This debate will center around many issues including huge taxes increases, economy-killing employer mandates and:

1. Abortion: Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI) offered an amendment to the House bill to ban all federal funds flowing into the health care system from funding abortion. Senator Reid put language in the bill that allows some funds to go to abortion services by using an accounting gimmick. This issue could take the bill down, because the House approach is far different from the Senate approach. If this bill becomes a referendum on abortion policy, it may fail.

2. Cost: Senator Reid has promoted his bill as costing the federal government $849 billion and as a budget cutting bill. Conservatives in the Senate have pointed out that the costs are more accurately $2.5 trillion over the first 10 years of implementation because the benefits are not even scheduled to be paid out until 2014. There is a huge disparity between the two sides as to the cost of the bill and if it gets bigger and bigger on the Senate floor, then it may suffer a legislative implosion.

3. The Public Plan: Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) has pledged to support a filibuster of any bill containing the public option. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) will only accept a public option with a trigger. Other Senators have expressed reservations about different permutations of the public option. A bill with a too strong public option may not have the support to pass the Senate.

4. Wild Card: As with all these debates, there may be an issue that comes out of the blue and becomes central to the bill. There were debates over “death panels” during initial stages of the debates and controversies over coverage for illegal immigrants. Some other issue may be offered as an amendment or may be buried in the 2000 pages of the bill that may become the next controversy to prevent passage.

The week after Thanksgiving, the Senate will start the process of considering and voting on amendments to the bill. This process may go in one of two directions. It is possible that Reid uses the amendment process to buy just enough votes to pass the bill through targeted special interest amendments. Expect Connecticut, Nebraska, Arkansas, and, yet again, Louisiana to receive special treatment in the amendment process. If Senator Reid is able to buy support during this process, the bill will pass and the President will sign Obamacare before his State of the Union.

Scenario two kicks in if opponents of the bill play hardball. If opposing Senators offer non-germane amendments, like the legislation to restore the 2nd Amendment in the District of Columbia or a resolution of disapproval for Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try Kahlid Sheik Mohammed in federal courts, then the Senate would be mixing some volatile issues into the health care mix. Regardless the course of action, this bill will either pass or fail as a direct result of the actions of a handful of Senators.

Read more about the five major flaws of Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care bill here and at FixHealthCarePolicy.org.

With unbridled and infectious optimism, Jack Kemp (1935-2009) championed hope, growth, and enterprise to overcome poverty and social breakdown in America and around the world. In his roles as U.S. Congressman, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and passionate proponent of the free market, Kemp’s efforts highlighted the powerful combination of great ideas joined with the good works of neighborhood leaders.

Jeff Kemp, son of the late Jack Kemp and President of Stronger Families, pays tribute to his father’s legacy as the social justice conservative of his generation. As Jack Kemp’s example reminds us, social justice begins at the ground level where relationships foster the personal dignity and responsibility that lead to opportunity. Following Kemp’s keynote address, a panel of conservatives from Australia and Britain discussed policy implications of these universal principles, and how they are applying them to stop social breakdown, help families escape poverty, and rebuild communities in their own countries.

Read more at RestoringSocialJustice.com

Small business can’t support a proposal that does not address their No. 1 problem: the unsustainable cost of healthcare. With unemployment at a 26-year high and small business owners struggling to simply keep their doors open, this kind of reform is not what we need to encourage small businesses to thrive.

We oppose the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act due to the amount of new taxes, the creation of new mandates, and the establishment of new entitlement programs. There is no doubt all these burdens will be paid for on the backs of small business. It’s clear to us that, at the end of the day, the costs to small business more than outweigh the benefits they may have realized.

NFIB declared the Reid Bill to be unacceptable due to the “impact from these new taxes, a rich benefit package that is more costly than what they can afford today, a new government entitlement program, and a hard employer mandate” which together would cripple small businesses.

The organization’s conclusion is not surprising, given that the Reid Bill leaves small businesses in a lurch. The bill essentially acknowledges that it is terrible policy for small businesses, given that it includes a “small business tax credit” to minimize the impact of the job killing employer mandates and regulation-caused rises in private health insurance premiums.

The problem is that the tax credit only lasts two years and largely excludes small business owners, small businesses with high-average payrolls, and firms with 25 or more workers. After all exclusions, essentially the only eligible firms are those firms with 10 or fewer workers as well as those with low-income workers—the least likely to offer coverage even with a significant price reduction.

