Dee perez-Scott: Obama lies again and again

The Obama campaign is calling Mitt Romney a liar for saying that Obama is attempting to gut welfare reform by taking the “work” out of “workfare.” They have even recruited Ron Haskins, who helped write the welfare reform law in 1996 and then went on to work in the George W. Bush administration, to refute the charges. Haskins, who suspiciously enough, now works at the left-wing Brookings institution, lambasted Romney: "On the merits, waivers are justified. The idea that the administration is going to try to overturn welfare reform is ridiculous."

Only one problem, Mr. Haskins: Romney is absolutely correct. Paul Mirengoff of powerlineblog.com, based on Robert Rector’s analysis at NRO gets it right:

The Obama administration claims authority to overhaul every aspect of the TANF work provisions (section 407), including “definitions of work activities and engagement, specified limitations, verification procedures and the calculation of participation rates” — in other words, the whole work program. Sebelius’s HHS bureaucracy declared the existing TANF law a blank slate on which it can write any policy it chooses. Because HHS granted itself total authority to change any aspect of the work standards, the agency will not be bound by its state-by-state waiver approach in the future.

Moreover, “flexibility” for the states only works one way:

HHS has made it clear that it will not accept waivers for new conservative policies. The agency’s guidance states that it will not approve policy initiatives that are “likely to reduce access to aid.” Translation: HHS will oppose any policy that reduces welfare caseloads.

Team Obama touts a feature in its new policy under which states receiving a waiver must “commit that their proposals will move at least 20 percent more people from welfare to work compared [with] the state’s prior performance.” But Rector shows that this provision is virtually meaningless:

Liberals traditionally use sham “exit” statistics to pretend they are shrinking welfare, while in reality they’re increasing it. Given the normal turnover rate in welfare programs, the easiest way to increase the number of individuals moving from “welfare to work” is to increase the number entering welfare in the first place. Bogus statistical ploys like these were the norm before the 1996 reform. TANF curtailed the use of sham measures of success and established meaningful standards: Participating in work activities meant actual work activities, not “bed rest” or “reading” or doing one hour of job search per month; reducing welfare dependence meant reducing caseloads. Now those standards are gone.

As Mirengoff points out with help from a reader, Haskins is supporting Obama because he thinks the Obama Administration wants to give states more flexibility for new welfare policies. But the administration has ignored the proper way to do this – by a limited, statutory change with clear limits on the authority – in order to give itself and any future Administration the right to wipe out work requirements in the future. The fact that the Obama administration eschewed working with Congress to find a limited statutory change indicates that they are indeed trying to permanently gut the work requirements.
Romney has it right, and in response, Obama is lying again. There’s the mantra for this campaign.

Dee Perez-Scott: The Quote of the Decade

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America 's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America 's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, "the buck stops here.'

Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.
America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”


-- Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006

Dee Perez-Scott: Debt Ceiling Debate

Dee Perez-Scott: Pay Attention to Hillary!

We cannot sustain this level of deficit financing and debt without losing our influence, without being constrained in the tough decisions we have to make, it’s time to make the national security case about reducing the deficit and getting the debt under control.

—HILLARY CLINTON, MAY 2010

The Dumbest President...EVER!

July 08, 2010
By Stuart Schwartz
Barack Obama is the dumbest president...EVER.


That is a reasonable conclusion once you've assessed the first nineteen months of his presidency and compared it to the definition of intelligence put together by researchers in the field. Although the mainstream media have spent the last two years proclaiming Obama "super-smart" or, as Newsweek put it, "sort of God" in stature and brilliance, the 44th president of the United States is poised to surpass our 15th president, James Buchanan. Jr., as the White House occupant who has made the dumbest moves while in office. With two years left, he is on the fast track to last.


That takes some doing, for the leadership of the hapless Buchanan prior to the Civil War "has led to his consistent ranking by historians as one of the worst Presidents." This is the president who vetoed a college funding bill because "there were already too many educated people" in the young nation. Buchanan's judgment was so wretched that he thought anti-slavery forces could be convinced to give up their opposition by his personal assurances that slaves were "treated with kindness and humanity" and that poverty could be ended by simply printing more money. Sound familiar?


