Biden Urges Passage of Stimulus Despite Voter Backlash

[BMT (RIP)]

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/0...oter-backlash/


BMT

[Gypsy]

Despite voter backlash?

DESPITE THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE is more like it. Moron.

[BMT (RIP)]

When Romper Room Mz P. 500 million unemployed gather in DC will that be an eye opener??

BMT

[Gypsy]

Originally Posted by BMT

When Romper Room Mz P. 500 million unemployed gather in DC will that be an eye opener??

BMT

LOL they'd freak out, don't you know tourists smell? (remember that news story?)

You know, she was corrected by Chris Wallace and then a few days later said 500 million again.

[Red Flag 1]

Originally Posted by BMT

When Romper Room Mz P. 500 million unemployed gather in DC will that be an eye opener??

BMT

Somehow it will be billed as a belated, anti Bush march!


RF 1

[Box]

I feel like I am in a bad dream and I cant wake up.
Who cares what the voters want....
69 million Americans voted for change; now they are getting to see what change tastes like.

[nmap]

Here's a disturbing little something from Bloomberg:

Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan: Betsy McCaughey
Email | Print | A A A

Commentary by Betsy McCaughey



Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”


Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

New Penalties

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Elderly Hardest Hit

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

Hidden Provisions

If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.

The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).

Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”

More Scrutiny Needed

On Friday, President Obama called it “inexcusable and irresponsible” for senators to delay passing the stimulus bill. In truth, this bill needs more scrutiny.

The health-care industry is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth industry. Imagine limiting growth and innovation in the electronics or auto industry during this downturn. This stimulus is dangerous to your health and the economy.

(Betsy McCaughey is former lieutenant governor of New York and is an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Betsy McCaughey at Betsymross@aol.com

Last Updated: February 9, 2009 00:01 EST

LINK

[abc_123]

And then there is THIS...

Obama: 'Only Government' Can Break Cycle of Job Loss, Economic Downturn

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/firs...ss-conference/

..these are not the 'droids you are looking for....

[Ret10Echo]

Good quote from Dr. Robert Barro a Harvard economist:


"This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don't know what to say. I mean it's wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don't think will work, so I don't think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don't think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn't really geared toward incentives. It's not really geared to lowering tax rates; it's more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it's garbage. So in terms of balance between the two it doesn't really matter that much."


Further along in the article:

Obama's combination of mega-spending and (welfare payments) tax rebates to people who don't pay taxes (as opposed to cuts in the tax rate), are a double-whammy of pure Socialist folly.

One keen Democrat notes that this is neither a stimulus bill nor a pork bill. It is actually a permanent Democrat patronage bill, designed to create an army of people beholden to the Democrat Party for decades to come.


Article from the DC Examiner

http://www.examiner.com/x-2304-DC-Re...ince-the-1930s

[Ret10Echo]

New York City,
December 17, 1913

"'My Dear Senator Weeks:

"'Throughout my public life I have supported all measures designed to take the Government out of the banking business. This bill puts the Government into the banking business as never before in our history. "'The powers vested in the Federal Reserve Board seen to me highly dangerous especially where there is political control of the Board. I should be sorry to hold stock in a bank subject to such dominations. The bill as it stands seems to me to open the way to a vast inflation of the currency. "'I had hoped to support this bill, but I cannot vote for it cause it seems to me to contain features and to rest upon principles in the highest degree menacing to our prosperity, to stability in business, and to the general welfare of the people of the United States.

Very Truly Yours,
Henry Cabot Lodge.'"

[nmap]

I've attached a PDF of the spending items, along with the differences, in the House and Senate versions of the bill.

[Richard]

FYI--here's how the left side of the aisle--$$ by George Soros--thinks of the current stimulus plan and what they're doing about it with all those citizens who happen to be little more than computer literate.

Richard's $.02

PS--every time I hear someone say stimulus plan, I have an image of Dr Frankenbama, assisted by Joegor, in a White House basement trying to shock a dead horse back into living.

Dear MoveOn member,

You'd think after bankrupting our country, Republican leaders would rethink some of their ideas.

Guess again.

They actually tried to replace the whole stimulus bill with tax cuts for the rich. And the worst part is, they were partially successful—they gutted funding from some of the most progressive programs, like school construction and affordable health care.

