HOUSE Republican Leader John Boehner

Mega-Bureaucracy: J.E.C. Chart Shows Speaker Pelosi’s New Bill Will Create Unprecedented Health Care Labyrinth

The Joint Economic Committee (JEC) House Republican staff, which earlier this year created a chart mapping the bureaucratic complexity of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s original health care proposal (H.R. 3200), has combined similar analysis by the House Republican Conference with the earlier chart.  The analysis details new additions to the health care bureaucracy contained in the new version of the Speaker’s bill (H.R. 3962) that were not previously listed.  Let’s just say the Speaker’s vision for government-run health care hasn’t gotten any simpler.

“This is the blueprint for a taxpayer-funded mega-bureaucracy,” said House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH).  “The new chart is an astonishing and unsettling glimpse of the future that awaits American health care, should H.R. 3962 be passed by the House and signed into law.”

The chart, completed at the direction of Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), the committee’s ranking House Republican Member, shows that the Pelosi plan has grown even more complex in the months since it was originally unveiled by congressional Democrats.  The new bill - expected to be brought to a vote in the House as early as Saturday - contains all of the bureaucracy of the original plan, plus a whole lot more, the chart illustrates.  The full chart can be seen here:

“The American people have spoken.  They don’t want their health care replaced by massive government bureaucracy.  This chart shows the Democratic leadership hasn’t listened,” Boehner said.  “Instead of starting over on a common-sense plan to improve our health care system, Speaker Pelosi and her allies have created a bureaucratic beast that will end the American health care system as we know it.  I commend Ranking House Republican Brady and his team for illustrating what’s at stake.”

In addition to establishing the Mother of All Bureaucracies, House Republicans note, the Pelosi health care bill will kill millions of small business jobs at a time when our nation’s unemployment rate has exceeded 10 percent.  It will also cut Medicare, pile massive debt on future generations, increase Americans’ health care costs, and use federal funds to pay for abortion.

Republicans have offered a better solution: a common-sense, step-by-step approach to health care reform, which can be seen in full legislative text at http://healthcare.gop.gov/.

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Rep. Paul Ryan Explains How Pelosi Care Will Destroy Small Business Jobs

Appearing on CNBC’s The Kudlow Report this evening, House Budget Committee Ranking Republican Paul Ryan (R-WI) explained how Speaker Pelosi’s 2,032-page government takeover of health care will saddle small businesses with crushing mandates and punitive new taxes, increase rather than decrease health expenditures over time, and add at least a $1.3 trillion burden on the American middle class over the next ten years.

Rep. Ryan said:

If you use Christina Romer’s multiplier, her economic model - the Obama Administrator’s Economic model, [Speaker Pelosi’s Government Takeover of Health Care]  will cost us 5.5 million jobs.  A surtax on small businesses, bringing the small tax rate to 45 percent in Wisconsin, that top tax rate is 54.27 percent.  If you take a look at the 8 percent payroll tax on all those employers who are going to shift their employees into the public plan, I would say 23 percent payroll tax on those workers and those firms.

Outside actuaries are telling us from 50 to 66 percent of employers are going to dump their people into the exchange.  That means that many employers with a 23 percent payroll tax on their employee, a 45 percent federal top tax rate on small businesses, and we’re going to do this in the middle of a recession when we have 10.2 percent unemployment?  Technically, we’re probably out of this recession, but this is a sure fire way of getting us back into one.

Health care reform should help small businesses and families tackle the problem of rising costs. Small businesses are the engines of job growth in America, creating between 60-80 percent of new jobs in our economy, and health reform that reduces costs for employers will foster job growth. A Washington takeover of health care will achieve neither objective.

House Republicans have a common-sense, responsible solution our nation and small businesses can afford. The GOP alternative recognizes that health care reform should be market-driven, preserve the relationship between doctors and patients, and reduce health care costs for small businesses struggling to keep their doors open.

To read a side-by-side comparison of the House Republican alternative to the Democrats’ $1.3 trillion government takeover of health care, click HERE.  To learn more about the Republican plan, visit HealthCare.GOP.gov.

