Medicare

There is a fight going on in the nation's capital. Congress and the White House are fighting over whether or not to raise the national debt ceiling. It appears to be yet another partisan argument, but the outcomes could consist of Social Security and other payments could be defaulted on if the debt ceiling isn't elevated. With a rise, the government will be able to take out even more personel loans. 

Congress to give up Fourth of July break to work on debt issue 

The national debt ceiling, or the credit limit of the U.S. federal government, is one of the biggest issues being considered right now. There is no way for the government to exceed $14.3 trillion right now. That number was reached in May, as reported by Reuters. Yet the government has been making expenses on it through last-minute measures. 

Increasing the debt limit is something the Congressional Republicans don't want to do. They want the fiscal policies to change first. To be able to keep working on the debt ceiling, the traditional week-long recess after the Fourth of July will not be taken by the Senate, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid Leader told CBS. Before August 4, it has to be elevated. That is the deadline. 

Warnings issued against default 

There have been warnings about what will take place without the debt ceiling being elevated although there's a month to get an agreement put in place still. Standard & Poor's has cautioned the maturing U.S. Treasury bonds would get a "D" rating if the bonds aren't paid by August 4 on top of the issues the global financial market would face. About $30 billion in interest payments will be due through Treasury bond sales for the U.S. Sheila Bair is a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman. She said surely it is a "dangerous game" Congress is playing, according to NASDAQ.

Potential fallout in suit of default 

The American federal government is presently borrowing 40 cents of every dollar it spends, and in August of 2011 alone, the federal government is slated to spend $134 billion more than it will take in, according to USA Today. The government may not be able to make all of its expenses. It could miss up to 44 percent of them. Probably the most vulnerable citizens could possibly be hit hard very soon with the expenses even though it seems like a faraway issue to a few. Social Security expenses to retirees, disability benefits, Medicare and Medicaid benefits and other forms of social aid such as welfare and food stamps may go unfunded. Federal employees may also be furloughed and contractors, including defense contractors, may go unpaid or have their contracts cancelled. 

On August 3, the $23 billion payment for SSDI, or SSDI, and Social Security will not be paid. Social Security represents 50 percent or more of all income for 53 percent of all couples aged 65 or older and 73 percent of all individuals over the age of 65.

Articles cited 

Reuters 

reuters.com/article/2011/06/30/us-usa-debt-sandp-idUSTRE75S5GV20110630 

CBS News 

cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20075723-503544.html?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.5 

NASDAQ 

nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201106301552dowjonesdjonline000613&title=fdics-bairwarns-against-getting-too-close-to-debt-ceiling-deadline 

USA Today 

usatoday.com/money/perfi/retirement/2011-06-28-debt-limit-impasse-Congress-Obama-Social-Security_n.htm 

Social Security Administration 

ssa.gov/pressoffice/basicfact.htm

Back in the 1990's there was a young political Jedi Knight, battling for conservative principles against the entrenched forces of the Washington establishment. Brimming with ideas, never a loss for energy, he toppled 40 years of Democrat dominance in 1994.

That man was Newt Gingrich. 

Fast forward 17 years. Newt is old. The welfare state is burgeoning and threatens something far worse than it did a generation ago--it threatens national insolvency.  And some young courageous Republicans challenge the conventional wisdom and suggest a new direction.

And this year's Gingrich decides to cut him off at the knees.  

 Gingrich also distanced himself from the plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to turn Medicare into a voucher system: "I think that that is too big a jump." He called the plan "right-wing social engineering," which he considers not "any more desirable than left-wing social engineering."

I cannot count how many ways this is an utter unmitigated disaster for Gingrich.  For one thing, some might accuse him of inventing "right wing social engineering" as a result of the multitude of policy proposals he's advanced since the 1980's. (indeed, Gingrich himself once was a fierce advocate of turning bureaucratic programs into vouchers)  Running against yourself is rarely a very effective strategy. 

This is particularly true when after you take a hacksaw to a fellow Republican the press finds out you previously endorsed the same plan. 

“But would you have voted for Ryan’s plan?” I pressed.

