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Archive February 2010

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Editorial: Climbing the Health Summit

Yesterday, the long-awaited health care takeover summit at the White House took place, and it was not as was expected nor advertised. It was supposed to be a trap. Congressional Republicans were supposed to “compromise,” laying the groundwork for the government takeover of the nation’s entire health care system once and for all.

Only, they did not lie down. Indeed, they were well-prepared and their arguments were highly effective against ObamaCare on just about every point, even though Democrats spoke for 233 minutes compared to the GOP’s 110 minutes, according to the Senate Republican Conference. Barack Obama alone spoke for 119 minutes, which he studiously ignored as not counting towards the Democrats’ time. Said Obama, “I don't count my time because I'm the President.”

Leaving Obama’s arrogance aside, Republicans made the most of their time in the summit, and outside of it. Congressional Republicans’ messaging machine was firing on all cylinders throughout the day. They deployed a rapid response fact-checking barrage of press releases, which ALG News chronicled at its news aggregator, Washington News Alert. Everything from Obama lying about CBO’s report, which does state that ObamaCare would raise premiums; to Reid lying about the Democrat threat of reconciliation.

Congressional Democrats, on the other hand, apparently were not so concerned about getting rapid reponses out to the media at all. By design, it appears, they put all their stock on the summit selling itself, or perhaps the media promoting it for them. The truth is, their silence was telling.

Republicans, on the other hand, climbed the summit. And they came out on top.

Within an hour of the summit’s opening remarks, it was clear that skeptics who thought Republicans should have sat it out were wrong. Republicans need not have walked away from this challenge. For, they hit the ground running.

Senator Lamar Alexander in the Republican opening statement made the point, quite effectively, that the summit was effectively pointless if Congressional Democrats refused to take the reconciliation threat off the table.

Said Alexander, “my request is this: before we go further today, that the Democratic Congressional leaders and you, Mr. President, renounce this idea of going back to the Congress and jamming your bill through on a partisan vote through a little-used process we call reconciliation.”

Continued Alexander, “You can say that this process has been used before, and that would be right, but it’s never been used for anything like this. It’s not appropriate to use to rewrite the rules for 17 percent of the economy. Senator Byrd, who is the constitutional historian of the Senate, has said that it would be an outrage to run the health care bill through the Senate like a freight train with this process. The Senate is the only place where the rights to the minority are protected, and sometimes, as Senator Byrd has said, the minority can be right.” Indeed.

Instead, Congressional Democrats left reconciliation — a process reserved for minor budget fixes — right there on the table as the summit continued unabated. Everything Republicans, and more importantly, the American people needed to know about the spirit of “bipartisanship” in Washington took place in those first minutes. And the meeting followed suit.

For Obama, the summit was a failure. And it failed precisely because Democrats refused to take the loaded gun off of the table. Instead, Republicans refused to simply bow to the will of Obama and his party. Republicans could have very easily just filed out of the room at that very moment, and just as much would have been substantively produced legislatively by the summit.

But, if they had just walked out then and there, or if they had not attended at all, a great opportunity would have been missed to set the record straight, which is exactly what they did. On point after point.

Obama and the Democrats may have thought they were laying a trap, but instead, it is they who have been hoisted by their own petards. So, Americans for Limited Government would like to say bravo to Congressional Republicans for standing up for the American people. They thank you.

On a bright note, reconciliation may have been an exaggerated threat all along, as reported by RedState’s Dan Perrin. Apparently, the votes may not be present in the House to pass a reconciliation bill. Why?

Senator Kent Conrad said, “I don’t know of any way where you can have a reconciliation bill pass before the bill that it is meant to reconcile passes.” Only, that is exactly what Democrats’ plan is in the House: pass the reconciliation bill first, then have that pass in the Senate, and only then would the House pass the Senate bill. Obama would then sign the Senate bill first, and the “reconciled” bill second, amending the Senate bill.

But, if a serious point of order can be raised, as it surely would, that the rule can only be applied to standing law and, importantly, that was enforced by Congress’ parliamentarian, House Democrats would be left with but one choice to enact their health takeover: vote on the Senate bill first. Except, they do not have the votes to do that.

