Thank you to the 183 Republicans and Democrats who voted against H.R. 3961, the so-called “Doc Fix” legislation. As many of you know, we had grave concerns with this legislation. Our concerns did not necessarily stem from the underlying policy, but rather the partisan political tactic being played. H.R. 3961 was an underhanded attempt to deceive taxpayers and artificially deflate the cost of the House-passed health “reform” bill. That health care bill, which passed the House by a vote of 220-215 on November 17, received a CBO estimate of $1.05 trillion dollars; however, when you implement these Medicare reimbursements, the cost rises to $1.3 trillion. Additionally, H.R. 3961 passed with ZERO offset, meaning the health care bill is NOT deficit neutral.

We opposed this odious bill in hopes that Representatives would opt for a more transparent process that presents Medicare reimbursements within the context of comprehensive legislation and not as a standalone bill. Efforts to play politics with patients’ lives are not the way to lower costs and improve the quality of care. More importantly, those efforts are not the way to restore the American people’s trust in their government to provide an open, honest forum for all issues to be debated.

With the exception of one, all Republicans voted against H.R. 3961. The following Democrats voted no:

Brian Baird (WA-3)
Dan Boren (OK-2)
Jim Cooper (TN-5)
Chet Edwards (TX-15)
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD – AL)
Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24)
Daniel Lipinski (IL-3)
Michael McMahon (NY-13)
Adam Smith (WA-9)
Gene Taylor (MS-4)
Collin Peterson (MN-7)

We thank you for putting party politics aside and voting in the best interest of the people you serve. As the process moves forward, we urge all Representatives to pursue a more common-sense, fiscally responsible bill that offers true health care reform as opposed to unbridled spending, tax hikes, and a less accountable government.

HT: TaxGuru

If you would like to support NTU's efforts to defeat Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's efforts to "reform" your health care, you can make a financial contribution of support using our secure server here.

A little bird has told me that some of the Senate phone circuits are very busy. If you can't call your Senators about tomorrow's health care vote, you can email them here or you can call, write, or tweet at highnoonforhealthcare.org. The time to speak out is now!

Tim Wise from ACTA passes along this chart from Mint.com showing who pays taxes. We have IRS data going back to 1999 here.

The lights will be burning on Capitol Hill again this weekend as the Senate takes a procedural vote on the Reid health care bill late Saturday, according to CQ. It's not too late to let your Senators know that you oppose tax hikes and more governmental control over health care.

The season of giving is near, and leave it to the government to think it has the prerogative to “give” away taxpayer money.

It was bad enough that the federal government bailed out banks last fall, but then they went a step further in the wrong direction by bailing out the automotive industry. To date, $78.9 BILLION in taxpayers' money has gone to bailout GM, Chrysler, and GMAC.

This number may seem easier to swallow when one considers other costs of late (the one-trillion dollar health care bill or the national debt), but to be sure, $80 billion still boils down to more than a pretty penny.

To put this $80 billion in auto bailouts into perspective, NTU released a study, The Auto Bailout -- A Taxpayer's Quagmire, this week that found that the American taxpayer has put up $12,200 for every General Motors vehicle sold and $7,600 for every Chrysler vehicle. Bet you didn't know your money was helping buy all those cars.

The study also found that the average American taxpaying family invested roughly $800 in the auto companies through the bailout.

So the next time one of your neighbors comes home in a brand new GM or Chrysler make sure they know to thank you for helping them purchase it.

Senator Reid tonight released the latest version of the many health care reform packages that are slowly working their way through Congress. His is called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and weighs in at 2,074 pages -- over twice as long as House Speaker Pelosi's America's Affordable Health Choices Act.

Here is a link to a Google Spreadsheet NTU Foundation put together that contains a word count of the key terms in Pelosi's original package and Reid's new text: Reid Word Count.

For example, in Reid's bill, the words "tax" and "taxes" appear 200 times. "Regulations" 192 times. In contrast, "choice" and "options" appear 26 and 40 times, respectively.

According to CNN, the CBO's preliminary analysis of the bill puts the 10-year cost at $849 billion. As with the previous health care reform bills, CBO's score is incomplete. The Budget Office has not yet put together estimates for all the discretionary spending in the bills; thus the final tally is likely to be higher. And, as the Washington Times points out, U.S. health plans have a history of cost overruns.

