Interview With Patrick Murray, Rep. Jim Moran’s Opponent

On Monday evening, a friend told me that Patrick Murray, the Republican opponent of Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), was holding an event on the roof of my apartment complex. Intrigued due to the RealClearPolitics video of Moran saying “the economy has recovered” this past weekend, as well as the ethics issues Moran was cleared of earlier this year, I attended the event, where the campaign allowed me a few minutes to interview Murray.

My first question to Murray was about the recession statement by Moran. Murray noted that the good job news was largely coming from the hiring of Census workers, and said the high unemployment rate showed that the stimulus didn’t work. He also said the comments by Moran showed that after 20 years in Congress, he was out of touch with his own constituents.

The final word on the Congressman’s comments? An emphatic “No!” regarding being out of the recession.

Following up on his comment of Moran being out of touch, I asked what Murray thought of term limits. He said he supported them, though he wasn’t certain what the best limitations were. He verified that he would want to hear different options before deciding on one, though he reiterated his support for term limits.

One of the Murray supporters at the event had told me she liked Murray because he was not a politician, which I found interesting. That brought me to ask Murray if he had chosen to run because of the ethics issues Moran had run into, and he simply and firmly said “No.” He then explained he was running because Moran was not the best person for the job, due to a variety of factors, including anti-Semitic remarks the Congressman made. He also stated he felt Moran was doing too much explaining to his constituents, and not enough listening. He cited a health care town hall where Moran brought former Vermont governor Howard Dean in to explain the health care bill, instead of listening to the concerns of his constituents. [Note: This was an infamously raucous town hall from last year.]

Murray launched into a few details regarding what he felt needed to be done. He said jobs; national security; and the national debt were front-end concerns, and said regarding the debt that we as a nation need to “turn this ship around.” He also said Moran and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi were “at the heart” of the tax-and-spend policies of the current Congress.

Due to time constraints – Murray did say we could go into more detail should I want to sit down with him again – I asked only one more question: as a Republican, if he were elected, would Murray work to cut defense spending as part of an overall approach to turning the debt ship around?

Fiscal hawk Republicans like Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) have put themselves on the record as supporting such a policy. Murray, a former Army Colonel with 24 years of experience in the military, said he could not comment on what Senator Coburn had done, but that he supported Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ recent proposal to cut between one and two percent of the defense budget after careful analysis. He said he was “very hesitant” to cut the budget in the middle of two wars, and that the first duty of the federal government is to provide for the common defense.

Unfortunately, I had to let Murray get back to the event, but I plan to follow-up. He seems like he has a pretty good head on his shoulders, and it would be great to have another conservative Republican with military experience since there are so few in Congress.

Author’s Note: I contacted the Moran office so they could respond to some of what Murray said, but as of the publication of this article his office had not responded.

Interview With Rep. Michele Bachmann

(You can grab the audio of the interview here via “Right-click… Save as…”.  Or hover your mouse over the speaker icon to listen to the interview as streaming audio. -nick)

Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) was kind enough to give thelobbyist.net a few minutes of her time last week to talk about the national debt and how if Congress trusts the American people, the so-called Debt-Paying Generation (those young Americans whose futures will be crushed by the tsunami of debt the nation faces) will be able to live the American Dream and not be forced to live a life of less quality than their parents.

Representative Bachmann is the Republican representative of the 6th District of Minnesota. She has represented her constituents since 2007, and has been a conservative leader in everything from government transparency to health care reform to reversing course on the size and scope of the federal government.

Dustin Siggins: So you and I met, briefly, Representative, when you were on the Laura Ingraham Show back in March…

Michele Bachmann: Mm-hm, isn’t she great?

DS: Oh she’s awesome; she’s a riot.

MB: She is such a talent.

DS: I really liked when she was on Bill O’Reilly a couple of weeks ago, and they were talking about blaming Napolitano- I don’t know if you saw it?

MB: I didn’t.

DS: They were debating and Bill O’Reilly decided that he wasn’t going to blame Napolitano for the BP response for the oil spill. And he was trying to play the middle road, and so Ingraham just went crazy on him and then picked up his cup of water from behind where he was sitting and went, “He is drinking the Kool-Aid!”

