THE HOUSE THE PROGRESSIVES BUILT
By Betty Freauf
February
28, 2010
NewsWithViews.com
Like relatives politely squabbling at a family event, President Obama along with his Democrat team and Republicans wasted seven plus hours of our time on February 25 listening to the Health Care summit. While the Republican legislators tried to make some excellent points, about the time I thought they were about to sine die, the president then took an additional 20 minutes for his summation of the event. It was noted he talked nine minutes longer than all the Republicans combined but he’s president so his time didn’t seem to count, he said.
In a few days it will be full speed ahead with his original agenda. While there were several rather controversial moments, perhaps the one that got the most attention was when former presidential candidate Senator John McCain was told by President Obama, “We aren’t campaigning any more. The election is over.” In other words, “Shut up. I won you lost!” Other GOP participants kept reading points from the earlier bills and quoting word for word what our dipstick Democrat leaders have made making absolute liars out of them. Calling it the Beer Summit may have been more accurate because without his teleprompter, our Harvard man President Obama kept stumbling over his words. Remembering how Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Cal) asked a Brigadier General to call her “Senator” rather than “maam”, I was appalled at how disrespectful and condescending President Obama was when he referred to Summit participants by their first names.
By the way, Senator Boxer has a measly 5% Constitutional approval in the December 7, 2008 New American current scoreboard. Senator Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) offered an amendment to the fiscal 2010 Transportation -HUD appropriations bill stating: “None of the funds made available under this Act may be directly or indirectly distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). It passed by an 83-7 vote. ACORN had been in the news so much that she must have felt it wise to oppose them; however, knowing a little about how the bureaucracy works and how closely tied Barack Obama has been to ACORN, I suspect they are getting their money from another bureaucratic source.
I chuckled the day following the Summit when Rush Limbaugh using Blogger Bungalow Bill’s insight at how quickly the media knew everything about the killer whale’s history that had surfaced the day before the Summit but failed to inform voters about Obama’s birth certificate, college records, associations, family background, etc. before the election.
Many “emotional” sob stories where shared by Democrat participants at the Summit but the one that topped them all was New York Democrat Congress woman, Louise Slaughter with a worse Constitutional voting record than Boxer’s noted above. She told of one constituent because she couldn’t afford dentures had to use her dead sister’s. The Congresswoman was shocked that this could happen in America.
What is even more shocking to me is how people like Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal) and Congresswoman Slaughter could even get elected! Because my husband and I did not join the socialist organization AARP that offered the Medicare Advantage plan which included many perks such as hearing aids, one of these days I’ll be wearing a hand-me-down hearing aid the widow of a veteran gave me. Now, I’ve been told the hearing aid can be adjusted for my use but I truly doubt dentures can be. Maybe someone can prove me wrong.
A February 2, 2005 article said Medicare was covering Viagra and similar drugs. Michael McAuliff writing in the New York Daily News on Dec. 22, 2005 said our U.S. House of Representatives approved a measure to use $90 million dollars, which had been earmarked for influenza preparedness, to be used instead to provide the sex-drug Viagra free to people on Medicare and Medicaid.
No where was it noted at the Summit that in 1995 when Medicare turned 30 years old the Republicans wanted to “reform” Medicare but Clinton charged Republicans who were offering a fix for Medicare that it would put elderly Americans at risk. This recommended “reform” was on Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s watch so should I have been surprised when he appeared on Greta’s FOX show that he didn’t make this point or did I miss it? Readers may recall how the little green man Gingrich in April 2008 made a commercial with House Speaker Pelosi promoting Al Gore’s $300 million global-warming ad campaign. Gingrich is a sheep in wolves clothing and I believe he may run for President so beware. He is a Progressive through and through.
Maybe Patrick Buchanan in his 2004 book Where the Right Went Wrong can tell us why Gingrich was silent about the GOP reform on his watch. Buchanan writes about the Republican Revolution of 1994, when, in 1995, Newt Gingrich backed down in his showdown with Clinton. Clinton, at the nadir of his presidency, refused to accept Gingrich-Dole cuts in the growth of Medicare, which they had embedded in a budget resolution and sent to the White House. Clinton vetoed the budget, shut down the government, and blamed the Republican’s insistency on “cutting Medicare.” Polls showed the nation backing Clinton and backing away from Congress. Gingrich and the GOP capitulated and did as Clinton demanded, restored the Medicare funds. Even at his weakest, Clinton had read the country right and bested the GOP when it thought the country was behind it.
