Posted on 05/12/2010 8:16:29 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told us just weeks before Congress passed President Barack Obama’s health care plan. Well, the nation’s post-passage Obamacare education continued yesterday when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed that the federal government will have to spend an additional $115 billion implementing the law, bringing the total estimated cost to over $1 trillion. The estimate had been requested before passage of the bill by Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), but the CBO was too overwhelmed with the Democrats’ other constant revisions to the law to get back to Lewis before the final vote.
This is by far not the only nasty little surprise that has come back to bite Obamacare after passage. Shortly after it became law, U.S. employers began reporting hundreds of millions if dollars in losses thanks to tax changes in the bill. AT&T and Verizon alone pegged their Obamacare tax losses at around $1 billion each. At first, Democrats in Congress were outraged by the announcements and threatened to hold hearings persecuting these companies. But then the Democrats not only found out the companies were obligated by law to report their Obamacare related losses, but that the losses were a signal these companies might have to dump their employees’ and retirees’ health care coverage all together.
Then the Obama administration’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released its final cost projections for Obamacare, finding that, contrary to White House claims, the legislation will increase national health care spending by $311 billion over the next decade. The CMS report also revealed that: 1) 18 million Americans will pay $33 billion in penalties for failing to comply with Obamacare’s individual mandate and still receive no health care; 2) U.S. employers will pay $87 billion in employer mandate penalties; 3) 14 million Americans will lose their current employer-based health coverage; 4) 7.4 million seniors will lose their current Medicare Advantage benefits; 5) 15% of all Medicare providers will be made unprofitable, thus “jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries.”
Facing this onslaught of reality, the Obama administration has swooped into full spin mode, devoting the Weekly Presidential Address to explaining the “real benefits” Obamacare is “already delivering” to Americans. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius then sent letters to House and Senate leaders touting her “progress” in implementing the law. And then last night White House aides Nancy-Ann DeParle and Stephanie Cutter briefed the House Democratic Caucus on the “tangible benefits” of the law. The sales pitch for all three events was the same: 1) “adults” age 26 and younger can be added to their parents’ plan (never mind that this drives up their parents’ health care costs); 2) new high-risk pools for Americans with pre-existing conditions (never mind that 19 states have rejected working with HHS since Obamacare massively underfunded the pools); 3) supplementing insurance for early retirees (never mind that the Medicare Advantage cuts and tax changes mentioned above are a big reason why seniors will need supplemental coverage).
Democrats know that Americans simply are not buying what they are selling. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) tells Politico: “It’s just like trying to explain the Encyclopedia Britannica.” And John Spratt (D-SC) adds: “You need to know what you’re talking about and this is extremely complex. It’s really difficult to remember, ‘was this in this bill, or was this in the bill Senate side.’” Maybe Spratt should have figured out what was and wasn’t in the bill before he voted for it.
Since the left can’t even figure out what is in the bill they are trying to defend, the latest Rasmussen Reports shows that 63% of likely voters now believe it will increase the federal deficit, and 56% now favor repeal. Not waiting for this November’s elections to change the leadership in Congress, states are leading the way on the road to repeal. According to The Washington Post 33 states have mounted legal and legislative challenges to the new law. Clint Bolick, litigation director of the Goldwater Institute, tells the Post: “This is going to be a long, protracted war of attrition and we haven’t even seen the first wave of regulations yet. … The initial challenges to McCain-Feingold were rejected. But since then, litigators found the vulnerabilities. Likewise, here I think you’re going to see a thousand flowers bloom in terms of lawsuits. I’m hoping that this will die a death of a thousand cuts.”
I disagree. An encyclopedia is a book of knowledge, not mythology.
I’m hoping for such a clean sweep of Rino’s and Rats by 2012 America can not only repeal this but dismantle a whole bunch more of the welfare state.
The left just wants to destroy America. The federal government is at war with its own citizens. Few people realize this fact.
“I’m hoping for such a clean sweep of Rino’s and Rats by 2012 America can not only repeal this but dismantle a whole bunch more of the welfare state.” ~ Nateman
Me to!
Check out the New Zealand solution:
Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 10:56:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: Forbes Newsletters newsletters@forbes.com
To: Matchett-PI
Subject: The Gilder Friday Letter v.429.0
http://www.gilder.com/ | Issue 429.0/May 7, 2010
The Week /CuttingGovernment is All Upside
GILDER TELECOSM FORUM MEMBER # 1(05/05/10):
Marc Farber (Bloomberg): I can tell you, all governments will eventually have to be bailed out in the western world. It’s either going to be through money printing, as I think, or default. They are over indebted, especially if you consider the unfunded liabilities like future pensions, social security, medicare, medicaid and so forth.
It does not add up, they will all default or they will all print money. But the outcome won`t be pretty, that I can assure you.
GEORGE GILDER, Gilder Telecosm Forum (05/05/10): Or someone will try the New Zealand solution, the only real remedy, imposed by a Labor government two decades ago, when they shocked everyone by zeroing out all government programs. The result was an amazing boom, particularly in agriculture, where huge farm subsidies and regulations were abolished and the entire department dismantled. New Zealand moved from being a massive net importer of food to provoking Wisconsin to protect its dairy products from unfair competition from down under. Abolishing government programs turned out to be all upside.
This is not a problem. It is an opportunity. The key to doing it is rescission of pensions extorted from the government by public sector unions, which are unconstitutional self-dealers trading their campaign agitprop and contributions for runaway benefits and absurd early retirements.
GILDER TELECOSM FORUM MEMBER # 1(05/05/10): Any recommended reading on the New Zealand solution?