Barack Obama is dumb. How dumb? Alfred E. Newman dumb, says columnist David Limbaugh, who labeled him "President Alfred E. Obama" because of his blithe disregard of the basics of fiscal responsibility. Alfred E. Newman is the Mad magazine mascot, whose answer to every problem is his signature statement: "What, me worry?"


How dumb? How-many-Obamas-does-it-take-to-screw-in-a-light-bulb dumb. And in the answer lies the answer, the key to his pole position in the race to last: It takes 242. One to hold the light bulb, four to turn the ladder, eighteen to assess conformity to OSHA workplace requirements, four to assess the environmental impact of the burnt-out bulb disposal, twelve to participate in a task force to evaluate green energy solutions for a replacement bulb, eight to script his actions, four to script instructions and work the teleprompter, 23 to work with the justice department to sue the light bulb manufacturer...you get the picture. And, à la Buchanan, Obama never does get that light bulb changed.


That James Buchanan "fiddled while Rome burned" seems to be the consensus of historians. His approach to the raging controversy over slavery in the decade preceding the Civil War was based on ignoring evidence and acting upon events as he wished them to be, not as they were. Fast-forward to the present: Obama responds to the Gulf crisis by trying to move us toward the collapsed centralized green economy of Spain, ignoring the fact that even Spain acknowledges that "every 'green job' created with government money...came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job."


In all areas of his presidency, Obama has demonstrated a striking disregard of facts, lack of good reasoning, and inability to function at an executive level, all at the core of the textbook definition of intelligence derived from more than a half century of research. Intelligence, the experts tell us, comes down to understanding the meaning of the world around us, and then using that understanding to live skillfully and appropriately (i.e., to get stuff done). One survey of more than fifty researchers in the field of intelligence offers the following definition:


A very special mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings---"catching on", "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.



Obama is Buchanan-esque in his inability to function as an executive, a key part of intelligence. Even a cursory analysis of history shows that limited government and free markets have produced prosperity; so Obama expands government and takes over private businesses, causing one observer to throw up his hands at another Buchanan moment from Obama and exclaim, "It isn't rocket science, Mr. President!" Hands-on executives and laser focus are business school basics for solving problems; so Obama parties rather than roll up his sleeves, unleashes federal regulators on hapless Gulf state residents rather than cutting through the red tape, and appoints study panels even as the oil washes ashore (e.g., see video timeline). Radical Islamists are waging war against the United States; Obama does a full Buchanan -- or, if you will, an Alfred E. Newman-style "What, me worry?" -- and, denying the existence of Islamic terrorism, asks whom are you going to believe -- me or your lying eyes?


The ability to draw reasonable conclusions from everyday life and then use those conclusions to adapt is fundamental to high intelligence, says cognitive psychologist Robert J. Steinberg, the award-winning Tufts University dean and University of Cambridge fellow. In other words, the scientific community has established good reasoning, learning from past experience, and acting according to those experiences as integral to high intelligence.


It does not include, as David Brooks, tells us, having an exceptional and "perfectly creased pant [leg]" or -- in what Hot Air's Allahpundit calls "a loathsome expression of elitism" -- being able to "talk like us," Brooks, and others of the "smart set." If that were the case, all we would need to increase intelligence in the U.S. Congress is to provide our elected representatives with dry cleaning services. As for the "talk like us" part, it doesn't take intelligence to talk like a self-styled intellectual, a.k.a. a New York Times columnist. Hawkeye Pearce has already shown us the way in the classic "Love Story" episode of television's "Mash." He teaches Radar, the shy Iowa farm boy who has a crush on a nurse who reads the classics and enjoys Bach, to reply with, eyebrows uplifted, "Ahhh...Bach" when she discusses music and throw in the occasional "That's highly significant."


Want to impress David Brooks and others of the media engaging in what Bernard Goldberg calls "a slobbering love affair" with the president? Simple. Reply, as Obama has done, "Ahhh...Burke" to David Brooks, enthralled by a president who expressed appreciation for the "finer points" of political philosophy; or flash your degree to Christopher Buckley, formerly of National Review, awestruck by Obama's "Harvard intellect"; or simply present Marxism and mainline elegance as typical of the academic life, and media academics like Michael Beschloss will gush on mainstream news, "he's probably the smartest guy ever to become President."


But intelligence is as intelligence does, as Forest Gump might remind us. Harvard has produced more than its share of great men and women, but it has also produced the Unabomber, Barney Frank, and Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling...and now, the next James Buchanan.


