Super Committee Fails To Come Up With Trivial Spending Cuts – Where Does The Buck Stop Again?

Harry Truman had a sign on his desk: “The Buck Stops Somewhere Else.”

Wait.  I’m sorry.  That’s Obama.  Truman’s sign said, “The Buck Stops Here.”

Where’s Harry S. when we need him?  Instead we’ve got an abject fool and failure whose only talent is pointing a finger at someone other than himself even when HE’S the man in charge.

The Super Committee has failed.  Wow.  Big surprise.  Congresss’ punting earlier this year didn’t result in their getting a touchdown.

Rep. James Clyburn, number three Democrat in the House, said, “The fact of the matter is Democrats have not coalesced around a plan.”  And how the hell were Republicans supposed to negotiate with Democrats when Democrats couldn’t even negotiate with themselves?  Democrats refused to even OFFER any entitlement cuts until the last possible minute.  Republicans, for their part, offered a plan that included increasing revenues.  The same Democrats that couldn’t get their own acts together voted it down.

This Super Committee was designed to fail from the very start.  And lo and behold, the Demgagogue-in-Chief crafted his campaign on running against a do-nothing Congress.

It has now been 935 days since Democrats have bothered to pass any kind of a budget whatsoever.  And we were supposed to believe that Democrats gave a flying damn about the budget.

Barack Obama has DOUBLED George Bush’s budget and TRIPLED George Bush’s deficit even as the fool demands FAR MORE SPENDING.  And we were supposed to believe that Obama gave a flying damn about spending or deficits.

But that’s the way this rigged game was played.  And now the game is played out.

Do you know what the cuts in spending Democrats refused to agree to amounted to?  About one percent.  They were looking for $1.2 trillion in cuts over ten years.  Given the fact that, under Obama, the budget has swollen to $3.729 trillion, which is $37.3 trillion over ten years.  Which amounts to a 3% cut in spending.

And there was never any way in the hell that Democrats will surely one day end up in that Democrats were ever going to agree to a 3% cut in spending.

Democrats say this is a revenue problem, rather than a spending problem.  It doesn’t matter than out the federal budget DOUBLED in ten years, which is to say that we are spending 200% more on government than we were ten years ago.

It doesn’t matter than the top one percent of earners are paying thirty percent of the taxes; “they’re not paying their fair” share no matter how much they’re paying because the people demonizing them are class warfare Marxists.

It doesn’t matter if entitlements such as Medicare are NECESSARILY GOING TO GO BANKRUPT inside of five years because Democrats abjectly refuse to do anythign to save that program.

It doesn’t matter if actual U.S. debt under this president now exceeds the entire GDP of the entire planet combined.

And it doesn’t matter if we are watching Europe fall apart before our very eyes due to the same damn socialism and inability to reign in spending that Obama and the Democrats demand America follow.

And where has Obama been?  What leadership did he demonstrate with these debt committee negotiations?

Besides create commissions, all kinds of commissions that have accomplished NOTHING.

Remember when Obama promised over and over and over again to transcend the political system and rise above partisan party politics?  The New York Times – clearly not conservative – said that that was Obama’s “core promise” to the American people:

WASHINGTON — At the core of Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is a promise that he can transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars and build a new governing majority.

To achieve the change the country wants, he says, “we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, independents and Republicans together to get things done.”

Is that what Obama delivered?  is it even close to what Obama delivered?  Even according to the liberal New York Times, Obama has fundamentally and profoundly broken his core promise to the American people.

2012 can’t come fast enough.  Because Obama is determined to campaign rather than lead or govern.  And this country needs to decide if it wants spending and socilaism and European failure, or whether it wants to finally pull its belt tight and cut out-of-control government and pull itself out of this mess.

The United States of America will not survive Barack Hussein Obama.  And he never really intended America to survive him.  No, the man who apologized for America while he set this country up to fail is using the Cloward and Piven approach of his fellow liberals.

The beast is coming.  He will be a big government liberal who will usher in the global government that liberals have always wanted.  And he will turn that big global government into total hell on earth.  And no human being who has ever lived will be more responsible for his coming than Barack Obama.

If I Budget Like Liberals, I Can ‘Save’ A Billion Dollars And Go Bankrupt At The Same Time

I decided to buy a $1,700,000 Bugatti Veyron.  But instead I borrowed a ton of money to purchase a Lamborghini Reventon which costs only $1,600,000.

Ka-ching.  In Obama math, I just saved my family $100,000.  I think I’ll go buy myself some Versace suits to reward myself for my fiscal discipline.

How did I justify this car purchase?  Well, every day, I write myself a budget and allocate funds.  I don’t actually have the money, but that’s no big deal these days.  I allocate huge sums to myriad accounts.  And then I tally up the unspent portion and see how much I “saved.”  And if I re-allocate that money to another pet project, I count it as a “cut.”  And that way I’m justified to do basically whatever the hell I want.

