'76 Blog

Budgeting is about setting priorities.In most states, K-12 education is the top priority and receives the lion’s share of funding.  Yet across the country, states are grappling with a budget monster that pits education funding against federal health care mandates.In the last three years, total spending on K-12 education in Colorado has fallen by $389 million.  Spending on health care, however, has increased by $763 million during that same period.The problem is that states no longer have the ability to set their own priorities.  The federal-state Medicaid “partnership” increasingly resembles a shotgun wedding.  A state that rejects the federal spending mandates also loses out on federal matching funds that pay for half of the $5 billion price tag of Colorado’s program.In the past five years, the number of Coloradans participating in Medicaid has swollen from 391,962 to 613,148.  If that weren’t a big enough problem, ObamaCare (ironically named the “Affordable Care Act”) locks in current spending and requires states to expand eligibility to 133% of the federal poverty level.  Worse still, government health care programs are notorious for exponentially exceeding estimated costs.Two years ago, the Colorado legislature, then controlled by Democrats, passed a $600 million hidden tax on hospital patients.  Hospitals are prohibited from itemizing this “fee” on patients’ bills.  The state planned to use this fee to leverage more federal matching funds and expand Medicaid eligibility to all adults whose income was at or below the federal poverty level.According a Denver Post story by Tim Hoover, state bureaucrats estimated that the new program would serve 49,200 people at a cost of $197 million per year.  In fact, the number of eligible participants is closer to 143,000 and the cost of treating them $1.75 billion.For now, Colorado’s Department of Health Care Policy and Finance has controlled costs by limiting eligibility.  However, ObamaCare mandates that all states extend coverage to this entire population by 2014.  The federal government promises to pay for it by heaping even more debt on our children and grandchildren.Let’s be candid: Medicaid is government-sponsored charity — a noble but costly endeavor.In our family budgets, we may choose to cut back on extras to support worthwhile charities, but we don’t slash basics, like food and shelter for our children, to be even more generous to charitable causes.Given the choice, it’s inconceivable that legislators of either party would slash K-12 funding in order to expand Medicaid, but that’s exactly what’s happened.  And the outlook grows even more grim under ObamaCare.So, why haven’t those who want to raise taxes for education or want the courts to force the legislature to spend more on education taken aim at the chief culprit that’s cutting into education funding? Either they don’t understand how Medicaid is eviscerating the state budget or perhaps they find it more expedient to lock arms with others who want higher taxes to pay for more spending on virtually everything.Two sensible options exist for restoring fiscal sanity to Medicaid:• Lobby Congress to turn Medicaid into a block grant program whereby states receive a lump sum from the federal government and are liberated to design their own program without federal mandates.  Colorado will have allies because 49 other states are in a similar predicament.• Require Medicaid recipients to pay a small premium or co-pay in exchange for the health care they receive — which costs the state about $4,800 per patient per year.Some will object because Medicaid is a safety net program for the poor.  Yet, households with an average income of $17,500 (just below 100% of poverty) spend an average of $879 on junk food and soda pop, $1,160 on eating out and $1,192 on entertainment.If Medicaid patients paid an average of $400 a year out of pocket, the state could add some $300 per student in K-12 funding.So which is more responsible – more cuts to K-12 education or requiring Medicaid customers to help pay for their health care costs by cutting back on a few extras?   Mark Hillman served as Colorado state treasurer and Senate majority leader. He is now the Republican National Committeeman and a Centennial Institute Fellow. To read more or comment, go to www.MarkHillman.com. 

Conflicts of interest may discredit Colorado's newly formed health insurance exchange, worries Susan Barnes-Gelt in the July round of Head On TV debates. Look closer and you'll see the exchange concept itself is pure corporate statism, replies John Andrews, adding this is one more reason Obamacare must go. John on the right, Susan on the left, also go at it this month over the 2012 presidential outlook, the Stock Show's move to Aurora, Mayor Hancock's early moves, and the Denver Police Department. Head On has been a daily feature on Colorado Public Television since 1997. Here are all five scripts for July: 1. HEALTH INSURANCE EXCHANGE QUESTIONED John: Obamacare requires every state to create a new bureaucratic monster called the health insurance exchange.  Colorado House Republicans went along when they should have told the Feds to get lost.  Now we learn the board of the exchange is big business in bed with big government, pure corporate statism.  That helps no one. Susan:  Seems like policymakers all ‘round – the elected’s who appoint and the industry and business people appointed – need a tutorial on conflict of interest.  Hickenlooper’s appointments to the Health Insurance Exchange Board are awful.  The fox isn’t just guarding the hen house - he’s living in the master suite. John: Susan, it’s worse than that.  