While the Obama Administration has appeared anything but decisive in response to field commanders’ calls for more troops in Afghanistan, the Administration is earning kudos from some for efforts to protect biodiversity. Rep. Elliot Engle has sent a “dear colleague” urging members to sign a letter to Special Envoy to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke commending the U.S. State Department for developing a biodiversity program in Afghanistan. According to the Engle’s letter, “…thousands of Afghans have been trained in natural resource management, seven environmental laws and regulations have been drafted and 45 community committees link rural communities with the central government in deciding the future of natural resources.”

But that’s not all. Band-e-Amir, Afghanistan’s first national park was established this year. According to the Engle letter the park is a “… series of pristine travertine lakes in one of the safer regions of the country” and “has a history of drawing tourists from around the world to enjoy its cultural and environmental beauty.”

One such recent visitor was the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, who, according to the Huffington Post, “…jumped in a swan-shaped pedal boat and beamed a bright smile as he cruised the waters with different Afghan officials.” (See Ambassador peddling green swan boat here.)

Unless you were planning on replacing your barbells with the Reid health care bill or using H.R.3962 to cure insomnia, these proposals will do little for your health. Experts have agreed that neither plan would do a thing to lower the rising costs of health care, one of the main forces behind the inaccessibility of the health care system as a whole. Instead, every page penned by Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid will create more federal regulations American families must comply with before they can obtain health coverage.

It’s time lawmakers realized that health care is too complex to micromanage from Washington. Instead, Congress should seek to increase the number of insured and lower costs through state-based, free-market reforms that won’t require massive new taxes, increasing federal power, government program expansion, or thousands of pages of legislation.

We are certain that by Saturday night, when the first big vote is taken, every one of those 100 Senators will have read, digested, and pondered every single word. Right?

Kathryn Nix currently is a member of the Young Leaders Program at the Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm

Sometimes the best offense is a good defense and sometimes the best action is inaction. With unemployment surpassing 10 percent (go here to watch unemployment grow), Midwestern Congressmen want to ensure that Congress will protect three key areas of their respective state’s economy: agriculture, manufacturing and small business. One sure way to protect these jobs is not to implement climate change legislation.

Congressman Bob Latta (R-OH) and 31 more Midwestern Members of Congress sent a letter to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the House Energy and Commerce, Agriculture, and Small Business Committees requesting a joint hearing to how climate change would affect these important industries, not only in the Midwest, but all across the United States. Let us give you a preview, and the news is not good.

Manufacturing: The higher energy costs from cap and trade will kill economic activity and jobs. This is particularly true for energy-intensive industries – such as manufacturing. Economists in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis estimate that, because of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill, manufacturing jobs will fall on average by 400,000. Peak year unemployment in the manufacturing sector alone rises by almost 1.4 million. Some will disappear entirely as business cannot afford to operate. Others will go overseas to countries that choose not to implement a carbon reduction scheme where the costs of operation will be much lower. While manufacturing employment had an expected decline in years past as efficiency gains put labor and capital to more productive use, cap and trade would needlessly shrink the manufacturing industry well beyond what would occur with it.

Farming: Farming is another energy-intensive industry with its fuel, chemical, electricity and natural gas-derived fertilizer costs. Cap and trade’s effect on farmers should raise a red flag for those in the farm belt and will put U.S. agriculture at a tremendous competitive disadvantage if enacted. Farmers themselves will lose big time. Heritage estimates that farm income would drop $8 billion in 2012, $25 billion in 2024, and over $50 billion in 2035. These are decreases of 28%, 60% and 94%, respectively. The average net income lost over the 2010-2035 timeline is $23 billion – a 57% decrease from a world without cap and trade. And consumers will feel the pain as well, not only from the increase in their own energy prices, but increased food prices.

Small Businesses: In tough economic times, small businesses are struggling to make ends meet and making necessary cuts to stay afloat. There’s little talk of expansion and job creation. Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Ben Lieberman points out that many of the small businesses lost out on the cap and trade lobbying battle: “Electric utilities and some other big businesses have cut special deals that allow them to comply for much less. Waxman-Markey allows for such deals by giving these companies free rights to emit carbon dioxide and other regulated greenhouse gases. But small businesses have largely been left out of this special interest game. They will instead face the same higher costs for energy and other products as homeowners. According to a 2008 National Federation of Independent Business poll, energy costs are the second biggest problem facing small business: Waxman-Markey would only exacerbate those concerns.” While all small businesses would be hart hit, those in the Midwest, where a large percentage of electricity comes from coal, would be hurt the most.