MB: Oh! (laughter) She is so creative. Well you know the great thing is, he has a tremendous audience, and a lot of interests, and he tries very hard, I think…I think he is really trying to be fair and balanced and trying to get both sides or both perspectives. And obviously he has been very successful for a long period of time. But people really do love Laura and I think that her stock is only going to continue to soar.

DS: Oh I have to agree with you. There’s no way, and especially with what’s going on here in DC, there’s no way any conservative’s stock is going to tumble in the next two to four years.

MB: Yeah.

DS: Um, so I was talking to Dave, whom I met a couple of weeks ago, and I am currently at the Heritage Foundation working on the Debt Paying Generation project…

MB: Oh good so you’re working with Bill Beach!

DS: Exactly.  According to Mr. Beach you are a ‘huge fan.’

MB: I am a huge fan! This is the issue, I told Bill, that I really want to hit on because I think that young people’s ears are starting to perk up on their future, what their future is going to be like. And I think that it’s a tremendous shock for a lot of young people to find out that their standard of living could be demonstrably lowered beyond what their parents had. And even though people may hear that in the abstract, especially for younger people, it’s hard to believe that it could be true or that it could be translated into a diminishing reality going forward, and I think it’s important for us to make that case and I think it will be easier, then, for us to talk about positive solutions to be able to dig our way out so that we can have a way forward. Because, there is, it isn’t something where we have to give up and realize that we have to consign ourselves, especially the young debt-paying generation, to a future of less. We can have a better future, but what it means is people in my generation are going to have to make alterations as well.  We can’t let the government try to be the answer to every problem.

DS: Your generation, 31,32?

MB: That’s right. (laughter) No actually I love getting older, to be honest with you. I’m 54 years old and I told my husband that I love getting older so it doesn’t bother me at all.

DS: Interesting. Well I’m 24 and look 20, or 19 and 18; so I wouldn’t mind looking a little older, but-

MB: Ahh, well I’m sure, well your…It’ll come sooner than what you think.

DS: Well hopefully- I think the grey hair would help make me look distinguished.

MB: Yes, undoubtedly. Get a pair of glasses- that will help.

DS: I’ve had glasses since I was one and a half and it hasn’t helped (laughter) Well anyway, a little side-tracked. Regarding the debt paying of this generation, I mean obviously the democrats aren’t going to pass a budget in the house. Rep. Hoyer just stated that yesterday, correct?”

MB: That’s right.

DS: Why are they not passing a budget? Are they scared that American will look and say “oh wow, they made it worse than the Republicans did?”

MB: Well, it’s a dereliction of duty and it’s also an admission that they can’t govern. They had made the comment about Republicans passing budgets and I think now what is good for the goose is good for the gander. I think they’re going to have to live by their own statements. If they make an admission that they can’t pass a budget when they own the white house, when they own the senate, and when they own the house, they are making an admission that they cant govern. And frankly, they are digging a hole for themselves…that they hole that they dug for themselves is embarrassing. The debt and the taxing…the taxes that result from this out of control debt will be one that will mean fewer jobs will be created in the private sector. You have to have a growth economy to create jobs and we saw that there were some 40,000 jobs that were created last month, that is not going to get us anywhere. Especially for the debt paying generation, there is certainly more than 41,000 people who graduated from college last year. Those recent college graduates and those individuals that have left high school and chose not to go onto college, they are looking for employment; and unfortunately, under President Obama’s policies and Speaker Pelosi’s policies…their policies are not inducing entrepreneurs to grow and create jobs. Without private job creation, there can be no healthy public sector either. And so, they are making some very foolish decisions that have long term consequences and they bode ill for the debt paying generation.”

DS: The Center for American Progress did a study- well I guess they called it an analysis, I wouldn’t call it an analysis myself- but they cited several polls showing that the most popular thing for America is to cut the budget of Foreign Aid which is two percent of the budget that President Obama proposed and yet older Americans seem to like Social Security and seem to like Medicare, how do we convince people in my age bracket that we have to get rid of these programs, or at least reform them severely, as President Bush tried to do in 2005. How do we convince people this is best- that they’re going to have to suffer a little bit for the long-term benefit of the country?

