Obama's Health Care Reform - A War on Americans?

Rather than a post-partisan olive branch to congressional Republicans and the American public, President Obama’s latest health-care speech was a declaration of war. He’s more than willing to use a 51-vote reconciliation majority to jam through a roughly $2 trillion health-care plan that amounts to a government takeover of nearly one-fifth of the economy. He’s prepared to stick Uncle Sam right in the middle of the age-old relationship between patients and doctors, and doctors and hospitals, all while subjugating the private health-care insurance system to the status of a government-run utility -- without bending the cost curve downward.

More spending. More tax hikes on investors, businesses, and individuals. New government boards to control prices, ration care, and redistribute income. The Obama administration is basically taking a giant government leap backwards that the country doesn’t want to take.

One of the most galling features of this plan is a taxpayer-subsidized government-insurance entitlement for people earning up to 400 percent above the poverty line, or nearly $100,000 for a family of four. In other words, a middle-class health-care entitlement that will add millions of people to the federal dole. It’s all too reminiscent of the political dictum of the old New Dealer Harry Hopkins: tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect.

The spending has been well chronicled by congressman Paul Ryan, who baffled President Obama at the so-called health-care summit with his cogent analysis of a ten-year cost of $2.3 trillion that sets a floor, rather than ceiling, for the likely expense of this entitlement package. Obama had no rebuttal.

On taxing, let’s not forget that the current health-care payroll tax of 2.9 percent will be expanded to cover all forms of investment and capital formation, on top of the repeal of the Bush tax cuts. The anti-growth consequences are incalculable. As the late Jack Kemp used to say, you can’t have capitalism without capital. - Rasmussen Commentary

Obama's Bank Fee would Ultimately Hurt Consumers

ABC News' Matthew Jaffe reports:

President Obama's proposed fee on the country's biggest banks receiving taxpayer bailout money would ultimately result in costs to the firms' customers, employees, and investors, a non-partisan Congressional watchdog said today.

In January the President unveiled a proposal to impose a fee on about 50 of the nation's biggest banks with assets of $50 billion or more in an effort to recoup around $90 billion of taxpayer money dished out as part of the Wall Street bailout.

"We want our money back and we're going to get it," the President said.

But the Congressional Budget Office today warned that "the ultimate cost of a tax or fee is not necessarily borne by the entity that writes the check to the government."

"The cost of the proposed fee would ultimately be borne to varying degrees by an institution's customers, employees, and investors," the CBO said today in a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley.

"Customers would probably absorb some of the cost in the form of higher borrowing rates and other charges, although competition from financial institutions not subject to the fee would limit the extent to which the cost could be passed to borrowers. Employees might bear some of the cost by accepting some reduction in their compensation, including income from bonuses, if they did not have better employment opportunities available to them. Investors could bear some of the cost in the form of lower prices of their stock if the fee reduced the institution's future profits."

The availability of credit - already a problem for some consumers and businesses - could also be limited by the proposed fee, the CBO said.

"The fee would probably lower the total supply of credit in the financial system to a slight degree. It would also probably slightly decrease the availability of credit for small businesses."

The effect of the fee on the banks, the CBO said, would be "small". - ABC News Story

Karl Rove Settles Scores with Obama in New Book

“Rove hates me,” Barack Obama once confided to adviser Valerie Jarrett, according to a new book by Republican strategist Karl Rove that portrays the president as a “nasty and condescending” hypocrite who “plays fast and loose with the facts.”

Rove, who was the top political strategist to former President George W. Bush, uses his memoir, “Courage and Consequence,” to settle some scores with Obama, including a shot that Obama once took at Rove in his own memoir, “The Audacity of Hope.” Specifically, Obama accused Rove and fellow conservatives Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist in the 2006 book of declaring, “We are a Christian nation.”

“I certainly don’t believe and have never said, ‘We are a Christian nation,’” Rove insisted in “Courage,” which is scheduled for publication next week. “What happened to the Jews? The Muslims? The Hindus? The Buddhists? The skeptics and nonbelievers?”

Rove, now a Fox News contributor, said he confronted Obama, then the junior senator from Illinois, about the quotation during a chance encounter in the White House cafeteria. According to Rove, Obama initially denied attributing the quote to Rove, who then showed Obama the page in question.

“He looked surprised and began insisting he really wasn’t saying what he had quoted me as saying,” Rove wrote in “Courage,” which will be released Tuesday. “After a few moments, the conversation drew to an awkward and unsatisfactory conclusion; he was unwilling to acknowledge the mistake or apologize. It seemed to me he didn’t much care that he had attributed to me something I had never said and found offensive.”