“Sure,” Gingrich replied

Can we get John Kerry back from Pakistan to enter the GOP race? 

Now I'm not into the delegate and endorsement hunt but I hardly see how trashing a policy agenda item virtually the entire Republican House caucus  voted for is going to do Gingrich any good building a network in primary states.  But I'm sure Steve Israel and the DCCC went out for mimosas after hearing this sort of friendly fire against our tenuous House majority.  See the DKos reaction. 11th Commandment; much?  

It also appears that spending all his time on self-promotion has blinded Gingrich to the rather obvious fact that the 2012 GOP is far more libertarian and frugal than the 2008 version, and offers little traction for those running as a "big government conservative". Which appears to be Gingrich's strategy--after all he's also full bore for ethanol subsidies and fighting global warming.  Mike Huckabee was no fool and realized he was a nonstarter going down this path. Not Newt.

Gingrich fancies himself a historian. Back in the 1980's Gingrich was often  linked to Jack Kemp, another  visionary conservative. Kemp made a ill-fated run for the White House in 1988. Kemp, too, ran as the pro-entitlement candidate in the race.  He was a forgotten man in the Bush v. Dole battle royale, hardly making a ripple.  Why is running as the pro-spending candidate going to work better in an era of trillion dollar deficits than it did when a mere $200 Billion of red ink caused shock?

Once Newt Gingrich had ideas. And energy. And fought alongside economic conservatives. But now Newt wants to be President and he has polls and consultants.  Evidently bashing mosques polls well and trying to fix the entitlement state, not as well. Even if its a matter of national economic survival. If it's going to be a battle of who can offer controversial sound bites on calling the President vaguely foreign, well, let's just give the nomination to Donald Trump.  

The more I think about it, Paul Ryan is today's Jedi Knight of conservatism--a Luke Skywalker willing to challenge the Debt Star.  Once Gingrich was the same sort of Jedi Knight; but much like Anakin Skywalker, he has succumbed to the Dark Side in his lust for power.

Newt is supposedly greatly moved by the legacy of Winston Churchill  . A question then, for Mr. Gingrich.  Don't you think it was just as politically expedient for Neville Chamberlain to reject "right wing foreign policy" and try and manage the rise of the Nazis as it is to attack leaders trying to stop our appeasement of deficit spending?  Stop invoking Churchill's name and start applying his courage.

First and foremost has got to be the repeal of ‘Obamacare’. All over the nation there are stories of people’s insurance rates going through the roof, as insurance companies are forced to raise their premiums in the face of huge new regulatory demands in the health care legislation.

Worse still, one of the largest groups to which Obama sold his bill of goods was our seniors. After he insisted that seniors would get to keep their Medicare and their own doctors, Barry Hussein then immediately strips five billion dollars away from Medicare to offset the cost of forcing forty million people into a one-size-fits-all mandatory government health care system whether they like it or not… and most unequivocally don’t.

Then the other shoe fell and, just as predicted by conservatives all over the country, doctors began withdrawing from Medicare, telling their elderly patients that they could no longer treat them. This was never popular legislation to start with, other than with a few Marxist clones with a self-hatred complex and a need for someone to direct their lives for them.

When the nation saw the abyss into which the Obama administration and the Congressional Marxists were pushing the nation, the nation pushed back… and pushed. The end result was the Republican landslide we just experienced. There’s an immense task ahead for us, if we are to salvage the country and put it back on course.

The hard core elitist Republicans, you know them. They’re the ones who were not in the least responsible for the astounding success of the American Patriot movement, but who are constantly waiting in the wings to step in and resume business as usual. They are going to obstruct Patriots at every turn. Just as we’ve told the RINOs… your days are limited. Republicans need to remember who it is they work for and why they are there to start with.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

Barack Hussein and the Marxist Clown College, including the functionally impaired minions lurking in the (former) White House, dreaming their dreams of Marxian Utopia. Spawned, nurtured and polished by radical socialist academics, who haven’t the first clue as to how the country they are presuming to dictate to really works.