MB: Well, I think the best way we can do that is to make the case to people that these programs are going to collapse of their own accord- no one will benefit from that. We don’t want to see senior citizens put in a situation where they’re dependent on either Medicare or Social Security, and one day when they go to their mailbox, they open it up, and there’s no check there because these programs have collapsed because we’re actually bankrupt. That’s why we need to do the responsible thing and make these programs work for the people they were intended to benefit. And we can do that- we could do that sitting down with a magnifying glass and a pencil, and we could make adjustments so that we can actually save these programs for the people who really, truly need them and who truly depend on them, and then for the Debt-Paying Generation we want to make sure going forward that we have alternatives for them so that they can have a secure retirement and deal with health care in a more rational level.

Government takeover of health care has been the Obama way and the Obama solution, and it isn’t that I think President Obama is an evil, negative person- I think he just simply, simply has it wrong. I think he’s simply wrong about the government takeover of health care, and a person can’t point to one jurisdiction or area where the government takeover of health care has actually improved healthcare for people, or made it more inexpensive, because adding the price of bureaucracy to a product doesn’t make a product cheaper, it makes it more expensive and more difficult to obtain- and I think Americans intuitively know that will be our future going forward.

This is why I think, when it comes to health care, which is a new entitlement program, that’s why I think we have a real, and realistic, chance, of actually repealing the bill, and I was the first Member of Congress to issue a full-scale repeal of the bill, and ObamaCare, and it is very popular, as a measure, and we’re looking at about 2/3 of the American people hoping Congress will have a repeal. If you have 2/3 of the American people, wanting to repeal the president’s signature achievement over the last 18 months-perhaps the signature achievement of whatever length of time is his presidency- I think that we will be able to make the case on a number of areas of government overreach.

DS: Well, I guess my last question- and you talked about what the Democrats have done badly, and I agree with you- but I came of age during the Bush years, and Republicans obviously didn’t do so well between 2001 and 2006 with the Medicare Part D, and they jumped the cost of government, the size of government, up. How do you convince the American people that Republicans are trustworthy? Not you individually, of course [DS: Rep. Bachmann was first elected in 2006, and served her first term starting in 2007], but how, I mean, the Republican Party as a whole. This year, yes, it’s anti-incumbent, but I don’t think, personally, that it’s so much pro-Republican.

MB: Oh, I think you’re accurate about that. I think people are reacting negatively to what they have observed from the Pelosi/Reid/Obama agenda. People intuitively understand that they can’t live with excessive spending that creates unsustainable levels of debt- if they can’t live like that in their own personal lives or in their businesses, they certainly know that government doesn’t have a magic formula that defies economic reality. So people are rejecting the Obama agenda. People want to know, “Republicans, if we give you the gavel, can we trust you? Will you be responsible? Do you have a plan to get us out of this hole?” And that’s up to Republicans, now, to make that message. I think one of the best things we could do, is let the American people know- number one- if you put us in office, we will vote to full-scale repeal ObamaCare. Root and branch, we will pull it out, and we will repeal that measure. I think that’s something that is a very saleable proposition. I also think it’s saleable to tell the American people that we will pass a budget- a balanced budget- and I think that’s what people want us to do, is to pass a balanced budget, and then to show the American people, first of all, that the tremendous straits that we’re in, financially, going forward, once people know the difficulties and the reality of the problem that we’re in right now, I think they’ll be more amenable to the solutions that we can propose to put our financial house on a- in the right order.

DS: I hope so, because I’d like to see this country be as good for me as it was for my parents, so-

MB: Exactly. I will tell you, anywhere I go to speak, I ask that question. “Do you believe you live better than your parents?” Almost everyone in the audience puts their hand up. I ask them, “do you think your children will live better than you financially?” Virtually no one puts their hands up. I doubt in the last 234 years, if you ask that question of any generation, that they would think that their children would not be better off than they are; I just don’t think that you would have gotten that response. That’s really what is frightening today, because we’ve always been a country that’s been about forward- looking people, and growth. And this is one of the first times when Americans look into the future, and they see diminished way of life, and they see decline.