Reports Politico, “When reminded that House Democrats don’t want to do health care in that order, Conrad said bluntly: ‘Fine, then it’s dead.’” One can only hope, Obama’s attempt at resurrecting his bill yesterday notwithstanding. Even if he ultimately succeeds at passing this monstrosity, at least the American people have a political party that fought for them, even when the cards were stacked against them.

Whales and Government

 

ALG Editor's Note: William Warren's award-winning cartoons published at GetLiberty.org are a free service of ALG News Bureau. They may be reused and redistributed free of charge.

Global Warming: Having it Both Ways

By Victor Morawski

As people around the world watched the Winter Olympics this week, they were treated not only to images of the world’s greatest Winter athletes performing superbly in the sports at which they excel but they were also given a behind-the-scenes window into the frustrations dealt with by the games’ Canadian hosts.

From bare mountain slopes to rain delays that turned what little snow there was into slush to scenes of dump trucks hauling snow up to peaks that should already be white at this time of year, an unusual warm spell in Vancouver has posed problems for the games this time around.

Not surprisingly, Global Warming advocates have pointed to the abnormally warm weather in Vancouver this year, as supporting evidence for their theory. As also did Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., last year, when he published a piece reminiscing about the snowier winters he experienced in the Washington area as a child and bemoaning the relative lack of snow in recent Washington Winters.

Of course, that was before this winter’s record snows in the nation’s capital. Now, critics of Global Warming have understandably mocked Kennedy for his remarks, as they slogged through nearly fifty combined inches of Global Warming in one short week.

Undaunted by such skeptics, defenders of the theory have countered “that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce more frequent and more intense weather events,” as reported recently in the New York Times and Time magazine.

What a strong theory then is Global Warming, some may think, that supporting evidence can be found for it in such diverse, seemingly opposite, and apparently unrelated events.

But some well-established insights from the Philosophy of Science would quickly disabuse someone of this notion. For, as famously pointed out by giant-in-the-field Karl Popper, it is not a strength of a theory that nearly any observation can be taken as confirming it but this may actually mark it out as a bit of pseudo-science, immune to falsification and held tenaciously by its defenders as an article of faith.

The problem, Popper emphasized in his monumental Conjectures and Refutations, is not one of being able to find confirmatory evidence for a theory, for proponents of pseudo-scientific theories find confirmatory evidence for their theories around every corner.

If you held such a theory, he notes, “you saw confirmed instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth…”

What Popper admired most in a theory, and what he thought separated one out as scientific, was that it took risks by making predictions which, if not borne out by observational evidence, would actually disconfirm or falsify it.

And perhaps this is a good time to ask the proponents of Global Warming if there is any possible observation that they would take as disconfirming their theory.

To be fair, it did happen once.

Last year, Stephan Faris of the UN’s IPCC predicted that “if global warming continues at its current rate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates, the glaciers could be mostly gone from the mountains by 2035.”

Citing inaccuracy in the data on which it was based: “it [the IPCC] plucked the date for the glaciers’ disappearance from a 2005 report by the environmental advocacy group WWF, which in turn had taken the figure from a 1999 magazine article attributing the claim to an Indian glacier expert, who now denies he ever said such a thing.”

This move, while saving the theory from falsification, hardly engenders confidence in the IPCC and shows that scientists can make similar critical mistakes causing misguided government intervention.

Victor Morawski, professor at Coppin State University, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer for Americans for Limited Government.

Too Hot Not to Note: Republicans find loophole in budget ploy to push through healthcare legislation

 

ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured story from the Hill, South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint outlines how Republicans could hold up the reconciliation process indefinitely by offering an unlimited amount of amendments:

Republicans find loophole in budget ploy to push through healthcare legislation

By Alexander Bolton

As it turns out, Senate Democrats may not be able to force healthcare legislation through the chamber on a simple majority vote.

Republicans say they have found a loophole in the budget reconciliation process that could allow them to offer an indefinite number of amendments.

Though it has never been done, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) says he’s prepared to test the Senate’s stamina to block the Democrats from using the process to expedite changes to the healthcare bill.

