Obama Takeover Of Student Loans Means 2,500 Layoffs For Sallie Mae

What does ObamaCare mean?  It means a 29% slash in the workforce for student loan service provider Sallie Mae.  Remember in this insane world of Democrat rule that the government takeover of student loans was part of ObamaCare, whereas reimbursing doctors for Medicare was not.

Updated March 31, 2010
Sallie Mae Blames 2,500 Layoffs on Obama’s Student Loan Overhaul
By Kelly Chernenkoff

Powerhouse student loan provider Sallie Mae says layoffs are imminent as a result of President Obama’s new student loan overhaul.

“This legislation will force Sallie Mae to reduce our 8,600-person workforce by 2,500,” Conwey Casillas, Vice President of Sallie Mae Public Affairs, said in a statement to Fox News.

Obama was at Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria on Tuesday to sign the student loan changes into law. The new bill includes a provision for the government to begin directly lending to students, bypassing financial institutions like Sallie May that traditionally have provided the loans. Obama said that such institutions have soaked up billions in subsidies.

“Now, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that the big banks and financial institutions hired a army of lobbyists to protect the status quo,” Obama said. “In fact, Sallie Mae, America’s biggest student lender, spent more than $3 million on lobbying last year alone.”

Indeed, Sallie Mae has been outspoken in its opposition to the plan, calling it a “government takeover” just last month.

“The student loan provisions buried in the health care legislation intentionally eliminate valuable default prevention services and private sector jobs at a time when our country can least afford to lose them,” Casillas told Fox News.

Sallie Mae was trying to garner support for an alternative, which the company said was roundly rejected.

“We are profoundly disappointed that a reform plan that would have achieved more savings for students was ignored and now thousands of student loan experts will unnecessarily lose their jobs,” Casillas said.

But Obama says he’s merely looking out for those in need.

“I didn’t stand with the banks and the financial industries in this fight. That’s not why I came to Washington. And neither did any of the members of Congress who are here today,” he said. “We stood with you. We stood with America’s students. And together, we finally won that battle.”

Obama said the move will save billions, enabling his administration to use the money to improve the quality and affordability of higher education.

Sallie Mae hasn’t said exactly when jobs will start getting slashed, but the cuts “will start soon,” Casillas said.

Obama did a good job demonizing the student loan service providers (after all, demonizing is pretty much the only thing he does well), but the reality is as usual quite different than the Obama demagoguery:

From the Wall Street Journal in an article entitled, “The Quietest Trillion:
Congratulations. You’re about to own $100 billion a year in student loans“:

It’s not a popular idea on campus. Loans directly from the feds have been available for decades, but the government’s poor customer service has resulted in most borrowers choosing private lenders. This week three dozen college administrators, representing schools from Notre Dame to Nevada-Reno, signed a letter urging a longer transition period to this “public option.” The fear is that the bureaucrats will not be able to pull off a takeover in just eight months. “Any delay in getting funds to schools on behalf of students will result in our needing to find resources at a time when credit is difficult to obtain,” warns the letter.

Tough luck for the Irish. Democrats have already greased this fall’s budget reconciliation to pass all of this on a mere majority vote. They are helped by rigged government accounting that disguises the cost of making below-market loans to unemployed 18-year-olds. Democrats have claimed their plan “saves” $87 billion in mandatory spending by cutting out the private middlemen, and the Congressional Budget Office has dutifully “scored” $87 billion in mandatory “savings” (or a net of $80 billion after subtracting administrative costs).

But in a remarkable letter to Senator Judd Gregg, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf admits that government accounting is bogus. He writes that the statutory methodology “does not include the cost to the government stemming from the risk that the cash flows may be less than the amount projected (that is, that defaults could be higher than projected).” Mr. Elmendorf further notes that the government’s accounting system is specifically skewed to make direct loans from the government appear to cost much less than guaranteed loans made by private lenders. He says the real “savings” are only $47 billion, even though, in a deception that would be criminal fraud if it weren’t mandated by Congress, the official estimate remains at $80 billion.

Even the unofficial number is dubious. The government has been claiming lower default rates than private lenders, but most government loans have been to students at four-year colleges. The private lenders have serviced a higher percentage of students at community and two-year colleges, where defaults are more common regardless of lender.

If the feds are now making and owning all such loans, expect default rates to soar. When the government hires contractors to collect on its loans, it pays them for simply calling the borrower, regardless of the result. Private lenders, on the other hand, make money from a performing loan and have a greater incentive to do careful underwriting and aggressive collection.