Later, at the 2008 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Rove and Jarrett were guests at the table of Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham.

“Jarrett e-mailed Obama on her BlackBerry to let him know she was breaking bread with Satan himself,” Rove recalled. “He e-mailed her back and Jarrett made the mistake of showing Jon and me his reply, which was ‘Rove hates me.’ I knew Senator Obama was alluding to our run-in over the passage in his book. I asked Jarrett to tell him I wasn’t in the habit of hating people.”

This was not the only score Rove settled with Obama.

“Though we didn’t discuss it in our West Wing encounter, Obama also went on in his book to describe me and other conservatives as ‘eerily reminiscent of some of the New Left’s leaders during the sixties,’ who ‘viewed politics as a contest not just between competing policy visions, but between good and evil,’” Rove wrote.

“Now, that’s rich, isn’t it?” he marveled. “The last time I checked, I hadn’t bombed any government buildings (like, say, Obama’s great friend William Ayers); or asked that God ‘damn’ America (like, say, Obama’s former pastor and close friend Jeremiah Wright); or declared that I was proud of my country for the first time in my life only when I was in my forties (like, say, Obama’s wife, Michelle).” - FOX News Story

Obama Flip Flopping on Terror Trials

Top advisers to President Obama are close to a decision recommending that the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks be prosecuted in a military tribunal, The Washington Post reported Friday, citing unnamed administration officials.

According to the report, the president's advisors have grown increasingly wary of bipartisan opposition to the planned civilian federal trial in New York City, mere blocks from where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in the spectacular attack on the World Trade Center.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and prominent state Democrats, who initially embraced Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other conspirators in Manhattan, have since reversed their support for the trial.

The paper said administration officials are privately bracing for backlash from disappointed liberals and some government lawyers should Obama reverse his decision to try the detainees in civilian courts.

Officials told the Post an announcement could come soon and that they hoped to finalize their plans by March 18, when Obama leaves for a trip to Indonesia. - FOX News Story

Pelosi is Out of Touch and Out of the Loop

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that her staff kept her out of the loop about a “rumor” that Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) made unwanted advances on a male staffer, even though Majority Leader Steny Hoyer had known about the allegations for weeks.

“I asked my staff. I said, ‘Have there been any rumors about any of this before?’” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference. “There had been a rumor, but just that. There was no formal notification to our office that anything happened. It was a one-, two-, three-person rumor that had been reported to Mr. Hoyer’s office, that they reported to my staff, which they did not report to me because, you know what, this is Rumor City. There are rumors. I have a job to do, and I’ve been doing that.”

Hoyer learned about an allegation of misconduct on Feb. 8, his office said Wednesday night. He purportedly gave Massa or his staff 48 hours to take the issue to the ethics committee, threatening to take it to the panel himself if they wouldn't. Hoyer’s office told Pelosi’s staff about the Massa situation within days of these allegations, but Pelosi says she didn’t know this was going on.

The first-term upstate New York congressman didn’t tell the speaker anything was up until Wednesday, Pelosi asserts.

“Mr. Massa called me yesterday and told me he had been diagnosed with cancer and that he may not be seeking reelection,” she said. “That was the first I heard of that.”

The speaker spent much of her weekly news conference on the defensive, testily pushing back against questions about ethics lapses and controversy over abortion provisions in the new health bill.

“Some of the issues that you reference in terms of the issues that transpired in the last few days, they’re behind us,” she said. “They’re behind us. We have a new acting chair of the Ways and Means Committee. That’s a very big change. So our members are strong. They know that we have to be stronger on our message as to what it is we’ve done.” - Politico Story

Obama's New Hire is a More Business as Usual - No CHANGE

To the big donors who financed President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, the decision to make his chief fundraiser the gatekeeper for White House social events is a promise of access to come.

To good government groups, it’s a cue to start checking on who’s sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom.

The White House staunchly denies Julianna Smoot’s new role as social secretary will bear any connection to her Rolodex. “I’ve got bad news for donors who think that this changes how people get into the White House or who gets into the White House,” press secretary Robert Gibbs told POLITICO, noting that Obama is the first president to release lists of White House visitors. “Being a donor does not guarantee you access to this place, nor does it preclude you from having access to events.”

Smoot, Gibbs said, sees her role as continuing to make the White House the “people’s house.”

But Obama’s decision to make a hire that cuts so sharply across his message of change and of, specifically, ending the old Washington exchange of money and access, has puzzled some allies.