Experts on Senate procedural rules, from both parties, note that such a filibuster is possible. While reconciliation rules limit debate to 20 hours, senators lack similiarconstraints on amendments and could conceivably continue offering them until 60 members agree to cut the process off.

Another option for Democrats would be to seek a ruling by the parliamentarian that Republicans are simply filing amendments to stall the process. But such a ruling could taint the final healthcare vote and backfire for Democrats in November.

Or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) could use a tactic similar to the so-called nuclear option to quash the GOP tactics.

If those options failed, and Reid couldn’t convince a single Republican to vote with his 59-member conference, Democrats might be forced to consider withdrawing the healthcare bill.

A Democratic leadership aide confirmed to The Hill that the options outlined in this articlee are correct.

House Democrats have said they would not pass the Senate healthcare bill unless changes are made through reconciliation, which is necessary because Republicans control 41 Senate seats, enough to block legislation through the regular process.

But Republicans may end up having that power even under reconciliation.

“You could keep offering amendments until you don’t have any more to offer,” said a congressional aide, who said he did not know how long senators would be willing to stay in the chamber to move the reconciliation package. “What the body’s tolerance would be is unknown.”

A former Senate Republican leadership aide said: “The limit is on debate, not on consideration of amendments.”

DeMint said he’s ready to try anything.

“You’ll see Republicans do everything they can to delay and stop this process,” DeMint said. “They need to get the message the track they’re on is the wrong track.”

Reid spent significant time last year in close study of the Senate rules for fast-tracking healthcare legislation under special budget rules.

Reid stayed away from the special process of passing healthcare reform with only 51 votes because he knew it would be messy.

But since Republicans won a Senate seat in Massachusetts, thereby stripping Democrats of a filibuster-proof majority, it appears Democrats will need to invoke those rules to make crucial changes to healthcare legislation.


DeMint said that using reconciliation rules to pass the House-requested changes to the Senate healthcare bill with only 51 votes is “tyrannical.”

“I think you’ll see us offering amendments to get us into November, if we can,” said DeMint.

Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, said: “You could continue to offer amendments, I suspect.

“You can offer an unlimited number of amendments on the budget after time is elapsed so it’s logical that you could also do it on reconciliation,” Gregg said.

Democrats could try to persuade Republican colleagues to back down and withdraw their amendments after several hours or days of voting. With a unified Democratic conference, Reid would need just one GOP senator to cut off the process.

The most likely candidate would be Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who voted with Democrats to advance the Senate Finance Committee bill but has since opposed the healthcare measure on the Senate floor.

Reid or another Democrat could make a point of order that using amendments to stall a reconciliation bill violates the spirit of the Budget Act of 1974, which sets up for expedited consideration of budget-related bills.

Reid or another Democrat could argue that offering unlimited amendments violates the spirit of limiting debate.

The parliamentarian has ruled that the limit on debate does not allow senators to filibuster the motion to proceed to a reconciliation bill. The parliamentarian could rule that the same concept applies to amendments.

No one really knows, because a lawmaker has never tried to use amendments to filibuster a reconciliation package.

“We haven’t ever tried it before,” said a congressional aide.

Parliamentarian Alan Frumin could rule Republican amendments after a certain number out of order. But he could also allow the GOP amendments, since they are not expressly barred.

If Frumin ruled with Republicans, Reid would be in a difficult position. He could either pull the bill off the floor or he could appeal the ruling of the parliamentarian.

With a simple majority of 51 votes, Reid could overturn the ruling of the chair and set a Senate precedent that amendments must be limited to within reason. This tactic would be similar to the so-called nuclear option Senate Republicans considered using in 2005 to overrule Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees.

The GOP: A Time for Truth

By Robert Romano

In his latest generic ballot question, Rasmussen Reports shows Republicans holding a substantial 44 to 35 percent lead over Democrats for the 2010 Congressional elections. In fact, the poll shows that Republicans have led consistently since June 28th, 2009, just two days after the House passed its onerous legislation capping carbon emissions and taxing energy consumption.