You might say, “That’s crazy.  They don’t do that.”  But you’d be wrong:

Budget tricks helped Obama save programs from cuts
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press – 4/12/2011

WASHINGTON – The historic $38 billion in budget cuts resulting from at-times hostile bargaining between Congress and the Obama White House were accomplished in large part by pruning money left over from previous years, using accounting sleight of hand and going after programs President Barack Obama had targeted anyway.

Such moves permitted Obama to save favorite programs — Pell grants for college students, health research and “Race to the Top” aid for public schools, among others — from Republican knives, according to new details of the legislation released Tuesday morning.

And big holes in foreign aid and Environmental Protection Agency accounts were patched in large part. Republicans also gave up politically treacherous cuts to the Agriculture Department’s food inspection program.

The details of the agreement reached late Friday night just ahead of a deadline for a partial government shutdown reveal a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially “score” as cuts to pay for spending elsewhere, but often have little to no actual impact on the deficit.

As a result of that sleight of hand, Obama was able to reverse many of the cuts passed by House Republicans in February when the chamber approved a bill slashing this year’s budget by more than $60 billion. In doing so, the White House protected favorites like the Head Start early learning program, while maintaining the maximum Pell grant of $5,550 and funding for Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative that provides grants to better-performing schools. Food aid to the poor was preserved, as were housing subsidies.

Instead, the cuts that actually will make it into law are far tamer, including cuts to earmarks, unspent census money, leftover federal construction funding, and $2.5 billion from the most recent renewal of highway programs that can’t be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation. Another $3.5 billion comes from unused bonus money for states that enroll more uninsured children in a program providing health care to children of lower-income families.

More money was actually borrowed and spent in the time it took Congress to negotiate this package ($4 billion a day) than was actually “saved.”

And only in Washington can a budget which spends far more and borrows far more than the year before be seen as “cutting.”

In the movie “City Heat,” Mike Murphy’s (Burt Reynold’s) partner was killed over an extortion deal by gangsters who threw him out of a window.  Asked how he died, Murphy said, “Suddenly.”

That’s how the United States of America is going to die, too.  Suddenly.  Very suddenly.

The U.S. debt exceeds the gross domestic planet of the entire human race.  Eventually a few big lenders in that class known as “the rest of the world” are going to want their money.  And then it’s Great Depression Part Duex – only this time bigger and scarier than ever – coming to your town soon.

And most Americans are like ants, busy at work (well, the half of the country that actually works and pays taxes, anyway) scurrying around, only dimly aware that there’s a gigantic can of toxic pesticide labeled “U.S. Debt” poised over our thriving little colony.

Democrats WILL NOT actually cut money or spend less.  The best we can hope for – and that only after a knock-down drag-out fight in which we played chicken with our political system – is a charade of baits and switches.

A more precise anaology (than ants) for Democrats would be termites.  They have been busily eating away at the fabric of American society for decades.  The wood of our economic system is almost entirely gone now, leaving only a hollow shell that could completely collapse with a particularly large gust of wind.  But they are merely redoubling their efforts to just eat faster.

The word “trillion” has become a household word just in the last three years.  Yes, occasionally when talking about the national debt (and few people ever really bothered to do that prior to 2008), the word “trillion” came up.  But we all routinely hear that number thrown around now: a trillion.  A thousand billion.

Liberals love to argue that we had balanced budgets under Democrat Bill Clinton.  But a little history (contained in this article) would demonstrate Congress, and NOT the president, writes the national budget; that Bill Clinton and the Democrats were thoroughly defeated for their terrible policies in 1994, and that it was the REPUBLICAN CONGRESS which controlled the House and the Senate from that point on which actually balanced the budget; and that the Republicans actually massively cut spending largely over Bill Clinton’s objections.  You’d know that the very first platform on that incoming 1994 House Republican Congress was A BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT.  Bill Clinton didn’t “balance” anything; Republicans did.

Liberals also love to say it’s the Republicans whose policies have led us into now-almost-certain bankruptcy and national implosion (even as they keep recklessly spending while Republicans plead with them to stop being insane).  But here’s the reality from the same article cited above:

For the record, the last budget from a Republican President AND a Republican Congress – FY-2007 (passed in 2006) – resulted in a$161 billion deficit at a time when unemployment was 4.6%.  That’s what happened the last time the GOP was in control.

What happened when the Democrats took control in January 2007?  Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi passed a FY-2008 budget that had a $459 billion deficit – nearly three times the deficit in the immediately previous Republican-passed budget.  Three times.  And this before the financial crisis that somehow “necessitated” all this massive spending.

Now, that’s a pretty crazy increase under Democrat control.  But you aint seen nothin’ yet.

The Democrats passed a FY-2009 budget with a staggering, mind-boggling, totally reckless $1.42 TRILLION deficit.

