The President has spent the past week trying to convince the American people that he was in search of a bipartisan health care reform. But as yesterdays speech revealed, the President is not serious about building support for a product that Americans can feel good about.
If the President were serious about building bipartisanship, he would scrap the existing proposals and start fresh with the items that both sides can agree to like letting states take the lead on health reform; tackling that tax treatment of health insurance; getting serious about entitlement reform; and putting in place sensible insurance market reform. Instead the President is trying to cast his proposal as bipartisan by indicating he is open to adding so-called conservative ideas.
First, being open to ideas is not a real commitment to including them. At the summit, the President claimed to be supportive of many ideas from the other side. But, in his letter to Congress, key proposals such as allowing citizens to purchase coverage from other states were not highlighted.
Second, details matter. Hijacking conservative terminology does not mean that the underlying policy and legislative language meet the laugh test. Simply titling a section of the bill state flexibility, for example, does not mean the actual language will enable states to anything other than what the federal government gives it permission to do.
Finally, even if the President added — word for word the legislative language for so-called conservative ideas, it does not change the fundamental direction of the basic proposal. The House and Senate bills and the Presidents own outline would dramatically shift control over health care financing and delivery to Washington bureaucrats and politicians.
The American people have spoken. They are not comfortable with a proposal that would overhaul 1/6 of the US economy and dont want a government take over. Although the President continues to promise the American people that if they like their coverage nothing will change, it is difficult to accept that this 2,000+ page bill will not impact the way average Americans get health care.
</p>Three days ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton <ahref="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hiQjABaVFkUQC1-FDU-YPTmjd5Jw">said it could take months for new UN sanctions against Iran. Today, <ahref="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541304575099972132770104.html?m od=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop">The Wall Street Journal reports that, in addition to China, the Obama administration is increasingly worried about gaining the support of other members of the U.N. Security Council, including Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon. While Iran’s ballistic missile program <ahref="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/02/08/the-increasing-ballistic-missile-threat/">continues to advance, a long-range nuclear missile might not be the biggest threat Iran presents to the United States.
</p>Remember President Obamas trip to Copenhagen last year? Not the failed Chicago Olympics bid, but the Climate Change Conference where he attempted to place America under a cooperative international climate treaty. Now, the President has turned his attention to other avenues of global entente, and the frustrated momentum of the climate treaty has been replaced with a move towards closer cooperation with the International Criminal Court. Committing the U.S. to international accords that threaten to undermine our nations sovereignty appears to be a temptation the current administration cannot resist. The ICC is just another example of this infatuation with global governance.
</p>President Obama and congressional leadership are <ahref="../2010/03/04/morning-bell-obamacares-kabuki-end-game">nearing the end of the road on health care reform.*The only option left to pass their grandiose visions of a government overhaul of the nations health care system into law is to pass the Senate-passed bill in the House.* However, House Democrats will only go along with this if the bill is followed by a side-by-side bill including changes to the Senate bill, which could only clear the Senate using reconciliation, <ahref="../2010/03/02/reconciliation-a-rarely-used-procedure-with-serious-consequences">a method which would be both unpopular and unprecedented.
</p>It appears that Secretary Clintons much anticipated meeting with Brazilian President Lula da Silva and Foreign Minister Celso Amorim on March 3 resulted in the diplomatic cold shoulder with regard to cooperative action aimed at curbing Irans nuclear ambitions.
</p>In his <ahref="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-state-union-address">State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama proposed “a modest fee” on banks that “would pay back the taxpayers who rescued them in their time of need.” In truth, his bank tax would hit financial institutions who have paid-bank their bailout funds, with interest, while those who haven’t – Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Motors and Chrysler – would get off scot-free.
</p>Reps. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Mike Pence (R-ID), and John Campbell (R-CA) recently unveiled a <ahref="http://mikepence.house.gov/images/stories/sla_one-page_final.pdf">proposal to impose a limit on federal spending of 20 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).* This proposal serves as a necessary reminder that current federal spending is out of control and certain to grow further if nothing is done.
</p>Today marks the seventh year that we have published the <ahref="http://www.heritage.org/Research/SocialSecurity/cda1001.cfm">Index of Dependence on Government. And, for seven years running, our Index shows growing dependence. The Index now stands at 240, up from a value of 19 in 1962, or a nearly 13 fold increase since the Kennedy administration. The rate of growth, however, actually has increased over the last eight years. That period saw the second highest rate of growth in dependency creating programs: since 2001, the Index has increased 31 percent. Most disturbing of all, all of the evidence points to even more rapid increases in dependency ahead, which well could threaten democratic government.
</p>Even as NASA and the rest of the US government continue to debate about how it will sustain a manned presence in space, the Chinese government has now announced that the first module of the Tiangong-1 (Heavenly Palace) space lab will be launched next year. Expected to weigh about 8.5 tonnes, the module will provide a target for Chinese spacecraft to practice docking maneuvers an essential part of both a long-term presence in space and for any mission to the Moon or beyond.
</p>Federal spending is out of control. <ahref="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/02/18/a-toothless-commission-on-spending-is-no-substitute-for-true-leadership/">Even President Obama knows it.* To really stop the madness, Reps. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Mike Pence (R-IN), and John Campbell (R-CA) <ahref="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704231304575091622911663494.html?m od=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion">have proposed a simple solution a constitutional amendment capping federal spending at 20 percent of the economy. Their proposal puts the debate squarely where it should be: exploding federal spending and the size of government.* <ahref="http://mikepence.house.gov/images/stories/sla-3-3-10-long_doc.pdf">The authors of the amendment write that “Fiscal reform must begin and end with significant spending restraint.* If not – if spending continues unchecked – this generation will prove to be the first to mortgage the future of its children and grandchildren instead of leaving a better and more prosperous future”.* So true.* Congress has proved itself incapable of fixing the massive fiscal mess they created. *Now it must fix the legislative process and begin to propose real spending reforms.