That week was marked by an intense call-in and write-in campaign by the American people against the takeover of the energy industry, urged on by talk radio hosts such as Mark Levin who called for what he dubbed a “Levin Surge.” It worked; the American people practically shut down the Capitol switchboard that week, and the bill only passed by a slim 219 to 212 margin.

The Senate has hardly done anything with the bill at all, which insiders and even proponents such as Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) consider to be dead.

It was in this context that the debate over ObamaCare was picking up in earnest, leading to the ill-fated August recess and angry town halls where Congressional Democrats were confronted by their constituents, who intensely opposed the national takeover of health care.

Deadline after deadline was breached as Democrats fought amongst themselves, shut Republicans out of any meaningful negotiations, and finally passed on party-line votes the takeover in November and December in both houses.

And those votes promptly cost Democrats the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia — and then the Massachusetts Senate seat.

It should be noted that the same intensity by the American people pervades to date, and could turn into a true groundswell if Democrats invoke reconciliation — effectively eliminating the filibuster and the two-party system — to ram the bill down the throats of an unwilling American public. In Rasmussen’s latest poll on the question, 56 percent remain opposed to the health takeover. And a full 61 percent wish that Congress would simply start over.

Instead, of course, today kicks off Barack Obama’s much ballyhooed, six hour health takeover “summit,” where once again, Obama will attempt to coerce and cajole Congressional Republican support for his plan. This will fail. It may prove the narrative that Republicans are against his agenda, but nothing more will come out of it.

The American people have good reasons for opposing this takeover. Republicans are certain to point out that it will cost $2.5 trillion from 2014-2023, ration care away from seniors, increase the costs of premiums, decrease quality, and put even more pressure on the nation’s debt, which will top 100 percent of GDP as soon as next year.

They are also certain to point out that the “negotiations” are nothing more than a theater of the absurd. If Democrats truly do intend on invoking reconciliation, they do not need any Republican support. Without the filibuster threat, Republicans lack any leverage on this or any other issue facing the nation. Eliminating it would create de facto one-party rule. A true tyranny of the tone-deaf majority.

Beyond the meaningless summit, the new generic Congressional poll means that Republicans have some substantial political capital. By merely standing against and slowing down these government takeovers of health care and energy, Republicans have won the support of political Independents and a good swath of the tea party movement.

But, the GOP faces peril after a likely 2010 win, if it fails to outline an aggressive platform meant to cope with the legitimate concerns of the American people. Republicans need to be preparing the American people for the necessary, painful cuts that are to come.

Specifically, Republicans should be presenting a balanced budget, a plan for paying off the gargantuan national debt, reforming entitlements, and implementing permanent tax relief. They need to outline two broad principles that they will oppose: 1) printing money to finance government spending and borrowing; 2) tax increases to pay for government spending and paying down the debt.

They need to make abundantly clear that they will only support balancing the budget by cutting spending. Unfortunately, as the New York Times’ Paul Krugman rightly points out, Republicans have yet to comprehensively lay out such an agenda. Noting that the beast is starving, he writes, “It should be time, then, for conservatives to explain which parts of the beast they want to cut.”

On the other hand, Krugman is wrong to blame tax cuts of the 1980’s and 2000’s for the soaring national debt. As reported by the Congressional Budget Office, revenues have soared from $517.1 billion in 1980 to a peak of $2.568 trillion in 2007 in spite of the tax cuts, and chiefly because of the economic growth they produced. In 2009, they sank to a more modest $2.104 trillion in the wake of the recession.

Nonetheless, there is no need to raise taxes to balance the budget when the budget deficit is a projected $1.556 trillion. It is an annual shortfall that will only rise should ObamaCare be enacted, an entitlement expansion that the American people overwhelmingly oppose.

Krugman makes another correct point: “Since [Republicans] are adamantly opposed to reducing the deficit with tax increases, they would have to explain what spending they want to cut.” He is right. But, if he believes that is some sort of masterful trap, he is wrong.

The American people do want cuts because they know that they are necessary. They rightly see the sovereign debt crisis spreading from Greece. They see the writing on the wall. They understand that all roads lead to Rome, and that in this case, all those unfulfilled debt obligation dominoes are falling towards Washington.