The government will nonetheless start spending these illusory “savings” immediately, and this spending is certain to top official estimates. The Obama plan also adds a CBO-estimated $46 billion in new spending over 10 years to enlarge Pell grants. Ominously for the federal fisc, starting in 2011 these grants will automatically rise each year by the consumer price index plus 1%. Not that students will actually benefit from this subsidy explosion. Colleges have reliably raised prices to capture every federal dollar earmaked for education financing.

Rep. John Kline (R., Minn.) decided the cost estimate for Pell grants was too low, so he asked CBO to take a second look. Along comes another enlightening letter from Mr. Elmendorf. This week he wrote that Mr. Kline is correct—it looks like they will cost another $11 billion. Unfortunately, the earlier estimate must remain the official score under budgeting rules, even though the official scorekeeper says it is wrong.

You start to see why the student loan takeover was part of ObamaCare, but the doctor fix was not: pure deceitful political cynicism of the very worst kind.  ObamaCare forced the CBO to assume the deception that doctor’s Medicare reimbursements would be slashed by 21% so they could deceitfully claim that “saving” for ObamaCare.  Even though Democrats will add those reimbursements back in another bill that will cost a rock bottom minimum of $200 billion.  Meanwhile, they decide that student loans are very much a part of ObamaCare so that they could raid the profits – after, of course, dramatically misrepresenting what those profits actually were.

In one fell swoop, ObamaCare destroys jobs, undermines the student loan system, AND ruins our health care system.

Nice trifecta.  If you’re an enemy of America.

Democrats And Socialism Go Together Like Cookies And Milk

Great 5 minute video:

This goes to my earlier question, “The Democrat Party Is Different From The Communist Party How, Exactly?”

The answer is, “Your guess is as good as mine.”

But remember the Democrats’ mantra:

There are of course plenty of great moments in official Democrat Party socialism – such as Maxine Waters wanting to socialize the oil companies –

“And guess what this liberal would be all about. This liberal will be about socializing … uh, um. …  Would be about, basically, taking over, and the government running all of your companies. …”

– that didn’t make this new classic presentation of Democrats and their most beloved economic and political philosophy.   But it still deserves to another viewing.  And another one after that.

.

Democrat Admits REAL Purpose Of ObamaCare ‘to control the people’

Conservatives would rather their points be heeded beforehand than be proven right afterward.  That said, we’re proven right again.

We have been arguing that one of the very worst aspects to ObamaCare is its destruction of freedom.  Contrary to the historic goals of liberals to “fundamentally transform” America into a form of European socialism, Thomas Jefferson rightly said that, “With all the defects in our Constitution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with Hell.”

And so something that major House Democrat figure Rep. John Dingell said is very revealing:

“The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass 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.”

Hear him say it on Youtube.

Thank you for your rare moment of inadvertent honesty, Rep. Dingell.

When Barack Obama signed this 2,700 page monster into law yesterday, he said, “These reforms won’t give the government more control over your health care.” But that statement is simply untrue; otherwise over 16,000 new IRS agents wouldn’t need to be hired to enforce the mandates, now would they?

FreedomWorks.org makes the following point:

The Reid bill could just as easily be called the “Secretary Shall Bill.”  It references the “Secretary” 2,185 times and it uses the phrase the “Secretary shall” a shocking 725 times.  Each time it is granting a power to whoever is appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services, instead of empowering individuals.

But it’s even worse than that: ObamaCare creates a whopping 159 new federal agencies to force you to do what liberals want, and to prevent you from doing what liberals don’t want.

Individual mandates requiring you with the full power of law to purchase health insurance from the Reich’s “approved list” of insurance salesmen.  Sixteen thousand new IRS agents to poke through your personal life to make sure you did so.  A Secretary of Human Services run amok with all kinds of new powers administered through 159 new federal government bureaucracies.

Democrat Dingell couldn’t have expressed it better: he and his fellow Democrats have labored “to put the legislation together to control the people.”

And as of yesterday, they succeeded.

And, amazingly, they aren’t done taking power and freedom away from the people.  Only days after they took over health care, Democrats are already planning an even nastier takeover via a public option bill.  This ugly, demonic monstrosity will only grow, and grow, and grow.

They can’t stop themselves.  They will continue usurping power and spending trillions of dollars until the country implodes or they are booted out of office.

Vote for freedom.  Vote the Democrats out of office.

Otherwise, prepare to live in the rat maze:

The Disastrous ObamaCare Bill, In A Backstabbing Democrat’s Own Words

Democrats can say anything they want.  That’s what hypocrites do.  But when it comes to the bottom line, they don’t have any principles.

