Missouri’s 3rd District has a Cook rating of D+7, by the way: it’s Gephardt’s old seat. Russ Carnahan got 67% of the vote last time. It’s not out of reach – no seat ever is – but if it’s a target for next year this is the first I’ve heard of it. In other words, it’s in Blue Country.
And Carnahan still can’t parrot talking points about the Democrats’ health care rationing plan without getting mocked and booed. Via Ed Driscoll:
I was more or less letting the White House’s efforts to send the left-Sphere out to shill its medical rationing program*slide – after all, having the President personally lie to you is a step up; usually you get that through intermediaries – but in the process of reading up on this Don Surber linked to this funny article on the network well running dry for the administration. The White House wanted to schedule a last-minute press conference on health care:
CBS, which airs only repeats that evening, agreed early Monday to cover the conference.
But for NBC, Fox and ABC, the decision was tougher. During a summer that’s otherwise strewn with repeats, Wednesday includes all of their top-rated reality programs.
Fox declined outright to air the news conference. NBC and ABC fell into line late Monday after the White House shifted the event’s time from the previously announced 9 p.m. to the lesser-watched hour of 8 p.m.
The stakes were particularly high for NBC, which airs the most-watched show of the summer, “America’s Got Talent,” at 9 p.m. This week, the reality hit includes a heavily promoted interview with “Britain’s Got Talent” singing sensation Susan Boyle.
Back last month, House Minority Leader John Boehner made the following comment about government-run health care options:
“Listen, if you like going to the DMV and you think they do a great job, or you like going to the post office and think it’s the most efficient thing you’ve run into, then you’ll love the government-run health care system that they’re proposing because that’s basically what you’re going to have,”
…to which a variety of people who do, indeed, love the DMV/Post Office as examples of government-run agencies reacted in various levels of reflexively sardonic befuddlement. The DMV comparison was usually skipped over, in favor of the USPS: after all, what’s wrong with them? 44 cents for a stamp, send it out, gets where it’s going. Great, right?
On Tuesday night, be given a health care bill the size of Delaware that nobody in your office had a chance to read (over 1,000 pages, in this case).
On Wednesday, watch it be jammed through various committees.
On Thursday, find out from that the nonpartisan oversight group that’s supposed to be regulating this sort of thing hasn’t been able to read it, either.
Note that none of this is considered sufficiently important enough by the Democratic leadership to be worth taking the extra time to read the bill, let alone assess it. Because you should never let a good crisis go to waste, hey?
Moe Lane
PS: If you’re wondering why Rep. Paul Ryan didn’t rip off CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf’s head in that video, it’s because this isn’t Elmendorf’s fault. In fact, Senate Democratic leaders spent some time mocking Elmendorf’s concerns on the bill, presumably because they could. Also: don’t expect the so-called ‘Blue Dogs’ to hang tough on this. They never do.
Crossposted to RedState.
You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?
I’ll save you the trouble of reading: his answer is “The decision should not be up to you.”
Actually, if that doesn’t frighten you, then nothing will.
The Washington Post has come out against the progressive tax raises proposed by Congress to pay for health care. It does so reluctantly – it’s not against the principle of progressive taxes generally – but apparently they feel that the combination of Medicare cuts and wider-than-expected targets for the surcharge are just unacceptable.
…in principle, higher taxes for the well-heeled could make sense — as part of a broader rationalization of the unduly complex tax code.
But there is no case to be made for the House Democratic majority’s proposal to fund health-care legislation through an ad hoc income tax surcharge for top-earning households. The new surtax would hit individual households earning $350,000 and above. It would start at 1 percent, bumping up to 1.5 percent at $500,000 in income and to 5.4 percent at $1 million. The new levy would begin in 2011 and is supposed to raise $540 billion over 10 years, about half the projected cost of health-care reform. The rest of the money would come from reduced spending on Medicare and Medicaid — though the surtax for the lower two categories would jump by a percentage point each in 2013 unless the Office of Management and Budget determines that the rest of the bill has saved more than $150 billion.
[snip]
The long-term deficit is driven by the aging of the population as well as by growing health-care costs, both contributing to Social Security and Medicare expenses. There is simply no way to close the gap by taxing a handful of high earners. The House actions echo President Obama’s unrealistic campaign promise that he can build a larger, more progressive government while raising taxes on only the wealthiest.
For some bizarre reason, Rep. Keith Ellison thought that it was a good idea to get Rep. McDermott’s opinions on the public option on the public record. Who am I to pass up such an opportunity?
Yes, he really is advocating a policy that, to quote a colleague, “prevents insurers from calculating rates or willingness to insure based on risk; all must be served, and for no higher cost than anybody else.” And no, nobody he’s close to will ever have to face the consequences of McDermott’s policies. What, do you think that these people plan to live by the rules they’d impose upon the rest of us?
Moe Lane
PS: Gresham’s Law: “Bad money drives out good.” It’s a common problem in any system where one competitor for resources has coercive powers and the others do not. Conservatives handle this by punishing abuse of the coercive power; libertarians wish the coercive power removed altogether; and liberals don’t understand why this is automatically a problem, at least when they control the competitor.
Contra Gateway Pundit (and Hot Air), I am not certain that Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist-VT) actually meant to imply that the Democrats were going to destroy private health insurers. Given that he is in fact a socialist, it may be that being one has finally killed enough brain cells to make him not notice that he answered the question so poorly.
Look, it’s not my fault that intellectually speaking being a self-identified socialist in this day and age is much like being a self-identified Flat-Earther*. It just is. And it makes you do dumb things, like tell private insurance companies that the United States Senate is coming after them with a mad gleam in its eye. Given that, true or not, this is precisely the impression that current Senate leadership does not want to create… well. To use the terminology of the guy that the Senator spent the last eight years ineffectually fighting: heckuva job there, Bernie.
Moe Lane
PS: More seriously, please remember: no matter what happens with the health care plan, neither Senator Sanders, his family, nor his close associates will ever suffer from the more onerous aspects of it. Because while all animals are equal, some animals are more equal than others.
*Well, except for the former’s higher historical body count.
He’s got those sixty votes, you see. And he’s impatient. Impatient of the way that people are still getting in the way of his shepherding of a health care plan that neither him or his will ever have to use.
One of the leading Senate Democrats in the health care reform battle said that the seating of Al Franken has given the party the purpose and direction it needs to ensure that a public option for insurance coverage remains in any bill.
“If you did a consensus within the Democratic Party, you would find the level-playing-field public option to be the answer,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “And now that we have 60 votes, it seems to me like we don’t have to turn it inside out for something we don’t like.”
Well, that’s certainly blunt enough; so, shall we get on with it then, Senators?
That would be Senators Bayh, Bennett, Gillibrand, Lincoln, and Specter, mind you. After all, none of you are scared of taking a firm position on an issue that’s splitting the country right down the middle, are you?
, it would be unseemly for me to ask: 