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Like Lee at Gettysburg, the party had chosen to fight on the wrong battlefield. At that point the Republican morale was broken, wrote Buchanan. And no one until now has had the guts to take on the task. Now, today, Barack and friends want an unelected, unaccountable “death panel” to approve or reject treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit and guess who is targeted? The elderly. Instead of going after the shysters who bilk the Medicare system for millions first, the elderly who have paid into the system believing they’d have the “insurance” when they grow old are being targeted. The cost of Medicaid and illegals can be addressed in another article.
At that time in 1995 Medicare was providing medical coverage for 33 million elderly and 4 million disabled Americans making it one of the most popular and politically important government programs. In addition, children 18 and under are eligible for Social Security when a working parent dies. With Americans living longer and health-care costs rising, Medicare and its sister Medicaid program for the poor are the fastest growing part of the federal budget. Trustees were projecting that Medicare’s hospital fund would go broke in 2002 without corrective action. To use the word “trustee” suggests something is in trust; however, the bureaucrats found the social security deposits to be just another slush fund. Today there is no trust fund and baby boomers are now retiring and looking for their share only to find it broke. In addition to presidents appointing naifs to head these unconstitutional agencies that always end up mismanaged and because there is no accountability or punishment like there is in the private sector, one of the most profitable crimes in America is the fraud industry.
Mark Levin in his 2009 book Liberty and Tyranny said in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson, building on the New Deal with his Great Society, used the umbrella of the Social Security Act to establish two massive new entitlement programs – Medicare and Medicaid. As Johnson said when he signed the Medicare bill, ‘In 1935, when…Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Society Security Act, he said it was, and I quote him, ‘a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but it is by no means complete.’ Well, perhaps no single act in the entire administration of the beloved Franklin D. Roosevelt really did more to win him the illustrious place in history he has as did the laying of that cornerstone…And those who share this day will also be remembered for making the most important addition to that structure, and you are making it in this bill, but most important addition that has been made in three decades.” Johnson explained, “Through this new law…every citizen will be able, in his productive years when he is earning, to insure himself against the ravages of illness in his old age. This insurance will help pay for care in hospitals, in skilled nursing homes, or in the home. And under a separate plan, it will help meet the fees of doctors.” So Johnson, like Roosevelt, understood the importance of deceiving the American people by packaging Medicare’s potential costs in the lie of insurance. A November 27, 2009 article said Medicare makes an expected announcement that Physicians’ pay will be cut 21% in 2010. The Medicare Fee Schedule sets payment rates for more than 7,000 types of services in physicians’ offices, hospitals and other settings. Recently, a number of letters to the editor in my local paper tell about how doctors are no longer taking Medicare patients.
The private sector could never get away with such lies. When we sign up for insurance through the private sector, we have a legal and binding contract and they are required by law to have substantial reserves or its CEOs go to jail if the government doesn’t unconstitutionally decide to bail them out. Yes, some people with pre-existing conditions may be rated or put into risk categories and others such as smokers, mountain climbers, skydivers and others in risky categories may have a higher premium, which is understandable. But with the government in charge, anyone is eligible and the responsible ones pay for the risky behaviors and let’s be honest. Many who don’t have insurance would sooner spend their money on frivolous items instead.
Would you believe that when Republican President George W. Bush’s stupid, unconstitutional $400 billion entitlement Medicare prescription drug bill endorsed by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) was introduced in the Senate, Hillary Clinton voted against it? Why? Because Hillary didn’t believe it went far enough.
Well, dear readers, it has been 35 years since Johnson sold Americans this big lie just as FDR did 75 years earlier. This is what happens when our elected officials step outside the constraints of the Constitution and pass unconstitutional laws. Who will be willing to sacrifice their perks and today’s living standards before we are reduced to Third World status? If not us, who? If not now, when?
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The unfunded liabilities are so gigantic that there is no way government is going to be able to deliver all of Medicare’s promises in addition to all the other entitlements. I believe Glenn Beck is preparing us for 50% in cuts and a return to post thirties-forties depression standards in order to save the ship from sinking and we all go down.
� 2010 Betty Freauf - All Rights Reserved
