Great News: CBO Reconsiders Obamacare, Decides Country Is Headed for Collapse Under President Subprime McDowngrade

Pity they couldn't have told the American people before the passage of the Patient Destruction Act.

CBO Report: Spending Is Driving Debt to “Unsupportable” Level

...CBO’s “alternative” projections ... make clear once again that too much spending—not too little tax revenue—is the biggest threat to the country’s fiscal and economic health. Among other things, the alternative figures show that:

Federal spending will consume record levels of resources as a share of the economy, reaching nearly one-quarter of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022.

Without tax increases, tax revenue would still reach its historical average, but uncontrolled spending would outpace revenue. This would push federal debt to levels that the CBO calls “unsupportable.”

CBO’s conventional baseline (defined by statute) projects spending, tax revenue, and deficits assuming current law—including scheduled changes in law. This includes an expiration of the “doc fix,” which has prevented a plunge in Medicare physician reimbursements every year since 2003, and the expiration of the Bush-era tax policies, as well as a number of other tax provisions. These would result in a tax increase of about $4 trillion over the next 10 years. These assumptions represent what CBO calls “a significant departure from recent policies.” That is, no one expects these changes to happen...

Oh, and as for Obamacare itself -- guess what?

CBO: New 10-year projected cost of ObamaCare is … $1.76 trillion

...The original 10-year price tag, the one that made it “safe” (but not really safe) for Democrats to drop this fiscal atomic bomb, was $940 billion. What happened, you ask? Well, see for yourself:

Remember, they gamed this thing so that it wouldn’t take effect until 2014, which means that the cost of the first four years of implementation was essentially zero. That $940 billion figure really represented just six years of cost, not 10, but it was politically invaluable to Democratic messaging in letting them tout the bill as costing less than a trillion dollars. Now that we’re nearing 2014 and the 10-year window of cost projections has slid forward, you can see what this leviathan boondoggle really costs: $1.76 trillion, soon to top $2 trillion when the window slides forward another year in 2013 and the new projection reaches into 2023.

But wait. More good news: "Four million Americans can expect to lose their employer-provided healthcare by 2016, according to the revised figures, far more than the 1 million people estimated last year..."

Thanks to the economy, we’re going to end up with a lot fewer people getting health insurance through the workplace than previously estimated and a lot more people getting it through Medicaid, which, as Klein notes, inches us a little closer to that government takeover of health care that the left insists is a conservative myth...

This represents another all-too-predictable failure by the Utopian Statists -- also known as Democrats -- who are bent on dominating our lives.

Ephemeral dreams of an ideal society

Can Americans trust the claims of temporary politicians who promise that their grand dreams and intricate plans will solve humanity's most vexing issues?

Consider their track record...

Social Security

THEN: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 14 August 1935, Washington, D.C.:

Today, a hope of many years' standing is in large part fulfilled. The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, had tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what will be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last...

...This social security measure gives at least some protection to 50 millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions, and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health...

...It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness...

NOW: Social Security Is Failing Even Faster Than We Thought:

In last year's Trustees Report, the Social Security Administration warned that the program's trust fund was likely to run out of money in 2036, leading to deep cuts in benefits. If that weren't bad enough for anyone expecting to be alive then, a more recent projection from the Congressional Budget Office paints a much worse picture.

This year's CBO report forecasts that by the end of this decade, the combined Social Security Old Age and Disability Trust Funds will be about $800 billion smaller than last year's SSA projections. That's a very substantial drop -- and a sign that this year's Trustees Report will likely bring another downward revision to the year it expects those Trust Funds to dry up and benefits to be cut.

Medicare

THEN: President Lyndon Baines Johnson, 30 July 1965, Washington, D.C.

...No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine. No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years... And no longer will this Nation refuse the hand of justice to those who have given a lifetime of service and wisdom and labor to the progress of this progressive country...

...During your working years, the people of America--you--will contribute ... a small amount each payday for hospital insurance protection. For example, the average worker in 1966 will contribute about $1.50 per month. The employer will contribute a similar amount. And this will provide the funds to pay up to 90 days of hospital care for each illness, plus diagnostic care, and up to 100 home health visits after you are 65. And beginning in 1967, you will also be covered for up to 100 days of care in a skilled nursing home after a period of hospital care.

NOW: Medicare’s Worsening Finances: The Other Shoe Drops:

A week ago, the Medicare Trustees issued their annual report, which showed that the program is on the fact track to insolvency. The 2011 analysis projected that the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund (which funds Medicare Part A) will be insolvent in 2024, and the program’s long-term unfunded obligations—promised benefits that are not paid for—amount to $24.6 trillion...

...[new] across-the-board cuts would cause 15 percent of hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and home health agencies to become unprofitable by 2019. This number would climb to 25 percent in 2030 and 40 percent by 2050.

