goal of controlling runaway costs. It also warned that Medicare cuts may be unrealistic and unsustainable, driving about 15 percent of hospitals into the red and ‘possibly jeopardizing access’ to care for seniors.”

But in the run-up to the vote, indeed throughout the year-long debate on health care, Democrats and President Obama repeatedly insisted that their unpopular legislation would control costs and save the government money. In December, President Obama announced, “We agree on reforms that will finally reduce the costs of health care. Families will save on their premiums. Businesses that will see their costs rise if we do nothing will save money now and in the future.” Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) insisted at the beginning of debate in the Senate, “The Republican Leader just a few moments ago says that this bill raises costs. With all due respect to my good friend from Kentucky, that statement is false.” And Democrats repeatedly cited a CBO report saying that if all the Medicare cuts are implemented, the bill could save $130 billion over the next decade. This was pointed to by everyone from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to rank-and-file House Democrats like Ohio Rep. John Boccieri.

But as the AP story explains, “The [CMS] report acknowledged that some of the cost-control measures in the bill — Medicare cuts, a tax on high-cost insurance and a commission to seek ongoing Medicare savings — could help reduce the rate of cost increases beyond 2020. But it held out little hope for progress in the first decade. ‘During 2010-2019, however, these effects would be outweighed by the increased costs associated with the expansions of health insurance coverage,’ wrote Richard S. Foster, Medicare’s chief actuary. ‘Also, the longer-term viability of the Medicare … reductions is doubtful.’”

As Sen. McConnell said when President Obama signed the health care bill, “Most Americans out there aren’t celebrating today. . . . People oppose this bill not because they don’t know what’s in it, but because they know exactly what’s in it. . . . They know you don’t have to slash Medicare by half a trillion dollars to get lower premiums. . . . People know you won’t save money on health care by spending another $2.6 trillion on health care. . . . They know you don’t reduce the deficit by creating a massive new government program that even Democrats have described as a Ponzi scheme. They know you can go a long ways towards doing all these things without creating a brand new entitlement at a time when we can’t even cover the cost of the entitlements we have.”

Once again, studies by neutral observers have shown that Democrats’ claims about their health care bill just do not match reality. This was a flawed bill rushed through because Democrats wanted to “make history.” But Americans know better. At a time of record deficits and debt, this irresponsible health spending bill should be repealed and replaced with legislation that actually addresses health care costs.

All one has to do is look at Obama’s plunging polls in the aftermath of the passage of ObamaCare to verify that the American people did not want and do not want this “boondogglization” of the American health care system.  Polls across the board show Obama’s approval plunging dramatically since health care “reform” was shoved down the nation’s throat: Quinnipiac has Obama’s approval at a lowest-ever-measured 44% – with a majority disapproving of him; top-pollster Rasmussen has Obama at only 47% – with a whopping 52% disapproving of him; and the RCP average has Obama WELL below a 50% approval.  Barack Obama is no longer in any way speaking for or representing the American people.

It turns out this is the same guy who is on tape at least eight times saying all the health care negotiations would all be on C-SPAN – and then he went to closed-door meeting after closed door meeting that resulted in a health care bill that NOBODY knows anything about.  It turns out that this is the same guy who promised he would unite the country in a bipartisan manner – and instead broke that promise and became the most polarizing and divisive president in history.   This is the same guy who said he would NEVER allow health care to pass by the awful partisan reconciliation tactic – and then he did exactly what he promised he wouldn’t do.  This is the guy who repeatedly promised that he wouldn’t tax anyone making less than $250,000 a year – and now everyone knows he’ll break that central, fundamental promise.  This is the same guy who demonized Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for doing what his own chief of staff had just done only the day before.

I can go on.  For example, I can talk about how his administration promised up and down that the $787 billion (subsequently massively upwardly revised to $862 billion) stimulus – which will actually cost $3.27 TRILLION – would keep unemployment under 8%.  Obama sold a massive lie to sell a massive porkulus.  And now we’re paying for a fat pile of lies.

Now we find out that this fundamental liar told yet another massive, fundamental lie.

Now we find out that Barack Obama personally and repeatedly lied to the American people about the cost of his precious boondoggle ObamaCare:

“I pledged that I will not sign health insurance reform — as badly as I think it’s necessary, I won’t sign it if that reform adds even one dime to our deficit over the next decade — and I mean what I say.”

You loathsome, vile LIAR.

You said whatever you thought you needed to say to get the American people to jump into bed with you.  Then you raped them.  And then moved on to the next lie and rape.  And the next lie and rape after that.

Now, you think this is terrible news about the terrible ObamaCare power-grab?  You aint seen NOTHING yet.  Have a gander at this:

Not one of its major programs has gotten started, and already the wheels are starting to come off of Obamacare. The administration’s own actuary reported on Thursday that millions of people could lose their health insurance, that health-care costs will rise faster than they would have if the law hadn’t passed, and that the overhaul will mean that people will have a harder and harder time finding physicians to see them.

The White House is trying to spin the new report from Medicare’s chief actuary Richard Foster as only half bad because it concludes that, while costs will increase, only 23 million people will remain uninsured (instead of 24 million previously estimated).

