Henry Ross: You Can Put Lipstick On A Pig…
Well, you know the rest. First District candidate Henry Ross went back to a line Obama used to describe the McCain/ Palin ticket in 2008 saying the president’s rule very much applies to the new healthcare proposal being floated by the White House.
Ross’ thoughts on healthcare and today’s summit are below, but I just want to reiterate what I have said all along: this is a good debate for the GOP to be having. I thought after the election of Scott Brown, Democrats would shift focus and Obamacare would go the way of Hillarycare. Obama is determined to get something passed even as polls continue to track against Democrats.
This means Travis Childers and Gene Taylor, no matter their position on healthcare, will have to continue talking about healthcare instead of tax cuts or creating jobs. To Ross, McGlowan, and Nunnelee- this is good news.
And here is the entire press release from Ross:
Last year, while on the campaign trail President Obama mocked Governor Palin by saying, “you can put lip stick on a pig, it’s still a pig.” What the president implied was that you may be able to try to cover something up by making small changes, but in the end it is still the same thing. Well this rule, Mr. President, certainly applies to your healthcare proposal. On Monday, the White House issued their “new” healthcare proposal to serve as the centerpiece of tomorrow’s “bipartisan healthcare summit.” Considering the fact that the White House did not consult with any Republicans on the proposal, I’d say it is safe to believe the president’s bipartisanship is off to a rocky start. When you look at his proposal in detail you have to wonder why on earth any Republican would want to join his big government plan anyway. Some of the most disturbing aspects of the president’s plan are below:
His plan cost $75 billion more than the senate’s previous version, which now comes to a grand total of $950 billion. You, like me, are wondering how on earth we can afford it? Well, simply put we can’t. But the president intends to raise your tax dollars to do it anyway. He specifically targets high income seniors who use Medicare. If the president has it his way, with one stroke of the pen he’ll tax Medicare recipients who earn over $200,000 and raise their capital gains taxes. He further proposes to penalize small business owners who either cannot afford or do not provide insurance coverage for their employees. He wants to slap a fee on pharmaceutical companies, thus making medicine more expensive. He kept the Senate provision that taxes so called “Cadillac plans.” What is most discouraging is the president still wants to regulate your healthcare through government run exchanges and create a brand new regulatory agency that will eventually bankrupt private health insurance carriers. In the end, the president won’t lower your health insurance premiums. Instead, he’ll raise your taxes and reduce the basic freedom you enjoy to make your own healthcare decisions. The last thing we need is more tax raisers in Washington. Did I mention that Nancy Pelosi already said she has the votes to pass his proposal?
Republicans have solutions to the healthcare debate. We need true tort reform that lowers costs by stopping frivolous lawsuits and outrageous damage awards that cripple the medical profession. Patients deserve to be able to take their health insurance from job to job and to be able to shop all over the country for the lowest premiums. We can’t lose track of what the healthcare debate is about –providing affordable, quality health care. We must work to lower healthcare cost by eliminating unnecessary spending. Finally, healthy individuals need to be rewarded for their lifestyle choices.
You lose freedom when you cannot make the most basic decisions, with the advice of your doctor, on how to maintain your own health. We need strong leaders who are not afraid to fight for our freedom to decide these matters for ourselves. As your Congressman, I will fight to make sure you and your doctor have the final say about your healthcare.
This is definatly Mrs. McGlowans strong point she is conservetive with goverment spending. I hope she will reach some of her detracters on this point. But all of the candidates should be stong on this. I think even Childers is agianst the health care.
“instead of tax cuts or creating jobs”
As much as I would love for my taxes to be cut (just like I assume most people would) we as a country cannot afford tax cuts now. Tax cuts are not free for the country and tax cuts are partly responsible for the growing crippling national debt. Pull up any graph of the national debt over the past sixty years and you will see that the percentage of our debt in relation to GDP declined from the 1950s until the 1980 when our national debt was about 35% of our GDP. After 12 years of Reagan/Bush with increased military spending and tax cuts our national debt doubled from about 35% of our GDP to 70% of GDP. Clinton, in his second term with the help of a republican congress was able to begin to pay down the national debt, but that came with two things 1) less spending; and 2) increased taxes.