So the next time Brooks or others in the mainstream media firmament tell you that Barack Obama is a towering intellect, the smartest president ever, just nod your head wisely and say, "Ahhh...pant leg."


Stuart Schwartz, a former retail and media executive, is on the faculty at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

A Postmodern Presidency

After reading Victor Davis Hanson’s piece “A Postmodern Presidency” last week, I was furious for two reasons. One, it was one of those columns that I wish I had written. Two, it made me realize exactly who Obama is and how we conservatives have been battling him on all the wrong fronts.
The heart of Hanson’s piece is this: Barack Obama is the first truly “postmodern” President. Having been raised and educated on the deconstructed principles of “relativism and the primacy of language over reality,” Obama is a walking, talking and bowing (more on this later) ambassador of postmodernism.
A brief primer on this “after modernity” ism, quoting Hanson:
“Genres, rules, and protocols in art, music, or in much of anything vanish as the unnecessary obstructions they are deemed to be — constructed by those with privilege to perpetuate their own entrenched received authority and power. . . .
“. . . What we signify and brand as ‘real,’ in essence, is no more valid than another’s “truth,” even if we retreat to specious claims of “evidence”—especially if our aim is to perpetuate the nation state, or the primacy of the white male capitalist Westerner who long ago manufactured norms in his own interests.”
In Hanson’s mind (and I completely agree), everything Obama has done – from “stimulus,” to healthcare reform, to alienating our “allies,” etc. – is for the purpose of removing the centuries-old hegemony enjoyed, by namely, white, Christian men.

Postmodernism exhibits progressive liberal “victimhood” ideology in the sense that everything, literally, is a struggle between class, race and gender. Societal norms and “absolute truth” are outdated modes lacking contextualization. Obama believes all of this. And this is what “hope and change” has always been about.
We can’t expect to win the battle for the soul of our nation (and the stability of the entire world) by battling Obama the way we have. When we question Obama’s numbers on healthcare reform, when that lady at the town hall asked if it’s wise to up the tax burden, when we howl at his narcissism, when we call him naïve, we’ve already lost.

To us, all evidence points to the fact that Obama is naïve, that he really doesn’t understand how the world works. But as Hanson wrote, “[Obama] is offering us another — a postmodern — way of looking at the world.” Obama’s remarks about “Greek exceptionalism” last spring make a little more sense now, don’t they?

He’s like the Joker in the Dark Knight. No matter how insane or random Obama’s policies look to us, they are, as the Joker would say, “all part of the plan.”

Hamstringing our nuclear capabilities? Can’t get more hegemonic than hoarding nuclear warheads. Peace through strength is so modernity.
Bowing to foreign heads of state? America has had more than its fair share of time in the limelight.
Redistribution of wealth? Your capitalistic wealth is homophobic, sexist and probably Islamophobic.

So we cry “Socialist!” And like the Joker when accused of being insane, Obama simply quips, “No, I’m not.”

Being a “socialist” isn’t deep enough, isn’t narrative-changing enough. Attacking health care, foreign policy, cap-and-trade or anything else is fine, but it doesn’t get at the embedded philosophy and life system. We have to realize we’re not even battling against Obama. We’re up against an entire zeitgeist, a paradoxical and chaotic worldview that needs to be dug up by the roots.

As Batman and Joker struggled physically and philosophically over Gotham, the Joker turned to his nemesis and said, “The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.”

So it is with Obama. There are no rules – just language, that fluid gift of reality construction that eliminates all “traditional” obstacles and norms. It’s no surprise, then, that he loves to speechify, because in postmodernity, if you don’t have language, you don’t have anything. [Since there are no rules, it is useless to prevail upon Obama to enforce the immigration laws or secure the border.]

Trevor Sides, former editor of the Akron News-Reporter, is a Liberty Features Syndicate writer for Americans for Limited Government.

Radicals Wrote Stimulus Bill

No congressman read and perhaps no congressman even had a hand in writing the much-criticized stimulus bill. It’s largely the creation of a coalition of leftwing organizations called the Apollo Alliance, whose primary interests are the earth and environmental justice and redistributing wealth. They are not friends of job-creating capitalism.