Obamacare

THEN: President Barack Hussein Obama, 23 March 2010, Washington, D.C.:

...And we have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care...

...I said this once or twice, but it bears repeating: If you like your current insurance, you will keep your current insurance. No government takeover; nobody is changing what you’ve got if you’re happy with it. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. In fact, more people will keep their doctors because your coverage will be more secure and more stable than it was before I signed this legislation.

NOW: Obamacare's Broken Promises:

Hard times continue for the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). The administration has scrapped the law's long-term care insurance program, covering nursing homes and home health care. The program was deemed unrealistic. This is a harbinger...

...Writing in The New York Review of Books, [Arnold Relman, the former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine] says that "the law does very little or nothing to address some of the most important causes of the high cost of care and its rapid inflation.” Note: Relman isn't a conservative crank. He's a critic of insurance companies and advocates a single-payer, government-run health-care system.

The ACA, Relman writes, doesn't alter fee-for-service reimbursement... [he is also] unimpressed with the ACA provisions intended to control costs: for example, the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). It's a group of 15 experts who would recommend changes if government health spending rose too rapidly... Relman also dismisses "accountable care organizations” (ACOs) that supposedly save money through coordinated care by doctors and hospitals. The regulations governing ACOs will be so complicated that there won't be many of them, he writes.

...Many of [the ACA's] promises rest, like CLASS, on unrealistic assumptions. Disappointments loom, and the needed debate is deferred.

We are living in Ameritopia

Mark Levin explains:

The reason I say that liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid is because we can look at what's going around in the country today. If, in your own lives, you were pursuing policies that were destroying your own home ownership, that were destroying your own job, that were creating a massive, impossible debt for your family and your children in particular, you'd stop it. You wouldn't keep doing it!

And yet for the liberal, if it's imposed on you -- and they feel that they can be immune from it -- they're for it. They wouldn't do to themselves and their own family what they're doing to you, and your family, and the whole nation! Take Barack Obama. Does Barack Obama conduct himself in his own, personal affairs, in his family's affairs, as recklessly as he conducts the affairs of the nation? No. Would he run up the kind of relative personal debt that he's running up for the nation? No way.

...So they do to us -- and they do to our society -- what they would never do to their own families. They do not live in their own lives as they seek to have the rest of us live. Or as they seek to have our society conduct itself.

The only question that remains is whether the country can be saved. 2012 may be our last, best chance to save this Republic from the Utopian Statists, whose pursuit of impossible, narcissistic dreams have set the country on a course for national fiscal suicide.

The Reparations Administration [Updated]

Author's Note: I originally wrote this article nearly two years ago, on July 8, 2010, to address what I perceived to be the unspoken agenda of the Obama White House.

In light of the recent revelations that Obama was a personal advocate for the racial eliminationist Dr. Derrick Bell, I thought it fitting and proper to re-post it.

Observers have characterized President Obama's many efforts to nationalize industries a systematic form of "wealth redistribution." But the activities instigated by the White House go beyond redistribution and devolve straight into reparations. Consider:

Race Gender Quotas in "Financial Reform"

Section 342, which declares that race and gender employment ratios, if not quotas, must be observed by private financial institutions that do business with the government. In a major power grab, the new law inserts race and gender quotas into America's financial industry... ...Section 342 sets up at least 20 Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion.

Racial Preferences in Obamacare

Transfer of wealth and “crucial decisions” aside, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act contains provisions that provide incentives for racial discrimination...

One provision states that programs with “a record of training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or from a rural or disadvantaged background” will be given priority for government money. This is only one of several such provisions. Programs and medical institutions that practice racial preferences will be moved further up the money queue than programs and medical institutions that disregard race... The one who disregards skin color is penalized... The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called the provisions racially discriminatory and sent President Barack Obama and Congress letters warning them about the provisions. The politicians ignored the warning, naturally.

DOJ encourages illegal immigration by Mexican crime gangs

A study released earlier today calculates that illegal immigration costs U.S. taxpayers $113 billion annually... And rather than defending America's citizens, which is his primary duty under the Constitution, President Obama instead has unleashed a professional defender of terrorists to expand his practice -- protecting the Mexican crime gangs who now terrorize the southwest.

Another voter fraud scandal involving the Justice Department.

J. Christian Adams,, a former career Justice Department lawyer who resigned recently to protest political interference in cases he worked on, made some news yesterday in testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights... As expected, he claimed that Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, an Obama appointee, overruled a unanimous recommendation by six career Justice attorneys for continued prosecution of members of the New Black Panther Party on charges of voter intimidation in an incident I detailed here yesterday...

...But Mr. Adams leveled an even more explosive charge beyond the Panther case. He testified that last year Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes made a jaw-dropping announcement to attorneys in Justice's Voting Rights section. She said she would not support any enforcement of a key section of the federal "Motor Voter" law -- Section 8, which requires states to periodically purge their voter rolls of dead people, felons, illegal voters and those who have moved out of state.