The FY-2010 budget approved by Reid and Pelosi and signed by Obama had an estimated $1.6 TRILLION deficit.

The deficit has increased from $161 billion in the last budget before Democrats took control of the Congress (FY 2007) to $1.42 trillion in the most recent fiscal year (FY 2009)—an increase of $1.26 trillion or 782%.

With three months remaining in the fiscal 2009 budget, the federal deficit just officially passed the $1 trillion mark.  Worse yet, Obama borrowed more than forty cents for every single dollar he spent.

We also suffered a budget shortfall of $94 billion in the month of June, which marks the first June in more than ten years (read, “encompassing the entire Bush presidency”).  Bush’s success in raising revenues is bookended by two Democrat presidents who failed.

And now the Democrats aren’t even bothering to pass a budget for the next fiscal year, so they can simply spend without any accountability whatsoever.

The old annual deficits under Republicans have now   become the monthly deficits under Democrats:

In the 12 years that Republicans controlled the   House, the average deficit was $104 billion (average of final   deficit/surplus FY1996-FY2007 data taken from Table F-1 below).  In   just 3 years under Democrats, the average deficit is now almost $1.1   trillion (average of final deficit/surplus FY2008 and 2009 data   taken from Table F-1; FY2010 data taken from Table 1-3).  Source: CBO January 2010 Budget and Economic Outlook

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Minority Whip) rightly pointed out 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.”

And yet the media falsely blame BUSH and Republicans for that spending, rather than Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the Democrat-controlled House and Senate, even though factually speaking the Democrats were ENTIRELY to blame for every single penny that was spent from January 2007 on.  Because our Constitution forbids a president from spending; it is CONGRESS that spends.

Right now, liberal newspapers such as the New York Times are decrying the Republicans for “holding America hostage.” How DARE Republicans demand spending cuts?  Don’t they care about all the children they’re murdering? ask the liberals who are responsible for 53 million dead babies since 1973.

Liberals also incessantly say, “If we don’t spend more, America will collapse.”

“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”

And you just try that at home and see how it works out, kids.

Democrats are morally and fiscally insane.  And all they have done – along with an ideological propagandist mainstream media’s assistance at every turn – is to redefine insanity as “sane” and sanity as “insane.”

If we do not initiate massive cuts now, America itself is 100% guaranteed to collapse within just a few more years.  And when it collapses – and mark my words it will fall like a house of cards in a way that will stun Americans because they’ve believed liberal lies – it will be the poorest who will suffer the most.

All the budget gimmicks and phoney tricks aside, when America implodes, it will be because Democrats spent too much, not because Republicans cut too much.

Latest ObamaCare ‘Oopsie’: HealthCare Destruction Act Already Killing People

“It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.” – Robert Reich, lifelong Democrat “expert”

“A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people” – Obama Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein

“At least we can let doctors know — and your mom know — that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller.” – The Hussein himself, informing a woman that it’s basically time to let her mother die.

“ObamaCare Factoid: Access To Health Care Doesn’t Mean Squat When Hospitals, Doctors And Pharmacists Bail” – Title of article by Michael Eden now factually demonstrated to have been completely right.

Before I provide the article of the day, allow me to show you some things that I posted/wrote nearly a year ago:

This is nothing compared to what might happen under Democratic health overhaul plans, which would slash Medicare spending by nearly $500 billion over 10 years. As Medicare actuaries recently pointed out in understated fashion, such cuts “may be unrealistic.” But, if Congress actually carried them out, about one in five hospitals, nursing homes and home care agencies could lose money, they warned in their report. As a result, such providers could drop Medicare, leaving seniors with less access.

[…]

Don’t think for a second that this isn’t directly related to the disaster known as ObamaCare.  Democrats are gutting Medicare reimbursements and blocking the essential “doctor fix” from their bill to create the contrived and bogus illusion that their boondoggle will provide “deficit neutrality.”  They are playing all kinds of games and gimmicks, such as taxing for ten years and only providing benefits for five, to support that illusion. It will fail, and a lot of people will die.

[…]

And so, what do you think will happen when Democrats cut the reimbursement rates?  People who have commons sense know: hospitals and doctors will begin to see fewer and fewer Medicare patients, as a matter of simple economic necessity.   That isn’t a “reform,” but a disaster.

And this stuff is why the dean of the Harvard Medical School gave ObamaCare a failing grade.  It’s why the California Medical Association recently came out strongly against the bill.  It’s why more and more state governors – Democrats as well as Republicans – are beginning to scream that ObamaCare merely turns Medicaid into a giant deficit-creating unfunded mandate on the states (again, to create the illusion of being “deficit neutral”).

And, now, without further delay, the article of the day’s latest demonstration that the Democrat Party is the political arm of the devil and Barack Obama is leading America into ruin not seen since the last time socialism devastated Europe when our grandparents were young kids…

It is somehow ironically fitting that this destruction of our health care system would be described in Obama’s hometown.