On Apollo's Web site, Sen. Reid, whose state also leads in foreclosures, is quoted praising the group of which former green czar Van Jones was a board member.
"We've talked about moving forward on these ideas for decades," Reid is quoted as saying. "The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them."

Jones, the former Oakland, Calif., community organizer and self-avowed communist, was on the board of the Apollo Alliance when he accepted the position in the Obama administration as green jobs czar.

As Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity told Glenn Beck, Jones has "described the Apollo Alliance mission as sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive left causes" that would tie elements of organized labor with community organizers and environmental groups into an outfit that would restructure American society.

Wade Rathke, founder of Acorn, was also on the Apollo board, as is Gerald Hudson, vice president of the Service Employees International Union, which provides the shock troops in the movement to pass government-run health care.

John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Clinton and now president of the leftist Center for American Progress, also sits on the Apollo board. Each day his group sends out talking points to the left side of the blogosphere. Mark Lloyd, diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission, was a senior fellow at CAP.

According to Kerpen, the Apollo Alliance put together a draft stimulus bill in 2008 that included almost everything in the final $787 billion package. Little did the voters know that the congressmen and senators they would elect would pass a bill written by activist outsiders.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of all this is that an even more radical Jeff Jones (no relation) has a relationship with the Apollo Alliance. Jeff Jones was a domestic terrorist in the '60s and a fugitive from justice throughout the '70s who, with Bill Ayers, helped found the Weather Underground in 1969.Ayers, Jones and the Weathermen participated in the violent Days of Rage riots in Chicago and a nationwide anti-government bombing campaign. Like Ayers, Jeff Jones has no regrets, saying: "To this day, we still, lots of us, including me, still think it was the right thing to do."

Today, Jones finds himself director of the Apollo Alliance's New York affiliate and a consultant to the national group. One of his clients is the Workforce Development Institute, a union-controlled organization.As a consultant to WDI, Jones helps write the grant proposals for federal stimulus dollars — funds authorized in the bill that Apollo helped write — all to ensure that taxpayer dollars end up in the hands of groups that share Apollo's political agenda.

Welcome to government of the activist, by the activist and for the activist. Sounds like corruption to me.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Subtle Disingenuosness

You lie? No. Barack Obama doesn't lie. He's too subtle for that. He ... well, you judge.

Herewith three examples within a single speech -- the now-famous Obama-Wilson "you lie" address to Congress on health care -- of Obama's relationship with truth.

(1) "I will not sign (a plan)," he solemnly pledged, "if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future. Period."

Wonderful. The president seems serious, veto-ready, determined to hold the line. Until, notes Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, you get to Obama's very next sentence: "And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize."

This apparent strengthening of the pledge brilliantly and deceptively undermines it. What Obama suggests is that his plan will require mandatory spending cuts if the current rosy projections prove false. But there's absolutely nothing automatic about such cuts. Every Congress is sovereign. Nothing enacted today will force a future Congress or a future president to make any cuts in any spending, mandatory or not.

Just look at the supposedly automatic Medicare cuts contained in the Sustainable Growth Rate formula enacted to constrain out-of-control Medicare spending. Every year since 2003, Congress has waived the cuts.

Mankiw puts the Obama bait-and-switch in plain language. "Translation: I promise to fix the problem. And if I do not fix the problem now, I will fix it later, or some future president will, after I am long gone. I promise he will. Absolutely, positively, I am committed to that future president fixing the problem. You can count on it. Would I lie to you?"

(2) And then there's the famous contretemps about health insurance for illegal immigrants. Obama said they would not be insured. Well, all four committee-passed bills in Congress allow illegal immigrants to take part in the proposed Health Insurance Exchange.

But more importantly, the problem is that laws are not self-enforcing. If they were, we'd have no illegal immigrants because, as I understand it, it's illegal to enter the United States illegally. We have laws against burglary, too. But we also provide for cops and jails on the assumption that most burglars don't voluntarily turn themselves in.

When Republicans proposed requiring proof of citizenship, the Democrats twice voted that down in committee. Indeed, after Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" shout-out, the Senate Finance Committee revisited the language of its bill to prevent illegal immigrants from getting any federal benefits. Why would the Finance Committee fix a nonexistent problem?

(3) Obama said he would largely solve the insoluble cost problem of Obamacare by eliminating "hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud" from Medicare.

