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Joe Wilson Reprimand Demonstrates Democrats' Hypocrisy
Tweet Share on Facebook September 16, 2009 Comment (51)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Having initially announced that U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson's apology for his interruption of President Barack Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress was sufficient, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., may eventually rue the day she changed her mind.
Tuesday the House voted, virtually along party lines, to approve a resolution of disapproval lodged against Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, for calling out "you lie" when Obama claimed during his speech that paying the healthcare costs of uninsured illegal immigrants was not part of the healthcare reform agenda.
At the time, the only healthcare reform package available for public examination was H.R. 3200, the bill introduced and passed out of several committees in the U.S. House of Representatives. And it, according to a number of knowledgeable critics of the bill, treats illegals quite differently than the president suggested was the case during his speech.
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A Fitting Senate Tribute to the Kennedy Brothers
Tweet Share on Facebook September 15, 2009 Comment (2)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In a fitting and most appropriate tribute, Sens. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and John F. Kerry, D-Mass., introduced a resolution Thursday to rename the elaborate and hallowed caucus room inside the Russell Senate Office Building in honor of three brothers, each of whom served in the United States Senate.
According to National Journal, the room will be rechristened the "Kennedy Caucus Room" in memory not only of Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy, who died last month from brain cancer, but of his brothers Jack, who later became president, and Bobby, who represented New York in the Senate in the years between his departure from the Johnson administration and his murder at the hands of an assassin the night he won the 1968 California Democratic primary.
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Obama is Trying to Scare America on Healthcare
Tweet Share on Facebook September 14, 2009 Comment (26)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
At his inauguration, Barack Obama presented himself as the man who would bring America together. The man who would heal the wounds the nation's partisanship had opened. To borrow a phrase from the man he replaced in the Oval Office, he would be "a uniter," not a divider.
How quickly things can change—especially when the stakes are high. In just six short months Obama, in his bid to restart his health reform effort, has adopted rhetoric so sharp it cuts like a knife. Worse than that, the president has become just what he accuses his critics of being: a fear-monger.
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Obama and the Democrats Will Pay Later if They Don’t Hit Reset on Healthcare Now
Tweet Share on Facebook September 11, 2009 Comment (23)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In his speech to a joint session of Congress Wednesday President Barack Obama doubled down in his support for nationalized healthcare. Hardly a game changer, as Democrats have claimed, Obama reiterated his support for the so-called public option while proposing little that would actually improve the quality of healthcare in the United States.
It's not likely it is going to make much of a difference. CNBC's Larry Kudlow, in an op-ed that appeared Friday, remarked that Wall Street is now betting heavily against the president.
In a strong stock market on Thursday ... health-insurer shares advanced significantly. Cigna increased 5 percent; Health Net almost 5 percent; Humana 3.5 percent; and UnitedHealth Group 1.5 percent. Hospital shares like Community Health Systems and Tenet Healthcare also rallied smartly, climbing about 5 percent each. Drug company Pfizer rose more than 1 percent.
These healthcare stocks would not have rallied the day after the speech if investors believed Obama would get his way on public option. Moreover, any of the plans being presented by the Democrats, even conceptually, will add to the deficit, increase taxes and force many Americans to give up the private insurance they currently have.
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Charlie Sheen Joins the 'Truther' 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Fringe
Tweet Share on Facebook September 9, 2009 Comment (407)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
"Truthers" are the people who believe the 9/11 terror attacks were an inside job. That the Bush administration had advance knowledge of them and let them occur. In the more extreme version of an already extremist theory, truthers believe the U.S. government itself carried out the attacks as an excuse to take the nation to war.
At the very least the truthers question the official version of events and want the government to reopen the investigation. In a way, they have a lot in common with those who to this day refuse to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal shot in Dallas.