Medicaid cuts: teeth pulled, transplant called off
By The Associated Press
Posted Dec 15, 2010

CHICAGO —

In Illinois, a pharmacist closes his business because of late Medicaid payments. In Arizona, a young father’s liver transplant is canceled because Medicaid suddenly won’t pay for it. In California, dentists pull teeth that could be saved because Medicaid doesn’t pay for root canals.

Across the country, state lawmakers have taken harsh actions to try to rein in the budget-busting costs of the health care program that serves 58 million poor and disabled Americans. Some states have cut payments to doctors, paid bills late and trimmed benefits such as insulin pumps, obesity surgery and hospice care.

Lawmakers are bracing for more work when they reconvene in January. Some states face multibillion-dollar deficits. Federal stimulus money for Medicaid is soon to evaporate. And Medicaid enrollment has never been higher because of job losses.

In the view of some lawmakers, Medicaid has become a monster, and it’s eating the budget. In Illinois, Medicaid sucks up more money than elementary, secondary and higher education combined.

“Medicaid is such a large, complicated part of our budget problem, that to get our hands around it is very difficult. It’s that big. It’s that bad,” said Illinois Sen. Dale Righter, a Republican and co-chairman of a bipartisan panel to reform Medicaid in Illinois, where nearly 30 percent of total spending goes to the program.

Medicaid costs are shared by the federal and state governments. It’s not just the poor and disabled who benefit. Wealthier people do, too, such as when middle-class families with elderly parents in nursing homes are relieved of financial pressure after Medicaid starts picking up the bills.

Contrary to stereotype, it’s the elderly and disabled who cost nearly 70 cents of every Medicaid dollar, not the single mother and her children.

In California, Medicaid no longer pays for many adult dental services. But it still pays for extractions, that is, tooth-pulling. The unintended consequence: Medicaid patients tell dentists to pull teeth that could be saved.

“The roots are fine. The tooth could be saved with a root canal,” said Dr. Nagaraj Murthy, who practices in Compton, Calif. “I had a patient yesterday. I said we could do a root canal. He said, ‘No, it’s hurting. Go ahead and pull it. I don’t have the money.”’

Murthy recently pulled an elderly woman’s last tooth, but Medicaid no longer pays for dentures.

“Elderly patients suffer the most,” Murthy said. “They’re walking around with no teeth.”

States can decide which optional services Medicaid covers, and dental care is among cutbacks in some places. Last year’s economic stimulus package increased the federal share of Medicaid money temporarily. But that money runs out at the end of June, when the federal government will go back to paying half the costs rather than 60 to 70 percent. So more cuts could be ahead.

During the Great Recession, millions of people relied on the Medicaid safety net. Between 2007 and 2009, the number of uninsured Americans grew by more than 5 million as workers lost jobs with employer-based insurance. Another 7 million signed up for Medicaid.

Just when caseloads hit their highest point, the nation’s new health care law required states not to change the rules on who’s eligible for Medicaid. That means states can’t roll up the welcome mat by tightening Medicaid’s income requirements.

So states have resorted to a variety of painful options.

In Arizona, lawmakers stopped paying for some kinds of transplants, including livers for people with hepatitis C. When the cuts took effect Oct. 1, Medicaid patient Francisco Felix, who needs a liver, suddenly had to raise $500,000 to get a transplant.

The 32-year-old’s case took a dramatic turn in November when a friend’s wife died, and her liver became available. Felix was prepped for surgery in hopes financial donations would come in. When the money didn’t materialize, the liver went to someone else, and Felix went home. His doctor told him he has a year before he’ll be too sick for a transplant.

“They are taking away his opportunity to live,” said his wife, Flor Felix. “It’s impossible for us or any family to get that much money.” The family is collecting donations through a website and plans a yard sale this weekend, she said.

The choices are difficult for states that have already cut payments to doctors and hospitals to the bone.

“If we don’t see an economic recovery where state revenues rebound, they’re really going to be very strained on how they can make ends meet,” said Diane Rowland, executive director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

States may consider lowering payment rates to nursing homes or home health agencies or further reducing payments to doctors, Rowland said.

“The problem here is the program is pretty lean, and payment rates are pretty low,” she said. Patients can’t find care because fewer doctors accept the low payments.

Prescription drug coverage in states is an optional benefit, another possible place to cut, Rowland said. “But if you cut back on people’s psychotropic drugs, is that penny-wise and pound-foolish? Do they end up in institutions where Medicaid pays more for their care?”

In Illinois, late payments became the rule.

Tom Miller closed his pharmacy in rural southern Illinois this summer and is going through bankruptcy, largely because the state was chronically late making Medicaid payments to him. Most of his former customers are in the program.