To a man, or for you PC hangups, to a person, they know nothing past their feverish dreams of Utopian perfection, blithely ignoring the perspective history has taught us about every single attempt at collective socialism… or if it floats your boat, Keynesian economics.

Ancient Rome, a massive behemoth which, when the trappings of empire were stripped away, never could self-sustain. Its people addicted to government grain handouts, farmers taxed by the output of their production leaving little incentive to grow more food, extravagant spectaculars to keep the ordinary Roman’s mind off his poverty, a government rife with corruption and intrigue.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. This scenario of ancient Rome could be Washington. It certainly has all the trappings of a decadent empire.

We’re watching the fruits of the almost universally despised Obamacare begin to ripen as it’s shaping up to be a disaster on every level… and there’s crap buried throughout this monstrous tome which could well break the bank by itself, let alone what we can see at this point.

One of the most glaring of the many outrageous lies perpetrated by Barack Hussein is that our seniors would be able to keep their Medicare and their own doctors. Guess what? Half a trillion dollars has been stripped away from Medicare and the Obama administration is trying to force 30 million people into a one-size-fits-all medical system, doomed to failure from its inception.

Those ‘death panels’ that the liberal media had such fun with Sarah Palin over? Guess what? They’re real… just ask Paul Krugman. He finally came out and said the death panels will be working overtime to rid us of those pesky seniors and oh, by the way, we need a VAT tax to help fund the government.

So we see that Obama is stripping medical coverage and benefits from seniors across this country. More frightening still are the hundreds of doctors whose practices can no longer afford to take Medicare patients because their payment schedules have been decimated by the DeMarxists’ depredations.

Dr Doom… and the cult of death. Only one of several for our good Doctor. Tell our Conservative Senators and Representatives that we don’t want Obama care fixed. We want it repealed, to remain forever on the manure pile of history.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

Some years ago, there was a television ad for a well-known brand of Dutch beer that claimed it “reached parts other beers cannot reach”. It could be a good election slogan for the Democrats.

Historically, the party has appealed to the dead voter, with great numbers of the deceased temporarily slipping out of the sarcophagus to visit the polling place. One would think that they would have had enough of politics while in the mortal world. Perhaps they can see a kindred spirit in the Democrats, the difference being that they refuse to lie down despite being dead in the water.

In gratitude for this electoral service, the government has given them $18 million of stimulus money, with 72,000 deceased each receiving $250. A further $4.3 million went to 17,000 prison inmates.

Mistakes happen. As someone I know is likely to say, “That’s why a pencil has an eraser on the other end”. Two things are worrying about this issue, though. The first is the apparent lack of checks carried out before parting with large amounts of taxpayers’ money. A recent CBS ’60 Minutes’ featured an article on a Medicare scam which has cost the taxpayer $60 billion… non-existent pharmacies billing Medicare for prescription drugs.

We all know that a vast percentage of stimulus money has been going to the wrong places when, if it had to be implemented at all, it should have been used in the form of tax breaks to support new and existing businesses and industries which are the mainstay of the American economy.

The other point of concern is that the government does not seem to know who is alive and who is dead, who is free and who is incarcerated… or even who has genuine citizenship documents and who does not. If the news reports are correct, it took the Social Security Department at least three years to notice something a little ‘hinky’ in Nicky Diaz’s credentials.

The US should have the most sophisticated government computer systems in the world. It certainly has a huge, ever-growing percentage of its population working for government. These two factors combined should make serious errors more rare, rather than the regular occurrence they seem to be.

I hope the security agencies’ due diligence is a little more advanced. It’s bad enough having them mess with people’s tax money, even worse to risk the security of the country.

(Editor Dee is in for Skip today)

You could tell just as soon as his props started filing out, most likely low-level White House staffers in the obligatory white lab coats left over from the rose garden hoopla a while ago. You could tell by the overbearing look of arrogance on his face. You could tell from the first sentence out of his mouth that there wouldn’t be a word of truth or forthrightness coming out of him.

Rush, Hannity and Levin said much the same thing, that there was not one bit of truth, fact or substance in anything he said. This guy is not really a convincing liar, you’d have to have seriously bought into the whole Obama persona thing to swallow it.