The health insurance exchange is a conflict of interest by definition.  The board appointments by legislative leaders and the governor were all quite legal.  But the exchange law itself rigs the marketplace and harms consumers.  Massachusetts could warn us.  Obamacare is fatally flawed.  Out with it! Susan:  Massachusetts’s residents love their health care system – Mitt Romney got something right as governor.  The current, unregulated system benefits health insurance companies – currently enjoying record profits. The current system works for insurance execs and shareholders. Hick needs to revisit his appointments. 2.  PRESIDENTIAL RACE HEATS UP Susan:  The 2012 Presidential race is on. The R’s have a fundamental problem – finding a candidate who appeals to the drown-government-in-a-bathtub contingent, dominating the primary process and nominating someone who can appeal to moderates and independents in November.  Despite the tough economy, I’m betting on Obama. John:  Your take on 2012 is backwards.  The only drowning to we face is a rising tide of unemployment and foreclosures, with Uncle Sam awash in red ink and Barack Obama in over his head.  Good luck on that reelection.  Republican challengers Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Tim Pawlenty could all beat this president. Susan:  The majority of voters want solutions – not partisan bickering and negative attacks.  Ronald Reagan beat incumbent Jimmy Carter because he had a positive message and uplifting vision.  The current R frontrunners are negative, small minded dividers.  Huntsman is the only viable option and he can’t win the nomination. John: Obama has made the economy worse.  He has made the deficit worse.  His policies will worsen health care and worsen national security.  He just can’t lead.  Maybe one of his fellow Democrats will take him down next year.  One of the strong Republicans, Gov. Romney, Gov. Perry, Gov. Pawlenty, Congressman Bachmann, definitely will. 3.  STOCK SHOW MAY LEAVE DENVER John: My first time at the National Western was 50 years ago, but I remember it like yesterday.  For a lot of us, the Stock Show is Denver.  But money talks, and now Aurora is talking loudest.  It’s a tough test for in a down economy for Michael Hancock as Denver’s new mayor. Susan:  The National Western is the only urban stock show in the country.  It needs 3 times the acreage it has.  The issue is not will they move, but who pays?  Denver should not pay for the stock show to Aurora unless we retain the revenue. John: The larger issue is how the people’s hard-earned tax dollars should be used and where the coercive power of government should be allowed to reach.  Massive subsidies to private businesses are on the table here, driven by the Gaylord fat cats.  Aurora’s election for mayor may become a referendum on the deal. Susan:  There are no winners when politics trumps policy.  The issue ought to be what’s best for the region and the stock show.  Balkanized local government pits city against city – to neither’s benefit.  There’s a win-win is this challenge. But I’m not sure rational thinking will prevail. 4.  HANCOCK’S EARLY MOVES Susan: Denver’s new mayor – Michael Hancock - has his hands full.  A tough budget, belligerent police leadership and the threatened stock show exit.  The weak economy and bloated transition process has made identifying the right appointees challenging.  Janice Sinden, his first-rate chief of staff is a good start. John: I like it that Mayor Hancock is not a showboat.  The guy seems sensible, steady, and real.  I like it that he appointed Sinden, a business-minded Republican.  I liked his gutsy, decent campaign style.  He didn’t pander to unions or hide his religious faith.  Now we’ll see how he governs. Susan:  The quality of his appointments will reveal a lot.  He needs to bring in smart people with fresh perspectives, not the usual retreads and campaign payoffs.  He’s got to replace tired leadership at the urban renewal authority and other policy commissions if he wants to be effective. John: Lots of people watching this don’t live in Denver.  But wherever you live in Colorado, you’d like to hope that Denver is a city on the rise, not on the decline.  The keys to that are dynamic free enterprise, excellent schools, and a proud civic spirit.  That should be the Hancock agenda. 5.  POLICE DISCIPLINE QUESTIONED Susan:  The majority of Denver cops are great. But one out of 17 have discipline problems serious enough to question their veracity in court.  Combined with the costly rash of excessive force cases – the DPD needs systemic overhaul.  A chief – new to the department is a start. John: The whole reason for government is to see that streets are safe, neighborhoods are peaceful, citizens are secure in their persons and property.  Law enforcement is tough, thankless work.  The men and women who do it deserve our gratitude and the benefit of the doubt.  I hope the new mayor knows that. Susan:  Public safety is the centerpiece of government. The police department’s mission is to protect and serve – not abuse and lie.  Lack of transparency and accountability destroys public trust and that’s where Denver is now.  The department and the city will be better off if the bad seeds are removed. John: Perfection never happens in this world.  Policing is no exception.  The outgoing chief, Gerry Whitman, is a man of honor and deserves our salute.  The former chief, Jim Collier, was right when he warned against demoralizing the force.  Don’t do it.  The manager of safety, Charles Garcia, doesn’t understand policing.  He should go.  

