Thrown out on a technicality regarding standing! When will the Supreme Court request to hear this? Doing this might help with jobs as cost of employee benefits is a major concern when hiring a new employee. Which employer is going to hire an employee without knowing how much it is going to cost the company to do so? NONE!
Comon Obama! Understand economics for once and request that the Supreme Court make an emergency ruling on the validity of Obamacare! Just so where employers know where they stand going forward.
Sarah, If Obama understood Economics and the Free Enterprise Capitalism of this country, he wouldn’t have asked for yet another stimulus to create his temporary union jobs to do infrastructure. It doesn’t surprise me that these liberal activist judges did this. The whole case is going to the Supreme Court soon and will hopefully be repealed for the new Republican President to sign.
I just love it how when Republicans don’t get their way in court it’s because of “liberal activist judges” but when they win it’s because the judge was simply following the law. Did you even read the opinion? I did. The judge followed the letter of the law.
Sarah, can you tell me without schneiding the truth that employers know how much healthcare is going to cost them now? For what period of time…a month, a quarter? I find it interesting that, after employers suffering double digit health care insurance cost increases for almost a decade now, you consider this a viable argument. As always, you seem to think that if you shout louder than everyone else, your pooint of view is the right one. Healthcare costs are inflating as well by double digits. Hospitals and medical providers keep three sets of books with different costs, with the uninsured suffering the highest costs. What kind of a system is this?
The issue is not, as you so disrespectfully refer to it as Obamacare, but rather the spiraling healthcare costs that were occurring way before this bill. And the spiraling ever upward health insurance costs.
Until we face and fix that and those issues, all your rants are for nothing. If we could lower or even contain costs while providing a basic healthcare safety net for ALL citizens, we wouldn’t be wasting our time with these arguments of constitutional vs. not constitutional because the ultimate benefit of providing universal access to healthcare services at some reasonable level is apparent to all but the most mean.
We let the goal be obfuscated by all the political name calling.
Face it; the problem is not the healthcare bill…it is the sprialing cost of healthcare, be it private, public, or charitable.
One more point about the “liberal activist judge”comment above and the “thrown out on a technicality” comment.
It would have been an “activist” judge who IGNNORED the technicsality and ruled on th emerits of the case anyway. That would be activism, i.e., not following the law to push your own agenda. “Technicalities” is the term that people use when they lose. “Oh, it was just a technicality, the judge should have ruled in my favor.”
Thank goodness our system of government doesn’t work that way where judges can ignore certain lasws (so called technicalities) in order to push their own agendas.
Liberal activist judges? How about “sometimes you win and sometimes you lose?” How about “maybe you just didn’t have the better legal argument?”
The Right needs to stop smear campaigns whenever they don’t get what they want.
D, Did a constitutional crisis exists during the Presidential election of George Bush over Al Gore when the hanging chad deal was being pushed by liberals? Who settled the matter? Why did they settle it?
Well I believe there is a constitutional crisis right now involving the total economy that Obama has created with his unfair and legally over-reaching Obamacare legislation that he had his political thugs Ried and Pelosi push through in the middle of the night, Remember? we had to pass it to find out what was in it!
The Supreme Court can request to hear a case if the court deams it necessary to avoid a constitutional crisis.
Or rather than attempting to make one person look like a crazy woman (like you just did) we can accept, that just like liberals decry the appointing of a conservative supreme court judge, so do the conservatives decry the appointing of a liberal one, and the reason is that LIBERAL or CONSERATIVE dominated judicial courts make DRAMATICALLY different rulings.
It’s not win or lose cases based on the better arguement. To say so is foolish. In most cases the issues like this end up being decided by one of the two sides, whichever had greater numbers, and were it not for being either ruled by more democrats or republicans an act would not have gone through. Example: Roe vs Wade. You’re going to tell me that if the conservatives had more judges it still would have ended the same?
I’m going to tell you both “ha” and “ha”. Your point is actually a typical liberal debating tactic. Try to make both sides equal, while giving an edge to one side: Democrats. Republicans do absolutely dislike liberal judges. And liberal judges do make more liberal decisions. Whether or not Sarah is correct in her ideals, your comment is pointless, incorrect, and screams “holier than thou” polarization tactics.
All of you sound like lazy Greek union members protesting the austerity package. One day soon, you will all understand we are broke and can not afford more programs or the money we print only devalues what we have. Also, the general welfare clause does not mean that the government has to feed you cloth you and house you and provide you with all of the healthcare you desire. Sorry liberals but WE ARE BROKE!