Flashback: A Staffer Hands Out The Props.

In his hubris he demanded an up or down vote on the bill within weeks, indicating use of the reconciliation process for passage without calling it that. Facing uniform opposition from the GOP and not a few Democrats, Obama, like Nancy Pelosi on ABC Sunday, called for loyal Democrats to fall on their swords while acknowledging that the legislation wasn’t very popular, by saying that he ‘didn’t know where it was going politically’. Master of understatement! America overwhelmingly despises this bill and everything to do with it.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that the legislation was vastly unpopular because the American people knew what the bill stood for and didn’t want it. He further said it represented a half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts and a half a trillion dollars in tax increases. He said that in the first ten years it would create two point five trillion dollars in unfunded debt through new spending. He also made the point that the opposition to the bill was not between the Republicans and the Democrats, it was between the Democrats and the American people. He followed by saying that the price would be paid in November because the Democrats would not have this issue behind them, they would have it in front of them.

The desperation of the Obama administration is palpable. What they and most everyone else has ignored is that with every likelihood of a Republican takeover of Congress in 2010, Obama just as likely to be a one term President, with the Democrats setting the precedent for major legislation through reconciliation, anything they do pass could be just as easily dismantled.

Let’s hope it doesn’t get that far. Mark Levin has called for all his listeners to saturate Congress with their calls, faxes and emails. Let me add my urging to that. Everyone who reads this please get active. It’s our country, it’s your and your children’s freedoms. It’s the future of the free world.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

To paraphrase Sarah Palin, “How’s that hopey changey thing workin’ out for ya?” Mr ‘No family making less than 250,000.00 dollars will see a tax increase’.. ad nauseum. Now Mr Presidential Chameleon has come up with another mind-torturing shape change. Our wonderful leader has discovered that he is ‘AGNOSTIC’ to tax increases for the “middle class”, whatever his definition of that may be this week.

Our nouveau deficit hawk is fresh from his most recent bi-partisan entrapment attempt, complaining that the Republicans didn’t want to come out and play. Obama was seeking political cover for his latest money pig-out, asking for EIGHTY BILLION dollars for ‘jobs’. If you’re a Democrat you know you’re in trouble when one of your own statist media organs (AP) looks at your ‘jobs’ bill and says it won’t create many jobs.

Knowing that the Democrats were only too happy to set them up as being the party of ‘NO’, the Republicans neatly sidestepped the ploy. The ‘tax’ cut provisions of the bill were something that would only appeal to someone who had never worked in the private sector, run a company or had to make a payroll. Therein lies the rub for Obama’s administration. There simply is no one to tell them ‘heck no’, it just doesn’t work like that. Few, if any, people in the White House have ever held a private sector job and have little understanding of the economic engines that actually drive job growth.

Harry Reid Speaks To The Media After Scrapping The Bipartisan Jobs Bill

Other provisions in the bill are more transportation make-work union paybacks, and possibly the only part of the proposed legislation that may have validity, further extensions of unemployment benefits for those who have been unable to find work. With a stagnant economy there are approximately six job seekers for every job out in the private sector. The only job growth has been in the public (government) sector which has a direct negative effect on private sector job growth.

Along with the tax increases, the administration is seeking cuts in spending for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare… sure to be an extremely unpopular issue with the country’s seniors. A huge voting block that up to this point had been reliably Democrat.

Of course, a REALLY courageous leader and his party could find much of that money by removing many of the multi-layered and redundant agencies and bureaucracies which glut our government, and by reducing the truly insane regulatory burden being placed on American business. Naturally, that would probably make too much sense. As would CUTTING TAXES. It’s easy, Obama. You want to create jobs? LOTS of jobs? CUT TAXES.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

Harry Truman was full of good quotes. Two of my favorite: “If you want a friend in Washington get a dog” and “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) can likely sympathize with Truman – because he’s givin’ Democrats hell and it isn’t making him many friends.