That's not a lie. That's not even deception. That's just an insult to our intelligence. Waste, fraud and abuse -- Meg Greenfield once called this phrase "the dread big three" -- as the all-purpose piggy bank for budget savings has been a joke since Jimmy Carter first used it in 1977.

Moreover, if half a trillion is waiting to be squeezed painlessly out of Medicare, why wait for health care reform? If, as Obama repeatedly insists, Medicare overspending is breaking the budget, why hasn't he gotten started on the painless billions in "waste and fraud" savings?

Obama doesn't lie. He merely elides, gliding from one dubious assertion to another. This has been the story throughout his whole health care crusade. Its original premise was that our current financial crisis was rooted in neglect of three things -- energy, education and health care. That transparent attempt to exploit Emanuel's Law -- a crisis is a terrible thing to waste -- failed for health care because no one is stupid enough to believe that the 2008 financial collapse was caused by a lack of universal health care.

So on to the next gambit: selling health care reform as a cure for the deficit. When that was exploded by the Congressional Budget Office's demonstration of staggering Obamacare deficits, Obama tried a new tack: selling his plan as revenue-neutral insurance reform -- until the revenue neutrality is exposed as phony future cuts and chimerical waste and fraud.

Obama doesn't lie. He implies, he misdirects, he misleads -- so fluidly and incessantly that he risks transmuting eloquence into mere slickness.

Slickness wasn't fatal to "Slick Willie" Clinton because he possessed a winning, near irresistible charm. Obama's persona is more cool, distant, imperial. The charming scoundrel can get away with endless deception; the righteous redeemer cannot.

Dr. Krauthammer Speaks

Dr. Krauthammer is an M.D. and a lawyer and is paralyzed from the neck down. He is a fiscal conservative and has received a Pulitzer Prize for writing. He is a frequent contributor to Fox News and writes weekly for the Washington Post.

In a recent talk he held his audience spell bound. He is forthright and careful in his analysis and never resorts to emotions or personal insults. He is neither a fear monger nor an extremist in his comments and views. . A friend went to hear him speak and the following is a 1st hand report of what he said. The ramifications for us, our children, and their children are staggering. Even two Democrats at my friend’s table agreed with everything Krauthammer said!
Summary of Dr. Krauthammer’s comments:

1. Mr. Obama is a very intellectual, charming individual. He is not to be underestimated. He is a cool customer who doesn't show his emotions. It's very hard to know what's behind the mask. The taking down of the Clinton dynasty by a political neophyte was an amazing accomplishment. The Clintons still do not understand what hit them. Obama was in the perfect place at the perfect time.

2. Obama has political skills comparable to Reagan and Clinton. He has a way of making you think he's on your side, agreeing with your position, while doing the opposite. Pay no attention to what he SAYS;
rather, watch what he DOES!

3. Obama has a ruthless quest for power. He did not come to Washington to make something out of himself, but rather to change everything, including dismantling capitalism. He can’t be straightforward on his ambitions, as the public would not go along. He has a heavy hand, and wants to level the playing field with income redistribution and punishment to the achievers of society. He would like to model the USA to Great Britain or Canada.

4. His three main goals are federal government control of ENERGY, PUBLIC EDUCATION and HEALTH CARE. He doesn't care about the auto or financial services industries, but got control of them as an early bonus. Cap and trade will add costs to everything and stifle growth. Free college education
fir everyone is his goal. Most scary is his healthcare program, because if you make it free or low cost and add 46,000,000 people to a Medicare-type single-payer system, the costs will go through the roof. The only way to control costs is with massive rationing of services, like in Canada.
5. He has surrounded himself with mostly far-left academic sycophants. No one around
him has ever even run a candy store. But they are going to try and run the auto, financial, banking, energy, education, health care, and other industries. This obviously can’t work in the long run. Obama is not a socialist; rather he's a far-left secular progressive bent on nothing short of revolution. He ran as a moderate, but will govern from the hard left. Again, watch what he does, not what he says.

6. Obama doesn’t really see himself as President of the United States, but more as a ruler over the world. He sees himself above it all, trying to orchestrate and coordinate various countries and
their agendas. He sees moral equivalency in all cultures. His apology tour in Germany and England was a prime example of how he sees America, as an imperialist nation that has been arrogant, rather than a great noble nation that has at times made errors. This is the first President ever who has chastised our allies and appeased our enemies!