This Administration is Lawless

The Civil Rights Act prohibits racial discrimination and preferences. But the White House has chosen to ignore applicable law -- and the Constitution itself -- to promote a racially divisive and potentially explosive agenda.

This morning, a Wall Street Journal op-ed asked, "Who Will Investigate the Investigators?".

I would phrase it differently: "What recourse is there when the White House and the Justice Department are operating lawlessly?"

Obama has spurned wealth redistribution for something even more extreme: a political form of reparations.

We know from a series of painful examples -- throughout history -- that wealth redistribution does not work. In fact, one need only point to the wealth redistribution approach advocated by Carter, Clinton, Reno and Cuomo -- the Community Reinvestment Act and its ilk -- which led directly to the implosion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The reparations model that Obama is pursuing could tear apart the very fabric that led to the creation of the most inclusive society in the world. It is destroying the integrity of the ballot box; corrupting health care; destroying financial services; and eradicating American sovereignty.

The reparations model advocated by the White House represents lawlessness. Ergo, this administration is lawless.

It's November or never. And citizens of every race, creed, religion, color and culture should reject the systematic destruction of America, before it's too late.

Sandra Fluke scores first product endorsement! [The Looking Spoon]

From The Looking Spoon:

So she's got that goin' for her.

Simply delightful: In July 2009, Mitt Romney pressed Obama to use the Individual Mandate to Nationalize Healthcare

Erick Erickson has all of the details.

Had Michigan not been as close, the Democrats would have waited to spring this on us in the general election. Luckily we have it now and I hope Ohio voters are paying attention.

In July 2009, Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in USA Today urging Barack Obama to use an individual mandate at the national level to control healthcare costs.

Health care cannot be handled the same way as the stimulus and cap-and-trade bills... There's a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.

...Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn't have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.

On the campaign trail now, Mitt Romney says the individual mandate is appropriate for Massachusetts, but not the nation. Repeatedly in debates, Romney has said he opposes a national individual mandate.

But back in 2009, as Barack Obama was formulating his healthcare vision for the country, Mitt Romney encouraged him publicly to use an individual mandate. In his op-ed, Governor Romney suggested that the federal government learn from Massachusetts how to make healthcare available for all. One of those things was “Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.”

Friends, if Mitt Romney is the nominee, we will be unable to fight Obama on an issue that 60% of Americans agree with us on.

Just a month after Romney penned his op-ed advocating the Individual Mandate, The Boston Globe ran a breathless report complaining about RomneyCare, headlined "Bay State health insurance premiums highest in country."

Massachusetts has the most expensive family health insurance premiums in the country, according to a new analysis that highlights the state’s challenge in trying to rein in medical costs after passage of a landmark 2006 law that mandated coverage for nearly everyone.

Oh, but that's right: Romney's the "only one who can win".

Of course, that's what they said about McCain and Dole.

Confirmed: Obama Slashes Health Care Funding for Seniors and the Military; Spigot to Public Sector Unions Still Wide Open

Of course, members of the armed forces and senior citizens aren't required to contribute to a proxy for the Democrat Party, but I'm sure that's just coincidental:

• Exhibit A - Tricare costs would jump in budget plan:

Pentagon officials will continue pressing in 2013 for significantly higher Tricare fees for military retirees, including older retirees covered by Tricare for Life, as well as higher drug co-pays for all Tricare beneficiaries.

The Defense Department’s proposed 2013 budget calls for annual enrollment fees for retirees in Tricare Prime to rise next year by 30 percent to 78 percent... depending on military retirement income.

• Exhibit B - Paul Ryan: Obamacare is Real Medicare Killer:

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan says contrary to what Democrats are saying, it is Obamacare — not his budget plan — that will kill Medicare... “Obamacare kills Medicare as we know it,” Ryan said. "Obamacare raids $500 billion from Medicare to spend on Obamacare, puts in place a [15-member] board to ration Medicare."

• Exhibit C - Obama’s budget calls for federal pay raises; workforce size stays flat:

President Obama wants to give raises to people collecting federal paychecks... The White House budget plan released Monday would increase federal civilian pay by a modest 0.5 percent... The budget proposal also projects that federal employment levels will remain essentially flat in fiscal 2013, growing by 0.1 percent, or 2,400 employees, to 2.1 million from the 2012 estimated level.

• Exhibit D - Obama budget slashes military spending, sends 'savings' to domestic agenda:

President Obama sent an annual budget request to Capitol Hill today that does little to reduce the deficit but dramatically cuts military spending anyway. Even though last year’s debt ceiling deal was supposedly agreed to in order to reduce America’s crushing debt burden, Obama is apparently planning to use half of the cuts in war spending to “help finance a major six-year, 50 percent increase in transportation spending.”