(Centennial Fellow) Some Democrats and their left-wing supporters are telling grotesque lies about a Republican Medicare reform plan, sinking so low in one instance, so pathetically, immorally, disgustingly low, as to try to convince the nation through an ad that the reform will murder the elderly. It's not just the ad by an outfit called The Agenda Project that's threatening rescue from our spending and debt plight, although there is surely a special place in Hell for such nasty propaganda.  The ad shows someone looking vaguely like Rep. Paul Ryan, R.-Wisc., push an old woman to the edge of a cliff in a wheelchair, dumping the protesting, helpless soul to her certain death when they get there. Along the way, we are told how half the 46 million Medicare recipients make no more than $28,000 a year. It is made to seem they will have to fend for themselves if the Republican plan flies. Without the video vividness, any number of Democrats (along with Republican Newt Gingrich) have spread similarly dire depictions even though the plan drawn up by Ryan and passed by the House would not go into full effect for 10 years and would not apply to anyone currently on Medicare. The government would still provide funds for health insurance and would reward the well off less than those with lower incomes, which is something you would think the soak-the-rich left would applaud. Given the known proclivity of Democrats to demonize entitlement sanity and the fact that Americans do cling to these programs like lifesavers in a sea storm, it took extraordinary courage for Ryan and the GOP to address this issue honestly in the first place. The concept, by the way, is not a far-right invention -- Alice Rivlin, appointed to top positions by Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, endorses it.  That's not to say she likes the particulars or that the concept or the particulars should not be debated. Some Republicans besides Gingrich don't like the plan, and I agree with the case for increased vouchers for the least affluent and still more means testing. Consider economic writer Robert Samuelson's observations that the number of poor elderly has been shrinking, the number of high-income elderly rising and that married-couple households over 65 years of age have a median net worth of $385,000, a lot more than most of those funding their benefits. The thing is, this plan does eventually begin cutting Medicare spending in a serious way, as we absolutely must do for the sake of both Medicare and the nation. No one questions that revenues are going to fall trillions of dollars short of promises, and you can't fix it with federal taxes. As an online Cato Institute piece observes, the Congressional Budget Office says most of these taxes would have to be doubled over the next 40 years to foot the bill, reducing national income by a fifth. Want a job, anyone? The trouble with most congressional opponents is that they have no answer of their own, preferring reelection to serving their country, and Medicare's chief actuary has cast doubt on whether Obamacare's Medicare tinkering will do the trick, either.  Remember, too, that Medicare is just part of the issue -- three-fourths of us get some federal benefit or the other whether we need it or not, and as Samuelson and a host of other analysts testify, this largesse cannot be sustained. If the taxes don't get us, debt will, dramatically darkening our economic way and making this passing recession seem happiness and sunshine by comparison. Government has to cut it out, but instead what we get is a vicious TV lie, too many Democratic opportunists, some cowardly Republicans and a president whose chief ambition has so far been to pretty much enlarge everything despite some talk to the contrary. Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is now a syndicated columnist and a Centennial Institute Fellow.

(Centennial Fellow) There's hope for America because, down in Florida, we have a wondrously smart federal judge who, unlike so many, still believes in the Constitution's restrictions on federal power. He is even courageously willing to apply them to Obamacare, which is to say, oh, oh. If you do that, Obamacare withers and dies. The withering especially starts in its requirement that those without health insurance will eventually have to hightail it to an insurance office and buy some. The issue mostly comes down to the Constitution's Commerce Clause, used to justify the demand. Its original purpose was mainly to ensure that states don't refuse to trade with each other. That kind of protectionism could just about kill off the union, and the founders recognized as much. They were not figuring the federal government would then use their words to regulate virtually any activity remotely connected with trade or even the production of goods for one's own consumption, but that's what started happening under the New Deal in the 1930's. Obamacare would take these constitutional misadventures to a bold, novel, high-handed realm, as is explained in refreshingly lucid prose by the able judge, Roger Vinson, who explained that not buying something is hardly an activity. It's inactivity. Telling citizens they must buy a private product has nothing to do with facilitating trade or regulating industry, and if you illogically insist otherwise, you are tyrannically insisting there's next to nothing the government cannot make you do. None of this is to say there aren't objections aplenty to the judge's wisdom, many of them to the effect that this judge is, you know - yech! -- conservative, practically a tea party kind of guy. The critics want it understood that this particular law is that without which there is no health, goodness nor compassion in this nation, and that as far as the powers of the government are concerned, absolutely anything goes as long as it agrees with their collective desires. The Obama administration especially knows how to put a judge down. Vinson is a "judiciary activist," spokesmen say. Others have dealt with this cutesiness, but let me reiterate that the use of the term "activist" is ordinarily in reference to the multiple judges who, in reviewing legislative deeds, substitute their own moral or political judgment for a reasonable interpretation of law or precedent. The result is that rule of law gets replaced by oligarchy, the antithesis of our republican experiment. Vinson was engaged in no such betrayal of principle. He was arguing that we heed the Constitution. His ruling would toss the whole health law out the window because of the impossibility of taking out one piece and seeing which others might hold up. Should the Supreme Court ultimately agree with such a stance, it doesn't follow that there can be no substitute better than this oversized abomination. President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union address that he'd go along with anything that would make it better, which is like saying he'd go along with converting an elephant to a Chihuahua puppy. Can't be done. The need is to start all over again with some such inexpensive but problem-solving step as switching from employer-based to individual-based insurance subsidies. Here's hoping that the high court, when it gets to it, will take note of Vinson's quote of James Madison in the Federalist Papers. Because we humans aren't angels, he said, we need government to help control us, but for the same reason, government itself must be controlled. It's appropriate a number of commentators have paid attention to this quote because if our most powerful institutions don't understand as much, ours will become a land of liberty only by reference to discarded traditions Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado and a Centennial Institute Fellow. He can be reached at SpeaktoJay@ aol.com

