House Health Bill Raises Taxes, Costs Too Much - CNN Poll 53% Oppose Dem Plans

Senate is only scheduled to be in session on Monday and Tuesday this week due to Veterans Day. Today the Senate will resume consideration of H.R. 3082, the fiscal year 2010 Military Construction-Veterans Affairs (Milcon-VA) appropriations bill. At 4:30 PM, the Senate will begin consideration of the nomination of Andre Davis to the 4^th Circuit Court of Appeals. After an hour of debate the Senate will vote on confirmation of the nomination. Votes on the Milcon bill are possible afterwards.

As previously reported, on Saturday night, the House voted 220-215 to pass H.R. 3962, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s $1 trillion health care bill. The bill was passed after the Democrat majority voted down the much less costly Republican alternative and rejected the GOP motion to recommit to add tort reform to the bill.

The Wall Street Journal writes today, “President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul faces an uncertain battle in the Senate after a narrow weekend victory in the House revealed the continuing divide among Democrats. . . . But its narrow passage in the House, where the Democrats have a large majority, underscores the difficulties ahead. Senate Democrats are struggling to agree on how to pay for the overhaul and whether to create a new public insurance plan to compete with private insurers, as the House did. Friction over how the bill treats abortion, which almost derailed the House vote, is likely to divide the Senate too.”

Indeed, the 39 House Democrats who voted against the bill Saturday pointed to many of the same problems with the legislation that Republicans have. Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA) said, “[This bill] failed to effectively rein in rising health care costs; it was punitive toward small businesses; and it paid for reform by raising taxes.” Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK) warned, “The worst thing we could do during a recession is raise taxes and this bill does just that.… I also believe the public option would ultimately lead to a single-payer health care system.” Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD) said, “Our nation is facing an $11.9 trillion national debt, and we simply cannot afford a bill that does not lower healthcare spending.” And Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-NC) said, “It raises too much in new taxes and imposes new requirements that will harm the ability of too many small businesses to compete and create jobs.”

Even Fred Hiatt, The Washington Post’s editorial page editor, can see the problems Pelosi’s bill presents. In an op-ed today, Hiatt writes, “The bill also could take America a step closer to bankruptcy.” He notes that the bill adds to the deficit and that Congress in unlikely to enact the cuts needed to pay for the bill down the road. Hiatt also points out, “The root difficulty is Obama’s insistence that the nation can afford a large new social program without raising taxes on anyone who earns less than $250,000 per year. . . . In the kind of fiscal crisis that might ensue, as progressive budget expert Robert Greenstein said recently, ‘the risk is high that the people with the least political power in this country could bear a disproportionate share of the burden even though, by and large, they’re lower on the income scale.’”

In today’s editorial, The Wall Street Journal ties up some of the worst aspects of the House bill with a pithy bow. “It creates a vast new entitlement, financed by European levels of taxation on business and individuals. The 20% corner of Medicare open to private competition is slashed, while fiscally strapped states are saddled with new Medicaid burdens. The insurance industry will have to vet every policy with Washington, which will regulate who it must cover, what it can offer, and how much it can charge.”

It’s little wonder, then, that polls continue to show public opposition to the Democrats’ health care reforms. On Friday, a CNN poll found that a majority, 53%, “oppose Barack Obama’s plan to reform health care.” The poll also found 33% would like to see major changes in the Democrats’ legislation, 24% want to scrap the current bills and start over, and 15% want to stop the bill altogether. That’s 72% of Americans who are not in favor of moving the Democrats’ health bills as they currently exist.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said over the weekend, “The government-run plan that narrowly passed the House Saturday was rejected by one in seven House Democrats and a majority of Americans. It should serve as a stark reminder that Americans don’t want a 2,000-page, trillion-dollar government experiment—they want commonsense reforms. Soon, Senate Democrats will propose their own version. We don’t know how big it will be or how expensive, but we do know with certainty that it will mean higher premiums, higher taxes and massive cuts to Medicare to create even more government programs. That’s not reform.”

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