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States Rise Up Against Speaker Pelosi’s Government Takeover of Health Care

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is proposing a 2,032-page government takeover of health care that will take power away from states, add to the burden of state budgets through a massive unfunded expansion of the Medicaid program, and add at least a $1.3 trillion burden on the American middle class over the next 10 years.   At time when the national unemployment rate is at 10.2 percent, Pelosi Care will saddle small business and entrepreneurs - the engine of job creation in America - with “roughly $730 billion in tax increases,” according to Congress Daily.

States legislatures aren’t taking Pelosi’s proposed mandates sitting down, however.  The National Conference of State Legislatures reported this week that “members of at least 11 state legislatures are using the legislative process to seek to limit, alter or oppose selected federal actions, including single-payer provisions and mandates that would require purchase of insurance.”  In fact, “[a]s of late October, formal resolutions or bills had been filed in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wyoming” and “[u]p to ten additional states were reported in media or association articles to have discussed future action or intentions.” 

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R) also wrote in a letter to the Indiana Congressional Delegation that “now is no time to pile more taxes and spending on a fragile economy, nor to add yet another industry to those taken over by the federal government in the last few months.”

Governor Daniels has it exactly right.  America can’t afford Speaker Pelosi’s costly government takeover of health care.   House Republicans have proposed a sensible solution that recognizes that health care reform must be market-driven, preserve the relationship between doctors and patients, and reduce health care costs for American families.  The GOP bill incorporates health care reform ideas Republicans at all levels of government have been promoting through the GOP State Solutions project launched earlier this year by House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and other means.

Pelosi Care will force states to comply with complex new federal regulations and directives, preventing them from developing health care programs that best fit the needs of their residents, and saddle governors and state legislators with massive unfunded mandates.  Pelosi Care will:

• Mandate an expansion of the Medicaid program: Raises the threshold for coverage to 150% of FPL ($33,000 per year for a family of four) costing states $34 billion over ten years according to the independent, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
• Limit State Innovation: Sec. 2531(a)(4) prohibits states from receiving new incentive payments to adopt liability reforms if they put limits on attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.
• Grant sweeping powers to a new “Health Care Czar” that will impose new regulations on states and state insurance plans.

For example, the federal government will now:

• Regulate all insurance plans, both in and out of the Exchange (Page 127, Section 234);
• Decide which physicians and hospitals participate in the government-run plan and in private plan provider networks (Page 174-178, Section 304(b));
• Determine which states are allowed to operate their own Exchange and to terminate a previously-approved State Exchange at any time (Page 197-202; Section 308); and
• Override state laws regarding covered health benefits (Page 170-171; Section 303(d)).

As the New Hampshire Union Leader noted in an editorial today:

“If Pelosi’s bill becomes law, New Hampshire’s Medicaid costs would explode. Suddenly, state taxpayers would have to cover thousands more families, perhaps more than double the number covered now. And the bill prevents states from ever lowering eligibility requirements. We’d be stuck with those costs forever.”

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) is devoted to working with reform-minded GOP governors and state legislators to fight Washington bureaucracy, inefficiency, and waste and to promote better solutions to the challenges facing the American people.  That’s why Leader Boehner, along with Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Mike Rogers (R-MI), started the State Solutions project earlier this year, to bring ideas from outside Washington, D.C.  inside the Capitol - because Republicans know that real solutions start beyond the beltway. 

The Republicans’ health care alternative was drafted in that spirit.  To read a side-by-side comparison of the House Republican alternative to the Democrats’ $1.3 trillion government takeover of health care, click HERE.  To learn more about the Republican plan, visit HealthCare.GOP.gov.

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Speaker Pelosi’s Government Takeover of Health Care is Causing a Rebellion

Today, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) joined Mark Levin, Jon Voight, and  House Republicans to address the thousands of citizens who trekked from across America to tell Speaker Pelosi and out-of-touch Washington Democrats that the American people don’t want a 2,032 page government takeover of health care.  

To view pictures of the rally, visit Leader Boehner’s Flickr account.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) were instrumental in organizing the event, dubbed a “House Call” – which brought in  “thousands of protesters,” according to Fox News.

Congress Daily quoted Leader Boehner, who said at the rally that:

This bill is the greatest threat to freedom that I have seen in the 19 years I have been here in Washington, taking away your freedom to choose your doctor, the freedom to buy health insurance on your own…Join us in rejecting Pelosi care.

And Politico reported that:

During his remarks to Thursday’s rally, Boehner rallied the crowd by cheering the ‘town hall rebellion’ that took [place in] August against the Democratic health care plan.