Sarah, let’s try to stick to the conventional point-counterpoint format instead of creating strawmen and then bludgeoning them with cliches. Thanks in advance.
LOL Sarah, actually, the example you cited, Bush v. Gore is a well established case of conservative judicial activism. First, teh court did not step in and rule on an emergency basis. Yes, they ruled quickly, but only after the case was appealed to them. The “process” works. But the Suprme Court doesn’t just step in and decide cases. Second, you ask “Who settled the matter? Why did they settle it?” That’s where conservative judicial activism kicks in. The Supreme Court decided to throw out what the Florida Supreme Court had ruled. The Florida Supreme Court said “count the votes.” That was the law. The U.S. Supreme Court made a policy decision to stop the recount. So, just so you are aware, judicial activism is not a one-way street. Conservative judges push their agendas too.
And one day soon you will understand that we wouldn’t be broke if we would just revert to the tax rates in effect when Clinton was President…you know, back when unemployment was low and we had a balanced budget.
I love it how Republicans cut taxes and cut taxes and cut taxes and then they say “hey, we don’t have enough money…we’re broke.” Duh!
If you knew anything, you’d know JFK did one of the largest tax rate reductions in history (other than Reagan). The receipts were barely affected. Using Clinton (the abnormality in revenues research, which everyone knows is due to the global economy at the time) as the grade for all revenues is absolutely insane. If JFK dropped the rates by 20% on the top marginal rate, instituted caps on the death tax, estate tax, etc and it had very little effect on the tax revenues, do you honestly believe 3% is what made the tax surplus vs deficit? Again: Both “ha” and “ha”. JFK’s tax cuts were similar, touched on the same areas as Bush’s, and were far more extensive. Please do some research. 3-5% in comparison to 20% should have made little difference so you have to look for the “anomoly” that caused there to be a difference in revenues that was larger with Clinton than JFK, and it wasn’t the tax rates. It was the economy that pulled in the higher revenues, and the whole world I might add was in a boom at the time, not just Clinton, so no Clinton and or the republicans at the time did NOT cause the boom (that is what we call being fair in politics, I don’t even give credit to the right). I might add the congress in 1995 was republican, and there was a gridlock in spending because the republicans refused to pass anything Clinton wanted so even if it did cause it (which it didn’t) it would be republicans who did it. Clinton did NOT make the 1996-2000 budgets. A republican congress did. You might also want to look into Canada. They had a crises. They lowered taxes and decreased spending. They had almost TEN years of surpluses, and paid off a portion of their DEBT. Not deficit. DEBT. The U.S. did not do that under Clinton. Their corporate tax rate is less than half of ours right now. And their corporate tax revenues are pretty much double ours on a consistent basis (except now during their recession, which again, is GLOBAL so Bush didn’t cause it). Do you think that might show the effect of higher taxes on economy? They have studies on it, showing the hinderance of higher taxes on economy and numbers showing the %’s of busineses that have put their operations in Canada since they lowered the corporate tax rate in comparison to the U.S. But…Liberals here ignore those studies. Liberals in Canada however…Started those studies (there’s the kicker! Showing I’m not biased on the right). It was started by a liberal prime minister in the 90’s who recently urged the U.S. to follow suite. Look into global politics. The world does not revolve around Clinton’s or United State’s presidential or political decisions. Many countries in the 90’s, if not the plurality, cut taxes. Clinton did not, and he has even stated that in his presidency he did not keep our rates competitive. And Canada did better than us. There is no doubt. They are the only G7 country who has paid off a portion of their debt in the last 20 years. So when they say lower taxes to increase revenues, we should listen.
Yeah, you see it is a case of Conservative Activism because the conservatives won in that case…But Conservative Activism was not what started that.
I believe her point was the democrats deemed it necessary to push a ruling at the time and started the whole battle on that one. When it was to their benefit they fought. Just like the republicans are fighting this. She’s saying the demorats rushed it then, why not now? I believe it’s a good point. Though I also understand the ruling does not take place until 2014, we should also expect there to be a hell of a lot of process, so they should hear it immediately. Not 2013 in December.
I should have said that first, but your blatant disregard to decent political comparison just got me focused on the part where you made blatantly unresearched or poorly researched comments.
Sarah is a bit heated, as am I, because we have a left leaning society who lets bashes the right far too much. Sarah is not a republican. If you have paid attention to her posts she is entirely a different party. She’s also not tea party. You could ask her, I do know. But you labeled her. And I imagine she doesn’t like it. She’s heated due to a lot of crap in this country, and does not need to have some guy come in lol’ing with poor research attempting to appear balanced while trying to paint her as being inept.