But looking at the details of Foster’s report shows the many, many danger signs for Obamacare and how many of its promises will be broken:

1. People losing coverage: About 14 million people will lose their employer coverage by 2019, as smaller employers terminate their plans and workers who currently have employer coverage enroll in Medicaid. Half of all seniors on Medicare Advantage could lose their coverage and the extra benefits the plans offer.

2. Huge fines for companies: Businesses will pay $87 billion in penalties in the first five years after the fines trigger in 2014, partly because they can’t afford to offer expensive, government-mandated coverage and partly because some of their employees will apply for taxpayer-subsidized insurance.

3. Higher costs for consumers: Tens of billions of dollars in new fees and excise taxes will be “passed through to health consumers in the form of higher drug and devices prices and higher premiums,” according to Foster. A separate report shows small businesses will be hit hardest.

4. A program created to fail: The new “CLASS Act” long-term-care insurance program will face “a significant risk of failure,” according to Foster. Indeed, he finds, “there is a very serious risk that the problem of adverse selection will make the CLASS program unsustainable.”

5. Spending increases: Under the new law, national health spending will increase by $311 billion over the coming decade. And instead of bending the federal spending curve down, it will move it upward “by a net total of $251 billion” over the next decade.

6. “Free-riders”: An estimated 23 million people will remain uninsured in 2019, roughly 5 million of whom would be undocumented aliens; the remainder would be the 18 million who decline to get coverage and who will pay the penalty.

7. Spending reductions are fiction
: Estimated reductions in the growth rate of health spending “may not be fully achievable” because “Medicare productivity adjustments could become unsustainable even within the next ten years, and over time the reductions in the scope of employer-sponsored health insurance could also become an issue.”

8. You can’t keep your doctor
: Fifteen percent of all hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers treating Medicare patients could be operating at a loss by 2019, which will “possibly jeopardize access to care for beneficiaries.” Doctors are threatening to drop out of Medicare because cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates mean they can’t even cover their costs.

9. Coverage but no care: A significant portion of those newly eligible for Medicaid will have trouble finding physicians who will see them, and the increased demand for Medicaid services could be difficult to meet.

This is an objective report by administration actuaries that shows this sweeping legislation has serious, serious problems.

And there’s more: Joint Economic Committee Republicans explain in a new report the impact of a rarely mentioned $14.3 billion per year tax on health insurance, effective in 2014. They find this tax will be mostly passed through to consumers in the form of higher premiums for private coverage. It will cost the typical family of four with job-based coverage an additional $1,000 a year in higher premiums and will fall largely, and inequitably, on small businesses and their employees.

States are fighting back. The Florida legislature voted Thursday to place a state constitutional amendment on the ballot that would ban any laws that compel someone to “participate in any health care system.” It requires a 60 percent vote to succeed. The legislation is modeled after the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, which has been introduced or announced in 42 states.

It just makes you want to cry.  Fifteen percent of hospitals are going to close, tens of thousands of doctors will leave medicine, and yet millions of people are going to start swamping the healthcare rolls.  If I wanted to destroy our healthcare system, that’s how I’d do it.

On top of that – something that will crash the system even sooner – is the fact that more and more healthier people will increasingly pay the fines and opt out of ObamaCare, will more and more sick people enter the system.  The result will be a social catastrophe.  Our very worst enemy couldn’t have engineered our downfall better.

Business after business have been and will continue to be writing down billions and billions of dollars in profits to cover the huge costs of ObamaCare.  These are businesses that would have hired workers, only now the skyrocketing costs of paying for ObamaCare for their employees will keep that hiring to an absolute minimum.

Barack Obama proudly and arrogantly said, “You Can Measure America’s Bottom Line By Looking At Caterpillar’s’” – and then he torpedoed Caterpillar’s bottom line.

Unemployment is going to be soaringly high for years – as even the Obama White House acknowledges.  Now you know why.

What’s the result of the Democrats’ idiotic policies?  Ask Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who just told us that sky-high “unemployment is likely to remain unacceptably high for a long time.”

The unemployment rate “is still terribly high and is going to stay unacceptably high for a very long time,” Geithner said.

Of course, if unemployment is going to stay “unacceptably high” for “a very long time,” you’re pretty much accepting it, aren’t you?

Meanwhile, there will be trillions of dollars in additional spending that Obama and the Democrats refused to allow the CBO to count: such as the SIX TRILLION DOLLARS it will cost Americans to buy ObamaCare policies or face fines.

The Titanic wasn’t as big of a disaster as ObamaCare.  If we can’t repeal and replace it, it will bankrupt the country.

Mainstream Media Touts $848 Billion Senate Health Bill, Ignores Actual Cost Of At LEAST $2.5 Trillion

November 20, 2009

Democrats have done a good job – along with the loyal participation of a leftwing propaganda machine – of projecting their takeover of the health care system as “only” costing a “mere” $848 billion.

They think the American people are dumb enough to buy their fraud, and maybe they are.

But the actual cost of this program over ten years of its actual implementation will be at least $2.5 trillion.  And that is $107.5 trillion more than we’ve got.