Let me some up the opinion of ObamaCare by a Democrat who is now going to vote for it anyway:

• “I don’t know what there is for my constituents”
• It’s “a license to just steal money from people”
• ObamaCare is a “giveaway to the insurance industry”
• This bill is “not going to protect consumers from these rapid premium increases
• It provides “no guarantees of any control over premiums”
• It is “forcing people to buy private insurance”
• It’s going to result in “five consecutive years of double-digit premium increases”
• “I just don`t see that this bill is the solution”
• “The insurance companies are the problem and we`re giving them a version of a bailout”
• “This bill doesn`t change the fact that the insurance companies are going to keep socking it to the consumer”
• It results in a “giveaway to the insurance industry”
• “You`re building on sand. There`s no structure here”
• If we pass this bill, “all we`re going to have is more poverty in this country”
• If we pass this bill, “people aren`t going to get the care that they need”

So there’s ObamaCare in a nutshell, according to one of its converts.

Democrats are touting the “yes” vote of Deniss Kucinich as a great victory.  They are saying that if Dennis Kucinich can switch his vote, then no Democrat who has held out for a public option should not similarly switch votes.

In a word, bullcrap.

Dennis Kucinich is a man without integrity or credibility.

Here is what he said:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH, D-OHIO: Anytime I can support the president, I’d like to. I just — except on this bill, I signed a commitment with 77 other members of Congress, saying that if there was not robust public option in the health care bill, that was presented to the House, I wouldn’t vote for it. I kept my word.

If you don’t have a public option, the insurance companies have a license to just steal money from people.

I wish that they brought that public option back — I supported it in committee. And absent of a robust public option, I don’t know what there is for my constituents.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

Hey, Democrats, if this is what you think “I kept my word” means, can I borrow ten thousand dollars from you?  I promise to pay it back.

Okay.  So Dennis Kucinich says he signed a pledge, which he has broken.  And he praised himself for keeping his word, but now in hindsight he broke the very promise he praised himself for keeping.  he said that the very bill he is now voting for amounts to “a license to steal money” and that it offers nothing for his constituents.

And now he is breaking his faith with his fellow signers, and abandoning his constituents to vote for a bill which he himself said amounts to an act of theft.

And that is a Democrat with principles.

Here’s another exchange in which Dennis Kucinich states his principled objection to an unprincipled and fundamentally flawed bill.  From MSNBC’s Countdown on March 8, 2010:

Congressman Kucinich, as we`ve discussed on this show, you`re facing a two-vote — two-stage vote process in the House. First, vote on the Senate bill as is. Then vote for a reconciliation bill to correct everything that`s wrong with the Senate bill that you just voted for.

Will you vote yes for the Senate bill?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH (D-OHIO), FMR. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, keep in mind I voted against the first version of the bill in the House. I told the president twice in two different meetings that I couldn`t support the bill, didn`t have a robust public option and if — at least, if it didn`t have something that was going to protect consumers from these rapid premium increases. And you know what? The White House counts me as wavering.

The fact of the matter is, I listened to the president in your news story here, and to hear the president, you`d think that he was for single- payer, at least a public option. But he`s not. This bill represents a giveaway to the insurance industry, $70 billion a year, and no guarantees of any control over premiums, forcing people to buy private insurance, five consecutive years of double-digit premium increases.

I mean, I`m sorry. I just don`t see that this bill is the solution. The insurance companies are the problem and we`re giving them a version of a bailout.

O`DONNELL: So, did we just get a “no” there, Congressman? Will you vote against the Senate bill at the first stage of this process in the House?

KUCINICH: If that sounded like a “no,” you`re correct.

O`DONNELL: OK. Will you be comfortable if it turns out you are in effect the single vote that defeats health care reform?

KUCINICH: Every vote counts. And I`m one of 435 members of the House of Representatives. The White House has known my position. It`s not a secret. Democratic leaders have known my position.

You have to remember that I carried a single-payer proposal to three Democratic national conventions, three times to the platform committee, twice as a presidential candidate.

We need health care reform. We need Medicare for all. We need to join the rest of the industrial world in being able to provide health care for our people as a basic right, but the fact is that one of every three health care dollars goes for corporate profits, stock options, executive salaries, advertising, marketing across the paperwork. This bill doesn`t change that. This bill doesn`t change the fact that the insurance companies are going to keep socking it to the consumer.

So, you know, if the White House is ready to go back and have a robust public option as Jacob Hacker iterated with 125 million people being able to negotiate and knock down the insurance premiums, then we have something to talk about. But otherwise, you know, I need some — I need to hear more about what they`re proposing. And what they proposed so far isn`t anything different than I voted against.

O`DONNELL: Do you fear for the Democratic Party if there is no health care reform bill passed? Do you think that outcome politically for the Democratic Party will be worse than passing this flawed bill?