Two bills, one in the Senate and one in the House, were crafted by politicians from California and Massachusetts. No state is going to escape the economic pain of cap and trade, but the Midwest is right to be concerned as they will bear much of the brunt.

And to visit our work on Copenhagen, check out our Copenhagen Rapid Response  page.

Under current law, the death tax has a top rate of 45 percent and an exemption of $3.5 million ($7 million for couples) this year. But on January 1, 2010 it expires. It only stays expired for one year, however, as it springs back to life in 2011 with a top rate of 55 percent and an exemption of only $1 million ($2 million for couples).

With this impending one-year hiatus looming, members of both the House and Senate were coalescing around an agreement to extend the death tax permanently at a 35 percent top rate and a $3.5 million exemption. Senators Kly (R-Arizona) and Lincoln (D-Arkansas) were successful in including a provision for such an extension in the Senate’s 2010 budget resolution. Representatives Berkley (D-Nevada) and Brady (R-Texas) offered similar legislation in the House.

The Kly/Lincoln and Berkley/Brady plans would have increased the death tax for 2010 – any extension would be a tax hike since the death tax raises no revenue in 2010 under current law– but would have lowered the death tax in succeeding years.

This new agreement struck by some in the House would increase the death tax above the level proposed by Kyl/Lincoln and Berkley/Brady in 2010 and beyond, and opens the door to returning the tax after 2010 to its previous jobs destroying 55 percent rate and $1 million exemption.

Heritage research has shown that the death tax is a severe hindrance to the economy because it:

• discourages savings and investment;
• undermines job creation;
• suppresses productivity and wage growth;
• contradicts the central promise of American life: wealth creation;
• hurts those who have their savings tied up in land; and
• hurts businesses owned by women and African-Americans.

Its no wonder the latest research shows full repeal of the death tax would create 1.5 million jobs.

Congress should turn back this attempt to hike taxes after considering the devastating impact the death tax has on family-owned businesses. As recently released videos from the Heritage Foundation show, the death tax hammers these small businesses and destroys jobs and weakens communities in the process.

The economy cannot afford an increase in the Death Tax. And while the Kyl/Lincoln and Berkley/Brady framework would be an improvement over the newest proposal, the economy really needs the boost full repeal of this harmful tax would give. It is time for Congress to do the right thing and kill the Death Tax once and for all.

On his radio show yesterday, former Sen. Fred Thompson upped his criticism of President Barack Obama’s handling of the war in Afghanistan, predicting:

It really doesn’t matter how President Obama divides the Afghan baby, how he splits the difference between McChrystal and Biden. Because the war has been lost. I say this because of one sad and simple fact. The president does not have the will and determination to do what’s necessary to win it. His heart’s not in it, and never has been. The Taliban knows it. Al Qaeda knows it. Our allies know it. And the American people know it.

Our enemies are now emboldened and our friends are discouraged. We cannot prevail if the American people are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary for an extended effort. The case has not been made to them to justify this effort. The case can only be made by the president. This president is unable or unwilling to make that case.

Thompson is half right. If the Obama administration chooses to deny its field commander’s request for the troops and resources necessary to fully implement a counterinsurgency strategy, the results would likely be disastrous. Half measures are guaranteed to fail.

But all hope is not lost. On the campaign trail President Obama showed he has the leadership and the rhetorical skills necessary to inspire Americans. As a candidate last year, and even as recently as this August, President Obama acknowledged the centrality of defeating the Taliban to American security. That President Obama could win this war.

Victory is still possible. It all depends on whether the President’s heart is in it.

As blogger Keith Hennessey reminds readers, then-candidate Obama pledged on September 12, 2008:

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.

Hennessey notes that Obama first broke that pledge with his February signing of the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009, which hiked tobacco taxes by 156% – effectively a tax on middle class American consumers. And that broken promise occurred only 15 days into the Obama presidency.

Now, as the Senate takes up the Reid Bill, there are a whole slew of new middle class taxes that also amount to breaches of the Obama “no new tax” pledge. Hennessey writes that there are six tax increases that qualify. Here is his analysis:

1. The clearest violation is the 5% excise tax on cosmetic surgery and similar procedures (including teeth whitening). I assume that cosmetic surgery and similar procedures are skewed toward the high end of the income distribution, but there certainly are many people getting these treatments with annual family income less than $250,000.