Updated November 19, 2009
Senate Health Bill Price Tag, Rosy Deficit Estimate Assailed as ‘Fantasy’

by FOXNews.com

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claims that his health care bill costs about $848 billion in the first 10 years, well under President Obama’s $900 billion target. That’s for 10 years of revenue-gathering, but only six years of service.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claims that his health care bill costs about $848 billion in the first 10 years, well under President Obama’s $900 billion target.

That’s for 10 years of revenue-gathering, but only six years of service, according to the analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.

Adding in expenses beyond the 10-year mark drastically skews the overall cost, making the $848 billion a mere fraction of the long-term price tag of overhauling America’s health care system — and that’s if no changes are made to the legislation during that time.

The additional claim touted by Senate Democrats — that the bill will reduce the deficit by $130 billion over the first 10 years — is also coming under fire as “fantasy.”

Republicans have countered the CBO estimate with a figure of their own: $2.5 trillion, an estimate that comes out of the Senate Budget Committee minority’s analysis of Reid’s plan.

“This is a lousy bill that’s going to cost American taxpayers like mad for the rest of our lives,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a fierce critic of the health care legislation, told Fox News on Thursday.

Part of the problem with the CBO estimate is that it covers a 10-year period from 2010-2019 — however, the health care reform plan is not fully implemented until 2014. That means the federal government is raking in billions in taxes and savings for the first four years without spending on the new program. The $2.5 trillion estimate is for the 10-year window starting in 2014, after implementation of the program begins.

Under the timetable in the CBO estimate, the government spends $9 billion in the first four years, but $838 billion in the last six when the overhaul goes into full force.

The revenue significantly ramps up in the latter half of the decade to keep pace with spending, but the nearly $100 billion in deficit savings in the first four years is not necessarily in the piggy bank either.

Democrats are holding up estimates that show the second decade of health care reform yields even more deficit reduction.

President Obama said in a statement Wednesday night that the unveiling of the is a “critical milestone” and cited one estimate showing the second 10 years would yield up to $650 billion in deficit reduction.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, cited the same estimate, telling Fox News that Reid’s bill is “going in the right direction” and yields significant savings.

“That to me is the most encouraging part of this,” he said.

Budget analysts say that the early revenue cannot be fenced off, much like Social Security money is spent despite a trust fund for that purpose. The funding gets absorbed into the general federal budget, presumably to go toward reducing the deficit on a yearly basis.

However, this creates the possibility that Congress could spend that money twice, by using the up-front savings as fun money for new projects and then having to pay the bill for health care reform down the road. Holtz-Eakin called this a worst-case scenario.

“The government’s incapable of segregating funds. You can’t put the money in a cigar box and bury it behind the Treasury Department,” said Michael Tanner, senior fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute.

Tanner pointed to two other “gimmicks” that make the price seem smaller than it is.

One deals with the so-called “doctor fix,” which would be an act of Congress to ensure Medicare doctors don’t face steeps cuts in federal reimbursements. This would cost at least $210 billion over 10 years, and it’s a “fix” that Democrats are trying to separate from the health care reform bill
.

That alone erases the $130 billion in deficit savings claimed by the CBO’s latest health care estimate.

Tanner also pointed to the CLASS Act, a long-term care program in the bill that takes in billions in revenue early on but does not pay out in any significant way until the next decade.

“If you use honest accounting … then this bill’s not paid for,” Tanner said. “It’s smoke-and-mirrors accounting.”

The Budget Committee document estimating the actual cost to be $2.5 trillion over years five through 14 of the program also showed $126 billion in deficit reduction in that period. It estimated even more down the road.

But Holtz-Eakin called that “fiction,” since it relies on more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

He said there’s no way the government can sustain and increase those cuts and expect the program to work.

The biggest problem of all is that the CBO – regardless of how well-intentioned or “objective” it is – have routinely underestimated the costs of government programs – especially health-related government programs – by a factor of ten.

The Senate Democrat health bill includes the public option.  It guarantees a government takeover of healthcare.

We are talking about clear matters of life and death.  We are talking about 1/6th of the U.S. economy.  And Democrats are playing games of smoke and mirrors.  What they are doing is beyond unconscionable.

$1 trillion in cuts to Medicare?  Bye-bye, old people.  In the words of Obama adviser Robert Reich, “We’re going to let you die.”

Liberal Newsweek has it’s “Case for Killing Granny.”  Newsbusters points out:

For good measure the magazine also promises readers to explain “Why We Should Insure Illegals” and how “Health Reform Could Combat Crime” in related articles linked on the front page. More illegal immigration, fewer criminals and old people. What a deal!

Please don’t be so naive and so stupid as to believe that these people aren’t serious.  And I mean deadly serious.

Make no mistake: Democrats are voting for the national economic suicide of the United States, and for the deaths by medical-resource rationing of millions of Americans who otherwise would have lived.

Politics For Kindergartners

August 27, 2008

Lesson Learned!

I was talking to the little girl of a friend of mine the other day
who said she wanted to be President some day.

Both of her parents, who are liberal Democrats, were standing there,
so I asked her, ‘If you were President what would be the first thing
you would do?’

(more…)