7. He is now handing out goodies. He hopes that the bill (and pain) will not come due until after
he is reelected in 2012. He would like to blame all problems from the past on Bush, and on whoever is his successor in the future. He has a huge ego and Dr. Krauthammer believes he is a narcissist.

8. The current level of spending is irresponsible and outrageous. We are spending trillions that we don’t
have. This could lead to hyperinflation, depression or worse. No country has ever spent itself into prosperity.
9. The media is giving Obama, Reid, and Pelosi a pass because they love their agenda. But eventually the bill will come due and people will realize the huge bailouts didn’t work, nor
will the stimulus package. These were trillion-dollar payoffs to Obama’s allies, unions and the Congress to placate the left, so he can get support for #4 above.

10. The election was over in mid-September when Lehman brothers failed, fear and panic swept in, we had an unpopular President and the war was grinding on indefinitely without a clear outcome. The people were in pain, and the mantra of change caused people to act emotionally. Any Democrat would have won this election; it was surprising it was as close as it was.

11. In 2012, if the unemployment rate is over 10%, Republicans will be swept back into power. If it's less than 8%, the Democrats continue to roll. If it's between 8-10%, it will be a dogfight. It will all be about the economy.
I hope this gets you really thinking about what's happening in Washington and Congress. According to Krauthammer, there is a left-wing revolution going on and he encourages us to keep the faith and join the loyal resistance. The work will be hard, but we’re right on most issues and we must reclaim our country, before it's too late.
Do yourself a long term favor; send this to all who will listen to an intelligent assessment of the big picture. All our futures and children's futures depend on our good understanding of what is really going on in D.C. and our action pursuant to that understanding!! It really is up to each of us to take individual action!! Start with educating your friends and neighbors!!!

Health Care Expansion

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500
July 4, 2009

Dear Mr. President:

Today is Independence Day. We Americans have always valued our independence which is why I take note of this date. The value we place on independence applies to health care today as much as it did on other matters when the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Many Americans are concerned that the proposed health care expansion will make a bad situation worse when it comes to the national debt and the projected multi-year deficits. Most people believe that health care costs need to be constrained and the uninsured need some short-term help with their insurance premiums. However, the reform revenue and cost estimates are another matter entirely. The cost of adding the uninsured and those with pre-existing conditions is certain to be underestimated and obviously will increase rather than reduce the overall costs of health care in America. More thought needs to be given to promoting HSAs and catastrophic health insurance as the best alternative for those who cannot afford more expensive plans.

Critics say the public health care insurance alternative, which is being promoted as a way to drive down costs, will force private insurers out of business. This criticism has the ring of truth and therefore is another major concern about a public program. Finally, I needn't remind you of the unfunded liability or insolvency of another public health insurance plan, Medicare. The cost of Medicaid has also ballooned to unanticipated levels. These programs deserve to be fixed before any new program is entertained.

Instead of another potentially insolvent public program, why not simply establish realistic cost goals and guidelines for drug companies, doctors, and hospitals that would achieve the same objective as competition from a public-funded program? Hospitals and drug companies have already come forward with plans to reduce costs by a substantial amount. Perhaps doctors will also step up with similar concessions. We do, of course, need to keep in mind that adequate drug company profits are needed to drive research on new drugs and attract investors. Similarly, adequate compensation for doctors, after their long and arduous training, is an important factor in determining the quality of the health care we receive.

The Public is appropriately skeptical about how health care reform will be funded. They have heard similar fairy tales too many times before. Government estimates are rarely worth the paper they are written on. I know, I used to be a government cost analyst. All too often political appointees overrule legitimate cost estimates because they do not support the programs they favor.

Social Security and Medicare are good examples of programs that have grown beyond their means. Congress has added new benefits and new recipients without commensurate increases in the contribution rate and base necessary to cover the additional costs. Although faulty estimates of revenue and expense may have been a factor, the Congress has never had the political will to take the steps necessary assure full funding of the programs it enacts.

