This Morning Bell is the third in a five-part week-long series on how Obamacare will affect you. The scariest part about yesterday’s Senate Finance Committee vote passing its version of Obamacare, is not what is in their bill (to the extent that it even exists), but that the Finance Committee bill promises to be the high water mark for “bipartisanship” in health care reform. Now all of the other bills will be merged together behind the closed doors. All the bills are fundamentally flawed and will only get worse as …
Throughout the health care debate, President Barack Obama repeatedly promised the American people that his health care plan “will help bring our deficits under control in the long term.” The problem is that the White House could not get the Congressional Budget Office to cooperate. Throughout the summer the CBO issued report after report showing that the versions of Obamacare working their way through Congress all added to the deficit. First, CBO found that the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) bill would increase the deficit by …
The Washington Post front page blares today: “Prospects for Public Option Dim in Senate.” Don’t believe it. Yes, the Senate Finance Committee did vote down two amendments that each would have added a government-run insurance plan to the committee’s health care bill. But two key Democrats who voted against Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s (D-WV) public plan, Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Tom Carper (D-DE), voted for Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) version. According to an independent analysis of Senate Democrat public statements on the public option, that raises the number of Democrats on …
Live from the Senate Finance Committee Mark-up During the Senate Finance Committee mark up of the Baucus health bill today Senator Bunning of Kentucky put forth an innovative amendment. This amendment stipulated that before voting on the measure in Committee, legislative language would have to be accessible to the public for 72 hours and that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) would need to publish an official tally of how much this bill will cost the American people and what the real impact will be on health costs. There are …
With the President and Congress’s plan to pass comprehensive health care reform reaching increasingly high levels of unpopularity, and reconciliation becoming an impediment, the leadership of the Senate is rumored to be preparing a new secret plan to railroad the bill through the Senate in record time by using a seldom used parliamentary procedure. Their plan is to proceed to a House passed non-health care bill to provide a shell of legislation to give Obamacare a ride to the House then to the President’s desk. Sound confusing? We lay out …
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has abandoned her plans to draft and mark-up a comprehensive national energy tax modeled after the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill before Congress’s August recess. According to Reuters, Boxer promised, “we’ll do it as soon as we get back” from our month-long vacation. This should not come as surprise, as problems with the bill were beginning to mount. Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have engaged in a very public debate over “carbon tariffs” with Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and …
According to Politico, CNN’s Dana Bash and Ted Barrett reported yesterday on how the $800 billion Stimulus bill managed to not only protect AIG’s bonuses; but a provision that would’ve prevented the executive bonuses was stripped. The obvious question is why these protections were put in place by Congress for AIG’s executive bonuses? A stunning comment from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) says it all: Frankly it was such a rush — we’re talking about the stimulus bill now — to get it passed, I didn’t have time …