The beauty of America, is that we get to choose.  We get to choose decline, or we get to choose if we want growth. I think that if you put the question to a referendum to the American people, they will choose growth. And if that means pinching back on a social safety-net, I think that we’ll have buy-in from people, because, ultimately people do want better for their children and for the next generation.  Even if people are childless, they want the next generation to be able to do well. In fact, I think it’s simply the matter of having to make the case, you know just like you’ll see on Glenn Beck with his chalkboard, he makes a compelling case if he’s describing an issue. And I think that’s something that Republicans will have to do, so to speak, have our own kind of a chalkboard where we make the case to the American people of two futures for America: one where we go down the road of the Pelosi-Reid Agenda that they have taken us down, which the American people are thoroughly rejecting, but take it beyond the year 2010…play it out to 2020, and play it out to what America will look like when we are in the same economic bind that Greece is in today. Economists like Larry Lindsey tell us that we are looking within a ten-year window of having that type of economic decline. That truly is not a road that people would choose to go down, and that’s what gives me great hope and great excitement because even people who are senior citizens, they don’t want to bequeath a future grounded in decline. I know that sounds like an oxymoron; but senior citizens don’t want to see that for their own children and grand-children. And that’s what gives me hope going forward- because we really are a nation of very bright people, who make good choices. We could trust the American peoples’ choice, we just need to give them the truth and put all facts on the table, and then I have every hope and every reason to believe that people will make choices for their own gain and their own benefit because no one wants to succeed… I mean, no one wants to fail, everyone wants to succeed.

DS: Well, Representative Bachmann, I think I’ve run out of time. I really appreciate what you’ve said and hopefully we’ll see you doing a lot of that, especially if Republicans take back the House.

MB: Well, and we’ll do this again soon, I’d love to do this again!

DS: Alright, thank you very much.  Take care!

MB: Alright, bye bye.

[Note: I would like to thank RJ; Will; and Nick for helping transcribe the interview. This would not have gotten posted without their help. DS]

Oops…Democrats Didn’t Think This Through…

Despite the despondent attitude I had earlier this week, I’m a bit more optimistic after a number of Democratic mistakes on health care reform, as well as the leadership of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK). Even better, I saw on Fox News this morning that a CBS poll showed the vast majority of Americans want the GOP to repeal the health care reform bill President Obama signed into law. Even better than that, however, is the upcoming ping-pong of the reconciliation bill back to the House. Maybe they can scare a few Democrats into shutting it down. Unlikely, but possible.

Hope springs eternal- I just hope the right is not getting reform fatigue. I know I am. (Though that might be the allergies…)

Why This Bill Needs To Crash & Burn

With the House health care vote tomorrow likely to go in favor of Democrats, Republicans and conservatives are doubling down on their pressure on Democrats. We cannot let up until the final vote is cast. The vote is expected to happen tomorrow afternoon, so please call offices and spread around as much as you can just why we should oppose this latest boondoggle. I have gathered information from a variety of sources, and hopefully they can be of assistance.

Regarding the Congressional Budget Office score and other budget concerns:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) pointed was on Fox yesterday morning, and he pointed out some flaws in the CBO’s score of the House bill. They include accusations that the bill double-counts Medicare cuts, double-counts taxes, and doesn’t include the Doc Fix which, according to CBO in a report released after the bill’s score, would raise the deficit:

You asked about the total budgetary impact of enacting the reconciliation proposal (the amendment to H.R. 4872), the Senate-passed health bill (H.R. 3590), and the Medicare Physicians Payment Reform Act of 2009 (H.R. 3961). CBO estimates that enacting all three pieces of legislation would add $59 billion to budget deficits over the 2010–2019 period.

Under current law, Medicare’s payment rates for physicians’ services will be reduced by about 21 percent in April 2010 and by an average of about 2 percent per year for the rest of the decade. H.R. 3961 would increase those payment rates by 1.2 percent in 2010 and would restructure the sustainable growth rate mechanism beginning in 2011. Those changes would result in significantly higher payment rates for physicians than those that would result under current law. CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 3961, by itself, would cost about $208 billion over the 2010–2019 period. (That estimate reflects the enactment of two short-term extension acts, which lowered the cost in 2010 by about $2 billion compared with CBO’s estimate of November 4, 2009.)…

CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 3961 together with those two bills would add $59 billion to budget deficits over the 2010–2019 period. That amount is about $10 billion less than the figure that would result from summing the effects of enacting the bills separately. The $10 billion difference occurs primarily because H.R. 3590 and the reconciliation proposal would modify how the government’s payments to Medicare Advantage plans are set.