Then once Bush II came into office we saw the opposite 1) increased spending – two wars; and 2) lower taxes. As a result our national debt once again skyrocketed. Now we have a president willing to let the Bush taxcuts rollback (a plus) but he is continuing to spend, which will offset any gains recovered through higher taxes.
If we do not work now to control our debt it is projected that within 12 years the largest item of in the federal budget will be interest payments on the national debt – former US Comptroller General David Walker said that.
While we all hate paying taxes already, much less higher ones, however what will you think when you are paying higher taxes just to pay interest for which no one in this country receives any benefit. Already in 2009 we paid $260 BILLION in interest! That was roughly 8% of the budget went to interest payments for which we got NOTHING in return.
The intitial Bush tax cuts at a time of war were unprecedented and reckless and extending these cuts now would be just as reckless. This is the only time in recent history that taxes were not increased during wartime. Wars are expensive and with less revenue coming in and two ongoing wars the government was forced into deficit spending not seen since the Reagan years which has added to our national debt.
Keep in mind too, that in order to pay off the debt from WWII the top tax bracket from 1944 to 1963 fluctuated between 82% and 91%, and from 1964 to 1986 the top bracket fluctuated from 50% to 77%. If we allow our debt to keep spiraling out of control NOW the only way we will be able to pay if off will we to return to these obscenely high tax rates.
As much as I love paying less taxes the choice we all have is do we sacrafice a little now or do we put it off and really take a hit in the future. However, for this to work we need a President and a Congress prepared to do 2 things 1) allow the Bush tax cuts to expire and 2) cut spending.
Sadly however, the democrats are willing to do #1 but not #2 and the republicans are willing to do #2 but not #1. So we have more of the same to look forward to as our deficit spirals out of control.
The facts are you do not raise taxes during poor economic times and you certaintly do not raise taxes to cover the cost of intrusive, poorly written healthcare policy. We need to cut spending, cut taxes and get back to common sense governence.
Colonel, you are right in part. Higher taxes should not go to pay for healthcare, right now we cannot afford to pay for healthcare. The increased revenue should directly to paying off the debt.
As for your other point, you don’t engage in wars without funding them. If we are so opposed to actually paying for the wars in which we are engaged through taxes, then maybe we should get out of these wars. Otherwise, funding tax cuts through deficit spending just forces your children to pay for the tax cuts you enjoy, not very noble in my opinion.
The problem that I have with any of this is the fact that the government as a whole is working some real fuzzy math.
Stay with me now we are going to do a word problem.
If I go to the store and I have 3 dollars with me. Lets say I want to buy a gallon of milk @ $3.50 and a two T-Bone steaks @ $15.00 each. I go up to the counter to check out and they tell me the total is $37.50. So I then take the two T-Bones back and get two ribeyes @ $10.00 each. As I am walking to the counter I realise that I have now saved $10.00 dollars so I go ahead and get some salad fixins and bread with the ten dollars that I saved.
Upon returning to the counter I am shocked to find that I still cannot afford any of the items that I have picked out. To remedy the problem I borrow money from some other shoppers and I leave with the groceries.
Upon leaving the store I then take my brand new groceries that I bought with money that belonged to the other shoppers give them to the dogs to eat.
All the while bragging to the shoppers who lended me the money in the first place about how I saved ten dollars on a steak dinner.
As you said RandomThoughts both sides are responsible we need to hold them accountable.
Our country can, and will, pay off our debts if we stop spending money we do not have.
If we stop counting money, that we stop spending by cutting useless programs, as saving. Finally if we stop giving our goods to dogs that do not want to contribute to the well being of our country in the first place.
I guess we agree for the most part Random Thoughts I am just not willing to pass out
‘atta boys to Clinton or anyone else. Because If you are not part of the solution then you are the problem. Clinton along was only good at fuzzy math along with alot of other politicians.
