So this is how Soviet America begins. The Dems are the REDS -- the real Americans are the WHITES.
Here is the other thing I’m noticing. Because there is a lot of overlap in what the Repubicans say they want and whats already in the bill just not exactly how they would like it, the whole lets set aside the bill and start over talking point is starting to sound patently foolish. The only area where I think the GOP has any opening now, largely because President Obama just gave it to the by calling it “legitimate”, is on cost. If we have a good argument on that then there is one last curveball and depending on how hard they hit it will tell you how Republicans think this is going today. Abortion. Now I doubt President Obama will bring it up, though he may. But if you see Bart Stupak get called on after the break just know that the GOP thinks this is going bad and they are going after the wedge issue and expect them to hit it hard, repeatedly and loudly.
BOEHNER: Mr. President, I want to say thank you for having us here. I think it's been a useful conversation. And as I listened to you open up this meeting, I thought to myself, I don't disagree with anything that you said at the beginning of the meeting, in terms of the premise for why we're here.
The American families are struggling with health care. We all know it. The American people want us to address this in a responsible way. And so, I really do say thanks for having us all here.
I think our job on behalf of our constituents and on behalf of the American people is to listen. And I spend time in my district, I spend time a lot of places. I've heard an awful lot.
And I can tell you the thing that I've heard more than anything over the last six or seven months is that the American people want us to scrap this bill. They've said it loud, they've said it clear.
Let me help -- help understand why. The first thing is, we've just talked -- we've heard from the two budget directors about our fiscal condition. We have Medicare that's going broke. We have Social Security that's going broke. We have Medicaid that is bankrupting not only the federal government, but all the states.
And yet, here we are having a conversation about creating a new entitlement program that will bankrupt our country. And it will bankrupt our country.
It's not that we can't do health insurance reform to help bring down costs to help save the system. This bill, this 2,700-page bill will bankrupt our country.
And, secondly, Mr. President, I'd point out that I think this is -- this right here is a dangerous experiment. We may have problems in our health care system, but we do have the best health care system in the world by far.
And -- and having a government takeover of health care -- and I believe that's what this is, is a dangerous experiment with the best health care system in the world that I don't think that we should do.
So why did I bring this bill today? I'll tell you why I brought it. We have $500 billion in new taxes here over the next 10 years. At a time when our economy is struggling, the last thing we need to do is to be raising taxes on the American people.
Secondly, we've got $500 billion worth of Medicare cuts here. I agree with Kent Conrad, we need to deal with the problem of Medicare.
But if we're going to deal with the problem with Medicare and find savings in Medicare, why don't we use it to extend the life of the Medicare program as opposed to spending that $500 billion creating a new entitlement program.
But it's not just, Mr. President, the taxes or the Medicare cuts, you've got -- you've got the individual mandate in here, which I think is unwise, and I, too, believe is unconstitutional.
You've got an employer mandate in here that says that employers, you've got to provide health insurance to the American people, or you're going to pay this tax. It's going to drive up cost of employment at a time when we have over 10 percent, or near 10 percent unemployment in America.
And beyond that, a lot of employers are going to look at this and say, "Well, I'll pay the tax," and they're going to dump their employees into the so-called exchange, because in five years, every American is going to have to go to the exchange to get their health care. And who's going to design every health care bill offered in the exchange? Under this bill, the federal government's going to design every single health care bill in America within five years, once this bill were to pass.
I could go on and on and on.
Let me just -- let me just make one other point. I'll save you -- I'll save you. For 30 years, we've had a federal law that says that we're not going to have taxpayer funding of abortions. We've had this debate in the House. It was a very serious debate.
But in the House, the House spoke. And the House upheld the language we have had in law for 30 years, that there will be no taxpayer funding of abortions.
This bill that we have before us, and there was no reference to that issue in your outline, Mr. President, begins -- for the first time in 30 years allows for the taxpayer-funding of abortions.