KUCINICH: I think the Democratic Party is in political trouble right now because we have 15 million people unemployed and we have another 11 million or 12 million people under employed. The economy is stagnant. We`ve given bailouts to Wall Street. We haven`t taken care of Main Street. We got — 12 million people could lose their homes this year and a quarter of the population is under water with their mortgage.

I mean, the economy is stagnant. That`s really the key issue.

Is health care a problem? You bet it is. Would it be helpful if everyone in this country had health care? Yes it would, but not in a giveaway to the insurance industry.

If you have $70 billion a year, put it into health care. You don`t have to give the insurance industry their cut because somehow, you know, they have so much influence in the political process. This bill that`s going from the Senate to the House is just another version of Medicare Part D which was a giveaway to pharmaceutical companies.

O`DONNELL: What do you say to the president and Democrats who say, let`s get this passed and then we can build on it with future legislation?

KUCINICH: You`re building on sand. There`s no structure here. You`re building on a foundation of privatization of our health care system. That`s the problem. The insurance companies are the problem.

They`re nothing to build on. We build our hopes on the insurance companies and all we`re going to have is more poverty in this country.

And people aren`t going —

O`DONNELL: Congressman Dennis Kucinich —

KUCINICH: — people aren`t going to get the care that they need.

O`DONNELL: Go ahead.

KUCINICH: Remember, insurance companies make money not providing health care. That is a fundamental truth about our health care system.

O`DONNELL: Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, you have been consistent throughout this debate. Many thanks for your time tonight.

KUCINICH: Thank you very much.

Here is a video of Dennis Kucinich saying the above and more:

Of course, the skinny little weasel WASN’T consistent, was he?  The moment it truly mattered, he broke his faith with the people, broke his word, broke his principles, broke his commitment.

It is an amazing thing that this man is held up as a model Democrat.  These people must all be cockroaches for him to be held in esteem.

Dennis Kucinich couldn’t have been more clear in his denunciation of the Senate Bill that he is now voting for.  It’s not a good bill, or even a bad bill; it is a terrible, immoral bill.

But when you are an unprincipled man from an unprincipled party, what do you expect?

Democrats Believe Their Power To Regulate Our Lives Has No Constitutional Limit

We can sing the below story to Nancy Pelosi’s famous tune, “Are you serious? Are you serious?” regarding whether she should give the faintest of consideration to the Constitution while she tries to regulate one-sixth of the US economy and force citizens to purchase insurance.

Sen. Feinstein ‘Assumes’ Commerce Clause Gives Congress Unlimited Authority to Mandate Health Insurance
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) – Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that Congress has the authority to mandate that people buy health insurance and that there is no constitutional limit on Congress’ power to enact such mandates, adding that this unlimited authority stemmed from the Commerce clause of the Constitution.

The health care bills in both the House and Senate require that every American purchase a health insurance policy. At the Capitol on Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked Sen. Feinstein: “Where in the Constitution does Congress get the authority for an individual health insurance mandate?”

Feinstein said: “Well, I would assume it would be in the Commerce clause of the Constitution. That’s how Congress legislates all kinds of various programs.”

CNSNews.com followed up by asking Sen. Feinstein whether this broad power had any limits: “If there’s a health insurance mandate, is there a limit to that authority? Is there something that can’t be mandated?”

Feinstein responded: “My own view is that there is not, within health insurance.”

The Commerce clause is found in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. It states the numerous powers authorized to Congress, including the power “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among several States, and with the Indian tribes.”

The Senate version of health reform imposes an historic mandate on all Americans, requiring them to have government-approved health insurance, either through an employer or individually. The mandate also can penalize people with a surtax ranging from $500 to nearly $1,500 per year if they do not have a health insurance policy.

The bill, which looks certain to pass the Senate sometime on Christmas Eve, is unpopular with the public, garnering the support of barely 40 percent of Americans, according to recent national polls. Those numbers led Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele to accuse Congress of “flipping the bird” to the American people.

“This is a bad bill, it is bad, certainly for individuals and enough is enough,” Steele said in a conference call on Monday. “I am tired of Congress thumbing its nose and flipping a bird to the American people. I’m tired of this Congress thinking it knows better than me and my family how to provide for our health care now and in the future. I’m tired of this Congress not listening to me and to the American people – to all of us.”

In 1994, when the Clinton administration attempted to push a health care reform plan through a Democratic Congress that also mandated every American buy health insurance, the Congressional Budget Office determined that the government had never ordered Americans to buy anything.

“The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States,” the CBO analysis said. “An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”

My own view is that California should elect a Senator who actually understands or even cares about the US Constitution.

