"Democrat Ben “Dover” Nelson, who had previously threatened to join a GOP filibuster of the Senate Health Care Bill, proved today that everything has a price – including a man’s values. The Nebraska Senator just accepted what I’ll generously describe as an enormous “monetary incentive” to do a complete 180 on his long-time position on abortion funding and thereby gave this awful legislation life with his 60th all-Democrat vote."
Which is why some are calling him BenedictArnold Nelson.
Keep calling your senators, if only to show them they can't get away with this so easily. I was only able to get through to them on their local offices via voice mail. I wish I had a fax machine. I'd love to flood their office floors with faxes.
Everyone should be watching CSPAN tonight. It is probably the 'last' debate on health care. Make a list. See who's 'naughty or nice' (who is for or against), then give those who voted 'yes' a nice boot out of office by next Christmas!!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - It was the concern of Nebraska's Republican governor over expanded Medicaid costs in the proposed Senate health care overhaul bill that led to a compromise to cover his state's estimated $45 million share over a decade, U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson said Sunday.
Gov. Dave Heineman "contacted me and he said this is another unfunded federal mandate and it's going to stress the state budget, and I agreed with him," the Nebraska Democrat said. "I said to the leader and others that this is something that has to be fixed. I didn't participate in the way it was fixed."
But Heineman expressed anything but gratitude, saying he had nothing to do with the compromise and calling the overhaul bill "bad news for Nebraska and bad news for America."
"Nebraskans did not ask for a special deal, only a fair deal," Heineman said in a statement Sunday.
That criticism is only a taste of what Nelson has received since announcing Saturday that he would become the 60th vote needed to advance the landmark legislation.
Despite the perks Nelson managed to garner for Nebraska in finally agreeing to support the overhaul bill, the backlash from those who wanted Nelson to hold a hard line against the measure was immediate.
Abortion foes howled in protest. Nebraska Right to Life, which has long endorsed Nelson, issued a scathing statement that dubbed Nelson a traitor. The state's Catholic bishops followed Sunday with a statement that they were "extremely disappointed" in him.
The chairman of Nebraska's Republican Party declared Nelson's decision to be the end of his political career in Nebraska, and within hours of Nelson's announcement, the state GOP launched a Web site, , to collect funds to oust the Democrat in the 2012 election.http://www.givebentheboot.com
Nothing in Constitution about government providing health care
On Nov. 7, after hours of debate, the House of Representatives passed the implausibly named “Affordable Health Care for America Act.” A similar bill is in the Senate. Each bill runs about 2,000 pages, aimed at constructing a medical care morass that taxes and regulates the dispensing of health care beneath the oversight of at least 100 new agencies and bureaucratic commissions. The federal government is a government of enumerated powers. Those powers are few and definite, and health care is nowhere to be found. Only those powers that could not be handled at the state level were delegate to the federal government by the Constitution. Our Founding Fathers never intended putting government in charge of health care — giving it, ultimately, the power to make life-and-death decisions for its citizens. The answer lies in sound money, free competing markets and medical savings accounts which would result in the patient making his or her own medical decisions and paying for them like other goods and services. Banking cartels (Federal Reserve), third-party payers (HMOs) and centralized planners (government regulators) reduce freedom of choice, cause prices to rise and lower standard of care and overall individual health. Americans need to call, write, and/or e-mail their senators, insisting that they uphold their oath by rejecting any and all attempts to take over the nation’s health care system. If they refuse to admit they are ignoring the Constitution, then come election time they can count on receiving pink slips and joining the ranks of the unemployed.
The progressives/socialists in this country care nothing about our Constitution or other founding documents and if they had their way they would eliminate them. They have waited for decades to pass their left wing ideology and this is their chance and they're going to make the most of it until next November when their power is going to end.
The progressives/socialists in this country care nothing about our Constitution or other founding documents and if they had their way they would eliminate them. They have waited for decades to pass their left wing ideology and this is their chance and they're going to make the most of it until next November when their power is going to end.
Yes there is a very good chance that many will get voted out next term, but the damage will have been done. We will still have a beast of yet another government health care system that will be around forever....just like medicare and medicaid.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Unfortunately this giant health-care plan that the government is forcing down our throats is going to bankrupt the country or the taxes will be so high in order to administer health-care that we'll all be poor.