He’s recently charted a course, determined to change the image of the GOP from “an opposition party to being the alternative party.” As he recently told the New York Times,

“[T]he problem in the minority [is that] you sometimes revert into a posture where ‘I don’t have to do anything controversial, I just can be against that and win by default.’ I’m not interested in winning by default.”

Sometimes the truth is tough to swallow. Unlike many in Washington, Rep. Ryan backs up his words with action. His sweeping Roadmap for America’s Future is a comprehensive reform package that stands in sharp contrast to the crushing budget President Obama unveiled last week. Although, as he never forgets to remind us, he didn’t get us completely into this mess, his budget didn’t exactly provide a plan to get out of it.

The problem is deep and multi-faceted, a combination of bloated entitlements, an aging population, and an ever-growing bureaucracy. There’s the iceberg and we’re headed right for it. Obama’s budget does nothing to turn the steering wheel, instead choosing to slam on the accelerator. Under the president’s plan spending will top $4 trillion in the upcoming year, the nation’s debt will double in five years, and triple in ten. In just the 10th year of Obama’s budget the federal government will be spending nearly $1 trillion a year on interest alone. In other words…we’re sunk.

Ryan’s plan is comprehensive, tackling everything from health care reform, the tax code, Medicare, and Social Security. I don’t dare to it injustice by attempting to explain it in its entirety, but here are some key points of the Roadmap:

• Freeze all discretionary spending except national defense and veteran’s health care for five years
• Simplify the income tax code by creating a two-tiered flat tax – 10% for incomes up to $100,000 and 25% on higher incomes
• Replace corporate income taxes, currently the world’s second highest, with a corporate consumption tax of 8.5% – about half the tax burden other nations place on average
• Overhaul Medicare to give seniors premium support through vouchers for private insurance in order to draw more people into the market and eliminate hidden subsidies
• Index the retirement age for Social Security to today’s lengthened life-expectancy
• Make the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 permanent

After implementing these changes you are left with a streamlined federal government, a solution to the economic crisis, and all without the burden of huge tax increases. But the Roadmap for America’s Future is greater than the sum of its parts. It represents a wholesale change in philosophy for a government growing more unwieldy by the day. As captured by the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson,

“[I]t represents an alternative political philosophy. . . For decades, culminating in the Obama health reform proposal, Democrats have attempted to build a political constituency for the welfare state by expanding its provisions to larger and larger portions of the middle class. Ryan proposes a federal system that focuses on helping the poor, while encouraging the middle class to take more personal responsibility in a dynamic economy. It is the appeal of security vs. the appeal of independence and enterprise.

The results of this alternative philosophy are astounding. The CBO, who analyzed the Roadmap, said

“The lower budget deficits under your proposal would result in much less federal debt than under the alternative fiscal scenario and thereby a much more favorable macro-economic outlook. . . The Roadmap would put the federal budget on a sustainable path, generating an annual budget surplus of about 5 percent of GDP by 2080.”

Words may not do justice. To understand the plan’s real impact, simply take a glimpse into the future comparing the proposed Democratic budgets and the Republican alternative:

This is our generation’s future we’re talking about. This is our chance to actually  receive the benefits of programs such as Medicare and Social Security that we are paying in to. This is the opportunity to avert a fiscal course in which we face tax increases simply so that our government can make interest payments on its debt. Moreover, we will play an important role in this fight because it is shaping up to be a generational struggle. Seniors, even conservative seniors, will view this as a threat to Medicare and Social Security. But those programs, which are already facing a $500 billion cut in the Democratic health bill, are insolvent as they currently stand. We have no hope of seeing benefits if the status quo remains. So we must make our voices heard on the issue. After all, the plan is entitled Roadmap for America’s Future, and we, College Republicans, are America’s future.

- Brandon Greife, Political Director of the College Republican National Committee

Andrea Mitchell was beside herself that the Republican leadership should actually insist on the Senate following its own rules, forcing the reading of EVERY word of the almost EIGHT HUNDRED page Sanders amendment. It’s certainly about time that the Republicans found some testicular fortitude!!