If Feinstein’s “view” were true, then the congress has no constitutional limits whatsoever.  On anything.  If they can regulate private citizens’ behavior or purchases as “interstate commerce,” then they can “regulate” anything and anyone on anything they want.  And this gives them the precedent to do more and more.  The Democrats’ vision of health care “reform” makes the entire idea of constitutional limits null and void.

Let’s call this what it is: a naked power grab.

Fascism, Marxism, take your pick.  We’re getting a hybrid of both (they’re both quintessentially leftist and socialist and totalitarian systems, you know) shoved right down our throats.

The Commerce clause regulates commerce between states.  It has NEVER been used even ONCE in our history to regulated the behavior of individual citizens.

This is almost as appalling as liberal activist judges reading “penumbras and emanations” into the Constitution so they could pull abortion out of thin air.

Democrats have been telling us quite openly that this bill is a clear pathway and vehicle to a government-controlled single-payer system.  It is past time that we took them at their word and started to realize the ramifications of what the Democrats are trying to accomplish.

Democrats aren’t focused in transforming either the quality or the costs of health care coverage.  Their bill does nothing to improve either.  Rather, it lays the architecture for a future socialistic system which they believe that they will ultimately be able to control and use to their own political advantage.  They want power and control.  They want to be able to wield the levers of government and “take care” of everyone and everything – or punish everyone and everything that get in their way.  And when big government has the power to shape things, it shapes them in a way that always favors big government, and favors more and more accumulation of big government.  And Democrats are nothing if not the party of big government.

These people aren’t going to let a little nuisance like the US Constitution get in their way.  Even our own president has repeatedly said disparaging things about our Constitution as well as the men who wrote it.  The once sacred and sacrosanct Constitution has come to mean whatever liberals want it to mean.

Tragically, a look back at history should tell you that the system the Democrats want will hardly be a success.  The fact of the matter is that Democrats are making the same arguments (that health care is a right) and the same promises (that every American will be guaranteed health care) that the Soviets made.

The former Soviet propaganda mouthpiece Pravda is watching America fall into the same catastrophic mistakes Russia did and is laughing hysterically .

The Obama administration and Democrats can swear all they want that rationing won’t be a part of their system, but you sure wouldn’t know it by looking at Obama officials such as Cass Sunstein and Ezekiel Emanuel.  They will be all about rationing.

To summarize, this is a flagrantly unconstitutional power grab, packaged on lies, which can’t even in theory fulfill the pantheon of bogus promises it was sold on.

Democrats Determined To Impose Health Agenda On Nation That Doesn’t Want It

Rasmussen – the nation’s most accurate polling organization – says the numbers are crystal clear: America doesn’t want ObamaCare.

Just 38% of voters now favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s the lowest level of support measured for the plan in nearly two dozen tracking polls conducted since June.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% now oppose the plan.

Half the survey was conducted before the Senate voted late Saturday to begin debate on its version of the legislation. Support for the plan was slightly lower in the half of the survey conducted after the Senate vote.

Prior to this, support for the plan had never fallen below 41%. Last week, support for the plan was at 47%. Two weeks ago, the effort was supported by 45% of voters.

Intensity remains stronger among those who oppose the push to change the nation’s health care system: 21% Strongly Favor the plan while 43% are Strongly Opposed.

Rasmussen Reports is continuing to track public opinion on the health care plan on a weekly basis. Next week’s Monday morning update will give an indication of whether these numbers reflect a trend of growing opposition or are merely statistical noise.

Only 16% now believe passage of the plan will lead to lower health care costs. Nearly four times as many (60%) believe the plan will increase health care costs. Most (54%) also believe passage of the plan will hurt the quality of care.

As has been the case for months, Democrats favor the plan while Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party are opposed. The latest numbers show support from 73% of those in the president’s party. The plan is opposed by 83% of Republicans and 70% of unaffiliated voters.

Other recent polling shows that Democrats consider health care reform to be the top priority for the president. Republicans and unaffiliated voters see deficit reduction as most important.

Among the nation’s senior citizens, 34% favor the health care plan and 60% are opposed. A majority of those under 30 favor the plan, but a majority of all other age groups are opposed (Premium Members can see full demographic crosstabs).

Support for health care has declined along with President Obama’s approval ratings. For the first time in the Obama era, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval Index has been in negative double digits for nine straight days.

Despite the decline in support for the health care plan, 50% still say it is at least somewhat likely to become law this year. That figure includes 17% who say passage is Very Likely.