“Maybe they’re thinking of this as jobs creation in the [Republican National Committee] research shop,” gibed one prominent Democrat.

And allies and defenders alike see Smoot as a return to a kind of business as usual. - Politico Story

Democrats Agree to Push Health Care Through with Reconciliation

Sen. Tom Harkin told POLITICO that Senate Democratic leaders have decided to go the reconciliation route. The House, he said, will first pass the Senate bill after Senate leaders demonstrate to House leaders that they have the votes to pass reconciliation in the Senate.

Harkin made the comments after a meeting in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office including Harkin and Sens. Baucus, Dodd, Durbin, Schumer and Murray.

When asked whether the leaders had made the decision, Durbin said: "We are moving ahead with a version of the health care reform bill that we believe has a good chance of passing both the House and the Senate."

He then put the onus on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to signal whether she can provide enough votes to pass the Senate bill, followed by a package of fixes through reconciliation.

"The first step is with Speaker Pelosi and so I will let her decide what it takes in the House," Durbin said.

Reconciliation "has always been an option. But she has to make her own decision on what it takes to enact this in the House," he added.

Durbin said Democrats are "coming to closure" on legislative language to send to the Congressional Budget Office for a cost estimate -- a step that can take weeks. "It has not been sent yet, but we are hoping it can be sent soon."

It remains unclear what kind of guarantee the Senate can provide to the House that the upper chamber will make fixes to the bill, Durbin said.

"I don't know what the gesture will be but it will be a convincing gesture," he said. - Politico Story

Democrats Push for Freeze on Stimulus Funding On Renewable Energy

A group of Democratic senators is urging the Obama administration to suspend an economic stimulus program aimed at financing renewable energy, complaining that money is going to projects that are creating jobs in foreign countries.

The four senators, led by Chuck Schumer of New York, wrote to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday to request a moratorium on the Recovery Act program. They asked that the moratorium remain in place until they can pass legislation mandating stimulus aid flow only to projects which preserve and create U.S. jobs.

"A critical Recovery Act priority is investment in the domestic renewable and clean energy industry, not investment in foreign manufacturers," the senators wrote in the letter, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. The letter, which will be disclosed at a news conference Wednesday, was also signed by Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania and Jon Tester of Montana.

The lawmakers cited a report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop which found that a majority of the program's grants went to foreign-owned companies, and that a majority of the turbines purchased with the money were built by foreign manufacturers.

"This is not the intended use of Recovery Act funds," they wrote. - FOX News Story

Democrats & WH to Push Health Care Through Reconciliation

The only mystery left in President Obama's "final stage" speech Wednesday on the future of health care is whether he will utter the "R" word.

The "R" word, at least as far as the health care debate is concerned, is reconciliation. Reconciliation is the procedural nom de guerre for the majority party's path around the Senate's 60-vote filibuster.

Senate Democrats would like to hear Obama say reconciliation, if for no other reason than to give the maneuver a presidential imprimatur.

"Yes, yes, yes," a senior Democratic congressional source told Fox when asked if Senate Democrats wanted Obama to invoke the "R" word.

Senate Democrats also believe such declaration from Obama would demystify the process and give them a degree of political cover. How? By allowing them to share with Obama the rationale for muscling health care through the chamber on simple-majority vote -- even though they studiously avoided that approach before Sen. Scott Brown's stunning upset victory in Massachusetts deprived them of their 60-vote majority.

House Democrats don't much care if Obama says the "R" word or not. They know the Senate is going to use reconciliation and, they say, so should anyone paying attention.

"Saying it doesn't make it any more or less real," a senior House Democrat said. "If you don't know the Senate is going to use reconciliation by now, you haven't been paying attention."

In fact, House Democrats are far more worried about what will happen in their chamber. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still has to corral enough votes to pass the Senate health care bill. If she can't, the reconciliation process stalls before it even starts.

"With reconciliation, things are easier for the Senate Democrats, it's on our side where things are still difficult," the House Democrat said. "I don't think people fully appreciate that."

In fact, there really is no mystery about all this.

Obama will not use the "R" word Wednesday, two White House officials told Fox.

"When in this entire year-long process have we ever benefited from talking about process," one White House official asked rhetorically. "Answer: Never."

The White House knows if Obama says "reconciliation" in Wednesday's speech that will become the headline. This will thrust Obama knee-deep into arcane Senate procedures and rules -- the last place White House officials want Obama to be. - FOX News Story

Al Gore's Making up Global Warming Again?