With the state sometimes months behind in payments, he couldn’t pay his suppliers. Five workers lost their jobs when his business closed.

“You can only fight it for so long,” said Miller, 54. He now works as a pharmacist in a hospital. He misses his old clients, the families he grew to know.

“I was in my third generation. I’ve had moms who had kids. I saw the kids raised, and they had their own children,” he said. As a neighborhood pharmacist, “you’re their friend. You’re family.”

The death panels are right around the corner.  To the extent that they’re not already here right now, as with the case of Francisco Felix, who is being denied life by being denied a liver by Medicaid.

Francisco Felix never stood in front of a death panel; but bureaucrats don’t need you wasting their time with bothersome questions when they decide to let you die a slow and agonizing death due to medical neglect (or maybe you’re fortunate enough to get that pain pill from Obama?).

We told you so.  We told you so.  We told you so.  WE TOLD YOU SO.

As one speaking from the lofty vantage point of one having a one-thousand percent batting average, let me forewarn you Democrats yet again: Someday, when you’re burning in hell for all eternity for your direct participation in the murder of 52 million innocent human beings in America alone through abortion, realize that God is going to turn up the fires a few billion extra degrees for the coming horror that is going to come to this country as a result of your ObamaCare disaster.

CBO Says Real 10-Year Cost of Senate ObamaCare Bill Still $2.5 Trillion

The American people will pay an additional one trillion dollars in taxes over ten years than they otherwise would have paid to finance the Democrats’ takeover of health care.  That is a brutal fact.

When the Democrats say their bill is “deficit neutral” what they mean is that they made drastic cuts in the Medicare budget and drastic increases in our taxes in order to create the illusion that it was deficit neutral.

Here’s some more brutal facts that your mainstream media will not tell you about regarding health care.

CBO: Real 10-Year Cost of Senate Bill Still $2.5 Trillion

With Obamacare, you get the good, the bad, and the ugly — except for the first part.

The Congressional Budget Office’s score is in for the final Senate health bill, and it’s amazing how little Americans would get for so much.

The Democrats are irresponsibly and disingenuously claiming that the bill would cost $871 billion over 10 years. But that’s not what the CBO says. Rather, the CBO says that $871 billion would be the costs from 2010 to 2019 for expansions in insurance coverage alone. But less than 2 percent of those “10-year costs” would kick in before the fifth year of that span. In its real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), the CBO says that the bill would cost $1.8 trillion — for insurance coverage expansions alone. Other parts of the bill would cost approximately $700 billion more, bringing the bill’s full 10-year tab to approximately $2.5 trillion — according to the CBO.

In those real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), Americans would have to pay over $1 trillion in additional taxes, over $1 trillion would be siphoned out of Medicare (over $200 billion out of Medicare Advantage alone) and spent on Obamacare, and deficits would rise by over $200 billion . They would rise, that is, unless Congress follows through on the bill’s pledge to cut doctors’ payments under Medicare by 21 percent next year and never raise them back up — which would reduce doctors’ enthusiasm for seeing Medicare patients dramatically.

And what would Americans get in return for this staggering sum? Well, the CBO says that health care premiums would rise, and the Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product spent on health care would rise from 17 percent today to 21 percent by the end of 2019.  Nationwide health care costs would be $234 billion higher than under current law. How’s that for “reform”?

Even MoveOn.org says that the bill is “a massive giveaway” to private insurance companies. The CBO estimates that, from 2015-25, private insurers would receive $1.0 trillion in subsidies from the American taxpayer — the insurers’ apparent price for giving up their freedom and being controlled by the government. Congress would mandate that Americans buy the insurers’ product and would redirect massive sums of taxpayer money to make that mandate more feasible. So, if insurance companies are your idea of a worthy object of philanthropy, then Obamacare is for you.

And this is the bill that Ben Nelson has decided to support?

One hopes that Nebraska voters — and all other voters in other states who have sent Democrats to Washington — are making a list and checking it twice, keeping track of votes on Obamacare.

As Harry Reid keeps senators in session rather than letting them go home to be with their families and celebrate Christmas, it’s important to remember that this bill would not go into effect in any meaningful way until more than an Olympiad from now. Thus, it is the American voters — and not the current Democratic Congress or the current president — who will ultimately decide its fate. Providing reminders to representatives in both chambers of that in the coming days will be crucial to beating back the onslaught of proposed legislation that, even if it passes the Senate, would at least have to passed again by the House and would likely have to go back through both chambers in compromised form.

Posted by Jeffrey H. Anderson on December 19, 2009 07:49 PM | Permalink

There’s a frightening game being played with the truth.  And willingly or not, the CBO is helping the Obama administration lie to the American people.

A big part of the problem is that the CBO has to take Congress’ word for everything in their scoring – and the Congress (especially this Congress) is a bunch of liars.