And more to add: Another reason not to wait to hear it: We want to put in a good plan if it’s going to be thrown out right? If there’s even a chance it will be thrown out, we need time to put in something for people who need healthcare reform, and time to debate new options and to be thinking about this, not forcing a year and a half do nothing period while we wait. We should not be waiting to hear this.
I don’t know about you but anytime someone starts with labels and name-calling, I quit the conversation and go golfing. Credibility is not built on being louder or poisoning the well. It is a damned shame that because of the explosion of information and the complete unfettered access to that information, that we have lost the concept of fact checking to make sure we know what the real issue is. Too many folks rely on 15 second assertions, soundbytes, for their “proof”, instead of using their brains to parse out the issues. and allowing pundits to hide behind the cloak of “entertainment” to hurl insults and falsehoods only makes it worse. Just because you read it somewhere or because you can hide behind an anonymous nom-de-plume is a shame. Know your facts, know your justification, and keep civil and maybe we won’t have to rely on the Supreme Court to decide what is just a way to control costs; the individual mandate is a means to ensure everyone who participates has a means to pay. Otherwise we allow freeloading…why isn’t that lambasted by you politicos?
Absolutely correct. I would add that all it takes is a modicum of research to learn that the “mandate” was an idea that originated by the Heritage Foundation (a Republican think tank) and was proposed as an alternative to the plan put forth by the Clintons in the 1990’s. The mandate is a Republican idea! But when Obama announced he would support it, the Republicans decided to waffle. Why? Because they have repeatedly stated that their goal is to make sure he is a one-term President. How many times did you hear the words “I hope he fails!”?
That’s why in 2010, they ran on “jobs, jobs, jobs” and when they took control of the House, they didn’t introduce a single jobs bill, but spent their time trying to defund Planned Parenthood. They don’t want to imrpove the economy until after they get a Republican in the White House.
The individual mandate has layers in it’s error but I’ll go to the main points.
I would normally support a mandate. I however do not support this one. It forces you to buy something that is thereafer counted as taxable income. Are you aware that paid insurance premiums will now be reportable on taxes after the passage of this law? $4,699 is the average cost of a policy per year. First of all: Good luck getting the lower class to pay for that in the middle of a crud economy. There’s going to be a lot of fines. Second of all: Good luck adding $4,699 to their taxable income on someone who earns $20,000-$35,000 a year (the people we are supposedly trying to help right?). That’s $1,080 more taxes a year on the low end, in addition to $4,699 of expenses. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure they can’t afford $5,779. Even if they get 50% of those insurance costs covered through assistance (on the $4,699) it’s still going to be: $3,429.50. You might want to go to the government census website to see that only 5% of the population over 44 is not insured. It’s the 18-44 age group that make up the other 11% making the total about 16% uninsured. Those are government approved facts there son. I prefer not to find opinion articles, but to get government facts, and then make the conclusion myself. This method is extremely flawed and is not about healthcare or “cost”. It’s about “coverage” and gaining “revenues” for people unable to handle the “cost”. Can you see how that automatically makes the plan fail, if the very people we are attempting to help with “cost” we just increased their “coverage” and “cost” of insurance but did not direct the factors contributing to their “cost”?
On to republican jobs plans: First of all, the government can’t make permanent jobs. Businesses can.
Second of all: So you missed the 1 trillion dollars of outsourced jobs debate where republicans agreed with busineses to lower the corporate tax rate to 5.25% and the companies stated if republicans did so they wouuld bring ALL the jobs back to America? 1/14th the gdp, should account for 1/14th the jobs, which would be about 15 million. Even if it’s efficiency was a quarter that of normal economic trends it would still be over 4 million jobs. You also must have missed Clinton agreeing the corporate tax rate needed to be lowered. Obama is the only one out on that loop. You also must have missed the trade agreement suggestions regarding Korea, Panama, China, and a few others and the plans to generate a few more revenues there by making fair trade agreements, and getting our goods on the market over there with a trade plan (as most those countries do not trade with us very much, yet we do print out dollars for them often) I guess you also missed the plan to drill in America (we have the largest untapped oil reserves in the world, the main reason Texas does well with surpluses and jobs is oil, so it would help) and that you also missed that much of the driving force behind Canada’s surpluses and jobs increases came from drilling in their country (A huge portion of our oil imports is Canada. Canada provides more than the middle east. You’d be surprised. We should drill here and would have similar results) and to look into nuclear fusion technology (which produces no nuclear waste, and largely more amounts of energy it’s just hard as heck to sustain a reaction in a way that can absorb and contain the energy). I guess you missed the plan to privatize social security, taking the same dollars we have now and having companies produce profit on those dollars over the course of 25 years (much like insurance companies, who have a 100% pay out on certain types of life insurance plans and still manage profit. How do you think they do that? They already do something similar, and if you don’t believe they can handle the social security better you’re ignoring life insurance statistics and you’re in the field, how sad) You also seem to have missed the Ryan’s plan, pushing medicare dollars into private insurance assistance. Making less government dollars go out, and giving medicare recipients the ability to pay for a better plan. Canada mocks our medicare system, as too often it does not take care of our elderly as well as the private insurance. When the costs of medicare and social security go down, and people have more money, and the tax burden on busineses go down (the higher the taxes all that happens is corporations charge us more, see Canadian studies) we will have more jobs, more revenues, etc. I guess…You missed all the plans? *shrugs* not sure how. I have to ask, what is your news source?