‘It was a simple statement by Americans that they love their country, they love our way of life, they love the things that America stands for - prosperity, liberty and freedom - and they want nothing more to hand freedom off to their kids and to their grandkids,’ he said.

Holding a copy of the Constitution, Boehner implored the crowd to ‘join us in saying no to a government takeover of health care.’

‘Join us in rejecting higher taxes and more deficits,’ he continued. ‘Join us in defending our freedom. And join us in defeating Pelosi-care.’

House Republicans aren’t just saying ‘no’ to Speaker Pelosi’s $1.3 trillion (and counting) government takeover of health care - they’ve come up with a better solution that the independent, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said will lower health care premiums by up to 10 percent and reduce the deficit by $68 billion over 10 years - all without imposing tax increases on families and small businesses.   To learn more, visit HealthCare.GOP.gov. 

Read More:

• Los Angeles Times: “House Republicans offer alternative healthcare proposal”
• Washington Examiner: “CBO: Republican health plan would reduce premiums, cut deficit”
• New York Times: “G.O.P. Counters With a Health Plan of Its Own”

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Speaker Pelosi’s Government-Run Health Plan Will Require a Monthly Abortion Premium

Follow @GOPLeader on Twitter for updates.

Health care reform should not be used as an opportunity to use federal funds to pay for elective abortions. Health reform should be an opportunity to protect human life - not end it.

Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi’s 2,032-page government takeover of health care does just that.  On line 17, p. 110, section 222 under “Abortions for which Public Funding is Allowed” the Health and Human Services Secretary is given the authority to determine when abortion is allowed under the government-run plan.  The Speaker’s plan also requires that at least one insurance plan offered in the Exchange covers abortions.

What is even more alarming is that a monthly abortion premium will be charged of all enrollees in the government-run plan.  It’s right there on line 16, page 96, section 213, under “Insurance Rating Rules.”  The premium will be paid into a U.S. Treasury account - and these federal funds will be used to pay for the abortion services.

Section 213 describes the process in which the Health Benefits Commissioner is to assess the monthly premiums that will be used to pay for elective abortions under the government-run plan.  The Commissioner must charge at a minimum $1 per enrollee per month.

A majority of Americans believe that health care plans should not be mandated to provide elective abortion coverage, and a majority of Americans do not believe government health care plans should include abortion coverage. Currently, federal appropriations bills include language known as the Hyde Amendment that prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for elective abortions under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, while another provision, known as the Smith Amendment, prohibits federal funding of abortion under the federal employees’ health benefits plan.

Speaker Pelosi’s 2,032-page health care monstrosity is an affront to the American people and drastically moves away from current policy.  The American people deserve more from their government than being forced to pay for abortion.

House Republicans are offering a common-sense, responsible solution that would reduce health care costs and expand access while protecting the dignity of all human life. The Republican plan, available at HealthCare.GOP.gov, would codify the Hyde Amendment and prohibit all authorized and appropriated federal funds from being used to pay for abortion. And under the Republican plan, any health plan that includes abortion coverage may not receive federal funds.

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It’s Still The Economy: Americans Reject Democrats’ Tax and Spend Agenda

Yesterday the American people delivered the Democrats a message: stop all taxing us to death, spending us into oblivion, and mortgaging our kids and grandkids futures.  And start answering this question: “where are the jobs?”

In Virginia, “Fully 85 percent said they are worried about the direction of the nation’s economy,” according to a Fox News exit poll.  And in New Jersey, the number one issue for voters was “economy/jobs.”   CNN senior political analyst Gloria Borger said last night that the voters sent a message to Democrats: “This is a signal to this White House they have some problems right now - particularly on the economy and on the deficit,” she said.

Despite spending $1 trillion on a “stimulus” program, promising that it would “create or save 4 million jobs” and keep unemployment below eight percent, unemployment continues to creep up - it’s now at nearly 10 percent nationally - and may rise yet again when the October unemployment numbers are released on Friday.

The “stimulus” is emblematic of out-of-touch Washington Democrats’ belief that a lot of government spending can cure any ill.  

But over at Reason Magazine, economist Veronique de Rugy stated that: “funds are being distributed randomly, as quickly as possible, among the states.  That in turn suggests something else: Even the federal government doesn’t believe the myth that government spending can actually create jobs.” 