('76 Contributor) The U.S. House of Representatives will soon vote on a proposal to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare. So this is a good time to discuss the continuing obfuscation — what I have called “purposeful ignorance” — of one, not untypical, Member of Congress, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. Bennet cast a decisive vote enabling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to secure Senate passage on Christmas Eve, 2009. Bennet was appointed to the Senate two years ago when Ken Salazar became Pres. Obama’s Secretary of Interior. Bennet could be the poster child for Laurence Johnston Peter‘s observation of organizations, the “Peter Principle,” holding that people ultimately achieve through promotion positions for which they are incompetent. Bennet has the moneyed, educational background of a patrician. He was widely reported as successful in both private and public sector jobs prior to his appointment to the Senate. His performance there, however, has been whiny, ineffective and hypocritical (again, hardly untypical). Nonetheless, Coloradans narrowly voted in November 2010 to give him a six-year term. Our file contains a dozen or more emails and letters to Bennet. Nearly every one has elicited a form-letter reply, none responsive to any question, suggestion or objection we had stated, nor assistance we requested. (Udall, by the way, is no better, but we have a larger file of Bennet communications.) Congressional Budget Office. Bennet’s form letters about what he calls “health reform” usually have a litany of (unsupported) claims about what Coloradans want, etc., etc. And they always appeal to authority about which we continue to hear a great deal from the ObamaCare left, the Congressional Budget Office, CBO. This is a convenient dodge as the CBO is officially nonpartisan and its work is generally respected. However, most citizens are unaware of the game that can be played to get a favourable “score” from the CBO, estimating future fiscal results of legislation. Reid’s bill that was ultimately signed by the President in March 2010 comprised more than 2,000 pages and had dozens of references to existing statutes, some of which were amendments. In short, this was a work of mind-boggling complexity. (Many of us will remember forever the statement last March of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “…but we have to pass the bill so that you can, uh, find out what is in it — away from the fog of the controversy.”) CBO “scoring” must be confined to what is within the four corners of the legislation being proposed. Reid & Co. went through Byzantine legislative gymnastics in late 2009 to arrive at a set of conditions on which the CBO would “score” their legislation as having a positive effect on the Nation’s deficit decades out into the future. U.S. House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., appeared last week, January 6, on Fox News Channel’s “On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteren” and discussed this very subject, characterizing the Reid directions underlying CBO’s “score” as “smoke and mirrors.” Of course they were smoke and mirrors. CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said as much — with more careful language, to be sure — in his blog posted November 19, 2009. Among our letters to Bennet and Udall was one dated Dec. 1, 2009, 22 days before their fateful votes to approve Reid’s bill, including a link to that posting and discussing its implications as to dubiousness of the “score.” More than a year later, Dec. 16, 2010, a letter to us from Bennet repeated the same, tired, challenged claim about CBO scoring: “Health reform was fully paid for. In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that health reform will reduce the federal deficit by $143 billion over the next decade and with further deficit reductions the following decade.” I wrote back: “Once again, you appealed to the $143 billion deficit reduction ‘score’ obtained from the Congressional Budget Office [at the time you voted for ObamaCare] in late 2009.“There is enclosed an excerpt from a letter I wrote to you at that time — December 1, 2009 — when we had begun to receive your CBO-supported argument about costs. A link was provided there to the CBO director’s blog, from which anyone reading at about ninth grade level could understand that the ‘score’ CBO had provided was little more than hot air. The director narrowly avoided outright cynicism as to Congress’s ever following through on major cost cutting that underlay the ‘score’ his office had been obligated to produce… “We can be sure that a great many of your constituents haven’t the time, perhaps not even the interest, to understand the $143 billion myth you continue to purvey. However, Senator, you understand it, and I have written in detail to you enough times that you know I do as well. Therefore, my wife and I find it insulting to continue to receive from you this fatuous claim.” (Emphasis in original.) I wrote above that Bennet’s performance as a U.S. Senator has been whiny and ineffective. Three days before casting his critical vote in favour of Reid’s bill, Bennet had delivered a speech on the floor of the Senate strongly decrying the pressure, deal-making and other methods used by leadership to get the requisite favourable majority. One of Bennet’s problems was that something like the notorious deals used to buy other senators’ votes hadn’t come his way for Colorado. In the run-up to the election this past fall, The Denver Post published a comically tepid editorial endorsing Bennet’s election. Included was this: “On Dec. 21, 2009, for example, [Bennet] made an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, blasting Washington lawmakers for their dirty dealing as they patched together a health care bill larded with special deals. It was an eloquent speech and a devastating indictment on all that’s wrong with Washington. Then, three days later, he voted for the bill.  The current health care bill is law because of Bennet’s one vote.That vote, and his speech, epitomize his short Senate career. So much potential, yet not enough spine.” Spine isn’t all Bennet lacks. He hasn’t enough character.