Secondly, the CBO score assumes the following:

CBO has not extrapolated estimates further into the future because the uncertainties surrounding them are magnified even more. However, in view of the projected net savings during the decade following the 10-year budget window, CBO anticipates that the reconciliation proposal would probably continue to reduce budget deficits relative to those under current law in subsequent decades, assuming that all of its provisions would continue to be fully implemented.

What are some of these provisions? They include hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts that Democrats will immediately move into covering the “Donut Hole.” So, as Ryan noted, the numbers are both double-counted and, furthermore, should we really believe Democrats are going to cut Medicare?

Secondly, the CBO never says the bill will save $1.3 trillion in the second decade, despite what Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and President Obama are claiming. If you read the letter sent to Pelosi, the CBO says the savings might, if things go really, really well, end up being equal to, or less than, a one-half of one percent of GDP in savings. Unless Democrats are expecting a $130 trillion GDP for America, their numbers are wrong.

Last, but certainly not least, according to The Washington Examiner’s Byrok York, the bill includes the CLASS Act, which is a long-term care program that the CBO accounts for in its analysis. The problem? The CLASS Act is unaffordable in the long run, but the CBO only counts the intake of money, not the expenditures. Furthermore, it includes the Democrats’ student loan modifications, which is where much of the savings for the bill will come from. (Both of these points are explained in some detail here.) So, to summarize, the bill takes in a lot of money, but does not spend much of it for years. These and other budgetary concerns are analyzed quite well here, and by the Senate Budget Committee’s minority staff here.

I need to clarify, by the way, that I am not criticizing the CBO. They analyze what they are given by politicians, and so their numbers are sometimes necessarily incorrect. Blame the politicians- on both sides, yes, but in this case, the Democrats- for gaming the system so dishonestly. Furthermore, the CBO letter is a preliminary letter, which means its analysis is necessarily vague and has many suppositions. As Daniel Foster notes at The Corner, the final one is supposed to be out this weekend.

More bureaucracy and cost for Americans:

According to The Washington Examiner, the bill to be voted on would increase the number of IRS employees by over 16,000. So let me get this straight- we need more IRS employees? Well, I suppose they were doing such a good job with Geithner, Rangel, Daschle and the rest…

It gets worse, however. According to Americans for Tax Reform, the following occur in the bill:

• The number of new tax increases in the healthcare bill: 19
• The number of tax increases that unquestionably violate President Obama’s “firm pledge” not to raise “any form” of taxes on families making less than $250,000:  7
• The tax increase over the first decade if the healthcare bill becomes law: $497 billion
• The top federal tax rate on wages and self-employment earnings under this bill: 43.4%
• The annual tax hike for every man, woman, and child in America: $165
• The top federal tax rate on early distributions from HSAs under this bill: 59.6%

Next, according to Republican Representative Kevin Brady (R-TX) (H/T to the Examiner):

In addition to more complicated tax returns, families and small businesses will be forced to reveal further tax information to the IRS, provide proof of ‘government approved’ health care and submit detailed sales information to comply with new excise taxes.

Thirdly, there are a number of tax increases in the bill. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth, in fact, and they would hit those making less than $250,000 in some cases. Once again, the president is violating his pledge to not hit lower-income Americans. For some reason, Democrats continue to want to reduce the budget by increasing taxes. Or, to put it another way, they believe that hurting the economic growth of America is the way to go.

Fun Fact: Caterpillar will have its costs increased by $100 million in the first year of ObamaCare.

Special Deals- Remember, President Obama doesn’t care about the process

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) made a Profile In Courage statement Thursday that should send chills down the backs of every Democrat who changes from a “No” vote to a “Yes” vote in the House tomorrow. He threatened to- brace yourselves- hold them accountable, as well as those Democrats who accept deals for their “Yes” votes. Check out the video of Coburn’s statement here.