The Associated Press delivered the proof this morning, when they reported that a salary raises have counted towards “jobs saved”:

About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren’t saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren’t saved.

It’s not just the “stimulus” that’s turning the American people off.  It’s the dramatic takeoff in total government spending since the Democrats took over Washington.  The Buckeye Institute notes that:

Between 1983 and 1988, growth in the private sector accelerated to 5.1% per year as the government expenditure wedge fell 3.3 points back down to 45.7%…The [”stimulus”] will increase the government expenditure wedge from 49.16% to 52.41% for an overall 3.25% increase.  This increase will reduce the growth in real net business output by 2.5%, which translates to a reduction of 1.7 million jobs nationally.

Read the rest of this entry »

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No More Excuses for Delay on Afghanistan

Yesterday, “Afghanistan’s election commission declared incumbent Hamid Karzai the winner of the country’s presidential contest and canceled a second round of voting, ending a political drama that had thrown the country into two months of turmoil,” the Wall Street Journal reported this morning.

In March 2009, President Obama outlined a new counterinsurgency strategy to secure Afghanistan - which he has called the central front in the war on terror - against a radical terrorist threat.  But after the Washington Post reported two months ago that General Stanley McChrystal “needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict ‘will likely result in failure,’” - the Administration has used virtually every excuse under the sun to delay approving Gen. McChrystal’s request. 

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) commented yesterday:

Now that it is clear that President Karzai will remain in office, the White House has no further pretext for delaying the decision on giving General McChrystal the resources he needs to achieve our goals in Afghanistan. Delaying the decision puts our men and women fighting there in greater danger every single day… It’s time for the Obama Administration to give our commander on the ground the resources he needs to protect our troops and achieve the goals the President has said he supports.

Many Democrats agree, including House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO), who stated yesterday, “I continue to believe that Gen. McChrystal’s counterinsurgency plan is the right approach, including his call to build capability at the local level.”

But the Administration may still be weeks away from deciding.  NBC News Correspondent Chuck Todd reported last night on NBC’s Nightly News that “with the runoff now off…the President doesn’t have a reason for delaying a decision on that Afghanistan strategy, but don’t expect it in the next week.  I’m told that he wants another meeting from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  He would like more military options, and a decision…might not come until Thanksgiving.”

The Wall Street Journal summarized the stakes in Afghanistan nicely in an editorial this morning:

The strategic reality is that we’re fighting in Afghanistan in our own national security interest-to defeat al Qaeda and deny it a safe haven either on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border or once again inside Afghanistan. Those Taliban who would protect al Qaeda must also be defeated.

It’s time to do what is right and approve Gen. McChrystal’s request for more resources to implement the President’s March 2009 strategy.  No More Excuses.

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House GOP Launches New Website to Expose Truth About Speaker Pelosi’s Health Care Bill

As House Republicans continue to battle Speaker Pelosi’s $1.3 trillion government takeover of health care, they’re using a new tool - Amplify.com - to engage the American people in a section-by-section dialogue scrutinizing all 1,990 pages of PelosiCare.  Republicans hope the new site - HealthCareTruth.Amplify.com - will provide the American people with an unfiltered online clearinghouse for emerging information about the Pelosi bill as Democrats attempt to bring the massive legislation to a vote.

The idea is simple.  As House Republicans pore through the Speaker’s health care monstrosity and uncover harmful provisions not being disclosed to the American people by the majority, Amplify allows House Republicans to clip specific portions and explain what they mean in plain English.

The best part is that this process isn’t a one-way street.  When visitors arrive at healthcaretruth.amplify.com they are able to easily leave their own comments on any portion, or share the content using Twitter, Facebook, Digg and other popular social tools.  The site, created by Reps. Bob Latta (R-OH), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), and John Boehner (R-OH), is up and operating now.

This is hardly the first time this year that House Republicans have pressed for a more transparent and accountable Congress.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Congressional Republicans have been fighting for a series of reforms in Congress to “let the sun shine in” on the legislative process.  These reforms include a requirement that all bills be posted online for at least 72 hours before they are brought to a vote, and a requirement that committees post bills and amendments online within 24 hours after they are passed at the committee level, to prevent the majority from adding “phantom amendments” to bills in secret without a vote, as recently occurred with the health care bill in the Senate.  House Republicans have also called for the Speaker to open secretive health care negotiations to the public and to put cameras in the powerful Rules Committee - one of the few Congressional panels that still does its work behind closed doors.  These reforms are detailed at www.gopleader.gov/readthebill.