They want Washington to deal with it before it becomes a crisis that ruins the nation’s full faith and credit, saddling the American people with hyperinflation, soaring interest rates, and economic desolation.

Republicans should not shy away from this debate when the winds are at their back. Otherwise, they will make the same mistake Barack Obama made in 2008, when he never outlined in specific detail his takeovers of the health care and energy industry.

Obama never prepared the American people for his Big Government agenda. Republicans, on the other hand, have an opportunity to prepare the American people for their limited government agenda, as ALG News has previously reported. If they do so with courage and specifically address these concerns, they will have political support when the painful cuts begin. And they could rightly argue that they campaigned on it.

The alternative is to ride out the political opposition to Obama's agenda without addressing the legitimate concerns of the American people. If they choose to do nothing, they will assuredly find their current lead in the Congressional ballot evaporate rather quickly in 2011 and 2012, when they stand for re-election.

The support the American people now give them will come to naught, just as it did in 2006 when the voters turned on a Do-Nothing GOP majority that turned out to be a fraud.

Robert Romano is Senior Editor of ALG News.

Obama's Health Summit

ALG Editor's Note: William Warren's award-winning cartoons published at GetLiberty.org are a free service of ALG News Bureau. They may be reused and redistributed free of charge.

Count On A Nosy Government

By Michael Swartz

Since 1790, every 10 years the federal government has come around to count every American in an effort to determine proportional representation. This is dictated by Article I, Section 2 of our Constitution and it’s one of the rare instances the Constitution has been rigidly followed throughout our 230-plus year history.

In March, most households will receive a fairly short form intended to provide the information the government needs to determine these Congressional districts. (Others get a longer form which asks a number of questions about living situation, income, and other personal items.) In either case, though, respondents are asked about much more than the number of people living in their dwelling.

Consider the 10-question short form most Americans will receive. While Question 1 seeks the essential information about how many occupy the subject’s residence, other questions on the short form ask about home ownership, gender, and race.

More importantly, the government database being created also has name, age, date of birth, and telephone number. While the Census Bureau vows that the information collected will be kept secure, one has to wonder just how private this information will remain in an age of hackers and identity theft. Remember, none of this information is truly necessary to achieve the mandated purpose of determining population numbers for proportional representation.

In truth, the Census facts and figures have grown to meet purposes far beyond the intentions of the Founding Fathers, just as the size and scope of the government they created has. According to the Census Bureau, the status of living arrangements is asked because the answers are, “used to administer housing programs and to inform planning decisions.” Similarly, the age and date of birth are used for, “forecasting the number of people eligible for Social Security or Medicare services,” and the gender question is asked because, “many federal programs must differentiate between males and females for funding, implementing, and evaluating their programs.”

But even the obvious reason for the decennial count has fallen prey to overt discrimination on the part of bureaucrats in Washington, for it’s not Question 1 which determines the proper number of representatives to Congress per state, but Question 9.

And what is Question 9? It asks the race of each person in the household, yet, “state governments use the data to determine congressional, state, and local voting districts.” So much for the colorblind society those in power claim they wish to create. Instead, these numbers are used to create monolithic voting districts which forever doom minorities to second-class status.

The Census Bureau website claims that the count is necessary because, “(e)ach question helps to determine how more than $400 billion will be allocated to communities across the country.” Their radio spots talk about the need to respond because otherwise we’d not know if a school grew enough for new classrooms or if a town needed a traffic signal. They conveniently forget, though, that there’s other less intrusive measures to come up with the appropriate figures. As always, it becomes a question of following the money.

It’s been said many times in several variants that, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” We see the results of pitting groups against one another – a weakening of freedom and an erosion of liberty.

In response, we should call on our leaders to return the Census to the noble purpose for which it was intended and not continue using it as the wedge it’s become. While it’s not advisable to ignore the Census, we should think twice about just what information we share with Washington.

Michael Swartz, an architect and writer who lives in rural Maryland, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer for Americans for Limited Government.