NTUF is working on putting together a list of all the authorizations and appropriations in the new health care reform bill. I can't look at it any more this evening (it is now 11:30PM), but through page 717, I've totaled up $19.017 billion in funding, including, ironically enough, $375 million for "Personal Responsibility Education."

Reid's funding wish list (a work-in-progress) for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is viewable here (also as a Google Spreadsheet).

Update:
ATR has put together a list of all the new taxes in Reid's bill.

Thanks to our friends at the Mercatus Center for giving us the heads up that the new version of Stimulus Watch is now available! The original site featured proposed stimulus projects taken from the US Conference of Mayors survey. The new version contains actual stimulus spending across the country. The information comes directly from the official recipient reports available at Recovery.gov.

StimulusWatch.org was created to help the Administration keep its pledge to invest stimulus money wisely, and to hold public officials accountable for the way in which they spend taxpayer money. It allows taxpayers to search for contracts and grants awards by state and by city, by awarding agency, or by recipient. It also allows you to vote on whether you are satisfied with the award or not, add to the wiki description of the project, and join in a conversation about the award.

Here are just a few examples of the stimulus-funded projects you can find on StimulusWatch.org:

• R.J. Thomas Manufacturing Company, Inc. received $30,480 in July to furnish and deliver picnic tables in Cherokee, Iowa. No jobs were created as a result of this project. 14.29% of voters are satisfied while 85.71% of voters are not satisfied with this use of taxpayer dollars.

• Atlantic Air Corporation received $3,634 in September for the purchase of an ice machine/dispenser in Virginia Beach, Virginia. No jobs were created and 100% of voters were dissatisfied with the purchase.

• The most expensive expenditure is $4,387,948,882 for the support of public elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education, and, early childhood education programs and services in Sacramento, California. It is receiving mixed reviews with 25% of voters satisfied and 75% dissatisfied. While the project is 50% completed, it has already created 53,391 positions.

Be sure to check out StimulusWatch.org and look for stimulus-funded projects in your neighborhood!

From The Hill:

"Of all the bills we've seen, it'll be the best," Reid said. "Saves more money, is more protective of Medicare, is a bill that's good for the American people."

He added confidently: "I think if you're not impressed, you should be."

And how impressed should you be? How about $849 billion worth, according to MSNBC.

NTU urges all Senators to vote “NO” on ANY motion to proceed to the health care bill being introduced by Senator Harry Reid (D-NV).

All published reports suggest that this bill will dramatically expand the size and scope of our federal government, boost taxes on millions of small businesses and families, and increase health costs at a very difficult time for many Americans.

There is a bipartisan consensus that our health care system is in need of reform. But rather than addressing the underlying problems of the high cost of our employer-based system, a lack of transparency, and regulations that stifle private-sector competition, this bill resorts to the tired old formula of higher taxes, bigger government, and more damaging regulations.

Americans deserve real health reform, but this bill would not deliver it. More than $500 billion in tax hikes, many of which would hammer struggling middle class Americans, will not deliver it. Creating a massive new government-run health insurance plan will not deliver it. And adding to the heap of restrictive regulations that are pushing costs higher today will not deliver it. The time has come to scrap this “reform” and start over.

The vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to this health care bill is THE important vote for taxpayers. Any vote in favor of that motion is effectively a vote in favor of this monstrosity of a bill. As such, a vote on cloture on the motion to proceed will be among only a handful in the last decade to receive the highest weight of 100 in our annual Rating of Congress and we urge all Senators to vote “NO.”

If you have any questions, please contact
NTU Director of Government Affairs Andrew Moylan at (703) 683-5700

After the Associated Press broke the left-leaning media's cone of silence about the Administration errors and/or lies regarding jobs "created or saved" with so-called "stimulus" money, other would-be journalists and even Democratic politicians have found a bit of courage and are castigating the reported statistics.

On Monday, ABC News reported more than $100 million in spending and hundreds of "jobs created" in congressional districts which do not exist, both in the US and in territories such as the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Administration has deleted at least 60,000 jobs "created or saved" so far from their prior reports -- roughly 10% of the total.  And that's probably just a start.  The Washington Examiner has already mapped out more than 75,000 bogus job claims.  It's an admission of such egregious errors that even Rep. David Obey (D-MI), the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is slamming the White House: "The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes."  He added "Whether the numbers are good news or bad news, I want the honest numbers and I want them now."  I'm guessing he'd much prefer them if they were good news for the Democrats, but they won't be.  That said, I applaud Mr. Obey for his accurate criticism of the Administration, something far too few Democrats have been willing to do.