Hard to imagine a worse health plan Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist. Mona Charen
Does anyone remember the TV show “Supermarket Sweep”? Contestants would compete with one another by careening through a supermarket and grabbing as many products as they could toss into a basket. The winner was the shopper whose cart carried the biggest price tag when the bell sounded. It’s a fitting image for the way Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have handled the most important domestic issue of the decade. They’ve raced down the health policy aisles, sweeping items off the shelves and into their legislative carts, heedless of nutritional value, taste or cost. As items dropped out on the hairpin turns, others were shoved into the spaces. Harry Reid inserted the Medicare “buy-in” at the 11th hour and just as quickly withdrew it under pressure. No organizing principle has governed the contents of their baskets (Pelosi added and jettisoned abortion coverage), just an urgent imperative to pass something. And now, as the clock winds down, they are declaring, as a journalistic cheerleader at the Washington Post put it, “a legislative feat of epic proportions.” Actually, it was the sloppiest and most slapdash legislative process ever to accompany a major bill. The 383-page manager’s amendment, making changes to the Senate bill, was released on the morning of the cloture vote. Secrecy marked Reid’s handling of the bill throughout. Not only Republicans, but Democrats, too, were kept from studying the legislation. Payoffs to wavering Sens. Lieberman, Landrieu, and Nelson, on the other hand, were blatant. The Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, in concert with the White House, have bullied, bribed, and rushed their members to vote on this legislation so that the deed could be done before constituents — who oppose it forcefully — could confront their representatives face-to-face over the Christmas break. The Democrats have endured bruising internecine conflicts and risked the loss of between 20 and 40 seats in 2010 (Pelosi’s estimate) for this. And what have they achieved? Their goal — a single-payer system or a glide path to one — remains as distant as ever. Instead, they have produced (or will, after the conference committee) an enormous new $2.5 trillion octopus of federal regulation that will increase premiums, contribute to medical cost infl ation, reduce quality and choice of care, and deeply politicize an aspect of life that most Americans regard as sacrosanct. Additionally, and most alarmingly, it will aggravate the already crushing debt we are accumulating. President Obama has betrayed every ringing promise he made about this reform. People will not be able to keep their health plans if they are happy with them. The federal government will determine which plans pass muster. As for not adding one dime to the federal deficit? Risible. The “savings” in the Senate bill consist of cuts to Medicare, not increased competition or more efficient delivery of services. And while CBO has scored the bill as reducing the deficit, CBO must abide by the assumptions Congress presents. It cannot say what we know from history to be the truth: Congress will not make cuts in Medicare. Besides, every entitlement ever enacted has wound up costing orders of magnitude more than the estimates at passage. That’s why the Medicare and Social Security unfunded liability is currently $107 trillion, according to a 2009 trustees’ report. The Reid bill will add at least 15 million new beneficiaries to Medicaid, accelerating that program’s budget-busting momentum. The president also promised that no one earning less than $250,000 would pay higher taxes. But under both the Senate and House bills, people who do not purchase health insurance will be slapped with an excise tax (2.5 percent of adjusted gross income under Pelosicare, and $750 or 2 percent of income, whichever is larger, under Reidcare). The Democrats have not achieved their goal of completely lassoing one-sixth of the economy, but their mammoth legislation (the House and Senate bills both top 2,000 pages) will apply heavy-handed regulation that will further gum up a system already choking on bureaucracy. Americans will be forced to buy health insurance. Insurance companies will be forbidden to price their services according to actuarial tables. And no aspect of medical care will be free of political interference. (One section of the Senate bill reinstates coverage for DXA scans because two senators insisted upon it. Another requires breastfeeding breaks in the workplace.) The Democrats will create, among others, the following new bureaus: The Grant Program for Health Insurance Cooperatives, the Telehealth Advisory Committee, the Community Based Medical Home Pilot Program, the Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research, and the Qualified Health Benefits Plan Ombudsman. In short, Democrats have done the maximum amount of damage to our system that they could manage under the circumstances.
Senate OK’s health care bill Landmark legislation a victory for Obama BY DAVID ESPO The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — In an epic struggle settled at dawn, the Democraticcontrolled Senate passed health care legislation Thursday, a triumph for President Barack Obama that clears the way for compromise talks with the House on a bill to reduce the ranks of the uninsured and rein in the insurance industry. The vote was 60-39, strictly along party lines, one day after Democrats succeeded in crushing a filibuster by Republicans eager — yet unable — to inflict a year-end political defeat on the White House. At the White House, Obama called the vote historic, and said because of it, “we are incredibly close to making health insurance reform a reality in this country. Our challenge now is to fi nish the job.” Democrats, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, said they would, by early in the new year. Even before they held a celebratory news conference, Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement pledging, “We will soon produce a final bill that is founded on the core principles of health insurance reform: affordability for the middle class, security for our seniors, responsibility to our children by reducing the defi cit, and accountability for the insurance industry.” The House passed its bill in November, and officials said it was likely to be February before the two sides can sort out their differences over issues as diverse as government’s role in a remade health care system, coverage for abortion and federal subsidies for lower and middle-income families who would be required to purchase insurance. Senate Republicans attacked the bill to the end, and citing public opinion polls, said they would use it as an issue in the 2010 congressional elections. “This debate was supposed to produce a bill that reformed health care in America. Instead, we’re left with party-line votes in the middle of the night, a couple of sweetheart deals to get it over the finish line, and a public that’s outraged,” said the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. ..............>>>>......................>>>>.................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00101&AppName=1
Re Dec. 22 article, “Pre-Christmas passage on track”: Did New York win or lose [with] the Obama health care plan? Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand can redeem themselves by not supporting the payments to Louisiana, Nebraska and any other proposed bribes. It appears they voted for it on a partisan basis, leaving New York residents in a difficult position to pay for the other smart politicians (Louisiana receiving $300 million, Nebraska receiving a concession that Congress will pay 100 percent of the Medicaid expenses into perpetuity). This, along with the intimidation by a Connecticut senator to support the bill with the threat of his wife losing her position supporting woman’s cancer programs. How can anyone believe our elected officials care about their constituents? There should be a law against having other states pay for the rightful charges from another state under this plan. Election time is coming.
The Dec. 20 story on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid working out a deal with Sen. Ben Nelson for the 60th vote on health care reform was very informative. But one part of the deal worked out with the Nebraska senator was strangely left out. That would be the $45 million bribe Reid gave Nelson. Under the proposed health bill, more people would become eligible to sign up for Medicaid. The Reid-Nelson deal would exempt Nebraska taxpayers from these additional payments. Instead these payment would be paid by the federal government, meaning the rest of us taxpayers. A nice deal if you can get it. And that $45 million is only an estimate for the fi rst 10 years. Like I said, this deal is forever.
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