Too Hot Not to Note: Dallas Tea Party Invites Olbermann to Event to Witness Tea Party Diversity

ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured video by the Dallas Tea Party, a diverse group of Americans take MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann to task for portraying the tea party movement as racist and “all-white”:

Dallas Tea Party Invites Olbermann to Event to Witness Tea Party Diversity

Editorial: Televised Circus at 1600 Penn

“Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up! Hurry, hurry! Here’s a sight you haven’t seen before: bipartisan healthcare negotiations!” That’s what President Obama has been trumpeting to the American people for over two weeks now, with his healthcare summit at the historic Blair House now less than 24 hours away.

There’s only one minor problem. It is literally impossible for this meeting to resemble or produce anything faintly bipartisan. You know it’s true, and so does Obama and every Democrat and Republican member of Congress too.

Let’s review the facts and see what went wrong. On Super Bowl Sunday, Barack Obama stated, “I want to come back [after the Presidents Day congressional recess] and have a large meeting — Republicans and Democrats — to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward.”

Any American with a modicum of common sense could – and did – deduce from that statement that Obama was proposing a truly bipartisan healthcare discussion, one starting with a “clean-slate” if you will. Meaning, Obama and the Democrats would not show up with a partisan, trillion dollar bill already written. Nor would Democrats come loaded with a controversial plan mapped out utilizing budget reconciliation to pass the partisan bill by a party-line vote (i.e., not bipartisan) under special procedures. But, as you already know, this is precisely what has come to pass.

Obama introduced his own healthcare proposal just three days ago and declared it to be the “starting point” for the summit discussions. The proposal is not an actual bill, mind you, since it’s only 11-pages long and does not contain sufficient detail to be scored by CBO. Nevertheless, it bears a striking resemblance to the Senate-passed bill that failed to garner a single Republican vote, and has been referred to as “toxic” by more than one Democrat House member. This is apparently Obama’s definition of working with Republicans in a “bipartisan manner.”

This fact actually explains the continued erosion of public support for the Democrats current healthcare reform efforts. Rasmussen’s latest poll on ObamaCare finds 56 percent of voters opposed to the plan, including a whopping 45 percent who strongly oppose it. Rasmussen also conducted a poll just after the president first announced the summit, and discovered that 61 percent of voters believe Congress should scrap the current plan and start all over again. In the same poll, only 35 percent of voters believe Congress should pass healthcare reform before the November elections.

Republicans, for their part, have been singing with the chorus of the Rasmussen poll daily. Just yesterday, Boehner stated in a release that, “Americans want us to scrap this massive bill and start over with a step-by-step approach focused on lowering costs.”

So with Obama on the record in support of true bipartisan healthcare discussions and the polls overwhelmingly in support of the Republican position of starting with a clean slate, why is the summit set up to fail? Unfortunately, largely because Boehner and McConnell failed to initially set any terms for their attendance. Yes, they criticized Obama daily as his plan became increasingly obvious, but by the time the ground rules were set – heavily in favor of the Democrats as expected – it was too late for Republicans to back out while saving face.

They were simply never bold enough to demand as little as one condition – a clean slate as the starting point of discussions – or threaten to boycott the event. Now, the optics and parameters are so lopsided, Republicans even expect to get whipped tomorrow. Consider the following: Obama is making the opening statement, followed by the Republican and Democrat leader, so it’s already two-on-one. Obama is the moderator. Obama determined the “discussion points” which include “How will each side ensure universal coverage of the 30 million Americans currently uninsured.” This is a false question for Republicans, since they reject the very premise of the question on constitutional and free-market grounds, but it is the key to Democrats strategy. Democrats will castigate Republicans for refusing to attend, or attack their plan as woefully inadequate for failing to meet the “bare minimum” in healthcare reform, according to Obama’s own standard.

Hope still remains, since the facts are on the side of the Republicans. While many of the most articulate conservative members have apparently not even been invited – such as Rep. Mike Pence and Rep. Paul Ryan – Boehner and McConnell are well aware of the stakes and are sure to come out swinging. Let’s hope they land a few for the American people, deliver ObamaCare a TKO, and send this circus packing.

Abusive Harry Reid

ALG Editor's Note: William Warren's award-winning cartoons published at GetLiberty.org are a free service of ALG News Bureau. They may be reused and redistributed free of charge.

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