Defense cuts in the name of debt reduction are really for increased domestic spending. This is not a surprise. Last summer, President Obama made his priorities clear: social spending trumps national security...

Executive Summary

Obama's priorities are: (a) stealing redistributing money from seniors, the military and the intelligence community; and (b) spending those funds on public sector union wages from which mandatory union dues are deducted.

Those dues, in turn, end up laundered into Obama's campaign coffers.

Which explains his priorities. Not health care. Not national security. Not seniors. Getting reelected. First, last and everything in between. That is his priority.

Stunning report: Obama used administrative earmarks to buy Congressional support for his wildly unpopular agenda

Wondering how President Obama convinced politicians to vote for Cap-and-Trade, Obamacare and other unpopular bills that Democrats knew would put their seats at risk? Well, wonder no more, compadre:

An examination of “administrative earmarks” around the time of congressional votes on key pieces of President Obama’s agenda suggests the White House used its power to fund local projects as a means to “buy” votes for major legislative efforts...

...an analysis of grants from agencies during the early years of the Obama administration shows that the districts of moderate Democrats, whose support was so crucial for Obama during the 111th Congress, received large sums right around the passage of three key pieces of legislation: Obamacare, Dodd-Frank financial regulations, and the cap-and-trade bill... During the run-up to votes in the House of Representatives for each of those pieces of legislation, the rate of administrative earmarking spiked.

...The number of grants given by those agencies spiked precisely when the House was considering each of the three pieces of legislation.

Even more troubling: during the same time periods, significant grant money went to the districts of numerous Democratic representatives who looked to face tough battles for re-election. The legislation Obama was attempting to get through Congress was generally unpopular, and vulnerable members needed other ways to appeal to constituents. Federal grants made for a perfect opportunity.

Then-Rep. Chris Carney (D-PA), for instance, kept his support for Dodd-Frank quiet. His website never posted a press release announcing his “yes” vote on the bill. It did, however, tout two federal grants totaling $3.6 million for businesses in his district two days before the Dodd-Frank vote.

Then-Rep. Zach Space (D-OH) hailed from a district reliant on the coal industry, which would have been hit particularly hard by cap and trade. He voted for the measure, but neglected to publicize the vote on his website. He did, however, announce eight federal grants totaling roughly $1.8 million all made during the month before the House passed cap and trade.

At least 32 vulnerable House Democrats received significant federal grant money in the periods leading up to or directly after their votes on at least one of these three pieces of legislation, raising concerns that those grants may have been used either to encourage or reward votes in favor of the administration’s position...

When the complete story of this administration's misuse of taxpayer dollars is written, it will -- in my estimation -- make Tammany Hall look like a ragtag group of pickpockets. Literally trillions of dollars will have been stolen redistributed from the private sector to Obama's pals. Oh, and the next generation will have to repay those bills -- with interest.

Meet the masterminds who will decide what kind of health care you and your family will receive

The Wall Street Journal (via AEI) has the uncomfortable low-down on what Obamacare means:

Meet the Obamacare mandate committee

Think the contraception decision was bad? Wait until bureaucrats start telling your insurer which cancer screenings to cover

Offended by President Obama's decision to force health insurers to pay for contraception and surgical sterilization? It gets worse: In the future, thanks to ObamaCare, the government will issue such health edicts on a routine basis—and largely insulated from public view. This goes beyond contraception to cancer screenings, the use of common drugs like aspirin, and much more.

Under ObamaCare, a single committee—the United States Preventative Services Task Force—is empowered to evaluate preventive health services and decide which will be covered by health-insurance plans.

The task force already rates services with letter grades of "A" through "D" (or "I," if it has "insufficient evidence" to make a rating). But under ObamaCare, services rated "A" or "B"—such as colon cancer screening for adults aged 50-75—must be covered by health plans in full, without any co-pays. Many services that get "Cs" and "Ds"—such as screening for ovarian or testicular cancer—could get nixed from coverage entirely...

...Americans first became familiar with the task force in November 2009, when it made the controversial decision to recommend that women ages 40-49 shouldn't get routine mammograms. More recently, it rebuffed routine prostate-cancer screening and the use of tests that detect the viruses that can cause cervical cancer.

...The task force is a part-time board of volunteer advisers that works slowly and is often late to incorporate new science into its recommendations. Only in 2009 did it finally recommend aspirin for the prevention of stroke and heart attack among those at risk—decades after this practice was demonstrated to save lives and had become part of standard medical practice.

The article's author recommends several common-sense measures:

• Congress should make the task force "subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which would at least require it to hold its deliberations in public."

• And Congress should likewise "let private health plans—and their members—decide on their own how preventive tests and treatments should be covered."

All of this is a brutal wake-up call for Americans: Obama's contraception mandate isn't an anomaly. It's the sign of things to come.


Hat tip: BadBlue.