('76 Contributor) I have often wondered what propels the Douglas County economy and enables it to be the 8th most affluent and highly educated county in the United States. Many believe that the engine of growth was real estate development or big box retailing. Maybe, but a recent project I managed suggests a labor force concentrated in the health care field is the real underlying strength of the local economy. Over the past two months I have been organizing the State of Colorado’s Department of Regulatory Agency's lists of licensed health providers into a computerized data base and it has led to some startling revelations. The magnitude and velocity of growth in the far south suburban area over the past 30 years boggles the mind. In 1965, a 20-foot wall of water rushed down from the Palmer Divide through both Plum and Cherry creeks and wiped a clean slate through the County all the way to the South Platte River. By 1976, sod farms had replaced cattle grazing and there were all of 4800 telephones listed in a Castle Rock phone book that also included Elbert County. The 1976 death of Gerald Phipps, owner of Highlands Ranch and the place for James Michener's book Centennial, also set the stage for Mission Viejo, later Shea, to develop a planned community. In reviewing the 1976 phone book you could count all the doctors, dentists and pharmacists in the area on the fingers of both your hands. Douglas County, according to the latest Census Bureau American Community Survey now has a labor force of 151,000 and a total population of over 270,000. At 14%, the health care workforce is slightly more than 21,000 workers ranging from physicians to therapists . But, the impact on the economy is far greater since thousands of Front Range health care workers live in Douglas County and commute into the urban core. My assessment of the economic impact of health care suggests it has now become the economic engine of Douglas County for the 21st Century. The median household income in Douglas County is over $100,000. In Denver that number is only $44,000 and in rural Costilla County in the San Luis Valley, where settlement first occurred in Colorado median household income is a mere $19, 500. The building of three major hospitals in the southern suburbs over the past ten years--Littleton, Sky Ridge and Parker Adventist, has come at a time when hospitals in the urban core, such as Children’s, University, and the VA have also pulled up stakes and left for the suburbs. Mercy Medical Center closed and all the remaining hospitals in Denver are left with deteriorating demographic and the need to rebuild their facilities. From that original baker’s dozen of health care providers back in 1976, Douglas County has grown to where it has now has over 800 physicians and P.A.s, 300 Dentists, 600 pharmacists and nearly 1,000 occupational, physical, massage and respiratory therapists. There may be as many as 5,000 nurses and 3,000 mental health workers living in the area. By the year 2020, I estimate there will be nearly 100,000 health care workers in the suburban corridor ring south and east of the boundaries of the City of Denver. The shift in demographics and the growth of health care as a suburban industry has devastating consequences for Denver as a city. Denver seems to have irreversibly lost health care and the suburbs have gained. Francis M. Miller is the past vice chairman of the Colorado Health Data Commission and a health economist. In 2011 he will publish a Colorado Health Care Atlas of his findings from this project. You can watch its development on www.healthsmartco-op.com.    

(Centennial Fellow) In the battle over health care the Democrats’ great advantage was successfully identifying themselves with the plight of thirty three million uninsured Americans.  When Republicans  advanced their own plan to the Congressional Budget Office it was shown to extend coverage to a mere three million people.  For the remainder of the debate the Democrats-greatly aided by the media- used this disparity as a stick to relentlessly beat Republicans for their “callous indifference” to the uninsured Though current polling is highly favorable to Republicans as we move closer to the November elections it will not be enough to campaign solely on repeal of Obamacare.  It is imperative for Republicans to identify and rally around a credible alternative that persuasively addresses the very real problems of health care in America.  In doing so they must decisively take the issue of the uninsured away from the Democrats and make it their own trump card. Recently just such a credible alternative has emerged and it is highly impressive.  It is called the “Small Bill”, and it is the brainchild of Jeffrey Anderson, the Director of the Benjamin Rush Society which is an organization of medical professionals who advocate a free health care market. At the outset the Small Bill demonstrates that the “fact” of 33 million uninsured American citizens is a myth, albeit a myth that the Democrats successfully used as a battering ram to pass Obamacare. How did this happen? Throughout a year of public debate many estimates of the number of uninsured were bandied about-commonly anywhere from thirty to fifty million.  At some point the Democrats and an uncritical media fastened on the number 33 million, and Republicans made little effort to contest it. Another number-rarely mentioned- was total U.S. population, currently estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau at 309 million people.  The juxtaposition of the numbers 33 and 309 is important because it offers perspective on the dimensions of “The Problem”.  Whether a problem is “huge and overwhelming” or “serious but manageable” goes far toward shaping appropriate legislation. Even accepting the 33 million figure, that is barely 11 percent of total population, a number which must be contrasted with the 85% (according to most polls) of Americans who were basically satisfied with their existing healthcare programs. The perspectives offered by such contrasts and comparisons and their policy implications were never seriously spotlighted in the public debate.  Neither was much attention given to analysis of who the uninsured were, and why they lacked coverage. Opponents of Obamacare missed an important opportunity when they failed to drill down on these numbers, because fairly authoritative data was available from the U.S. Census Bureau which reports that there are actually 28 million uninsured Americans: 46 million uninsured people living in the United States, less 9 million non-citizens, and less 9 million people on Medicaid who the Census reports were mistakenly listed as uninsured.  Unfortunately CBO estimates count the 18 million non-citizens and Medicaid recipients as uninsured. The Census further tells us that not all of the remaining 28 million lack insurance because they are poor since about half of them earn more than the median U.S. income.  These 14 million-presumptively younger and / or healthier people- have as is their right simply chosen not to buy health coverage. Thus in the end we are left with 14 million people- just 4.5 percent of total U.S. population- who are uninsured and relatively low income. By right these figures should have propelled Congress away from the “huge and overwhelming” perception toward the “serious but manageable perception”.  