Senator Bernie Sanders, (I ?) VT, introduced Senate Amendment 2837, which would replace the bulk of the Senate bill’s language with provisions establishing a single-payer Medicare-for-all program, virtually identical to the DISASTROUSLY FAILED, BANKRUPT United Kingdom National Health Service.

Bernie Sanders

The Democrats and the lame stream media are sniveling all over themselves, calling the Republicans “obstructionist” and “mean” for insisting on the Senate following its own rules for once. Having every word read in public, AS THEY SHOULD BE, is the Democrats’ worst nightmare. You will recall that no one, but no one, has read either the amendment or the bill itself, as the whole process thus far has been behind closed doors, the public and especially the Republicans being shut out of the process. This is NOT democracy. It’s STALINIST POLITBURO CENTRAL PLANNING in action.

All this points out is that our so-called main stream press has completely abrogated its responsibility to the American people and has sold itself out to its DeMarxist masters. How does it feel to be the public relations arm of the Maoists, Andrea? Note: Bernie Sanders is on the floor of the Senate trying to withdraw his amendment as I’m writing this.

Nothing can be more indicative of the effectiveness of what the Republicans are doing than the amount of complaining coming from the left and the left’s lapdog press. All the while this is going on, the Anointed One is making loud public pronouncements about DISASTER and CATASTROPHE if his attempted SOCIALIST COUP doesn’t pass. Sounds very reminiscent of last January, when Barry Hussein was shouting from the rooftops that the sky was falling, in order to pass his 780+ billion dollar pork budget. It’s always a crisis with this guy, as he tries to panic the American people into following his pied piper.

We’ve been down this road before! The DeMarxists seem bound to rush to their own destruction, but can’t seem to see the handwriting on the wall. Such is the price of being blind ideologues. Point of fact, Nancy Pelosi actually sounds delusional, dangerously delusional.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

Senator John McCain stated last week that he had no idea what was in the back-room deal sent to the Congressional Budget Office for evaluation by Harry Reid. Dick Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate, told Senator McCain he didn’t either. That ‘deal’ fell by the wayside, as Senator Joe Lieberman flatly stated he would join the Republicans in opposing any bill that would add 55-60 year old Americans to the Medicare rolls, thereby destroying a program already on life support.

In what has to be one of the most glaring exhibitions of legislative desperation in living memory, Dingy Harry promised to ‘drop’ the public option in order to turn Lieberman on the issue. This has been the signatory feature of the bill, which he stated only last weekend HAD to be in the legislation, and which the extreme left has insisted upon.

This, folks, is just like those old used-car commercials we used to see on Saturday nights on TV. With each ad getting more and more spectacular, all the while the consumer ends up with the same old clunker. Only THAT clunker didn’t threaten to break the bank and cost TWO POINT FOUR TRILLION, to as much in some estimates as SEVEN TRILLION DOLLARS.

So while Dingy Harry plays his version of let’s make a deal, and Barry Hussein is saying the world is on the precipice if we don’t get passage on a bill that NO ONE HAS READ, there’s a vast amount of arm twisting going on. It’s like this. This is for all the bananas…there are four Senators who are pivotal on this bill that Dingy Harry has to have. Thousands of patriots have gathered in the Capitol mall to rally, and once again go into the capitol office buildings and confront our Senators with the FACTS. Over 60% of Americans are dead set against this health care legislation…America doesn’t want mandatory heath care – period! America doesn’t want government in control of their lives, their health care or any thing else.

Four Senators you need to concentrate on. Joe Lieberman, (I) Conn. His constituents need to let him know that they will vote him out of office if he votes yes on this bill. Ditto Ben Nelson, (D) Neb., Jim Webb (D) VA., and of course Olympia Snowe, (R) Maine. Your letters, telegrams, emails, phone calls and for those of you in range of the beltway visits to the Senate offices, all carry weight. Don’t kid yourselves that although they pretend to be bullet proof these people aren’t feeling the EXTREME displeasure of the American people. Come next November, there will be a SEA CHANGE in American politics of historic proportions. KEEP IT UP!! LET THEM KNOW HOW YOU FEEL!!

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009