Could someone wake up John Boehner? Because it's long past time to impeach Kathleen Sebelius

The peerless Mark Levin made the point last night. If the House of Representatives had real leadership, it would already be drafting articles of impeachment for HHS Chief Kathleen Sebelius.

...the Obama administration has reversed itself on whether it has enough money to create federal Exchanges in states that decline to create them. The administration has repeatedly claimed that the $1 billion ObamaCare appropriates would cover the federal government’s costs of implementing the law. And yet the president’s new budget proposal requests “another $1 billion” to cover what Sebelius calls “the one-time cost to build the infrastructure, the enrollment piece of [the federal exchange], the IT system that’s needed.”...

In other words... the Obama administration does not have the money it needs to create federal Exchanges. Therefore, if states don’t create them, ObamaCare grinds to a halt. (Oh, and this billion dollars is the last billion the administration will request. Honest.)

Most important, however, is this:

Even if Congress does not grant the president’s request for more health reform funding, Sebelius said her department will find a solution. “We are going to get it done, yes,” she said.

An HHS staffer prevented the reporter from asking Sebelius what she had in mind... This is a remarkable statement. Sebelius basically just copped to a double-subversion of the Constitution: Congress appropriates money for X, but not Y. Sebelius says, “I know better than Congress. I’m going to take money away from X to fund Y.” Sebelius has already shown contempt for the First Amendment, first by threatening insurance carriers with bankruptcy for engaging in non-fraudulent speech, and again by crafting a contraceptives mandate that violates religious freedom. Now, she has decided the whole separation of powers thing is for little people. What will Sebelius do the next time something gets in the way of her implementing ObamaCare?

We know what she'll do. She'll spit on the Constitution.

Could someone tell me what the hell John Boehner is doing as Speaker? The president is violating the Constitution left and right as he bankrupts America. His attorney general is, in the estimation of some law enforcement officials, perjuring himself in the process of orchestrating a massive cover-up of an illegal gun-running operation. And his HHS Secretary has basically laid a dukie on the House Speaker's head.

Which is the term Boehner prefers, I hear.

John Boehner needs to go. He's about as useful as you-know-whats on a bull. Which really overstates his usefulness.

Highlights: the Cato Institute Eviscerates Obamacare's Individual Mandate

Among many Amici Curiae ("Friend of the Court") briefs filed during the Obamacare fight, the Cato Institute's (PDF) is among the most interesting and powerful. Its highlights are well worth reading.

Question Presented

Can a limited government to whom a free people have delegated only certain enumerated powers commandeer that people into purchasing a product from a private business pursuant to its power to pass laws “necessary and proper for carrying into execution” the authority to “regulate Commerce . . . among the several States”?

Summary of Argument

The individual mandate exceeds Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce under existing doctrine. The outermost bounds of this Court’s Commerce Clause jurisprudence—the “substantial effects” doctrine—stop Congress from reaching intrastate non-economic activity regardless of its effect on the economy. Nor can Congress compel someone to engage in commerce, even if it purports to do so as part of a broader regulatory scheme.

The Constitution does not permit Congress to conscript citizens into economic transactions to remedy the admitted shortcomings—which the government usually terms “necessities”—of a hastily assembled piece of legislation...

...Although the Necessary and Proper Clause allows Congress to execute its regulatory authority over interstate commerce, it is not a blank check permitting Congress to ignore constitutional limits by manufacturing necessities and commandeering citizens to do its bidding... The individual health insurance mandate is not constitutionally warranted simply because it is “necessary” to make other legislation function properly. Indeed, any law “necessary” or otherwise—that purports to compel otherwise inactive citizens to engage in economic activity is unconstitutional.

While the government emphasizes the “uniqueness” of the healthcare market and the wisdom of the legislation, “this case is not about whether the Act is wise or unwise…in fact, it is not really about our healthcare system at all. It is principally about our federalist system, and it raises very important issues regarding the Constitutional role of the federal government.

...Moreover, what Congress is trying to do here is literally unprecedented, as recognized even by the lower courts that ruled for the government. “Congress has never exercised its commerce power in this way, and nothing suggests that this tradition reflects 200 years of self-restraint.” ... “The Government concedes the novelty of the mandate and the lack of any doctrinal limiting principles.”

The Congressional Budget Office agrees: “The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States." Nor has Congress ever before imposed on everyone a civil penalty for declining to participate in the market. And never before have courts had to consider such a breathtaking assertion of power under the Commerce Clause. Even in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), the federal government claimed “merely” the power to regulate what farmers grew, not to mandate that people become farmers, much less to force people to purchase farm products. Even if not purchasing health insurance is considered an “economic activity”—which of course would mean that every aspect of human life is economic activity—there is no constitutional warrant for Congress to force Americans to enter the marketplace to buy a particular good or service...