2. The bill would allow State insurance exchanges “to charge assessments or user fees to participating health insurers, or to otherwise generate funding, to support its operations.” [ §1311(d)(5)(A) ] Health insurers would pass these “assessments or user fees” through to consumers as higher premiums. This would affect anyone who buys health insurance, including those with family income less than $250,000.

3. The bill would impose a 40% excise tax on health coverage in excess of $8,500 (individuals) / $23,000 (families). While policies this generous are almost certainly skewed higher on the income distribution, there are definitely families with income less than $250,000 receiving these plans. Again, health insurers would pass these tax increases through to those families.

4. The bill would increase taxes on all health insurance plans, as well as on brand-name drugs and biologics, and on medical devices. These tax increases would affect anyone who buys these goods, even if their family income is less than $250,000.

5. According to CBO, “By 2019, … the number of nonelderly people who are uninsured would be reduced by about 31 million, leaving about 24 million nonelderly residents uninsured (about one-third of whom would be unauthorized immigrants.)” (p 8 ) These roughly 16 million people would pay “penalties” of $95 per adult in 2014, $350 per adult in 2015, and $750 per adult in 2016 and later. You’re charged half as much for each kid. Most of these 16 million people paying higher taxes will have family income less than $250,000 and will pay higher “penalties,” although not all will pay these full amounts.

6. The bill would create a new 0.5 percentage point increase in payroll taxes on individuals with incomes greater than $200,000 in 2013 and families with incomes greater than $250,000 in 2013. Since these amounts are for 2013 and not indexed, someone making $233K in 2009 would be affected by this in 2013, assuming 1% annual real wage growth and CBO’s assumptions about inflation. If you’re making $220K this year, you’ll probably be hit by the new tax in 2016. $210K this year, you first get bit in 2017, and so on.

For a more comprehensive look at the growing list of taxes already on the table in the health care reform legislation, take a look at The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Analyst in Tax Policy Curtis Dubay’s piece titled “Taxes Proposed to Pay for Health Care Reform.”

As Dubay writes, all the taxes in the House bill, when combined with state and local income taxes, would raise the average top marginal rate in the U.S. to over 52 percent, “higher than traditionally high-tax countries such as Italy, Spain, and even France.”

So much for Obama’s pledge.

Like the others, the Reid bill would subject all private health insurance — whether purchased from an insurance company by employer groups or individuals, or provided through an employer or union self-insured plan — to detailed Federal regulation.

These so called “insurance reform” provisions amount to a de facto nationalization of health insurance and they would produce that effect regardless of whether or not Congress creates another, new government-run health insurance plan.

Benefit Control. Of particular concern to patients should be that the detailed benefits in their health insurance coverage will soon be determined by the Federal Department of Health and Human Services. Last week, Americans got a foretaste of what Federal health benefit regulation means when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force changed its recommendation for breast cancer screening (mammography) for women aged 40 to 50 from “B” (recommended) to “C” (not recommended).

Normally, such recommendations would not create controversy as, until now, they have been merely suggestions to guide providers and health plans in making their own decisions for their patients or members. But under the proposed legislation they would take on the force of law, since the legislation will require all plans — starting in 2011 in the Reid bill — to provide coverage (with no patient co-pays) for, “items or services that have in effect a rating of ‘A’ or ‘B’ in the current recommendations of the United States Preventive Services Task Force.”

Thus, a decision by a, heretofore, obscure HHS Task Force to recommend a specific medical service would in the future carry the force of law, and would impose additional costs on insurers and employer health plans. Conversely, any decision by the Task Force to issue a “C” or “D” rating (not recommended) — as it did last week in the case of breast cancer screening — will be henceforth viewed by insurers and employers as a justification for discontinuing coverage.

Cost Impact. Over time the more specific HHS gets in its benefit requirements — driving up the cost of coverage — the greater the incentive will be for insurers and employers to control those escalating costs by not covering anything that they aren’t absolutely required to cover by federal law.

The eventual result will be that the only medical care paid for through private health insurance will be the specific, items and services required by federal regulations promulgated by HHS. At that point, Congress will have effectively nationalized the entire American health insurance system under the supervision of the Secretary of HHS — regardless of whether or not it also sets up yet another government health insurance program in the process.