Al Gore's defense of global-warming hysteria in Sunday's New York Times has many flaws, but I'll focus on just one whopper -- where the "Inconvenient Truth" man states the opposite of scientific fact.

Gore wrote, "The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere -- thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States."

It's an interesting theory, but where are the facts?

According to "State of the Climate" from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "Global precipitation in 2009 was near the 1961-1990 average." And there was certainly no pattern of increasing rain and snow on America's East Coast during the post-1976 years, when NOAA says the globe began to heat up.

So what was it, exactly, that Gore's nameless scientists "have long pointed out"? A 2008 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Climate Change and Water," says climate models "project precipitation increases in high latitudes and part of the tropics." In other areas, the IPCC reports only "substantial uncertainty in precipitation forecasts." - FOX News Story

Ego Battle at the White House

It's Rahmbo vs. the Obamanator. At least that's the chatter that's getting louder by the minute in Washington.

A series of columns and in-depth press reports over the past few weeks has hinted at such a slugfest, and the talk is bound to dog the White House for quite a while, especially if there's any truth to it.

The storyline goes something like this: White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel knows best ... the rest of the administration isn't listening ... and he is at his wit's end trying to convince President Obama and his Chicago buddies to dial back their ambitions for the sake of the president's agenda and political harmony.

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was compelled for the first time to respond to the chatter. He said the president "absolutely" has confidence in his chief of staff, and he dismissed speculation of a rift between the two as part of the usual lineup of Washington "parlor games" -- which he suggested were being played out of sheer boredom in the vacuum of the football off-season.

"Anybody that works in or around this building knows that there's nobody working harder on passing the president's agenda than the chief of staff," Gibbs said. - FOX News Story

Democrats No Longer Supporting Rangel

House Ways and Means Committee Charlie Rangel was on the verge of losing his gavel Tuesday night as a trickle of Democratic defections turned into a flood.

It wasn’t clear how Rangel would go – voluntarily, by force, temporarily or permanently – but the tide had clearly turned against him by the time he walked into a closed-door meeting with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s staff Tuesday night.

“The dam broke today,” said a senior Democratic aide.

Rangel suffered a significant blow Tuesday afternoon when Rep. Artur Davis – a member of both the Ways and Means Committee and the Congressional Black Caucus who’s running for governor back home in Alabama – issued a statement in which he said the chairman “should do the right thing and step aside.”

By Tuesday night, at least 13 other Democrats had said that Rangel should go, and Democratic leaders were braced for more to come.

Republicans are planning to bring a resolution to the House floor calling for his removal as chairman, and Democratic aides said Tuesday that the party’s most vulnerable incumbents are not willing to risk the electoral fallout that would come from standing by the 39-year House veteran. - Politico Story

Repub Senator Filibuster - Democrats Wave Paygo - Who's Right?

Sen. Jim Bunning took to the Senate floor on Monday to defend his one-man filibuster of expiring unemployment benefits.

"If we can't find $10 billion to pay for something that we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of this U.S. Senate," he said.

The Kentucky Republican has come under fierce fire from Democrats for his one man filibuster of expiring transportation funds, Medicare reimbursement rates, and unemployment benefits. Already his opposition has resulted in the furlough of 2,000 workers at the Department of Transportation. If it continues, millions of unemployed workers could lose their health insurance and benefits.

Bunning got support from Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl, who defended his colleagues insistence of paying for the legislation with unused stimulus funds.

"You can't say that everything we do around here needs to be offset," said Kyl, "and then waive the pay go legislation every time you want to do it."

"My colleague from Kentucky made a good point."

Bunning said that he had “offered several ways” to offset the costs in talks with Democratic leadership staff but “none have been successful.”

“We cannot keep adding to the debt,” he said. “It’s over $14 trillion and going up fast.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid fired back, pointing out that Bunning voted against passing pay-go rules requiring the Senate to offset costs of legislation with revenue raising provisions or tax cuts.

Bunning, said Reid, also raised no objections to passing the Bush tax cuts and authorizing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without paying for the provisions.

“We don’t need lectures here on debt,” said Reid. - Politico Story

Indiana Governor Rolls out Health Care Idea

... Indiana Gov. and possible 2012 candidate Mitch Daniels's argument that his state's health care system – specifically, its system of Health Savings Accounts – would be a superior model for cost-containing health care legislation.
As Democrats work to define Republicans as the "party of no ideas," Daniels defends his in the Wall Street Journal: “In the second straight year in which we've been forced to skip salary increases, workers switching to the HSA are adding thousands of dollars to their take-home pay. ... The state is saving, too. In a time of severe budgetary stress, Indiana will save at least $20 million in 2010 because of our high HSA enrollment. ...