If Congress has a huge spending bill, and tells the CBO that they will pay for it by picking the right numbers and hitting the mega-jackpot every year for the next 20 years, then the CBO must assume that the bill will be paid for – and thus “deficit neutral” in its scoring.

Maybe I’m not being clear enough.  So I’ll provide another example.  If Congress says that they will pay for their spending bill by summoning a winged fairy who will wave a magic wand and create a trillion dollars from nowhere, the CBO must count that trillion dollars in their scoring toward a “deficit neutral” bill.

Back in July, Obama summoned the director of the CBO, Douglas Elmendorf, to the White House. Republicans were outraged by this unprecedented event.  The Wall Street Journal had an article entitled, “Bullying CBO.”

Some have thought that Elmendorf was in fact intimidated, because their scores suddenly became much friendlier to ObamaCare.  But I personally believe it was simply a matter of the White House learning how to write a bill so that it would appear “deficit neutral” in a CBO score.  Democrats, in other words, learned how to use the right gimmicks to get the right results.

So if Congress says that it will increase taxes by a trillion dollars, then the CBO has to take it as gospel truth in its calculations.  But the fact of the matter is that tax revenues go down dramatically as tax rates go up (and see here also) for the simple reason that more and more people change their behavior and start sheltering their assets.  In the same way, when a bunch of new fees are imposed, people will start buying less and less of what will suddenly become more and more expensive.

The more of your own money you are allowed to keep, the harder you will work, and the more you will risk your money by investing.  The more you are taxed, the more you will adjust your behavior by protecting what you have, and the less you will be willing to take risks for a shrinking reward.

Bottom line: the federal government will collect far less in revenue than it thinks it will.  Revenues are already down dramatically as the White House and congressional Democrats have repeatedly vowed to end the Bush tax cuts (i.e. raise taxes) and increase taxes across the board.

In the same way, if Democrats tell the CBO that they will create savings by cutting the Medicare budget to the tune of half a trillion dollars and apply that “savings” to ObamaCare, then the CBO must assume that that will be the case.

It’s frankly difficult to believe that the Democrats will actually gut Medicare as they are saying they will do.  Will they really take $500 billion from Medicare?  Really?  And utterly outrage seniors who have counted on that benefit for decades?  If they do, they will pay dearly for it in every election until those seniors finally die.  If they don’t, you can add at least half a trillion dollars to what the Democrats say their bill will cost.

The same thing applies to the “doctor fix.”  Democrats will either follow through with their plan to make Medicare so expensive to doctors and hospitals that many medical professionals stop accepting it, or else they won’t.  If they do, the Medicare system will collapse.  If they don’t, then you can add hundreds of billions more to the cost of their health care plan.

The Washington Post put it this way:

“A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending — one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s health-care system — would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday. The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.”

And to pay for that fiasco, the Democrats are playing games that even liberals recognize are gimmickry and trickery.

As the government increasingly takes over, costs are going to go up (as they always do when government starts administering programs) and quality is going to go down.

The very people people who are going to increase our health care spending by trillions of dollars are preaching fiscal responsibility and the need to reduce our spending even as they do it.

The hypocrisy, stupidity, and lunacy of the government is enough to make one scream.

Democrats Actually Voting To Raid Medicare To Fund ObamaCare

If you are a senior and like your Medicare, then you are a pure idiot for voting Democrat, that’s all I can say.

Medicare cuts focus of Senate health care debate

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans forced Democrats to vote in favor of cutting billions from providers of home care for older people as partisan debate flared Saturday during a rare weekend session on President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

Obama planned to travel to Capitol Hill on Sunday to help Democrats resolve internal disputes that stand in the way of Majority Leader Harry Reid bringing the 10-year, nearly $1 trillion legislation to a vote.

Ahead of his visit, Republicans, bent on making Democrats cast politically risky votes, offered their third amendment in the debate so far showcasing more than $400 billion in cuts to projected Medicare spending that would pay for the bill, mostly for subsidies to help extend coverage to millions of uninsured.

Like the other two, this one went down to defeat, on a vote of 53 to 41. The measure by Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., would have eliminated $42 billion in cuts over 10 years to agencies that provide home health care to seniors under Medicare.

Four moderate Democrats joined all Republicans present in voting for the amendment: Sens. Jim Webb of Virginia, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

Underscoring the pressures on the moderates, Lincoln, who faces a difficult re-election next year, initially cast a “no” vote with the Democratic majority but switched to “yes” in the course of the 15-minute vote. Republicans accused her of flip-flopping, but Lincoln said later that she changed her vote after considering how important home health care is to Arkansas.

“That’s why they give us 15 minutes,” said Lincoln.

The more consequential action was taking place behind closed doors Saturday as Democrats struggled to find a compromise on a proposed government insurance plan that would compete with private insurers. Lincoln and several other moderate Democrats are opposed to the government insurance plan in the bill, and Reid, D-Nev., doesn’t have a vote to spare in his 60-member caucus.