Unfortunately for the country, it didn’t. Unlike the Democrats’ 2,700 page bill, the Small Bill can be summarized on a single page, hence the name.  It offers seven very specific solutions to controlling health care costs and covering the uninsured.  They are:  1.   Serious tort reform; 2. allowing insurance purchase across state lines; 3. allowing lower premiums for healthier lifestyles; 4. giving the uninsured and self-insured the same tax breaks as people with employer provided programs; 5. increasing federal support for state-run high risk pools; 6. getting the uninsured out of Emergency Rooms and into less expensive routine care; and 7. implementing a few regulatory and Administrative reforms included in the House Republicans health care proposal.  Further details are available at www.smallbill.org  or in Jeffrey Anderson’s excellent National Review  article (April 19, 2010).  The following contrasts between the Small Bill and Obamacare should more than justify that closer look:  Cost                        Obamacare – 2.5 trillion;                    Small Bill- 180 billion            Taxes                      Obamacare – 1 trillion dollars;           Small Bill- zero Medicare Advantage  cuts Obamacare – 254 billion;                   Small Bill- zero Insurance Premiuns           Obamacare – 10-13 % increase;         Small Bill- 5-8 % decrease 10 year cost                        Obamacare – 76,000 dollars;              Small Bill- 18,000 dollars  per newly insured person Deficit Spending 2015-19  Obamacare – 139 billion dollars;       Small Bill- deficit neutral     (CBO estimates) If this cost comparison was clearly and persuasively presented to American voters, which plan do you think they would prefer?  Let Jeffrey Anderson have the last word: “Lower insurance premiums instead of higher, no trillion dollar tax hike, no hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts- and all at 7 percent of the cost of the Democrats’ program.  If the Small Bill sounds too good to be true, that illustrates how colossally bad Obamacare is”. Absent a better idea, Republicans should validate, refine, and rally around this proposal as a centerpiece of their Fall campaign strategy.  Done right the Small Bill could be a key engine driving a massive Republican victory in the most important mid-term elections of our lifetime.__________________________________________________________________________ William Moloney’s columns have appeared in the Wall St Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, and Human Events.  

(Centennial Fellow) The current controversy around Obamacare echoes the debate over ratification of the Constitution in 1787-88. Contention then centered on how the government would obtain and maintain the sufficient support of the people, while at the same time protecting the people’s liberties.  Both the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists agreed that this indeed was the proper role of government.  Their disagreement lay in how best to constitute a government to achieve these desired ends.  For government to be legitimate, it must maintain a voluntary attachment and obedience to the laws. For the Federalists, a new theory of government – the “extended compound republic” – was believed to be the solution to these challenges.  By introducing a diversity of opinions from a large geographical expanse (made possible by representative government), the Federalists believed that laws passed by elected officials would only be passed with the widespread support of a clear majority of the people.  At the same time, laws harmful to the rights of the people would be very difficult to pass through the layers of checks and balances established in the compound republic.  Finally, the Federalists argued that a system of “dual sovereignties” was created by the Constitution of 1787, with distinct powers held by the states and other distinct powers given to the national government.  This division of power provided the necessary balance and security for the individual citizen’s liberties. The Anti-Federalists were highly skeptical that this new science of government crafted by Madison and his fellow convention delegates would satisfy either of these significant concerns.  Simply having elected officials who were to represent the interests of the people in the national government was seen as no security at all to the opponents of ratification.  In fact, Robert Yates, a New York judge writing under the pseudonym Brutus, argued that the people “will have no confidence in their legislature, suspect them of ambitious views, be jealous of every measure they adopt, and will not support the laws they pass.”  Brutus suggests that rather than having the voluntary attachment to the laws – because they reflect a majority will of the people – the people will instead be highly skeptical of them. When the people are skeptical of their laws, they will have neither a voluntary attachment nor a voluntary obedience to them, which leads to the second great concern of the Anti-Federalists: when the people don’t voluntarily support the nation’s laws, they will necessarily be coerced or forced to obey them.  Richard Henry Lee, a leading founder, noted that when public opinion is not behind our laws, “force then becomes necessary to secure the purposes of civil government.”  Finally, the Anti-Federalists did not accept the argument that “dual sovereignties” could be long maintained.  Inevitably, they would tend in one direction or the other, and the Anti-Federalists were certain that this tendency would ultimately move away from the states in favor of the national government. The historic debate on protecting liberty and ensuring popular legislation was not resolved in 1787 -- indeed it holds great relevance for us today.  Health care reform is a present-day example reflecting the very real concerns of both the Federalists and Anti-Federalists of whether laws would be passed with widespread support – ensuring voluntary attachment and obedience to them –  and whether or not our liberty is secure.  The most recent Rasmussen survey finds that 54% of respondents now favor repeal of the Health Care Reform.  In the analysis of the poll they find that: ** Fifty-nine percent (59%) of voters think the plan will increase the deficit despite assurances from the plan’s supporters that just the opposite is the case. ** Twenty-two percent (22%) say the quality of health care in America will get better under the new plan, but 52% think it will get worse. ** Fifty-six percent (56%) believe the plan will cause the cost of health care to go up. It is quite clear that this law fails the test of widespread support.  And when individual citizens are forced to purchase health insurance at the risk of being fined, there is indeed a new threat on our liberty.  Brutus and Lee’s worst fears appear to have been proven true: law in this instance does not reflect the will of the people and force will be necessary in order to secure obedience.