Republican congressman Darrell Issa (CA) sent a letter to the Chairman of the "Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board, Earl Devaney, with this question and suggestion: "Are you able to certify personally that the number of jobs reported as 'created/saved' on www.recovery.gov is accurate and auditable? If you are unable to do so, will you commit to incorporating some kind of qualifying information such as an asterisk or footnote to accompany the presentation of this information, warning visitors to the web site that the information is no accurate and auditable?"

Nobody should be surprised that the government is either incapable of managing data or telling the truth or both.  After all, what do you want from a government web site which cost $18 million just for its latest redesign?

At some point...and that point might be now...the Administration's claims of jobs "created or saved" will become a joke, even among Democrats.  I'm sure Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will attempt to quote recovery.gov statistics with a straight face, but nobody will take them seriously.

Of course, an administration which almost seems to make being a tax cheat a requirement for a high-ranking position should not be expected to have high standards when it comes to emphasizing the truth.  What's needed now is for enough of the kool-aid drinking Democrats and open-minded independents to begin to recognize these people for what they are: scheming statists for whom the end (government control of everything) justifies any means necessary.

NTU urges all Representatives to vote “NO” on H.R. 3961, the so-called “Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act.” Introduced by Representative John Dingell (D-MI), this bill is part of an appalling display of bait-and-switch to reduce the apparent cost of health care reform.

H.R. 3962, the recently passed House health care “reform” bill, received a 10-year cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office of $1.05 trillion. It achieved that number, nearly $200 billion lower than actual costs, in part by reducing physician reimbursements in Medicare. H.R. 3961 would immediately counteract the House-passed bill by reinstating higher reimbursement rates. By splitting these efforts into two separate pieces of legislation, leaders are attempting to deceive American taxpayers into believing that health care reform will be less expensive and deficit neutral – neither of which is true since H.R. 3961 contains no spending reductions elsewhere to offset its considerable cost.

This odious piece of deception should be rejected by any Representative who wants an honest debate about health reform moving forward.

Because it misleads taxpayers, NTU urges all Representatives to vote “NO” on H.R. 3961. Roll call votes on the legislation will be significantly weighted in our annual Rating of Congress.

If you have any questions, please contact NTU Federal Government Affairs Manager Jordan Forbes at (703) 683-5700

From today's Wall Street Journal editorial entitled "The Rationing Commission":

The core problem with government-run health care is that it doesn't make decisions in the best interests of patients, but in the best interests of government.

Following up on Ross Kaminsky's post about problems with the Obama Administration's stimulus job estimates, I took a closer look at the Illinois job numbers. What I found wasn't pretty.

Some examples:

• Guesses: The Illinois Institute of Technology was awarded $97,900 to “purchase a high performance computer cluster” and related software. One job was listed as saved and/or created. By what means? The associated “job creation” entry surmised: “I think the vendor of the computer equipment can retain about one job for this amount of purchase.” So the group thinks that the vendor will save about one job from the purchase. That’s a unsubstantiated guess, as best. Still, that one job that was added into Illinois’s statewide jobs tally.
  
  
• Mistakes: An entry for Head Start noted they would use $169,279 to “hire 2 additional staff and increase compensation of staff through a COLA to improve overall quality of program.” The two jobs created were “Interventionist Manager and FCP Manager.” Yet under “number of jobs,” they listed 63.65 positions. These 63.65 jobs went toward the statewide jobs total, even though it is clear that just 2 jobs were created.
  
  
• Waste: $1,108 in stimulus funds was used to install a new “thermoplastic-coated steel” picnic table in “North Fork of Pound Lake Campground” in Batavia, Illinois. Jobs created? “No new positions were created as far as we are aware.”

According to the Journal's Washington Wire: "After months of behind-the-scene discussions, Sens. Kent Conrad (D., S.D.) and Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), the Budget Committee's chairman and top Republican, have agreed in principle on a bill to establish a powerful commission to try to solve the government’s serious fiscal problems." The panel "would review major entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, as well as the tax code, to find ways of cutting future spending growth and patching the leaky tax code." The recommendations would be fast-tracked and require an up or down vote, similar to the base closing commission.

Is this a good idea? Would it work?