...The explicit purpose of Article I is to grant Congress certain enumerated powers and then strictly limit them. James Madison, the architect of our system of government, famously observed that “[i]n framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

...Thus, Article I gives Congress only certain legislative powers “herein granted,” Articles II and III check those powers, and the Tenth Amendment emphasizes that all other powers remain with those who breathed life into the new government in the first place: the sovereign “people of the United States.” The Framers believed that limiting federal power, and reserving the “residual” power in the hands of the states and the people would help “ensure protection of our fundamental liberties” and “reduce the risk of tyranny and abuse.”

...Given the Framers’ clear intent to establish a limited government of enumerated powers, it is unsurprising that this Court has consistently reaffirmed that the federal government does not enjoy a general police power. ... The Court should not now break with this well established and foundational American principle.

It is both telling and tragic that our hopes for individual sovereignty in this country now rest in the hands of one or two individuals on the Supreme Court.

And if Obama is reelected, he will likely have the chance to further stuff the court with doctrinaire radicals like Elena Kagan. And this Republic would be doomed.

Shhh. No one tell legacy media that a huge battle is raging in Britain to privatize the National Health Service

The failures of England's National Health Service (NHS) are well known throughout Europe. Of course, as Congressional Democrats and President Obama rammed through their own takeover of the health care industry here in the U.S., legacy media was careful to ignore all of the headlines from abroad.

The often-horrific levels of health care delivered by the NHS became so controversial that the current debate is over how much should be privatized. That's right: the DMV-like NHS will inevitably be dismantled in favor of private health care.

Because government-run health care can't work, won't work and hasn't ever worked in all of human history.

Almost two years in the making, the once eye-catching plan to take the axe to the NHS's bloated bureaucracy and hand power to family doctors has become a metaphor for Mr Cameron's worst failings as Prime Minister – lack of attention to detail, a hands-off management style, misplaced loyalty to old friends and a deep-rooted belief that shouting at the Despatch Box will silence one's critics.

...There has also been the lack of consistency; where once ministers boasted of having the professional bodies signed up and on board, they now claim angry and almost universal opposition is an inevitable outcome of radical reform. What was once hailed as the biggest change in the NHS for 60 years is now being represented as a logical, small-scale continuation of Blairite reforms. In July 2010, Mr Lansley boldly declared that "people voted for change" – which doesn't sit well with his pre-election promise of no more top-down reorganisations.

...In a sign of the fiasco at the heart of the Government, it is now the Liberal Democrats who speak most warmly about the legislation, having rewritten large passages in a coup led by Baroness Williams. The Lib Dems are furious after working hard behind the scenes to be constructive. "The Tories are flip-flopping all over the place," says one. "Cameron is panicking about local elections in May," says another, adding pointedly: "It is very much their Bill."

This, my friends, is the future of health care here in the U.S.

No lack of coverage, but deadly lack of health care. Rationing. Horror stories. Begging your representatives for treatment for yourself or your family members.

Until it all finally collapses. Just like the NHS.


Related: State-run Health Care, By the Numbers.

'Progressives' Believe Strongly in the Separation of Church and State. Except, Of Course, When It Comes to Abortion.

If the ramifications weren't so diabolical, the hypocrisy exhibited by Democrats would be laughable.

It has not even been two years since Obamacare was enacted, and already the President’s health care law has taken another victim — the religious freedoms Americans hold dear, as reflected by the First Amendment.

The Obama Administration recently reaffirmed a rule under Obamacare that requires many religious employers to provide health care coverage for all FDA-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and related education and counseling. On the grounds that certain FDA-approved contraceptive methods can sometimes “cause the demise of embryos both after and before uterine implantation,” many groups also believe that the rule forces them to cover abortion.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is calling the contraception mandate an “unprecedented” attack on religious freedom. And in statement after statement issued in diocese after diocese, many bishops are publicly declaring that they “cannot” and “will not” comply with “this unjust law.” As Cleveland Bishop Richard Lennon explained, “Unless this rule is overturned, Catholics will be compelled either to violate our consciences or to drop health care coverage for our employees.”

It’s not just Catholics affected by the rule, however. Leaders from other faith traditions have expressed their concern, and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has already filed a lawsuit on behalf of an interdenominational Christian college that objects to providing abortion and related education and counseling in its health care insurance. “The mandate is un-American, unprecedented, and flagrantly unconstitutional,” says an attorney for the college.

As shocking as the Obama Administration’s action is, it should not come as a surprise. Heritage experts explained years ago that freedom of conscience in health care is closely linked to greater personal freedom over health care decisions. Health care expert James Capretta says that “it was inevitable — only a matter of time,” now that the government is calling the shots and making health care choices for the American people. “Just the sight of Catholic leaders’ being forced to go begging before federal officials ought to be enough to convince most Americans that handing over so much power over such sensitive matters to the federal government was a terrible, terrible mistake,” he writes.

