 |
| Pix Via Frisk A Liberal |
The US Senate passed the House Continuing Resolution (87-13) which funds the government through April 8 and contains $6 billion in cuts. President Obama must sign the bill into law before Friday in order to avert a government shutdown of non-essential agencies and operations.
---------------
Today in Washington, D.C. March 17, 2011:
The Senate resumed consideration of S. 493, a bill reauthorizing the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. They will also began consideration of H.J. Res.48, the continuing resolution (CR) funding the government through April 8 that cuts $6 billion in spending. At 3 PM, the Senate will vote on passage of the CR and on confirmation of the nomination of Amy Berman Jackson to be a district judge in the District of Columbia.
Yesterday, the Senate voted 99-0 to adopt an amendment from Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) requiring businesses awarded federal contracts to notify subcontractors when they’re received. Prior to that, the Senate approved amendments rescinding government authorization from an organization misusing taxpayer money and expressing the sense of the Senate that its budget should be cut by 5%.
Next week will mark a year since Democrats in Congress jammed through a 2,700 page health care spending bill and President Obama signed it into law over the objections of a majority of Americans. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell marked the unfortunate occasion in a speech this morning. “I’d like to look back on what we’ve learned about this bill since its passage. Shortly before the final vote, then-Speaker Pelosi famously said that Democrats had to pass the bill so we could find out what was in it — away, as she put it, from the fog of controversy. Now that the fog has lifted, the question arises — what do we know we didn’t know then? Well, we now know that those who promised us that ‘if you like your plan, you can keep your plan’ were dead wrong. The Obama administration has already admitted that at least seven million seniors will now lose their Medicare Advantage plans.” Not two months ago, we learned that thanks to the health care law, “Aetna confirmed . . . that the insurer will no longer sell new individual-market health insurance policies in Colorado and will terminate current policies held by state residents no later than July 31, 2012.”
And Politico reported, “Health insurers in 34 states have stopped selling child-only insurance policies as a result of the health reform law, and the market continues to destablize. . . . One of the largest insurance markets in the country, Texas, has seen all their carriers drop child-only health insurance, as have other large states including Florida and Illinois.” Last fall, The New York Times reported that 840,000 people who get their insurance through Prudential Financial Group will have to change as the company will stop selling health insurance. And those are just some of numerous stories of people who will be forced to change their insurance plans because of the health care law.
As Leader McConnell said, “So the administration’s promises on this point, which were echoed by Capitol Hill Democrats like Speaker Pelosi, turned out to be hollow. . . . So Americans have every reason to be outraged not only by the bill itself, but also by the rhetoric that was used to sell it. And far from being reassured of the bill’s merits, Americans feel betrayed. Check the record. I doubt that one Democrat who voted for this bill told their constituents they’d see a change in their plans. Yet here we are, a year later, and they just expect people to accept it. Democrats knew exactly what Americans wanted to hear — and that’s what they told them. And perhaps the biggest deception of all was the claim that people could keep the plans they have.”
What else have Americans found out about the bill? “According to the independent CBO, the health care bill will result in the loss of more than 800,000 jobs over the next 10 years.” Just last month that Rep. John Campbell (R-CA) asked CBO director Doug Elemendorf, “In your estimation, the health care law would reduce employment by 800,000 in [20]'20-'21. Is that correct?” Elmendorf replied, “Yes.” Not only that, but job creators have repeatedly said the bill “jeopardizes the economic recovery of our nation’s job creators” and protested “the new laws’ employer mandates, industry-specific fees, Medicare hospital insurance tax increases, reporting requirements, excise taxes and limits on flexible spending accounts – all of which place more burdens on America’s job creators.”
And on top of all this, two federal judges have ruled that the bill’s mandate that all Americans purchase health insurance is unconstitutional. The Wall Street Journal editors wrote in December, “[A] federal district court judge in Virginia ruled that the health law breaches the Constitution's limits on government power. In a careful 42-page ruling, Judge Henry Hudson declared that ObamaCare's core enforcement mechanism known as the individual mandate—the regulation that requires everyone to purchase health insurance or else pay a penalty—exceeds Congress's authority to regulate the lives of Americans.” And in February, Judge Roger Vinson ruled in favor of the 26 states suing the federal government over the constitutionality of the health care law. The Washington Post described the ruling: “The decision . . . represents a more sweeping repudiation of the law than the December ruling in a suit brought by Virginia that found the requirement that most Americans purchase health insurance to be unconstitutional. . . . Likening the law to ‘a finely crafted watch’ in which ‘one essential piece is defective and must be removed,’ [Vinson] ruled that the insurance mandate cannot be separated from the rest of the statute and therefore the entire law must be voided.”
Leader McConnell summarized his indictment of the health care bill today: “Taken together, all these broken promises illustrate why so many Americans continue to support a full repeal – which the new Republican-led House has passed – followed by commonsense reforms that will actually lower costs, improve care, and protect jobs. The fog of controversy may have lifted. But contrary to the confident predictions of some, the contents of the health care bill are even worse than anyone expected. A year after Democrats passed it on a party-line vote, it looks even worse than it did then.”
Tags: Washington, D.C., US Senate, US House, Obamacare, healthcare fraud, broken promises, canceled insurance, job losses, unconstitutional bill, CR, continuing resolution NPR To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
0 comments:
Post a Comment