It’s time to remove Social Security and Medicare from the political arena by establishing a Board of Trustees with full authority to increase the contribution rate and base as necessary to both eliminate the unfunded liabilities of both programs over time and assure their long term viability. Congress should chip in a significant amount from the general revenues of the Treasury. This amount could be based on a CBO estimate of the amount needed to make up for the portion of the current unfunded obligation or liability that is attributable to past failures of Congress to properly fund these programs. Congress should not be able to overturn the Board’s decisions except by a 60% vote in both houses.

I suggest a novel approach regarding the funding of the proposed health care reforms. Once we have a sound estimate of the cost based on demographic, actuarial, and other studies, we need to clearly identify the specific sources of revenue that will be dedicated to cover the cost of the reforms. Then let’s limit the maximum cost and scope of the reform program to the actual amount those specific revenue sources produce. (Politically-motivated estimates are certain to be unreliable.) This approach would relieve some of the skepticism about government cost and revenue estimates. The Public could heave a collective sigh of relief knowing that for once the scope of a program would be limited to the actual amount of its earmarked sources of revenue. The funds available could be adjusted throughout the year based on the latest monthly estimate of costs and revenues.

Adjusting the cost to actual revenue could be done by establishing a priority list based on the family income of those who are receiving government subsidized coverage under the new reform program. In times of revenue shortfall, the subsidies for those on the cusp with the highest family income would be reduced or eliminated. These folks would be on notice that they have to be planning for that possibility. In any event, the objective should be to create incentives for people to get off the subsidy rolls and work toward self sufficiency.

Finally, we need to provide the appropriate incentives for the current uninsured to wean themselves from any new government subsidies and to open HSAs as soon as they are able. If promised cost reductions are actually achieved, that should make it easier for them to do so. These subsidies are a form of welfare and should be clearly labeled as such so that all recipients will know that they are imposing their health care costs on their more productive neighbors. They also should be put on notice that they will be expected to seek the education and job training to enable them to fund their own health care plans. Any new government subsidies should never be allowed to become entitlements. We will never be able to control health care costs if a significant number of the participants view health care as a free good or an entitlement. Limiting the available funding to the actual earmarked revenues would be one way to avoid that problem. Steep out-of-pocket co-pays is another.

Finally, it appears that what is being proposed will create a three tier system of health care insurance. At the top of the pyramid is Congress. Second are what I call sub-seniors and third, the seniors and aging baby boomers who are at the bottom of the totem pole. I understand that the already inadequate Medicare funding may be further reduced by $400 billion and the health care for seniors strictly rationed rationed. Many will view the latter as a sort of inverse euthanasia in which seniors are required to endure treatable medical problems and associated pain rather than receive the care they deserve. This sounds like a proposal to deprive one group of citizens of the care they need, so another group can be served. Does this represent equal treatment under the law? Is this the beginning of a "duty to die" program for the elderly?

Promising cost reductions while at the same time adding new coverage for those with pre-existing conditions and those without coverage sounds implausible on the face of it. Let’s not promise more than can be delivered.

Respectfully submitted,

Ultima

SENIOR DEATH WARRANTS

The actress Natasha Richardson died after falling skiing in Canada. It took eight hours to drive her to a hospital. If Canada had our healthcare she might be alive today. In the United States, we have medicalevacuation helicopters that would have gotten her to the hospital in 30 minutes.

In England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or a bypass because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed. Obama wants to have a healthcare system just like Canada's and England's.

I got this today and am sending it on. If Obama's plans in other areas don't scare you, this should.

Please do not let Obama sign senior death warrants. What if it was you, your spouse, your parents, or your grandparents?

Send this to every a senior citizen or about-to-be senior citizen in your address book.

Most of you know by now that the Senate version (at least) of the
"stimulus" Bill includes provisions for extensive rationing of health care
for senior citizens. It creates a three tier system: congress, sub-seniors and seniors in declining order of health care coverage.

The author of this part of the bill, former senator and tax evader, Tom Daschle was credited today by Bloomberg with the following statement: Daschle says "health-care reform will not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them." Doesn't that make you feel warm and toasty all over?

If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just remember that our esteemed Senators and Congressmen have their own healthcare plan that is first dollar or very low co-pay which they are guaranteed the remainder of their lives and are not subject to this new law if it passes.