Unfortunately, some Democrats haven’t paid attention, it seems. Fox News reports a number of states getting special deals, including North Dakota, where last year’s “Yes” vote Earl Pomeroy is from. However, Pomeroy has a tough race this year, and is rumored to be concerned about the abortion elements of the House vote. Is he being bribed with the North Dakota assistance? Considering his is the only state with a loophole regarding the nationalization of the student loan industry (the bank in North Dakota is the only state-run bank in the nation), and he was named Chairman of the Social Security Subcommittee after the Rangel dust-up…I’d say it’s possible. (Full disclosure: my uncle is Pomeroy’s Chief of Staff, which is why I am saying it’s possible, not definite. My uncle wouldn’t work for a bought-and-paid-for Congressman, as my uncle is an honest guy.) The exemption may be pulled, however, as Democratic North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad is asking for it to be eliminated to avoid controversy.

Other deals noted by Fox include:

• Retains $300 million in extra Medicaid aid for Louisiana, which had helped win support for the Senate health bill from Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. The state is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina.
• Keeps $100 million included in the Senate bill that is expected to go for a public hospital in Connecticut sought by Dodd, who is retiring.
• Preserves language won by Baucus permitting many of the 2,900 residents of Libby, Mont., to qualify for Medicare benefits. Some of them have asbestos-related diseases from a now-shuttered mine.
• Provides an additional $8.5 billion over the next decade for 11 states and the District of Columbia to help them pay for the more generous Medicaid assistance they have been providing low-income residents. These states are Arizona, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
• Maintains a Senate-approved provision giving extra money for hospitals and doctors in North and South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.

Another possible deal is noted by the House Republican Conference on their website, where water regulation changes are being accused of acting as a quid-pro-quo. Is it true? We cannot be certain, but the water legislation comes dangerously close to two California Democrats’ support for the bill.

I guess I don’t understand- Americans are against the bill, against the process…and still Democrats can’t get the message?

In Short:

When it comes down to it, this bill is including the deals typically denigrated by Americans as normal in Congress; it raises the deficit significantly, at an estimated cost of over two trillion dollars; raises taxes on Americans; and continues the over-regulation of American health care. These and other reasons are why we need to keep pushing this over the next 22 hours, convincing our fellow Americans to tell their Democratic representatives to vote against the bill. Here is a partial list of people to call, and here is a lengthier one.

300000000000000%!!!!!!!!!!!!

The president a few days ago met with a huge crowd of 200 people!  200 people went to see the messiah.  Seems like more would have attended…  Anyhow, Obama promised that if your job provides you health insurance that after Obamacare passed your boss would save 3000% on his premiums and then of course you would get a raise.  You wouldn’t get the raise by earning it of course.  You would get the raise because your boss had more money and you somehow have a right to it.  But that’s a whole other issue.

Did anyone in the audience happen to consider what a 3000% decrease in premiums would be? I’m guessing that if this had of been said by a certain Republican president with a W in his middle name we’d have talking heads and late night shows and comedians tearing this down.  It’s just that bad.

The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that the average premium for an individual in 2009 was $4,824.  So I’m just going to do a little math here.  Bear with me.

$4,824 x 3000% = $144,720

$144,720 – initial investment cost ($4,824) = $139,896 in total saving on one single policy for the employer.

Health care reform is a gold mine! Based on these figures, if we let the president pass this bill, Health insurance companies will actually be forced to pay business roughly $140k just for the business accepting their policy.

In addition to this, Obama was quoted as saying,

And she upped her deductible last year to the minimum, the highest possible deductible.

Obama speaks, clouds part, flowers blossom, rainbows light the heavens and we all become dumber for having listened to him.

Greece-ing the Skids Toward Dependency

On my drive from work, I was listening to a snippet of NPR where they were discussing the current economic apocalypse in Greece that Glenn Beck warned in his CPAC speech would occur here.  There have been riots in the streets as the Greek government desperately seeks to find ways of ameliorating their budgetary boondoggle.  They are of course frustrated by a plethora of failings and attempted fixes as reported by The Globe and Mail:

Greece will need to cut spending – by 10 per cent of GDP over 10 years – while raising revenue and cracking down on its untaxed black-market economy, which counts for as much as a third of all financial activity in the country. This combination could provoke further unrest, and may foretell similar tensions in Italy and Portugal.

If Greece’s crisis and accompanying political unrest were an isolated case, it might be more manageable, but this week the turmoil seemed to spread across the belly of Europe.

