Today in Washington D. C. - Sept 10, 2009 - Nation Recoils at Obama Speech

Update(4:40 pm): Fox News - Senate Confirms Obama's Pick for Regulatory 'Czar' - "Senators voted 57-40 to approve Harvard professor Cass Sunstein as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Budget and Management. As regulatory czar, Sunstein will review and provide guidance for draft federal regulations at different federal agencies. It is a wide-ranging and largely unrestrained position in the executive branch." Note: Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and James Webb (D-Va.) voted against Sunstein.
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Yesterday, the Senate voted 79-19 to pass S. 1023, the travel promotion bill. Senators also voted 63-35 to invoke cloture on the Sunstein nomination. At 12:30 PM, the Senate will resume post-cloture consideration of nomination of Cass Sunstein to be OMB’s Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. A final vote on his nomination could come today.

George LeMieux will be sworn in as the junior senator from Florida.  He is replacing Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) who resigned. Sen. Reid has indicated that the Senate is likely to take up the Transportation appropriations bill at some point this week.

The Hill offers a pithy take on President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress last night: “Obama’s 45-minute address, the second of his short tenure, was long on emotion and short on specifics even though White House officials have said for days that the address would clear up whatever confusion the debate had created.” Asked by a reporter this week if “the president [was] going to give new specifics in the speech . . . that he has never publicly stated before,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responded, “Yes.” But much of the news coverage of Obama’s speech echoed a criticism from The Hill, writing today that “he did not offer the specifics that both Democrats and Republicans have been clamoring for.” In fact, The Wall Street Journal observes, “Most of the proposals the president outlined in his speech were the same changes he has championed since he launched his effort to fix the health system in March.”

Other news reports were critical of the president for not attempting to give any clear direction on a number of contentious issues. In an analysis piece, the Los Angeles Times explains Obama “avoided making concrete commitments on some of the most contentious issues, reflecting a guiding principle of his legislative strategy: to put off the most controversial decisions until the very last moment.” The Washington Post editors responded: “he chose again to duck the biggest dispute of all: whether the new insurance exchange must contain a government-run ‘public option.’ Mr. Obama once again outlined the arguments for a public plan and once again said it was not essential.”

Beyond the lack of specifics and failure to defuse some of the major divisions even within his own party, there were a number of questionable assertions made by the president last night. Though President Obama said, “Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have,” USA Today notes, “the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicts some employers may change coverage options, which means some employees would indirectly be forced out of their current plans.” An AP fact check piece explained that even this position was a walkback from Obama’s previous assurances: “In the past Obama repeatedly said, ‘If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.’ Now he’s stopping short of that unconditional guarantee by saying nothing in the plan ‘requires’ any change.”

Press reports were even more critical of Obama’s claims about how the country will pay for his health care proposals. The Washington Post editorial notes, “the president’s suggestion for a ‘fiscal trigger’ strikes us as contrived. Mr. Obama announced a mechanism by which the president would have to certify, before the measure goes into effect in 2013, that the planned expansion of coverage remains fully paid for. If not, additional savings would have to be found, or spending scaled back. This doesn’t seem like a major means of restraint -- especially when the president’s Office of Management and Budget would do the calculating.”

The New York Times recounts a telling moment last night was when “the president drew laughter [from lawmakers] when he said, ‘there remain some significant details to be ironed out.’” Yesterday, Republican Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell pointed to some of those “significant details”: “Americans don’t understand how a massive expansion of government will lower costs, as the administration claims. They don’t understand how $500 billion in cuts to Medicare won’t affect the millions of seniors who depend on it. Americans don’t understand how they’ll be able to keep the health plans they have if government is allowed to undermine the private market. And they don’t understand why the administration doesn’t seem to be listening to these and many other concerns.” These were specifics that Americans were looking for last night, and the president didn’t provide the answers.

The Heritage Foundation responded that "The President Learned Nothing from August" and noted this was Obama's 29th speech devoted to health care in nine months in office. They said, "Mr. Obama ducked behind the English language—or, more charitable observers would say, used it to its fullest extent." Heritage noted that the president had "no clear response" to the question that all of America wanted him to answer. "To wit, is the President abandoning his stubborn attachment to a public plan . . . Or maybe he did. He appeared to draw a line on the sand at one point by saying, 'I will not back down from the idea that, if Americans cannot find affordable coverage, we will provide you with a choice.' Maybe that was the clearest indication of the night that Barack Obama is still sticking to the public plan, to be introduced by whatever means."