While Senate Democrats this weekend assembled enough votes to begin debate on the plan, many challenges remain. All Republican Senators and several Democrats, for example, have expressed opposition to the so-called “public option.” Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters nationwide say guaranteeing that no one is forced to change their health insurance coverage is a higher priority than giving consumers the choice of a “public option” government-run health insurance company. Most liberal voters say giving people the choice of a “public option” is more important. But most moderates take the opposite view and say guaranteeing that no one is forced to change their health insurance is the top priority.

Overall, 46% favor the creation of a government-sponsored non-profit health insurance option that people could choose instead of a private health insurance plan. However, if the plan encouraged companies to drop private health insurance coverage for their workers, support for the public option falls to 29%, and opposition rises to 58%.

As Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “The most important fundamental is that 68% of American voters have health insurance coverage they rate good or excellent. … Most of these voters approach the health care reform debate fearing that they have more to lose than to gain.”

Other challenging issues in the Senate debate include abortion and illegal immigration. Ever since the House’s passage of the Stupak Amendment which says the “public option” would not cover elective abortions and that recipients of federal insurance subsidies could not use them to buy abortion coverage, the divide among Democrats has been visible.

Earlier polling showed that 48% nationwide favored the abortion ban, but most supporters of health care reform didn’t want to address the issue. Just 13% of all voters wanted abortion coverage mandated in the legislation.

The Democrats are on the wrong side of health care – and every single element within their health care plan.  And yet here they are, determined to ram it through (especially before the public can get a chance to know how truly bad the plan is) and impose it on a country that doesn’t want it.

Obama’s approval is now at minus 15 – his lowest recorded number yet.  Only 45% of the country approves of him, versus 54% that disapprove.

You’d think that would matter.  But Democrats seem on a suicide mission to destroy America and destroy our way of life.  Your key words for understanding why: the Cloward-Piven strategy.  First ruin the country and cause it to implode, then assume total control over a desperate and hungry population by offering government as their only savior.

Elections have consequences.  A foolish America may literally pay for electing Democrats with their country.

Americans need to begin giving Democrats hell, or else Democrats will most assuredly give hell to Americans.

 

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

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.

House Democrats Pass Worst Bill Ever To Destroy U.S. Health Care, Economy

Congratulations, America.  This is what you’ve “won”:

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

The Worst Bill Ever
Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she’s prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that’s what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a “critical milestone,” may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.

In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.

Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan “reform” and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be “universal coverage.” The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country’s fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity.

•The spending surge. The Congressional Budget Office figures the House program will cost $1.055 trillion over a decade, which while far above the $829 billion net cost that Mrs. Pelosi fed to credulous reporters is still a low-ball estimate.  Most of the money goes into government-run “exchanges” where people earning between 150% and 400% of the poverty level—that is, up to about $96,000 for a family of four in 2016—could buy coverage at heavily subsidized rates, tied to income. The government would pay for 93% of insurance costs for a family making $42,000, 72% for another making $78,000, and so forth.

At least at first, these benefits would be offered only to those whose employers don’t provide insurance or work for small businesses with 100 or fewer workers. The taxpayer costs would be far higher if not for this “firewall”—which is sure to cave in when people see the deal their neighbors are getting on “free” health care. Mrs. Pelosi knows this, like everyone else in Washington.

Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs with budget gimmicks. It “pays for” about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, “saving” about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that.

• Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare—now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future Medicare spending to “pay for” universal coverage. While Medicare’s price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options.

As for Medicaid, the House will expand eligibility to everyone below 150% of the poverty level, meaning that some 15 million new people will be added to the rolls as private insurance gets crowded out at a cost of $425 billion. A decade from now more than a quarter of the population will be on a program originally intended for poor women, children and the disabled.

Even though the House will assume 91% of the “matching rate” for this joint state-federal program—up from today’s 57%—governors would still be forced to take on $34 billion in new burdens when budgets from Albany to Sacramento are in fiscal collapse. Washington’s budget will collapse too, if anything like the House bill passes.

• European levels of taxation. All told, the House favors $572 billion in new taxes, mostly by imposing a 5.4-percentage-point “surcharge” on joint filers earning over $1 million, $500,000 for singles. This tax will raise the top marginal rate to 45% in 2011 from 39.6% when the Bush tax cuts expire—not counting state income taxes and the phase-out of certain deductions and exemptions. The burden will mostly fall on the small businesses that have organized as Subchapter S or limited liability corporations, since the truly wealthy won’t have any difficulty sheltering their incomes.

This surtax could hit ever more earners because, like the alternative minimum tax, it isn’t indexed for inflation. Yet it still won’t be nearly enough. Even if Congress had confiscated 100% of the taxable income of people earning over $500,000 in the boom year of 2006, it would have only raised $1.3 trillion. When Democrats end up soaking the middle class, perhaps via the European-style value-added tax that Mrs. Pelosi has endorsed, they’ll claim the deficits that they created made them do it.