On Tuesday, Spain’s cities were shut down by unionized workers protesting its left-wing government’s plan to raise the retirement age to 67 and cut spending in order to deal with its own serious fiscal situation.

Spain has debt of 54 per cent of GDP and a deficit of more than 11 per cent, plus unemployment levels that approach 20 per cent and a housing-market collapse.

 

What struck me during the NPR report was their emphasis on the retirement age being raised while benefits are to head in the opposite direction in Greece; and at the same time, the story according to The Globe and Mail is that Greece is going to be taking similar steps.  

Riots are occurring in the streets because the government is controlling the retirement benefits of the citizenry.  Scary.

I was listening to the February 23^rd edition of Mark Levin (I do the free podcast a day later while I run, God bless him for making his show free and available) where he talked about being at the mercy of the government.  As these people in Europe see themselves: at the mercy of their government.  “Please sir, can I have some more?”  Where is the dignity and the honor?  I work in a place where I see the day to day sufferings of people who find themselves dependent on a government that only knows of their existence based on a number in a database.  Is this what we want?  To have to go to the government, to Social Security, to your Congress-persons’ offices, to Medicare, and beg for money to exist? 

Tocqueville once lamented about the coming age of rational control.  We look at a leviathan to take away the “pain of thinking” and the “agony of living” as Dr. Mansfield once recounted.  What needs to be explained to people, is that a dependency on government does nothing of the sort!  The people dependent on government might have purged the “pain of thinking” from their lives, but they continue to live in agony as their life is no longer at the will of him or her self or even Providence, but of boards, panels and case workers… How long after Health Care gets passed (should we be so unfortunate) before we are rioting in the streets because we have found ourselves in government bondage? 

-rj

What Can Brown Do For You?

It hurts, I know.  For the countless Conservatives and Tea Partiers who helped Scott Brown’s campaign make history, those who donated money from all around these United States (like the $348,000 spent by the Tea Party Express in California for a Scott Brown TV ad), those Republican operatives who boarded the buses here in DC and trekked northward into enemy territory to knock on doors: I cannot offer you and yours much comfort in my words.  Actions speak louder than words, and Conservatives, Libertarians and Tea Partiers seem to be uniting for the first time this year due to Senator Brown’s recent actions. 

It sucks; and nobody wanted to think this was going to be the case because as Glenn Beck said during his closing speech at CPAC, “it’s not enough for Republicans to just suck less than the other side.” 

What led us to this unfortunate quandary was the Senator’s recent vote against the filibuster for Senator Harry Reid’s Jobs Bill.  This will allow the Bill to reach a final vote in the Senate Wednesday.  His actions earned him praise from Maryland Democrat and Representative Steny Hoyer, which is the equivalent of Dallas Cowboys picking up L.T. and having Dan Snyder applaud the move as “great.”  It has also earned him some malicious scorn on his Facebook page and office phone lines; and a bit of criticism here at thelobbyist as well.   

Sen. Brown was probably pacing back and forth with his home state sticking to his shoes before returning to DC for votes this week.  He was probably taking a lot of information in about the problems facing Massachusetts, particularly unemployment which increased from 8.7% to 9.4% (November – December 2009), a considerable increase especially when compared to the rest of the United States.  All the while, Massachusetts’ Unemployment Insurance benefits have dipped $41.9 million into the red. 

I am not endorsing Senator Brown’s actions, nor am I even excusing them.  It is imperative that the Republican Party experience an eureka moment where they do not treat people who are for limited domestic influence by federal government as the fringe.  Can’t there be someone who can moderately explain why limited government involvement on the federal level is a good idea for the entire country?  Isn’t this where Reagan reigned supreme?  At the same time, can’t Tea Partiers, Conservatives and some Libertarians also come to accept that a Republican in Massachusetts will not be an exact replica of a Texas Republican, or a Carolina Republican? 

I am just asking for everyone to hold tight I guess.  I know we made Scott Brown into this last best hope, and I do not think that his voting in favor of this particular jobs bill shows us anything we really should not have already expected: Scott Brown is a Republican.  Not a Tea Partier, not particularly Conservative, and certainly not a libertarian.  Does this make him a RINO?  No… he is still a Republican and can still help us keep the $1 Trillion government slow-roll take-over of healthcare.  That means a lot more to me right now than the $14-40 Billion jobs bill.  Let’s not burn our bridge just yet, and keep our eyes on the prize.