Back in 1995, Democrats actually accused Republicans of “cutting Medicare” when they tried to merely slow the rate of growth – even though the actual spending would still increase.    Now the Democrats are flat-out CUTTING Medicare and trying to argue that their cuts are “savings.”

The “more than $400 billion” is actually $460 billion, which is seriously flirting with half a TRILLION dollars in cuts to a Medicare program that was already facing bankruptcy by 2017 – two years earlier than government actuaries estimated only last year.

The Democrats’ logic is to replace a bankrupt government program that will only crash against the seniors it was supposed to cover with a vastly larger government program that will crash with a far larger implosion against everybody.

The federal and states government already controls 61% of health care spending in the United States.  Government control, and government spending, have increased year after year.  I submit to you that too much government control of health care is the real problem, not “the evil insurance companies.”  In point of fact, more than half of Americans who have private insurance have it through not-for-profit insurers; and private insurance company profits are actually incredibly modest in relation to other industries.

Barack Obama has repeatedly said that if you liked your current plan, you could keep it.  That is yet another Obama lie: the fact of the matter is that 11 million seniors very much like their Medicare Advantage programs, and Barack Obama is trying to stop them from keeping it.  And those 11 million are just the tip of the iceberg: the Wall Street Journal demonstrates that some 133 million workers are going to wake up in five years and find out that ObamaCare destroyed their employer-based Erisa coverage.  That’s not nearly all the people that Obama and the Democrats are going to screw with their health care boondoggle – but it’s more than enough.

Seniors are going to die under the Democrats’ plan.  The logic is unavoidable: 1) the plan calls for young, healthy people to buy expensive insurance policies – which they have never purchased before – in order to “spread out risks” for the entire system.  2) If they don’t purchase the coverage, they will be called upon to pay a fine.  The problem is that the fine is much lower than the price of the insurance coverage.  3) Therefore young people largely WON’T purchase the insurance, and will instead pay the fine, knowing that since they CAN’T be rejected for any “pre-existing condition” (such as not being insured), they can’t be turned down if they get sick/injured and then need coverage.  For what it’s worth, a lot of other adults will be encouraged to do the same thing.  4) Therefore, the Democrats’ plan will not raise nearly as much as they think.  And 5) the need to severely ration care will be critical.

The Wall Street Journal rightly calls this fiasco “The Worst Bill Ever.”  Why?

As Congress’s balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive. Democrats can’t regulate their way out of the reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable—especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine.

The Dean of the Harvard Medical School gave it a “failing grade.”  Dr. Jeffrey Flier argued that:

In effect, while the legislation would enhance access to insurance, the trade-off would be an accelerated crisis of health-care costs and perpetuation of the current dysfunctional system—now with many more participants. This will make an eventual solution even more difficult. Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.

The California Medical Association came out strongly against the Democrat plan:

The state’s largest doctors group is opposing healthcare legislation being debated in the Senate this week, saying it would increase local healthcare costs and restrict access to care for elderly and low-income patients.

The California Medical Assn. represents more than 35,000 physicians statewide, making it the second-largest state medical association in the country after Texas. […]

d“The Senate bill came so short that we could not support it, even though we solidly support healthcare reform,” said Dr. Dev GnanaDev, medical director at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in San Bernardino, who also serves on the association’s executive committee.

Doctors who oppose the Senate bill are concerned that it would would shift Medicare funding from urban to rural areas, move responsibility for Medicare oversight away from Congress by creating an Independent Medicare Commission and, ultimately, decrease Medicare reimbursement rates.

The “Independent Medicare Commission” is just one of the many “death panels” this bill would create.  One hundred and eleven death panels, to be precise.

Rasmussen, the nation’s most accurate pollster, points out that Americans are opposed to the Democrats’ plan:

Support for the president’s health care plan fell to 38%, its lowest ever, just before Thanksgiving. Followed by two weeks at 41%, this marks the lowest extended period of support for the plan yet. With the exception of a few days following nationally televised presidential appeals for the legislation, the number of voters opposed to the plan has always exceeded the number who favor it.

“This suggests that public opinion about the health care plan is hardening,” says Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports. “Despite the fact that most American believe our health care system needs major changes, most are opposed to what Congress is currently doing about it.” […]

While one of the chief stated goals of the plan proposed by the president and congressional Democrats is to lower the cost of health care, 57% say costs will go up if the plan is passed. Twenty-one percent (21%) say costs will go down, and 17% believe they will stay about the same.

Similarly, only 23% think the quality of health care will get better if the plan is passed, while 54% predict that it will get worse. Sixteen percent (16%) expect quality to stay about the same.

Other polling shows that 47% trust the private sector more than government to keep health care costs down and the quality of care up. Two-thirds (66%) say an increase in free market competition will do more than government regulation to reduce health care costs.