The war is not the only government project (if I may call it that) that is causing excessive spending. The most billiant financial experts can not explain to us how the “Second stimulus package”, Tarp being the first, helped our economy. The war, medicare, social security, interstate commerce, and security of our country are federal government responsibilities and our taxes should go to pay those benefits of living in the United States. The rest of it belongs under the ownership of our states. Government programs need to be established by the administration closest to the people. One of the principle reasons that health care issues cannot be resolved is because of the individual variations and needs involved. It should not be a Federal Government issue. I want my taxes to go more to the state and less to the Federal Government. I want more control of how my money is being spent. I want to be sure that the area I live in is getting the legislation and support that is appropriate. Our Federal Government is huge and we are paying for it and not saying a word. Tax cuts are needed – if the money is not there it should not be spent. We need representatives that will fight to stop this federal spending. Then we need to do the same thing on a state and local level.
“Finally if we stop giving our goods to dogs that do not want to contribute to the well being of our country in the first place.” That is the answer. Welfare checks, disability checks, crazy checks, dumb checks, free breakfast, free lunch, EBT cards, Section 8 housing, EIC, CHIPs, how many other programs are there that benefit people who only reproduce a generation of more takers.
I am glad I didn’t have to spell it out.
“Tax cuts are needed – if the money is not there it should not be spent.”
The problem is while that may be true those of us who are responsible with our household finances, the government has no aversion to spending what it doesn’t have.
Tea Party Leader, you listed “he war, medicare, social security, interstate commerce, and security of our country” as responsibilities of the federal governement which our taxes should go to.
Look at some the 2011 $3.83 trillion budget:
$738 billion national defense
$738 billion to social security
$498 billion to medicare
$122 billion in veterans benefits
$251 billion in interest on debt
$381 billion in medicaid
This amount of spending ALONE gets us into deficit spending mode. So you can cut ALL other spending but that mentioned above, including highways, research, border security, federal prisons, federal prosecutors (and many valid and needed expenditures) etc. and we are STILL in deficit spending mode.
Unless you are in favor of cutting current government entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) or scaling back the military or wars taxes will have to increase, or we will go further in debt. And I am all for eliminating Social Security entirely and letting me keep that portion of my check but I am sure the AARP will have a problem with that.
Where will the savings come? Wellfare spending is easy to attack because most people here are not on wellfare but in reality the amount spent on wellfare is miniscule as compared to the overall budget. The biggest ticket items in our budget every year are the mandatory entitlement programs we won’t give up, Medicare, Medicaid and SS.
The simple fact is the country is at a point where there is no way we can afford further tax cuts, and any politician who says further tax cuts are the answer is choosing to place the burden of our national deficit on the next generation.
Random, you’re right. And when you look past at past polling you will notice two things: 1) Americans don’t want anymore taxes and 2) Americans don’t want any services/ entitlements cut. This would be like someone working at McDonald’s yet trying to buy a BMW. You can’t do both. As for the politicians, it’s a lot easier to add on to the debt then tell the voters you support cutting something.
I am in favor of some entitlements being cut. We need a generation of Americans who have learned that the free lunch costs someone.
The numbers are staggering. Do you know how much of that money goes to administration of those programs? That is a good place to start cutting. I have heard that the staff for Michelle Obama alone gets paid over $1million a year. Why? All the other first ladies had one secretary who was paid out of the president’s pocket. This is the kind of spending I am talking about. There is tremendous waste everywhere. I would agree that many of our older citizens are really dependant on social security and medicare and I would not want to eliminate those programs. Unfortunately there are others who now qualify for social security (not over 62) that need to be removed/recategorized. The other entitlement programs need a major overhaul with stricter qualifications for approval. It would be an overwhelming task but it needs to start now.
That is an thought prevoking list there.
$738 billion national defense-cut this too sharply and we will not have to worry about paying taxes because we will all be speaking Chinese.
$738 billion to social security- cut this and you will have everyone who has paid into it on your back because it is suppose to be there money at least it was at one time. Thanks L.B.J.
$498 billion to medicare – Old folks are already stirred up about the possibility of this being cut back I can only imagine the revolt if we cut it all together. Thanks L.B.J.
$122 billion in veterans benefits- I think this one is to low anyway. The least we can do is care for those who served in our Military.
$251 billion in interest on debt- see “national defense” above
$381 billion in medicaid- Who will be the first to volunteer to turn out a baby because there mamma is a crack head. Thanks L.B.J.
Some folks in our country are like the animals in the zoo. They have been cared for so long that they do not remember how to survive on there own.