Pathetic Democrat dupes like Bart Stupak and Steve Driehaus hardest hit.

The leaders of the Catholic Church could begin their fight by excommunicating Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius, and any other Catholic members of the Democrat Party who support this outrage.

Genius: Starting in 2014, Obamacare begins taxing... itself.

Gee, it's so surprising that we keep uncovering time-bombs buried inside a 2,200-page bill that no one read.

Under the health care overhaul, the federal government will begin taxing itself and the states beginning in 2014... And that’s giving state Medicaid directors heartburn.

The law calls for a new tax on health insurers’ premium revenue — intended to help pay for expansion of coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans. But the tax will be paid by all insurers, including those that contract with states to provide coverage to recipients of Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for the poor. Under federal law, that fee must be paid by the Medicaid program, meaning that state and federal governments must pick up the tab.

A report released today by the actuarial firm Milliman Inc. said the tax will cost the Medicaid program between $36.5 billion and $41.9 billion over 10 years. At least $13 billion will be borne by states, and at least $23.5 billion by the federal government, based on the state-federal Medicaid matching formula, according to the report paid for by the Medicaid Health Plans of America, which represents private health plans that cover people on Medicaid. According to the America’s Health Insurance plans, the tax overall would generate at least $73 billion from 2014-2019.

“This is not an issue on most people’s radar screens, but this is going to be a big problem,” said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. “This policy never really made sense … I get the point of an insurance tax, but when you are just passing on those costs to Medicaid, that makes no sense.”

With delightful surprises like this built into the Democrats' destructive health care bill, it's no wonder that Obama's advisers are predicting the death of America's health insurance companies. Which should do wonders for unemployment.

Awesome: Senior Romney Adviser Says a Republican President Could Never Repeal Obamacare

Yet another reason to support one of the two non-Romneys in the race:

Mitt Romney adviser Norm Coleman, a former senator from Minnesota, predicted the GOP won't repeal the Democrats' healthcare reform law even if a Republican candidate defeats President Obama this November.

"You will not repeal the act in its entirety, but you will see major changes, particularly if there is a Republican president," Coleman told BioCentury This Week television in an interview that aired on Sunday. "You can't whole-cloth throw it out. But you can substantially change what's been done."

...Coleman's remarks are remarkable because every Republican candidate — including Romney — has vowed to make repealing the law a priority. Coleman is also the chairman of the American Action Network, which has urged the courts to strike down the law's individual mandate and its Medicaid expansion.

Squishes like Norm Coleman, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are cowards who are either too scared or too invested in the status quo to try to save this country.

Folks, I don't mean to be a polyanna, but every expert from Obama adviser Peter Orszag to the CBO says that America is headed into a fiscal abyss. And these clowns are waving the white flag before the fight has even started?

So what do we do? We need to demand -- demand, not ask! -- that these establishment RINOs are replaced as Congressional leaders in 2012 by Tea Party conservatives like Michele Bachmann, Allen West, Jim DeMint, Marco Rubio, etc. If it takes a march on Washington, so be it. We're tired of being ignored by these numbskulls. Enough is enough.


Hat tip: Mark Levin.

Exclusive: Obama voters rush to post-election free healthcare centers [Joe Bill Scott]

@JoeBillScott:

Did someone say "free healthcare"?

Which GOP candidate has the courage to begin stripping away the Democrat welfare state that is bankrupting this country?

When the media questions a GOP candidate -- from Eric Cantor to Paul Ryan -- their perspective is always the same. Why are Republicans unwilling to compromise with their altruisitic Democrat partners? Why won't they work with President Obama?

The framing of these questions is, of course, patently bogus. When Democrats had control of Congress from 2006 to 2010, and after Obama's election in 2008, where were the great compromises that the media loves to harp about?

• Did they compromise on Obamacare? Or did they ram it through on midnight of Christmas Eve with bribes, backroom deals, and thousands of hidden pages of legislation?

• Did they compromise on Global Warming? Or did the president command the EPA to issue CO2 regulations when even a Democrat-controlled Congress couldn't pass cap-and-trade legislation?

• Did they compromise on the Stimulus package, ramming through trillions in deficit spending that has utterly failed to rescue anything except for the public sector unions' campaign coffers?

• Did they compromise on their outrageous financial reform legislation ("Dodd-Frank") that is spreading misery and layoffs throughout the country?

Actually, I don't recall a single Democrat compromise on any of these outrageous measures. Not a one.

So when we choose a candidate, are we going to have another RINO mush who will "go along to get along"? Who will permit the Democrats' social welfare state to continue expanding, albeit at a slightly slower pace? Who will not try to move the rudder on this country before it sails over the fiscal abyss?

Or will we have a man with courage? Who will shoot straight with the American people? Who would issue a true declaration of political war with the Marxist Utopians that have overthrown the real Democrat Party?