Please use the power of the Internet to get this message out. Talk it up at
the grassroots level. We have an election coming up in one year and nine
months. And we have the ability to address and reverse the dangerous direction the Obama administration and its allies have begun and in the interim, we can make a difference in Obama’s outrageous health care proposal: add all the uninsured and those with pre-existing conditions; reduce Medicare for seniors by $400 billion to help pay for it, cutoff treatment for seniors, and stiff those struggling with the costs of private plans with the additional burden.

This is why granny wants Obama to fail!

Obama’s success would be a disaster for this country’s health care and for seniors in articular. This hardly a racist sentiment and those who continue to characterize it as such are being disingenuous. They make the gross error of equating an Obama failure with a failure of our country. Instead of a failure it would be a victory and a success for the people who are America.

Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt

Here Comes the Next Fiscal Crisis
Alan J. Auerbach, William G. Gale

Published: July 10, 2009


Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2009
The U.S. confronts not one but two economic challenges: Its worst recession since the Depression and a growing imbalance between federal spending and revenues that makes its underlying fiscal policy unsustainable.

To get the economy going, the Obama administration and Congress have committed trillions of dollars to bailouts of the financial and automobile industries and to a stimulus package of tax cuts and government spending. These measures, on top of our current economic weakness and the imbalance between spending and revenues, have left us with a projected federal budget deficit of $1.7 trillion in 2009, or 12% of U.S. gross domestic product, a deficit share we have not even approached since World War II.

Most economists accept the need to put aside concerns about fiscal balance as we address the recession. But soon enough we will face pressure to shift our focus from the short-term economic problem to our longer-term fiscal problem. And, unfortunately, poor policy choices in the past combined with the enormity of the recession make the second problem worse and reduce the time we will have to deal with it.

The nature of our short-term problem is evident to all of us, as workers anxious about the future of our jobs, as homeowners worrying about the declining values of our houses, and as Californians wondering whether our state government can still function. The longer-term problem, though, is less apparent to most of us, and its more subtle nature has, until now, left our political leaders with little incentive to act.

There are two parts to the problem. First, over the next decade or so, even once we recover from the recession, federal revenues will fall far short of federal spending. Under the policies laid out in the Obama administration's recent budget, for example, the annual deficit will be 5.5% of GDP by 2019, an exceptionally high share in normal times. In the meantime, the national debt will accumulate so rapidly that it will stand at 82% of GDP, its highest mark since 1948, when we were paying off our war debts.

And we will be looking ahead to even larger deficits and faster debt accumulation. That's because of the second element of the problem, the rapid growth of our "big three" entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Due to an aging population and ever-increasing medical costs, these programs are growing much faster than the tax revenues we have to pay for them.

These realities aren't news, although the Bush administration's policies of massive tax cuts and increased spending on all fronts made these underlying problems substantially worse. Recent developments, however, have made ignoring the situation much harder.

The deficits projected over the next 10 years will accelerate our arrival at a debt-to-GDP ratio that for most countries would signal impending fiscal collapse. Indeed, Britain, with a debt-to-GDP ratio not appreciably worse than ours, was just warned by Standard & Poor's that its creditworthiness might be downgraded. The United States has traditionally enjoyed a favored status in this regard, as the supplier of the dollar, the world's reserve currency, and as a perceived haven in times of financial stress. But for how long?

In March, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao publicly questioned the safety of U.S. Treasury debt. Over the winter, prices in credit-default swap markets implied a significant probability of default on U.S. debt in the next five years.

Default on national debt is what happens in failed states and banana republics; such a possibility for the U.S. would have been unthinkable in the past.

All of this will finally force difficult choices on policymakers. Healthcare reform, for example, is crucial if we're to fix entitlement programs. But it alone won't be enough. Spending will have to drop, and taxes will have to rise. And the choices could get harder still. If the economy recovers very slowly, those decisions will need to be faced in the context of a weaker economic situation with demands for further fiscal stimulus.

In the immediate future, policymakers will face a delicate balancing act between encouraging economic recovery and establishing fiscal sustainability. Short-term stimulus can boost an otherwise weak economy, so withdrawing stimulative policies and imposing fiscal discipline too soon could slow the recovery. But delaying fiscal discipline too long could be equally destructive. Success will take new ideas, some luck and uncharacteristic honesty and resoluteness -- from our leaders in Washington and from the rest of us.

Alan J. Auerbach is a professor of economics and law and director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at UC Berkeley. William G. Gale is vice president of the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center.