Sixty percent (60%) of voters nationwide believe passage of the health care plan will increase the deficit. Seventy-five percent (75%) also think it is at least somewhat likely that middle class taxes will have to be raised to cover the cost of the plan. Fifty-nine percent (59%) say such a tax increase is Very Likely.

Only 27% favor a single-payer health care system where the federal government provides coverage for everyone.

So what do the Democrats – who promised unprecedented “openness” and “transparency” – do?  Barack Obama went to the Senate and had a
“closed-door meeting” that slammed the door shut in Republicans’ faces.  This is a hard care ideologically leftist partisan takever, funded by flat-out bribes paid for by the taxpayers.

Entrenched Democrats bought Mary Landrieu’s vote to proceed with their partisan boondoggle in what amounts to  the Louisiana Purchase, Part Deux.

And of course they have a trillion dollars in porkulus slush fund money to bribe and purchase whoever else they need to fundamentally screw the American people and destroy our way of life.

Is this seriously how you want the future of American health care to be decided?

Democrats KNOW Their ‘You Can Keep Your Current Health Coverage’ Line Is A Lie

I’m sure that you’ve heard Barack Obama, congressional Democrats, and their media propagandists say over and over again that if you like your current health coverage, you can keep it.

Last Thursday, as the Senate Finance Committee was marking up the Baucus version of the bill, Sen. Orrin Hatch tested the sincerity and integrity of the Democrats by offering this incredibly simple amendment:

The purpose of this amendment is simple. If the secretary of Health and Human Services certifies that more than 1 million Americans would lose the current coverage of their choice because of this bill, then this bill would not go into effect.

It seems like a very, very simple but perfect amendment for those of us who have integrity. This amendment is simply trying to safeguard President Obama’s pledge to the American people, you’ll get — that you will get to keep what you have.

And the Democrats failed the test.

Every single Democrat in the Finance Committee voted against it.  Every single one.

As Powerline put it:

One of President Obama’s mantras with regard to the Democrats’ health care proposal (whatever it turns out to be) is that if you like your present health insurance coverage, you will get to keep it. More recently, when the fraudulent nature of that pledge was revealed, he changed the formula to “the bill won’t require you to lose your coverage.” That’s right; it won’t require you to lose your coverage, it will just cause you to lose your coverage.

Don’t think for a second Democrats and President Obama don’t know what a pack of liars they are.

Last Sunday, Barack Obama proved that he is a liar by refusing to call what is clearly a tax a tax.  And Obama’s own hometown newspaper proves the obvious.

Last Tuesday, the Democrat-approved Congressional Budget Office laid out Obama’s lie that Medicare would not be cut:

Congress’ chief budget officer on Tuesday contradicted President Barack Obama’s oft-stated claim that seniors wouldn’t see their Medicare benefits cut under a health care overhaul.

The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, told senators that seniors in Medicare’s managed care plans could see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance Committee.

The bill would cut payments to the Medicare Advantage plans by more than $100 billion over 10 years.

The Democrats’ shocking deceit – and Barack Obama’s own personal deceptions and lies – are incredible.  They will literally say ANYTHING to get their terrible plan passed.

The biggest Democrat lie of all is the one that they tried to use to justify their takeover of health care in the first place: that they could cover nearly 50 million more people with better care while saving money.  People with common sense knew it was a blatant lie even before all the various iterations and deceptions came out.  It was simply transparently false from the outset.

Please don’t trust these liars to take over 1/6th of the U.S. economy during a period when the economy is already in deep trouble.  And please don’t turn the lives of seniors over to a plan that will literally kill many of them.

Wow, That Hot Sarah Palin Sure Looks Good In Her… Character

Sarah Palin is a real pretty lady.  She’s got that “hot librarian” thing going on, no doubt about it.

But this former Miss. Alaska runner-up looks best of all where it counts the very most: on the inside.

This woman is simply amazing.  I am looking at her with increasing admiration building toward awe.

This is a woman who – shortly after being elected as Governor – fired the Governor’s chef because “her children could fix their own breakfast and sandwiches.”

This is a Governor who put the private jet purchased by the previous Governor with state money on eBay.

This is a Governor who sold the Governor’s limousine and instead drives her Volkswagon Jetta to work.

This woman is better than any giant-killer; she’s the slayer of the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.”

Last year, this woman “vetoed 13 percent of the state’s proposed budget for capital projects. The cuts, the Anchorage Daily News said, ‘may be the biggest single-year line-item veto total in state history.'”

Now, that is a woman I can look at all day!

Sarah Palin is a pulchritudinous champion of the people against pork, corruption, and pretentious hoity-toity disconnect between leaders and the people they are supposed to serve has a remarkable personal story.  If you read on, you’ll get to see a titillating picture…