GEORGE GILDER, Gilder Telecosm Forum (05/05/10): The entire saga was told in detail in a Heritage Foundation tape that I gave to Steve Forbes (and he lost without mentioning). I bet Heritage could track it down and has paper records of the contents. It is the best libertarian story ever told. It is definitely worth chasing down. They zeroed out all the departments and all spending had to be justified from scratch. It changed New Zealand from a Third World basket case into a thriving economy for several decades.
Everybody expected disasters, but cutting government (except defense) is all upside.
Imagine zeroing out the department of agriculture, department of commerce, department of education, department of labor, etc. etc. Think anything bad would happen?
Friday Feature / Washington Possessed
DAVID MALPASS, Forbes.com: My Nov. 10, 2008 column warned that big government was walking away as the knockout winner over the private sector in the financial crisis. But it’s going much further than I’d feared. The federal government has accelerated its takeover of the economy, adding a mega-trillion-dollar health care entitlement, despite the damage to health care and the national debt this will cause. Washington is frenetically cutting unfunded checks. Capital is being channeled away from small businesses toward big government. Looming on the horizon is the bailout of state and local governments, which will concentrate more and more of the nation’s debt onto the diminishing base of federal taxpayers.
Washington’s excess spending is now running $1.5 trillion annually, and both the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are relying heavily on short-term credits for funding. The marketable national debt has ballooned to more than $8 trillion, but wait ... the Obama Administration has budgeted an increase to $20 trillion over the next few years, bringing it to more than 90% of GDP. Even that huge sum—$100,000 for every working-age American—doesn’t include the rapidly escalating debts of Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) or the government’s unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare. And to keep the debt estimate down the budgeteers are making wishful assumptions that millions of high-paying jobs will reappear and health care reform will pay for itself.
Every month Congress adds more federal powers and debt, voting as if its allegiance were to Washington, city of cranes, instead of to the voters and taxpayers. The financial services reform bill does little to reopen lending to small businesses but adds huge new federal powers, including the imposition of corporate taxes, to create a giant new bailout fund (think Son of Tarp). And the President’s ten-year $45 trillion spending budget makes crystal clear Washington’s hunger for a value-added tax. After the health care law it’s the next huge step in Washington’s expansion.
Given temporarily low federal borrowing costs, the government can concentrate the nation’s debt onto federal taxpayers without properly recording the cost. This process is stimulative in the short run—more debt for less cost—but is clearly dangerous in the longer term. The government is not only choosing health care treatments and mortgage clauses but also has taken responsibility for allocating credit throughout the economy—this state versus that state, this industry versus that one.
Delaying the day of reckoning, the Fed has committed its institutional credibility to monetary supercharging, as it did in 2003. By arbitrarily pegging the interest rate near zero for big banks and the Treasury, we’re living in a surreal framework in which the more federal debt, the better for GDP. Except that there are three huge losers: savers earning 0%, small businesses not hooked into zero-rate loans and future taxpayers saddled with the debt when interest rates zoom . . .
HERE: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2511847/posts?page=14#14
Vet
You always find the best stuff! Good post!
The people who passed this should be locked up.
(Reuters)(May 12, 2010) - The United States posted an $82.69 billion deficit in April, nearly four times the $20.91 billion shortfall registered in April 2009 and the largest on record for that month, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday.
It was more than twice the $40-billion deficit that Wall Street economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast and was striking since April marks the filing deadline for individual income taxes that are the main source of government revenue.
Department officials said that in prior years, there was a surplus during April in 43 out of the past 56 years.
The government has now posted 19 consecutive monthly budget deficits, the longest string of shortfalls on record.
WOO HOO! (see tagline)
sfl
the3000 pages of law will produce 500,000 pages of new regulations, many of which will contradict others. It will be like the tax code. So muddled that no one can say for sure what it means in a given case.
I want to see DeathCare repealed entirely. I would then applaud the lawmakers who would finally begin to dismantle this disastrous welfare state super-sized under that boob LBJ.
Understand, I have no problem helping those that CANNOT support themselves. My problem is with that class of people that WILL NOT support themselves. The latter is the same group of slack-jawed dullards who voted for Zero based on what he promised to do for them. This is also the same group of shiftless twits voicing support for ObamaCare, despite not knowing what is in the horribly written and hastily cobbled together bill/law.
One question to all: what is the over/under on the timeframe before this is heard by SCOTUS? Just a best guess.
They keep peddling this half-truth. Fact is, if you have kids between the ages of 18 and 26 they can only join your policy if there is no other option. If they work and their employer offers insurance, they cant take advantage of your policy.
Or more appropriately to the gallows for committing fraud & treason against the U.S. .....beginning with the usurper commie pig in chief, 0b0z0 the RAT bastard & followed by the entire slate of socialist demoRATs & RINO's who enabled these travesties to occur.
I'm calling my dimTURD socialist congress critter fatso Tim Walz's office tomorrow and rail on the bastard for voting for every one of 0bozo's socialist programs, and thereby contributing to this debacle. What a bunch of socialist-fascist RAT bastards!
No one will ever be able to say this administration nor Congress has any brains.
I am biding my time until Nancy and the rest go to jail.
In other words, this administration and Congress are dumber than a bunch of rocks. Stupid is just to mild a word.
Keep the HEAT on these punks in Congress. I write a few emails a week to each idiot in my state. My congressman must be wetting his pants at this point. He calls himself a BLUEDOG... Ha Mr Schiff, you are nancy’s LAPDOG!
Colbert in November!
I am hoping for the same, but what seems to be happening in some places is that some think THEIR Congress-critter is still electable, so they stick with them. If this doesn’t change, we won’t have mush change at all in November.
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