Posts Tagged ‘health care reform’
Senate climate change fight looks as tough as healthcare reform
By: Ben Geman
Senate Democrats will face a problem when they return in January every bit as tough as crafting the healthcare bill: Assembling a climate and energy package that can be shoehorned into the election-year calendar.
Imposing limits on greenhouse gases is a White House and Democratic priority, but it’s stuck in line behind health care, Wall Street reform and jobs legislation.
It’s also become increasingly apparent since the Copenhagen climate summit that the Senate will go forward in a dramatically different direction than the House, which approved its own climate bill last summer.
Environmentalists familiar with Democratic plans say party leaders remain committed to bringing up a bill next year. They are looking to Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) effort to craft a compromise plan with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).
But in a sign of how difficult it will be to cobble together 60 votes, Kerry and Graham have provided few details about what their plan will contain.
They hope to blend emissions limits with wider offshore oil-and-gas drilling, expanded federal financing for nuclear power and lots of support for low-emissions coal projects, among other measures aimed a navigating a thicket of regional and partisan interests.
Graham noted that different senators are proposing a variety of plans for limiting carbon emissions, and he said he’s open-minded to what is included in a bill, as long as it is a “meaningful control” on pollution.
Some Democratic centrists including Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) — who are both up for reelection next year – want the Senate to take up a broad energy measure that the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved in June as a stand-alone bill, rather than grafting it to a cap-and-trade plan.
That’s led to speculation that Democrats might seek to move an energy bill but put off the fight over climate change.
The problem with that logic is that dozens of Democrats want to move a climate change bill, including centrists such as Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), who faces a tough primary fight and then a difficult general election battle.
“I think it [climate legislation] is important. I think we ought to take it up,” Specter said in a brief interview last week. He’s also said any final bill must protect manufacturers and provide a major boost for low-emissions coal.
White House officials also are calling for a combined energy and climate package – including an economy-wide cap-and-trade plan.
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“Twas the Night Before Christmas”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Contact: Jill Latham (515) 720-5250
“Twas the Night Before Christmas”
Harry Reid and the liberals are voting Christmas Eve on government-run health care
(DES MOINES, IA) – Today, American Future Fund released a new ad for YouTube.com called “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
At a time when people should be gathering with family and friends, Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled a vote on government-run health care. The bill is laden with pork for certain states and exempts others from paying altogether. Now, on the eve of the Senate vote we learn the $500 billion in cuts from Medicare will in fact add $300 billion to the deficit.
“It is unfortunate that during a week of celebration, Harry Reid is ramming government-run health care through the Senate – increasing cost to the consumer and increasing the deficit,” said Sandy Greiner.
Greiner continued, “Americans can’t afford this boondoggle and it should be stopped. What we have witnessed in Washington the past week is shameful and Harry Reid is to blame for this government takeover.”
Listen to the radio ad here: http://www.youtube.com/AmericanFutureFund
Radio Script below:
AFF RADIO :60 “TWAS THE NIGHT”
ANNOUNCER:
‘Twas the night before Christmas and Nancy Pelosi adjourned the House
But Harry Reid was still scheming, as Senators groused
It was Christmas Eve…why were they all still there?
Because liberals wanted government-run health care
Back in 1993, they’d tried this before… but Americans said No, remember 1994?
But Reid and Pelosi tried to rush a bill past, and at town halls this summer we said “Too fast!”
Then Virginia and New Jersey caused Blue Dogs a scare…but liberals still would cut $500 billion from Medicare
What’s in this bill — and is this change wise?
Even the non-partisan CBO said costs will still rise
Higher taxes and Medicare cuts hurt us all,
No wonder public support continues to fall
Call your Senators at (202) 224-3121 – please don’t wait…
Tell them we must stop this government takeover — before it’s too late
Paid for by American Future Fund
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Sen. McConnell Statement on Health Care Bill
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following statement Saturday after Senate Democrats voted to move forward with a partisan health care bill which increases premiums, raises taxes and slashes Medicare:
“The health care debate is now officially underway on this 2,074 page, multi-trillion-dollar health care experiment.
“This bill may have been drafted behind closed doors but now it’s the American people’s turn to have their voices heard. For months, they have been asking Congress to do something about the high cost of healthcare and yet the sponsors of this bill responded with a half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts, massive tax hikes, and an unsustainable expansion of new government programs which Congress’s non-partisan scorekeeper says will result in higher premiums, not lower. It may be a lot of things, but it’s sure not reform.
“Republicans will now provide what the closed-door sessions did not. We will continue to offer the commonsense, step-by-step cost-saving reform that Americans really want.”
House Health Care Reform Adds $89 Billion to Debt When Medicare Adjustments Are Considered, Says CBO
While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has repeatedly said that health care reform would be deficit neutral, the House of Representatives passed an additional Medicare reform bill last week that would interact with the previously passed health care bill (H.R. 3962) to add $89 billion to budget deficits in the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
H.R. 3961, the Medicare Physicians Payment Rates Reform Act of 2009, is referred to as the “doc fix,” and is characterized on Pelosi’s Web site as “companion legislation” to the larger health care bill. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calls it a “fiscal shell game.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the legislation will cost $210 billion dollars over a decade to implement on its own. Taken together with the Affordable Health Care for America Act (the health-care reform bill), it would add $89 billion to the federal debt between 2010 and 2019.
Fact check: Health care poll results more mixed than certain
For the second day in a row House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office has sent out “fact sheets” touting the results of separate public opinion polls on health care. The first, referring to an Associated Press poll released this week, carried a headline that read, “New AP poll shows widespread support.” The second press release, referring to a poll in today’s Washington Post, included the words, “Americans support health reform bill.”
The polls themselves show Americans are far less exuberant. The AP poll found that more people (43%) oppose the health care plans being discussed in Congress compared with 41% who support it. The Washington Post poll found similar results (49% opposed compared with 48% in support) as did a Gallup poll last week that we told you about here.