A citizen source from Obama's home state of Illinois shared his own fact check list on the speech. He represent many of informed citizens of today. In focus on Obama' speech last night, he writes:

Obama: “And every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage. In other words, it can happen to anyone.”
Fact: The major coverage expansions in all the legislation being considered would not begin until January 2013—so according to the President’s own methodology, Democrat bills will allow more than 15 million additional Americans to become uninsured. So in one week over 100,000 people lose insurance REALY?

Obama: “And it’s why those of us with health insurance are also paying a hidden and growing tax for those without it—about $1000 per year that pays for somebody else’s emergency room and charitable care.”
Fact: An even larger tax—of nearly $1,800 per year—is paid by individuals with private coverage who are forced to subsidize lower payments made by government-run health plans like Medicare and Medicaid, according to a study conducted by independent actuaries at the consulting firm Milliman.

Obama: “Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.“
Fact: Independent experts all agree that the legislation proposed would result in millions of Americans losing the coverage they have—the Congressional Budget Office believes several million, the Urban Institute 47 million, and the Lewin Group as many as 114 million.

Obama: “Under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance – just as most states require you to carry auto insurance.”
Fact: Senior Obama Administration official Sherry Glied has previously written that a mandate “is in many respects analogous to a tax”—and furthermore has the potential to be a “very regressive tax, penalizing uninsured people who genuinely cannot afford to buy coverage.” Thus this policy stance breaks the signal promise of the Obama campaign: “I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

Obama: “There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false—the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”
Fact: Nothing in any of the Democrat bills would require individuals to verify their citizenship or identity prior to receiving taxpayer-subsidized benefits—making the President’s promise one that the legislation itself does not keep.

Obama: “And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up—under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.”
Fact: The National Right to Life Committee, among other independent pro-life groups, have confirmed that the legislation will result in federal funds being used to pay for abortions—both through the government-run health plan, and through federal subsidies provided through the Exchange, despite various accounting gimmicks created in an Energy and Commerce Committee “compromise.”

Obama: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits—either now or in the future. Period.”
Fact: The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has found that H.R. 3200 would increase deficits by $239 billion over ten years—and “would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits” thereafter. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation released a study today which found that in its second decade, H.R. 3200 would increase federal deficits by more than $1 trillion.

Obama: “Not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan.”
Fact: Among more than $500 billion in proposed savings from Medicare, the Democrat bills also propose re-directing $23 billion from the Medicare Improvement Fund to fund new health care entitlements. According to current law, the Medicare Improvement Fund is designated specifically “to make improvements under the original Medicare fee-for-service program.”

>Obama: “Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan. Much of the rest would be paid for with revenues from the very same drug and insurance companies that stand to benefit from tens of millions of new customers.”
Fact: The Congressional Budget Office has previously found that the cuts to Medicare Advantage plans included in the Democrat legislation would result in millions of seniors losing their current plan—a direct contradiction of the President’s assertion that “nothing in this plan requires you to change what you have.”

Obama: “This reform will charge insurance companies a fee for their most expensive policies, which will encourage them to provide greater value for the money – an idea which has the support of Democratic and Republican experts. And according to these same experts, this modest change could help hold down the cost of health care for all of us in the long-run.”
Fact: While some Republicans support addressing the current employee exclusion for health insurance in the context of overall tax reform, the President’s proposal would raise “fees” in order to finance new federal spending—a tax increase of hundreds of billions of dollars, and one that many Republicans may not support.

Obama: “Add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over ten years.”
Fact: The Congressional Budget Office, in its score of H.R. 3200 as introduced, found that the legislation would spend approximately $1.6 trillion over ten years—nearly double the President’s estimate.

Obama: “I will continue to seek common ground in the weeks ahead. If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen. My door is always open.”
Fact: On May 13, House Republican leaders all wrote the President a letter reading in part: “We write to you today to express our sincere desire to work with you and find common ground on the issue of health care reform….We respectfully request a meeting with you to discuss areas for potential common ground on health care reform.” Nearly four months later, that meeting has yet to take place.

So much for the uninformed electorate! Several people across the country are putting forth their opinion. And a  majority of citizens did not like being dressed down by the President of the United States for taking public stands at Tea Parties, town halls and freedom rides. On 9-12, many of these same people will arrive in Washington D.C. to "demonstrate" their commitment that our elected officials and their staffs in the Federal Government are failing our country by forcing us further into debt, invading our private lives with government programs, taxing us beyond reasonable bounds and and stripping us of our freedoms and rights as Americans. Each person that is able to make it to Washington represents 1000 more who had to stay at home working, raising kids or taking care of responsibilities. These people are not the vocal minority; they represent the heart beat of America. Washington politicians had better wake-up or prepare their resumes for new employment.

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