"Lets just get it all on the table"
"Lets find out who knew what and when and what they did about it"
"If we are going to get into these interrogation techniques we also ought to give the American people a bigger picture"
"Lets get all the facts on the table"
“Latinos contribute to the progress of this nation, and have a long standing history of serving of our country,” Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the CHC, said in an accompanying statement. “The video posted on Congressman John Boehner’s official website is a completely inappropriate message for the leader of the minority party to send to the American people.”
“It’s disrespectful to the hard-working Latinos across the nation, serving in every sector of our economy and on our military’s front lines,” Velazquez’s statement continued. “The CHC demands an apology from the Minority Leader for this insensitivity and that the video be removed immediately.”
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.), a politically shrewd up-and-comer in the GOP, has broken with his party on two high-profile issues. And the defections on last week’s AIG bonus tax bill and the Obama administration’s troubled assets plan have exasperated some members in the GOP conference.
The grumbling started when Cantor unexpectedly voted with Democrats last week on a measure to recoup the bonuses of AIG executives. Many Republicans called the bill unconstitutional, with more than half of the GOP conference rejecting it. Cantor, who has been labeled “Mr. No” by some Democrats, was one of only two Republican leadership officials who voted for the bill. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.) was the other.
“All the unconstitutional stuff aside, if you don’t believe in raising taxes, why would you vote to raise taxes?” House Republican Conference Secretary John Carter (Texas) said.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) added that supporting the retroactive tax cut “sets a terrible precedent, just terrible.”
Another Republican suggested more members might have voted no if Cantor had.
The GOP legislator who rejected the Democratic bill said sarcastically, “When your whip votes against you, it’s kind of tough to whip for it.”
Cantor’s colleagues in leadership called the bill “a sham.” Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that it was “more than an attempt to cover someone’s rear end because of the political damage that’s out there.”
Boehner told reporters last Thursday that he did not know how Cantor was going to vote on the bill. Boehner voted no early on, while Cantor waited until late to register his vote of yes.
But a leadership aide privy to conversations among GOP leaders said that in the end, Cantor “got spooked.”
Cantor this week adopted a position on Obama’s plan to buy troubled assets from banks that is at odds with that of other GOP leaders on Capitol Hill.
The 45-year-old lawmaker issued a statement that excoriated the administration’s proposal.
Meanwhile, Wall Street and Republican leaders in the Senate embraced the plan as the Dow Jones Industrial Average spiked nearly 7 percent.
Cantor called it a “shell game that hides the true cost of the program from the taxpayers that will be asked to pay for it.”
The top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee labeled it “a genuine and sincere effort.”
Boehner distanced himself from Cantor’s characterization of the assets initiative.
Boehner told reporters on Tuesday that Republicans were going to take a wait-and-see approach before offering an alternative.
“We’ll wait for more details before we prescribe what we think would be a better solution,” Boehner said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Monday that he was willing to “give the secretary of the Treasury credit for finally turning to the real issue here.”
“As I told my colleagues, we don’t have enough votes to legislate,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader. “We are not in the majority. We are not kind-of in the minority; we are in a hole. They ought to get the idea out of their minds that they are legislators. But what they can be is communicators.”
Following the GOP's weekly conference meeting, the second-ranking House Republican told reporters that President Obama should be focusing on the "economic crisis," as opposed to holding four-hour meetings on healthcare, as the president did last week. The efforts may be laudable, Cantor said, but the White House should be devoting all resources to fixing the economy and not to "impose these cap-and-trade schemes."
Other House Republicans in the leadership refrained from answering questions on that matter but did reiterate the call for President Obama to veto the omnibus likely headed to the White House this week, as soon as the Senate approves the $410 billion package.
Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who has attacked the package for the number of earmarks in the bill and the lack of scrutiny of many of those 9,000 pork projects, said that Obama should send the bill back to Congress for additional consideration.
But Boehner's earmark reform committee remains deadlocked over the issue as to what the conference should do about earmarks. The 10-member panel has thus far failed to agree on a way forward and told their leadership as much at a meeting Monday night.
“I'm very grateful that President Obama has lifted the restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. These new rules will now make it possible for scientists to move forward. I urge researchers to make use of the opportunities that are available to them, and to do all they can to fulfill the promise that stem cell research offers. Countless people, suffering from many different diseases, stand to benefit from the answers stem cell research can provide. We owe it to ourselves and to our children to do everything in our power to find cures for these diseases -- and soon. As I've said before, time is short, and life is precious.