"We can’t allow ourselves to remain silent as foaming-at-the-mouth protesters scream the vilest of epithets at members of Congress," wrote Bob Herbert in his New York Times column the other day. A Democrat friend of mine from Rochester, NY forwarded me the Herbert piece, entitled "An Absence of Class," about the alleged ugly incidents in the aftermath of the US House's healthcare vote.  She accompanied the link with this single sentence:  "You would never ever defend this."  The following is how I responded. If you think I would defend it, then you completely missed the point I was trying to make before.  I don't defend the things Bob Herbert describes--if they really happened (I am completely open to the possibility that they didn't actually happen as described, or that they were grossly exaggerated, or that Democratic members of Congress and their lackeys would make up or even stage such incidents in order to achieve exactly what the incidents have achieved:  a smear against thousands of people). But let's assume that it all did happen exactly as reported.  I say, So what? Any time you gather thousands of people together, no matter what the cause they're gathering to demonstrate for, you can take it as virtually guaranteed that some of them aren't going to be nice or well-behaved people.  The vast majority of humans, of any political stripe, aren't exactly saints.  Obviously, in any gathering of large size, you'll have a bell-curve distribution on the civility spectrum, and at one end of the curve you'll have bad apples. This method of gathering an unruly mob to make a political point in the streets, by chanting and waving signs (as opposed to making the points on the pages of a newspaper or at the debate lectern or in some other measured and intellectual manner) has been a favored practice of the Left for decades; seeing the same tactic on the other side is a fairly novel thing. You wouldn't seriously assert that nothing vile ever took place at any of the demonstrations in support of causes dear to the Left, over all the decades?  I've seen a little bit of it myself.  For example, sometimes I'd walk out of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California by its Franklin St. gate, during the height of the Iraq War, to find an anti-war mob with signs at the bottom of the hill, and some of them would jeer at me and call me things like "Nazi"--people who didn't know anything about me except that I sported a military-looking haircut.  But you know...so what? It wasn't unusual for acts of mob violence--looting, arson, etc.--to happen where MLK made a public appearance, even though King explicitly decried any such activity.  Things got pretty ugly right there in your town, if I'm not mistaken.  Should we paint all members of the civil rights movement with the brush of a few thuggish individuals who made the event a pretext to behave in a vile manner?  Everyone who favors desegragation is is a thieving incendiary...if YOU favor desegregation then YOU're on the side of looting and arson...yeah, okay...strong argument, huh? Herbert says, "We can’t allow ourselves to remain silent as foaming-at-the-mouth protesters scream the vilest of epithets at members of Congress — epithets that The Times will not allow me to repeat here."  Oh really?  We can't allow it?  How short his memory is, because he and his ilk were perfectly happy to keep quiet and allow it just a few years ago, when protesters were saying and doing things at least as vile against the previous administration.  I doubt if any president has received the amount of abuse that Bush did.  And I don't care about that.  He's a big boy and he wasn't drafted into the job of president, and having a thick skin is part of the job.  So what? Why is this Herbert article even worth serious consideration?  His chosen method of decrying a lone idiot who spat on some politician is to spit on tens of thousands of people with vile statements like these:  "For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness...."  "This is the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction, the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics. This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry." What is this?  Fight fire with fire?  This is Herbert's own commitment to hatred and bigotry on display. The whole article is nothing but an ad hominem.  He's not critiquing the Tea Party's central message--he's trying to turn people off to that message with guilt-by-association.  "If you are tempted to favor shockingly radical, fringy ideas like...oh, let's say, a limited government that is accountable to the people and stays within the bounds of the Constitution...then you're in the company of bigots, and therefore a bigot yourself."  That's what he's saying.  This is just the latest flavor of McCarthyism. I've been called a racist and a Nazi for criticizing Obama about issues that have nothing to do with race--those names were hurled at me based on nothing other than the ethnicity of the target of my criticism, as though the only thing that keeps me from cheering him for his policies is that he's not pure Anglo-Saxon.  Apparently nobody is allowed to criticize a public official on any grounds, if the official happens to be a minority.  That's about the level of Herbert's argument here. I don't care.  They can call me whatever they like.  All they're doing is revealing the Orwellian inversion of language that infects their thought:  If I am color-blind, applying the same standards of criticism to a black man that I would to a white man, then I'm a racist  It's no longer prejudice and racial double standard, but the absence of prejudice and racial double standard, that makes you a racist.  If I'm for limited government and against the kind of centralization of economic decision-making that Nazis and other varieties of socialists espouse, that makes me a Nazi.  Opposing socialism makes you a National Socialist.  Up is down, black is white.