-rj

Brown’s victory another blow to an ever-encroaching state

The Following was originally published and is the sole property of The Daily Caller.

Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts Senate race last night greatly complicates the House-Senate discussions on the health care bill. However, if the House passes the bill and President Obama signs the $871 billion Senate health care overhaul into law it will be the largest expansion of federal health entitlements since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid more than four decades ago. It is expected to extend coverage to more than 30 million previously uninsured Americans.

Such a massive expansion of government’s role in our everyday lives and the adding to our already unsustainable federal entitlement programs, begs the question, do we Americans have a right to health care? It is certainly not in our political and philosophical tradition to argue yes.

Progressives and modern liberals have long argued that in the words of Barack Obama, health care “should be a right for every American.” In FDR’s 1944 State of the Union he declared that health care was on the list of economic provisions that should form a second bill of rights that would serve as a supplement to the first 10 amendments of the Constitution. Many liberals such as Roosevelt, Johnson, and now President Obama have attempted to link the right to health care, like other positive economic “rights,” to the American political tradition: a natural right of some sort, or a civil right necessary to put into effect the natural right to life or the pursuit of happiness.

Health care is certainly not a natural right in the Lockean, and thus, American political tradition. In the view of our founders who followed the philosophical thought of John Locke and his ideas of natural right and the social contract, natural rights exist prior to the formation of government. Therefore, since there is no government in the original state of nature, there cannot be a right to government supplied health care in the state of nature. Then maybe perhaps, guaranteed government health care could be regarded as necessary because of its relation to the natural right to life or the pursuit of happiness. This is problematic as well. Even if the right to life led to a government obligation to provide health care, that right would “logically be restricted to medical actions essential to preserve life, especially emergency measures.” However, doctors and other medical professionals already provide emergency treatment without any “grand declaration of rights.” In terms of the pursuit of happiness, there is no evidence that government guaranteed health care is positively correlated with happiness. For instance, 85% of Americans say they are personally happy, which ranks in at about 15th in the world in a survey of 90 countries. Countries with universal health care such as England, France, and Germany lag considerably behind the U.S. in happiness. The founders named in the Bill of Rights among other documents, the civil rights they thought necessary for the execution of natural rights. There is no way possible to establish a right to health care based on the American political tradition.

The late historian and political scientist Samuel P. Huntington once asked, “Who are We?” as he thought America is in the midst of a national identity crisis. His solution was a return to our first principles. In other words, America needs to be reminded that we still hold our founding principles to be self-evident truths. To insist upon universal government health care for every living person in America, is an attempt to change our Lockean philosophical tradition into a Rousseauian utopia. It is an attempt to supplant our republic’s key political principles. If America accepts a positive government obligation to fund health care it would lead indefinitely to a Leviathan without limits. Last night’s victory in Massachusetts will certainly help the conservative effort in the fight against an ever-encroaching state.

-Sam K. Theodosopoulos is an undergraduate at The George Washington University where he is a member of the College Republicans and the editor of the GW Young Americas Foundation blog.

Reid’s Bill Could be the End of Private Insurance

The following was originally published and is the sole property of FrumForum.com

The left blogosphere is denouncing Obamacare as a triumph for private insurers. But Robert Book of the Heritage Foundation argues that it is much more plausible the operations of the plan will extinguish the private insurance industry.

The Senate bill would force private plans to spend a minimum amount on paying medical claims and tax excessive premiums.? The tax on those premiums however would not count towards the limits.

As Robert Book explains:

It would be very easy for regulators to become to develop a plan ?with a minimum benefit package that is high enough (say, above $8972 in average claims) that makes it literally impossible for health plans to break even, let alone make a profit.

Sam K. Theodosopoulos is the Editor of the GW YAF Blog.

Support Senator Nelson

Let him know you support his opposition to the health care bill as long as it does not include the Senate equivalent of the Stupak amendment. Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) has held strong, and it appears his constituents support his opposition. His contact information can be found here.

For those of you who are not opposed to the public funding of abortion, but still opposed to the Senate health care bill, please let the senator’s office know you oppose the bill because of its high costs and tax increases.

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