Under another new tax, businesses would have to surrender 8% of their payroll to government if they don’t offer insurance or pay at least 72.5% of their workers’ premiums, which eat into wages. Such “play or pay” taxes always become “pay or pay” and will rise over time, with severe consequences for hiring, job creation and ultimately growth. While the U.S. already has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world, Democrats are on the way to creating a high structural unemployment rate, much as Europe has done by expanding its welfare states.

Meanwhile, a tax equal to 2.5% of adjusted gross income will also be imposed on some 18 million people who CBO expects still won’t buy insurance in 2019. Democrats could make this penalty even higher, but that is politically unacceptable, or they could make the subsidies even higher, but that would expose the (already ludicrous) illusion that ObamaCare will reduce the deficit.

• The insurance takeover. A new “health choices commissioner” will decide what counts as “essential benefits,” which all insurers will have to offer as first-dollar coverage. Private insurers will also be told how much they are allowed to charge even as they will have to offer coverage at virtually the same price to anyone who applies, regardless of health status or medical history.

The cost of insurance, naturally, will skyrocket. The insurer WellPoint estimates based on its own market data that some premiums in the individual market will triple under these new burdens. The same is likely to prove true for the employer-sponsored plans that provide private coverage to about 177 million people today. Over time, the new mandates will apply to all contracts, including for the large businesses currently given a safe harbor from bureaucratic tampering under a 1974 law called Erisa.

The political incentive will always be for government to expand benefits and reduce cost-sharing, trampling any chance of giving individuals financial incentives to economize on care. Essentially, all insurers will become government contractors, in the business of fulfilling political demands: There will be no such thing as “private” health insurance.
***

All of this is intentional, even if it isn’t explicitly acknowledged. The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility. Mr. Obama’s own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back “public option” entitlement program is so that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.

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.

Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of “change,” but we doubt most voters realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the status quo. Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi’s handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR’s National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.

In 2008, America voted for national suicide, whether they understood it or not.  While it is increasingly obvious that Americans are rethinking their suicide pact with the Democrat Party, and beginning to change their minds, Democrats are nevertheless racing ahead to finish the job of destroying the country while they still can.

Think Cloward-Piven.  The Democrats believe that they are creating a “win we win, lose we win” stratagem.  If by some increasingly unlikely miracle our massive unprecedented debt-financed spending doesn’t cause the entire economic structure to implode, Democrats will be in a position to claim credit for their “success.”  If, far more likely, the economy self-destructs under the weight of the mind-boggling debts and economic hamstringing foisted upon us by the liberal agenda, Democrats are counting upon the fact that hungry, desperate, panicking people will turn to massive government structures to feed them and help them from the very problems that massive government structures caused in the first place.

Ten Things You Should Know About The Government Healthcare Takeover

Whether you support it or not, whether you know anything about it or not, the Democrats’ plan will have dramatic and sweeping impact over our lives.

The thing that frightens me the most is the word “shall.”  It occurs 3,425 times in the Democrats’ H.R. 3692.  That means there are three thousand, four hundred and twenty-five times that the government forces you to do something whether you want to do it or not.

That said, here’s a list of ten facts you should know:

1. RAISES TAXES ON MIDDLE CLASS FAMILIES. Speaker Pelosi’s health care bill imposes a range of tax increases on families with income below $250,000, breaking a promise made by President Obama.  Tax increases on middle class families include: an individual mandate tax of up to 2.5 percent of income for taxpayers earning as little as $9,350; repeal of a tax break on medicine purchased with funds from an HSA (health savings account); limits to tax relief through FSAs (flexible spending accounts); taxes on medical devices that will inevitably be passed on to consumers; and a new tax on all insurance policies.
2. MASSIVE CUTS TO MEDICARE BENEFITS FOR SENIORS. Despite grave warnings from CBO, FactCheck.org, and the independent Lewin Group that cuts to Medicare of the magnitude included in Speaker Pelosi’s bill would have a negative impact on seniors’ benefits and choices, Speaker Pelosi’s health care bill stays the course and cuts Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars.
3. NO PROTECTIONS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES. Speaker Pelosi’s health care bill claims to exempt small businesses from the steep eight percent ‘pay or play’ employer mandate.  The facts tell a different story.  Using Census data compiled by the Small Business Administration, this so-called ‘exemption’ hammers small employers with only, on average, 17 or more employees to new taxes and mandates.  The outfits affected employ 70 percent of all small business employees, or 42.3 million workers.  Adding to the assault on small businesses, the bill does not index the small business “exemption” amounts, meaning more and more small businesses will be ensnared by this job-killing employer mandate each year.
4. INCREASES THE COST OF HEALTH INSURANCE. Imposing a new $2 billion tax on insurance policies will be passed on to patients in the form of higher premiums.  Changes to the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit will, according to estimates by CBO, will raise Medicare Part B premiums by $25 billion and Part D premiums by 20 percent.  And imposing an unfunded mandate on the states to pay for the bill’s Medicaid expansion will shift the burden of this expansion on state taxpayers who may experience tax increases to cover the cost.
5. USES GIMMICKS TO HIDE BUDGET-BUSTING COST, PILES UP DEBT ON FUTURE GENERATIONS. Speaker Pelosi’s health care bill claims to be deficit neutral, but uses budget gimmickry to hide its massive total cost.  Working families across America know they cannot simply decide that a bill they get in the mail doesn’t exist, but that’s exactly what congressional Democrats are doing.  In order to meet the President’s ‘target’ spending total of $900 billion, Democrats have simply swept costly provisions under the rug, including the $245 billion ‘doc fix.’
6. IMPOSES JOB-KILLING EMPLOYER MANDATES. Additional taxes on employers and new government mandates that dictate acceptable insurance will place new and crushing burdens on employers.  These are burdens that will ultimately fall squarely on the backs of workers in the form of reduced wages, fewer hours or lost employment. CBO agrees that “[e]mployees largely bear the cost of… play-or-pay fees in the form of lower wages.”  According to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the nation’s largest small business association, an employer mandate of this magnitude will disproportionately impact small businesses, triggering up to 1.6 million lost jobs.  Two-thirds of those jobs would be shed by small businesses.
7. TILTS THE PLAYING FIELD IN FAVOR OF THE GOVERNMENT-RUN INSURANCE COMPANY. Speaker Pelosi’s health care bill promises not to give the government-run plan advantages over private insurers in the market, but the opposite is true.  The bill provides billions in start-up funding for the government-run plan, and while it requires the plan to repay the money over time it does not require the plan to pay interest on this “loan.”  This interest-free, taxpayer-subsidized loan is potentially worth millions of dollars and tilts the playing field in favor of the government-run plan.
8. THREATENS CASH-STRAPPED STATES WITH UNFUNDED MANDATES. Speaker Pelosi’s health care bill swells the number of Americans on the government rolls by expanding Medicaid eligibility.  Medicaid is financed through a federal-state partnership, but the bill dumps nearly ten percent of the mandated expansion included in the bill onto the states.  States, already struggling with fiscal constraints, would be left on the hook for billions of dollars due to this unfunded mandate.
9. CREATES A NEW MONSTROSITY IN THE TAX CODE. Starting in 2011, Speaker Pelosi’s health care bill imposes a 5.4 percent tax on adjusted gross income above $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for married couples.  Yet, the dollar amounts for which the tax kicks in are not indexed for inflation.  We’ve seen this horror film before: the Alternative Minimum Tax, another Frankenstein’s monster of the tax code, also wasn’t indexed for inflation and now affects millions of middle class families with incomes below the Democrat’s surtax.
10. MISSES AN OPPORTUNITY TO CURTAIL JUNK LAWSUITS. Speaker Pelosi’s health care bill misses a critical opportunity to rein in junk lawsuits and costly defensive medicine.  The bill includes only a voluntary grant program to deal with the medical liability crisis instead of including real reform, which would produce tens of billions of dollars in savings, improve efficiency in our health care system and reduce costs for patients and providers.

BONUS: Republicans have offered better solutions to lower health care costs and expand access to quality, affordable coverage at a price our nation can afford.  Learn more by visiting healthcare.gop.gov.

Courtesy House Republican Leader John Boehner

The Nuclear Option: Will Yet ANOTHER Obama Promise Go Up In Smoke?

It is amazing how many promises Barack Obama has broken since taking office.  The man literally began his presidential path with a lie, having promised on Meet the Press not to run for the White House, but to finish out his Senate term.

Obama has a huge documented record of lies.  Going back for years.  And he has taken his deceit train to healthcare land.

Looks like you can add another lie to the list.

From Freedom’s Lighthouse:

Here is audio of Barack Obama as a candidate in 2007 where he said flatly “we are not going to pass universal health care with a fifty plus one strategy.” Obama said “you can’t govern” if you go about things in that way.

But now, of course, the Democrats are contemplating the use of just such a “Nuclear Option” to ram ObamaCare through.

Go to Freedom’s Lighthouse where the audio is embedded.  Or click on the link here to hear yet another Democrat health care lie.