Today in Washington D. C. - Nov 23, 2009 - Congress in Recess Playing at Home

Updated recess schedule: Congress is in recess. The House will reconvene at 6:30 PM on Tuesday, December 1, 2009; the Senate will reconvene Monday, November 30th. At that time the Senate will resume consideration of the Reid substitute amendment to H.R. 3590, the vehicle for Democrats’ health care reform bill. As previously reported, the Senate voted 60-39 along party lines to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the Democrats’ 2,074-page health care bill.

Comment from Sam Adams MMIV: Now that Senate Majority Reader Harry Reid and the White House have convinced 60 Democrat senators to vote to proceed to the Senate health care bill which raises taxes, raises premiums, and cuts Medicare, a full debate with a significant amendment process will begin next week. One of the key problems Americans will be pointing out is the massive expansion of government spending and debt that will come if this bill is passed.  As Senate Budget Committee Judd Gregg (R) has explained, when fully implemented the Democrats’ bill will cost $2.5 trillion in its first decade. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell told senators before Saturday’s vote, “At a moment when more than one out of ten working Americans is looking for a job, at a time when the Chinese are lecturing us about our debt . . . this bill right here costs $2.5 trillion government doesn’t have. And cannot afford.”

Today’s New York Times has an alarming report that confirms this. The Times reports, “Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.

“With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher. In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The potential for rapidly escalating interest payouts is just one of the wrenching challenges facing the United States after decades of living beyond its means.”

And few things would add to this burden more than a multi-trillion-dollar experience in government-run health care. According to the NYT, “The problem, many analysts say, is that record government deficits have arrived just as the long-feared explosion begins in spending on benefits under Medicare and Social Security. The nation’s oldest baby boomers are approaching 65, setting off what experts have warned for years will be a fiscal nightmare for the government.” And yet Democrats are pushing to pass a bill that cuts nearly half a trillion dollars from Medicare to spend on a new entitlement, instead of fixing the fiscal mess Medicare is in.

The American people are well aware of the problem. In his column yesterday, The Washington Post’s David Broder pointed to the last week’s Quinnipiac poll which asked Americans if they thought Obama and the Congress would uphold the president’s promise that any health care bill won’t add to the budget deficit. Broder wrote, “The answer: Less than one-fifth of the voters -- 19 percent of the sample -- think he will keep his word. Nine of 10 Republicans and eight of 10 independents said that whatever passes will add to the torrent of red ink. By a margin of four to three, even Democrats agreed this is likely. That fear contributed directly to the fact that, by a 16-point margin, the majority in this poll said they oppose the legislation moving through Congress.”

Even some Senate Democrats claim to understand the problem here. The Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday, “‘We simply cannot ignore the growth in the federal government since the year 2000. I can assure you that the American people have not ignored it,’ [Sen. Blanche] Lincoln [D-AR] declared in her Senate floor speech—moments before she said she would vote to proceed with the biggest expansion of government in living memory.”

As. Sen. McConnell explained Saturday, “[A] vote in favor of this bill is a vote in favor of the spending binge that’s leading to a massive and unsustainable long-term debt that will shackle our children to a future they can’t afford.” But Lincoln and her Democrat colleagues voted to advance the bill anyway. Adding a $2.5 trillion entitlement that raises health care costs to the sea of red ink drowning the United States is not reform. [Sam Adams MMIV is a pen name for an un-named beltway source.]

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