House Republicans hope the American people will engage their Representatives through Amplify and other new media tools to usher in a new era of unprecedented transparency and openness in the legislative process.  After all, Members of Congress work for the American people - not the other way around.

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Obama Treasury Secretary Grilled About Bogus Job Creation Claims

In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner repeated the Obama Administrations’ debunked claim that the “stimulus” has “saved or created 640,000 jobs” - despite the fact that unemployment is nearing 10 percent, and “underemployment” is already at 17 percent.

Meet the Press moderator David Gregory challenged Secretary Geithner’s assertion that the “stimulus” is working, citing a memo from Dr. Alan Meltzer to House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who wrote that “[t]here is no greater recognition of the failure of the stimulus program to create jobs than the efforts to mislead the public into believing the program had saved thousands, or millions, of jobs.”

The transcript follows:

GREGORY: Let’s talk about claims of success about jobs.  The White House says 640,000 jobs have been created or saved by the $800 billion stimulus.  There are Republicans who say the number is bogus, that it’s just P.R.

John Boehner, Leader of the Republicans in the House, as you well know, circulated a quote from an economist at Carnegie Mellon University, and I’ll put it up on the screen and you can look at it. “One can search economic textbooks forever without finding a concept called `jobs saved.’ It doesn’t exist for good reason: how can anyone know that his or her job has been saved?”

You’ve got a lot of experience in the economy.  Is this P.R. or fact?

GEITHNER: This is fact.

Millions of Americans would beg to differ.  The Washington Examiner noted in an editorial today:

Even if we take at face value the White House claim that it created or saved all these jobs with approximately $150 billion of the economic stimulus money, a little simple math shows the taxpayers aren’t getting any bargains here: $150 billion divided by 650,000 jobs equals $230,000 per job saved or created.

Moreover, the Democrats’ $1 trillion “stimulus”  was doomed from the start because it was based on the flawed assumption that one can grow the economy by government borrowing, new taxes, and outlandish spending.  As Caroline Baum noted in Bloomberg News last week: “[t]he government has no money of its own to spend; only what it borrows or confiscates from us via taxation…That’s why ‘jobs created or saved’ is such pure fiction.  It ignores what’s unseen, as our old friend Frederic Bastiat explained so eloquently 160 years ago in an essay.”

The “stimulus” hasn’t created the jobs the President promised because it relies on big-government spending instead of helping small businesses, which are the foundation of job creation in America.  House Republicans offered a plan to let small businesses and families keep more of what they earn, but Democrats ignored it, took a go-it-alone approach, and passed their trillion-dollar big government plan anyway.   And it’s the American middle class that is paying the price.

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A Common-Sense Alternative to a Government Takeover of Health Care

Delivering the weekly Republican address, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) outlined Republicans’ plan to make health care more accessible and affordable for American families at a price our nation can afford.

Leader Boehner’s address highlights the differences between Republicans’ smart, fiscally responsible reforms and Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) 1,990-page government takeover of health care.  More on Republicans’ common-sense health care solutions is available at http://healthcare.gop.gov.An excerpt of the speech follows:

We first released our health care plan in June, and over the last six months, we have introduced at least eight bills that, taken together, would implement this blueprint.  You can go right now to healthcare.gop.gov and get all the details, but for now, I just want to share with you four ideas Republicans have proposed:

Number one: let families and businesses buy health insurance across state lines;

Number two: allow individuals, small businesses, and trade associations to pool together and acquire health insurance at lower prices, the same way large corporations and labor unions do today;

Number three: give states the tools to create their own innovative reforms that lower health care costs; and

Number four: end junk lawsuits that contribute to higher health care costs by increasing the number of tests and procedures that physicians sometimes order not because they think it’s good medicine, but because they are afraid of being sued.

These are four smart, fiscally-responsible reforms that we can implement today to lower costs and expand access at a price our nation can afford.  Again, you can learn more about these and all the health care initiatives Republicans have supported by visiting healthcare.gop.gov.

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