We need to make sure voters back home know what these Republicans are up to. Because if we don't, they'll do it again. They'll weaken or block every important piece of legislation this year.

If you want health care for all, if you want to stop climate change, if you want to end the war, can you help run ads letting voters know that their senators and representatives stood in the way of change? Since yesterday, thousands of contributions have been coming in. But we're still $100,000 short of our goal. Can you chip in $25 to put us over the top?

https://pol.moveon.org/donate/jobs.h...62-pHJ440x&t=3

President Obama and most of the congressional Democrats spent the last month working hard to craft a plan that would help keep hundreds of thousands of teachers from being laid off, invest in vital green-energy technology, and provide health care for folks who lose their jobs.

What did conservative Democrats and Republicans bring to the table? Rehashed Bush policies and tired talking points. The very same things that got us into this mess in the first place. The stimulus will still create millions of jobs, and it's an important first step, but it could have been even stronger.

People are really suffering across our nation, yet Republicans are continuing to play the same old partisan games—and they're being helped along by conservative Democrats. Don't worry: We'll hold both Republicans and Democrats who stand in the way of change accountable with these ads.

We need to make it crystal clear to their voters what they're doing. If we don't, these senators and representatives will stand in the way of every bit of progress we try to make this year, from clean energy to affordable health care for all. Can you chip in $25 to help us run hard-hitting ads exposing this conservative obstructionism?

https://pol.moveon.org/donate/jobs.h...62-pHJ440x&t=4

Thanks for all you do.

–Noah, Karin, Marika, Joan and the rest of the team

[alright4u]

Originally Posted by Billy L-bach

I feel like I am in a bad dream and I cant wake up.
Who cares what the voters want....
69 million Americans voted for change; now they are getting to see what change tastes like.

Basically, Biden has never cared about anyone except himself. Google Biden and how he got out of serving this country in war. He had more deferments then the DEMS made fun of Cheney for having. With the billions they are giving ACORN from the" Bankrupt America Act" to conduct more voter fraud, add the billions being given to illegals, they seem to feel immune to voter backlash.

Add the fact that Obama has just spent (reported today- 13th of this month) a small fortune to block access to all his personal records from all colleges plus birth certificate. Transparency my fanny.

An email, I received, stated this bill was like giving everyone living in America $93,500. That is not chump change to put on the back of every taxpayer in this country. Also how much of the 1K being to illegals who do not even need an SSN to file and collect the handout do we really believe will stay in the USA?

Sorry for the rant, but; this is no stimulus. It is a massive waste of money that only those who work and pay taxes here will have to pay it back. The job creators in the last few decades have been small businesses. When the banks do not loan money to small businesses, only the wealthiest of small businesses can still survive. Basic Econ /factors of production are land, labor and capital. MRC='s MRP.


Does any QP believe Obama could get a TS with friends like Obama has/had?

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Richard

And the worst part is, they were partially successful—they gutted funding from some of the most progressive programs, like school construction and affordable health care.

IMHO, the political opponents to the stimulus plan could do a better job at pointing out the fact that the White House and the Democratic Party is seeking to resuscitate the New Deal state. In a sense, the two parties have switched the roles they played in the (impoverished) debate over GWOT. Then as now, the party of the majority has established the 'master narrative.' Meanwhile, the minority party tries to peck away at the details rather than articulating a counter narrative that resonates beyond the choir.

The White House and its political allies have been shoo shooing the GOP's comparisons to the New Deal as being irrelevant. We can't believe you're still going after Roosevelt, they say. The opponents of the stimulus might point out that the New Deal deliberately sought to reconfigure American politics and society while revitalizing the economy and that it was more successful at the first two than at the third.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

The White House and its political allies have been shoo shooing the GOP's comparisons to the New Deal as being irrelevant. We can't believe you're still going after Roosevelt, they say. The opponents of the stimulus might point out that the New Deal deliberately sought to reconfigure American politics and society while revitalizing the economy and that it was more successful at the first two than at the third.

The prophetic words of 20th C. Socialist and 1940s Presidential Candidate Norman M. Thomas.

“The difference between Democrats and Republicans is: Democrats have accepted some ideas of Socialism cheerfully, while Republicans have accepted them reluctantly."

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."

"I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform."

Richard's $.02