“Most important, we are seeing significant changes in behavior, and consequently lower total costs. In 2009, for example, state workers with the HSA visited emergency rooms and physicians 67% less frequently than co-workers with traditional health care. They were much more likely to use generic drugs than those enrolled in the conventional plan, resulting in an average lower cost per prescription of $18. ... There will be no meaningful cost control until we are all cost controllers in our own right.

“Americans can make sound, thrifty decisions about their own health. If national policy trusted and encouraged them to do so, our skyrocketing health-care costs would decelerate.” - Politico

Obama Visit Doesn't Help Reid

There's no Obama bump for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

A poll conducted for the Las Vegas Review-Journal showed President Obama's visit to Nevada two weeks ago had a negligible effect on Reid's poll numbers.

Though the president spent time praising Reid effusively for his leadership, 75 percent of those surveyed said the visit would not affect how they vote.

Of those who might be swayed, more respondents said they'd be more inclined to vote against Reid than for him. Seventeen percent said the visit made them less likely to vote for Reid, while just 7 percent said the visit made them more likely to vote for him.

The Mason-Dixon poll of 625 likely state voters, conducted Monday through Wednesday, had a margin of error of 4 percentage points. - FOX News Story

Pelosi Protecting Dem in Ethics Scandal - For Now

Charles Rangel met with New York Democrats on Saturday in an effort to save embattled Gov. David Paterson. But the meeting could just as easily have been about Rangel himself.

The House ethics committee decision to admonish Rangel for taking two corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean has turned up the heat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee chairman — with even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying that Rangel’s actions don’t pass the “smell test.”

Several House Democrats have now joined Republicans in calling for Rangel to lose his gavel, and The New York Times has chimed in, saying the “arrogance” Rangel showed in the wake of Thursday’s ethics committee ruling provides “one more reason” for Pelosi to “stop protecting him and relieve him of his crucial role as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.”

In an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” Pelosi acknowledged that “what Mr. Rangel has been admonished for is not good.”

But the speaker also said that Rangel’s participation in the corporate-sponsored trips wasn’t something that had “jeopardized our country in any way,” and she made it clear that she has no intention of taking away Rangel’s chairmanship unless and until the ethics committee determines that he’s guilty of a number of ethics violations it’s currently investigating.

“Well, let’s ... why don’t we just give him a chance to hear what the independent, bipartisan [ethics committee says] — they work very hard to reach their conclusions, and we ... obviously, there’s more to come here,” Pelosi said. - Politico Story

Federal Deficit Worse than You Think

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- America's total debt load is on pace to top $13 trillion this year, and $22 trillion by 2020 -- and that's just the debt we're counting.

What's not being counted: potential debt bombs that don't get factored into most budget analysis.

When anyone talks about U.S. debt, they typically refer to two numbers.

The first is the debt held by the public. That's money owed to those who have bought U.S. Treasurys, most notably big bond mutual funds and foreign governments. Debt held by the public today is roughly $8 trillion and rising.

The second number is the money the federal government owes to government trust funds, such as those for Medicare and Social Security. The government has used revenue collected for those programs to cover other outlays. Currently, the debt to the trust funds is approaching $5 trillion.

The two combined is the total gross debt that's accounted for. But deficit hawks also worry about what's not on the books.

Here is just a sampling of the unseen or underplayed obligations that could worsen the debt outlook: - CNN Story

Forget Bipartisanship - Ram Health Care Through

WASHINGTON – The White House called for a "simple up-or-down" vote on health care legislation Sunday as Speaker Nancy Pelosi appealed to House Democrats to get behind President Barack Obama's chief domestic priority even it if threatens their political careers.

In voicing support for a simple majority vote, White House health reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle signaled Obama's intention to push the Democratic-crafted bill under Senate rules that would overcome GOP stalling tactics.

Republicans unanimously oppose the Democratic proposals. Without GOP support, Obama's only chance of emerging with a policy and political victory is to bypass the bipartisanship he promoted during his televised seven-hour health care summit Thursday.

"We're not talking about changing any rules here," DeParle said. "All the president's talking about is: Do we need to address this problem and does it make sense to have a simple, up-or-down vote on whether or not we want to fix these problems?"

DeParle was optimistic that the president would have the votes to pass the massive bill. But none of legislation's advocates who spoke on Sunday indicated that those votes were in hand. - FOX News Story