So here you have Barack Obama going in and spending the money on embryonic stem cell research, and then some, fundamentally changing – remember, those great progressive doctors are the ones who brought us Eugenics. It was the progressive movement and it science. Let’s put science truly in her place. If evolution is right, why don’t we just help out evolution? That was the idea. And sane people agreed with it!
And it was from America. Progressive movement in America. Eugenics. In case you don’t know what Eugenics led us to: the Final Solution. A master race! A perfect person. …. The stuff that we are facing is absolutely frightening. So I guess I have to put my name on yes, I hope Barack Obama fails. But I just want his policies to fail; I want America to wake up.
"The administration's announcement on embryonic stem cell research represents a troubling shift in U.S. policy. With this announcement, the government is, for the first time, incentivizing the creation and destruction of human embryos at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer. I support biomedical research and I believe the administration would be far better served by directing taxpayer funds to research on non-embryonic stem cells, which is both effective and ethical."
This decision runs counter to President Obama's promise to be a president for all Americans. For a third time in his young presidency, the President has rolled back important protections for innocent life, further dividing our nation at a time when we need greater unity to tackle the challenges before us. I fully support stem cell research, but I draw the line at taxpayer-funded research that requires the destruction of human embryos, and millions of Americans feel similarly. As we move forward, I am hopeful that the President will re-evaluate this and other controversial decisions that put government at odds with the sanctity of human life. Non-embryonic stem cell research is not only showing great promise in the laboratory, but its applications are already being used to treat scores of diseases and medical conditions. Indeed, science and respect for human life can coexist. Politicians in Washington would be well-served to recognize this fact before they ask taxpayers to subsidize the destruction of innocent human life simply to advance a particular agenda. Instead of asking taxpayers to pay for efforts that destroy life, Congress and the Administration should support bipartisan solutions like Rep. Randy Forbes' Patients First Act, which would promote stem cell research that is actually getting results."
But where did the Republicans get that number? By drawing some fuzzy conclusions from a 2007 paper by Dr. Christina Romer, chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers
In fact, a year before being tapped to serve as the Chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, Romer co-authored a report echoing the view that tax cuts can have a very large economic stimulus effect. As the authors noted at the time, 'tax cuts have very large and persistent positive output effects.' ... Using different assumptions and different sample periods, they estimated that a change in taxes equal to 1 percent of GDP resulted in a 2.2 percent to 3 percent change in GDP, with tax cuts increasing GDP.
We find Dr. Romer's previous conclusions on the economic impact of change in tax policy as an appropriate multiplier for examining the impact of stimulus proposals.
Except that the Romer analysis used by the GOP (linked to in the third paragraph of this page) never examined the effects of tax cuts on a deflationary economy -- it looked at the effects of tax increases on the economy as a whole and found a negative effect of 2.2% - 3% on GDP.
The Republican analysis simply flipped those numbers to positive and applied them to the GOP-backed tax cuts, then multiplied the result by a broad job creation estimate used in a recent paper from Romer and Jared Bernstein, an economic adviser to the vice president.
First of all, the family-planning program that Pelosi supports expanding in the stimulus bill was created in 1972 under the leadership of Republican president Richard Nixon.
What's being proposed is an expansion in the number of states that can use Medicaid money, with a federal match, to help low-income women prevent unwanted pregnancies. Of the 26 states that already have Medicaid waivers for family planning, eight are led by Republican governors (AL, FL, MS, SC, CA, LA, MN and RI -- a ninth, MO, had a GOP governor until this past November). If this policy is truly a taxpayer gift to "the abortion industry," as John Boehner and House Republicans claim, where are the GOP governors promising to end the program in their states?
Additionally, the process of obtaining a waiver for Medicaid family-planning coverage is extremely cumbersome. A letter written by Wisconsin health regulators in 2007 noted that some states have had to wait for as long as two years before their request was approved. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that eliminating the waiver requirement would save states $400 million over 10 years.
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