A man who would give a speech like this, paraphrasing Truman?

Two years ago an American juggernaut dropped a bomb on Democrats in Congress and destroyed their usefulness to the Marxist Left. That bomb had the power to swing 63 House seats and 680 state legislative seats and left in its wake what the National Journal called "devastation".

The Democrats began this war in 2007 when they promised to run the "most ethical Congress ever" with "no new deficit spending." Instead they permitted and encouraged rampant criminality and an all-time record of nearly $6 trillion in new deficit spending.

But the end of their reign of fiscal terror is near. The electorate dropped the political equivalent of an atomic bomb on the Democrats again last month. The force which gave birth to this country -- an insatiable desire for freedom -- has been loosed against those who brought fiscal ruin to the nation.

The greatest marvel is not the size of the Democrats' defeat, nor its cost, but the achievement of the people -- a true, grass-roots effort to repudiate Marxism, Statism, Utopianism, whatever their un-American strategies are called -- into a workable plan. People of all races, religions, economic backgrounds and interests worked to advance freedom. It is doubtful if another such combination could have been assembled anywhere in the world. What has been done is among the greatest achievements of a people fighting incipient tyranny in history. It was done under pressure and without failure.

We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every destructive endeavor the Democrat Statists have created. We shall destroy their agencies, their bureaucracies, their unconstitutional czars, their ideologues who have burrowed into regulatory bodies unknown to most Americans. Let there be no mistake: we shall completely destroy the Democrats' political power-base: the bloated federal bureaucracy that has grown, unchecked, for one reason and one reason alone, which is to fund Democrat campaigns.

It was to spare the Democrats from utter destruction that I issue this ultimatum.

If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of political ruin, the likes of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this 2012 offensive will follow subsequent forces in such number that and power as they have not yet seen and with the political skills of which they are already well aware.

The power of the people will continue to grow as more citizens educate themselves regarding the unholy alliance of Democrats and the fourth branch of government -- the public sector unions. Both align themselves against the citizen, against the taxpayer, and threaten the destruction of our country, our currency and our way of life.

We pledge to politically eradicate the Marxist left that inhabits the body of the Democrat Party like some sort of horror film zombie.

And in 2014, 2016, 2018 and in every subsequent election, we will return this great Republic to the Constitutional basis that our Framers intended. Our contract with America is this: it is the Constitution.

No political quarter asked, and none given.

This is a war for the country's future. We can have a failed Marxist welfare state of the sort melting down in Europe. Or we can begin to right the ship by returning to the principles of Constitutional government, the wisdom of which becomes more and more obvious by the day.

I believe Rick Santorum is the only candidate who would issue this kind of ultimatum to the Democrat-media complex. Time grows short to save this republic. I urge you to offer him your support.

Bummer: Seven State Unions Sue New York Over Obamacare

When you've lost the public sector unions... oh, and please note -- this article was written from the perspective of a drone Obamacare supporter named "Melissa Freeman" (if that is her real name):

Seven New York state unions have filed federal lawsuits against the state over what they claim is an unconstitutional increase in health care costs for retired workers. This is not a promising beginning for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), now that Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has given more power to the states in implementing the law.

HHS announced Dec. 16 that individual states will be left to select their own “benchmark” minimum health insurance plan under the national law. As a key step in defining universal health care in the U.S., determining minimum standards of health care should be done on a national level. Sebelius’ choice to delegate this duty to states is a cowardly attempt to evade tough decision-making, leading to a less efficient and effective policy of accommodation rather than full national change, and decreased federal accountability for the outcome of the ACA...

...By delegating this responsibility to the states, Sebelius has also deflected federal, mainly executive, responsibility for the plan’s possible failure, though assuredly not its potential success. The unfolding details of the law will undoubtedly draw many critics: The greater the benefits, the higher the costs; yet the lower the benefits, the less successful the law – a trophy of Obama’s first term. With its validity and effectiveness questioned early on, the ACA is already in a weak position to affect change. Sebelius has further weakened it by giving up the federal government’s ability to establish a major component of how the law will affect the millions of uninsured people across the country...

...With the passage of the ACA as a move towards universal health care, the national government needs to be more involved in establishing the standards that will detail the bill’s vaguely stated requirements. Allowing states to determine their own benchmark plan is a disappointing indicator of the ACA’s potential to bring about actual change...

Hey, genius: we don't have a "national" government. We have a federal government, established by the Constitution. You know, that's the document your pathetic Democrat hack politicians take an oath to uphold and promptly spit upon. And it's the same document that enumerates the federal government's powers.

And, last time I checked, there was no "Obamacare" clause in the Constitution. Or maybe it's hidden next to the "Abortion" clause.

Finally, Ms. Rocket Scientist, please list just one time in the history of mankind that a tiny authoritarian cabal of masterminds were able to centrally-manage an economy.

I'll wait here while you check, Einstein.