As “Black Monday” dawned to the realization that the fraud-filled spectacle of ObamaCare has finally passed the House of Representatives, you may have noticed some rumblings under foot.  It wasn’t an earthquake in the literal sense, though from the perspective of our constitutional republic, it might as well have been.It was the sound of James Madison rolling over in his grave. Of all the Founding Fathers, Madison was the one who most understood the importance of structure and process in our new democracy.  He would have been shocked to hear the President of the United States telling the media that process doesn’t matter, or the Democratic Majority Leader of the House of Representatives say that the American people don’t care about how the government “makes sausage” — only that it “gets things done”.  To Madison, any such talk would be akin to blasphemy: the Constitution was set up to prevent the kind of system where rules could be changed on a whim, and where partisan, parochial “ends” could always be justified by employing “means” which would put government — and not the people — in charge. In short, the sausage making matters. Madison understood principally that if the American system of government was going to be truly “by and for the people”, it had to function in a way that enshrined a balance of power between the legislative and executive branches, thereby preventing both the whim of an executive acting by fiat, or a tyranny of a majority in Congress usurping the rights of the minority party and acting on “winds of passion”.  The challenge for Madison and the other Founders – particularly Hamilton and Jay, his fellow authors of the Federalist Papers – was to create a structure of government that simultaneously gave vigorous representative power to the legislature, but which ensured that this power would be divided between different branches, two distinct houses of Congress, with different representations, rules and procedures.  The goal, as Madison outlined eloquently in Federalist 51, was to ensure that government — in scope and power – be controlled: In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. Principal among these “auxiliary precautions”, according to Madison, was to “divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them by different modes of election, and different principles of action, as little connected with each other” as possible.  The House of Representatives, then, was to be apportioned and elected differently than the Senate. House members, elected every two years and assigned to a relatively small constituency, was to be the “people’s house”.  The Senate, until 1913 appointed by state legislatures, offered equal representation among states irrespective of size and six year terms, insulating it from the vagaries of popular opinion. It also offered clear rules that protect the rights of the minority party from being steamrolled by the majority (thus the “filibuster”). The combination created, in Madison’s words, “opposite and rival interests, and the defect of better motives”.  And these motives were – first and foremost — to create a government that reflected the will and interests of the people. Given this, one can only imagine the outrage that Madison would feel today as the Congress – the very institution he crafted so carefully – made a mockery of its balanced powers to break every procedural rule in the book to pass a wildly unpopular bill.  It was a bill so unpopular, in fact, that the Democratic leadership in the Congress knew it could not pass on its own merits, and within Congress’ normal rules and procedures. After the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts as the “41st vote against ObamaCare”, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid decided to do an end-run around the Constitution by re-writing House and Senate rules to fit their partisan goals . Thus you had Rep. Louise Slaughter (D, NY) putting forth “Deem and Pass” – essentially passing the bill without any vote at all — and Harry Reid’s decision to in the Senate to use reconciliation on ObamaCare to avoid the filibuster, even though the architect of the reconciliation rule, Democrat Robert Byrd, has said clearly that the rule is not appropriate for legislation of this scope and magnitude and should not be used. For the left, such opinions are nothing more than inconveniences. The goals of progressive government – universal health care, wealth redistribution and social justice — are so important, not even the Constitution itself should stand in its way.  Obama has said so himself: In an interview with Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ-FM in 2001, he talked explicitly of the Constitution as a “flawed document” with “essential constraints” that were placed by the “Founding Fathers and Constitution” limiting its ability to promote social justice goals.  Thus the concept of the Constitution as a living document, open to modern interpretation and cultural updating.  This is no longer a theoretical threat to the Constitution.  This threat now sits firmly in power on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. James Madison certainly understood one important thing about the nature of man and power: “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”  Indeed, our leaders today are no angels.  And never have we more needed Madison’s prescriptions for a limited government that operates on rules which guarantee the rights of the minority, and which derives its legitimacy from We the People.  They work for us, after all.  We don’t work for them.