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Members of Congress Don't Have to Read the Healthcare Bill--They Can Listen to It
Tweet Share on Facebook September 8, 2009 Comment (7)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Having gone home with the expectation that they would use the recess period to lobby their constituents in support of Obamacare, members of Congress instead got an earful from the people they represent. And, wonder of wonders, at town hall meeting after town hall meeting, it seemed that the folks who had come to express an opinion about healthcare reform knew more about what was in the bill than the congressman holding the meeting.
It's no wonder. The bill currently under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives, the one produced by Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, Charlie Rangel, and others runs to more than 1,000 pages. No one, apparently, wants to read the darn thing. And, thanks to the group of public-spirited thespians who created the www.hearthebill.org Web site, they don't have to. They can listen to it online.
The more than 80 voice-over actors involved in the project turned the House bill, H.R. 3200, into an audio book so that anyone, especially members of Congress, would not have to spend precious time reading it. Fully downloadable and with an index, they can put it on their MP3 players and listen to it during the long plane ride back to Washington, during committee meetings, when their colleagues are making speeches on the floor and at any other time when, in their minds anyway, they really don't have anything better to do.
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For the Democrats' Sake, Charles Rangel Must Go
Tweet Share on Facebook September 8, 2009 Comment (24)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The emergence of U.S. Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., as the poster child for congressional corruption could not have come at a worse time for the Democrats or for President Obama. One of the powers behind Nancy Pelosi's drive to become speaker, Rangel is chairman of the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means, giving him a special role in the oversight of the federal Internal Revenue Service as well making him lord over the U.S. tax code.
An ongoing investigation into Rangel's finances reveals, however, that he has not been exactly candid with the IRS or, for the matter, his congressional colleagues about his real estate holding, sales of stock and his reportable income. The revelations have gotten so embarrassing that the liberal editorial writers at The Washington Post are once again demanding he step aside and surrender his chairman's gavel. They wrote Friday:
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The Dems' Healthcare Plan Can't Be Done--Not Because of Politics, But Economics
Tweet Share on Facebook September 3, 2009 Comment (14)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Just days before President Obama is scheduled to address the nation in a televised attempt to restart his healthcare reform initiative, congressional Democratic leaders seem to have painted themselves into a corner on the very same issue.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., continues to push for the so-called "public option," arguing as late as last week that it had to be included in any legislative vehicle the House would produce. "There's no way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option," she said at one recent press conference back in her San Francisco, Calif., district.
Backing her up on this is House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who agrees that any healthcare reform that is going to pass the Congress has to include the public option.
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Obamacare Would Let Government Bureaucrats Snoop Through Tax Returns
Tweet Share on Facebook September 2, 2009 Comment (9)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
One of the rallying cries issuing forth during the congressional recess from those opposed to Obamacare was that members of Congress need to read the health care bill before voting on it. Let Freedom Ring!, an organization with which I am affiliated, even went so far to ask every member of the U.S. House and Senate to pledge they would do so in writing.
The request is simple enough. In fact, it should be a no-brainer. True, the bill under consideration in the House before the August break ran more than 1,000 pages, meaning it would be a lot of work just to read through it. But, when dealing with something as fundamental as health care, which represents close to 20 percent of U.S. GDP, it only makes sense that members of Congress should know what is in it before they vote on it.
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MoveOn.org Attacks Over Healthcare Reform Bode Ill for Obama
Tweet Share on Facebook September 1, 2009 Comment (14)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
If it weren't for MoveOn.org, Barack Obama might still be just another United States Senator.
Originally founded by a couple of California millionaires who wanted the country to get past Bill Clinton's sexual peccadilloes, it became the rally place for American liberalism, as important to the left-of-center coalition as the Christian Coalition once was to the center-right.
Over time, MoveOn.org evolved into the cornerstone of a reinvigorated movement that exploited the Bush administration's weaknesses and was an important source of money, volunteers and political activity for those who made Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House and gave Harry Reid a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate. The Democrats in power today owe them a lot—and, as history teaches us, the piper must be paid.