Again, I thank OPV, perfesser, and youngin. For too long these blogs have been dominated by conservative shouters and ranters. Thank you for speaking up and making sense…without name calling. The Greek bit was totally uncalled for. I can only hope Sarah was playing devil’s advocate, but, sadly, i think she was not.
Let’s try to get back to civil discourse, for a change.
Thrown out on a technicality regarding standing! When will the Supreme Court request to hear this? Doing this might help with jobs as cost of employee benefits is a major concern when hiring a new employee. Which employer is going to hire an employee without knowing how much it is going to cost the company to do so? NONE!
Comon Obama! Understand economics for once and request that the Supreme Court make an emergency ruling on the validity of Obamacare! Just so where employers know where they stand going forward.
Sarah. Do you even understand how the Supreme Court works? Emergency ruling? Really?
D see below response.
Sarah, If Obama understood Economics and the Free Enterprise Capitalism of this country, he wouldn’t have asked for yet another stimulus to create his temporary union jobs to do infrastructure. It doesn’t surprise me that these liberal activist judges did this. The whole case is going to the Supreme Court soon and will hopefully be repealed for the new Republican President to sign.
I just love it how when Republicans don’t get their way in court it’s because of “liberal activist judges” but when they win it’s because the judge was simply following the law. Did you even read the opinion? I did. The judge followed the letter of the law.
Sarah, can you tell me without schneiding the truth that employers know how much healthcare is going to cost them now? For what period of time…a month, a quarter? I find it interesting that, after employers suffering double digit health care insurance cost increases for almost a decade now, you consider this a viable argument. As always, you seem to think that if you shout louder than everyone else, your pooint of view is the right one. Healthcare costs are inflating as well by double digits. Hospitals and medical providers keep three sets of books with different costs, with the uninsured suffering the highest costs. What kind of a system is this?
The issue is not, as you so disrespectfully refer to it as Obamacare, but rather the spiraling healthcare costs that were occurring way before this bill. And the spiraling ever upward health insurance costs.
Until we face and fix that and those issues, all your rants are for nothing. If we could lower or even contain costs while providing a basic healthcare safety net for ALL citizens, we wouldn’t be wasting our time with these arguments of constitutional vs. not constitutional because the ultimate benefit of providing universal access to healthcare services at some reasonable level is apparent to all but the most mean.
We let the goal be obfuscated by all the political name calling.
Face it; the problem is not the healthcare bill…it is the sprialing cost of healthcare, be it private, public, or charitable.
and again, I thank you, OPV.
One more point about the “liberal activist judge”comment above and the “thrown out on a technicality” comment.
It would have been an “activist” judge who IGNNORED the technicsality and ruled on th emerits of the case anyway. That would be activism, i.e., not following the law to push your own agenda. “Technicalities” is the term that people use when they lose. “Oh, it was just a technicality, the judge should have ruled in my favor.”
Thank goodness our system of government doesn’t work that way where judges can ignore certain lasws (so called technicalities) in order to push their own agendas.
Liberal activist judges? How about “sometimes you win and sometimes you lose?” How about “maybe you just didn’t have the better legal argument?”
The Right needs to stop smear campaigns whenever they don’t get what they want.
D, Did a constitutional crisis exists during the Presidential election of George Bush over Al Gore when the hanging chad deal was being pushed by liberals? Who settled the matter? Why did they settle it?
Well I believe there is a constitutional crisis right now involving the total economy that Obama has created with his unfair and legally over-reaching Obamacare legislation that he had his political thugs Ried and Pelosi push through in the middle of the night, Remember? we had to pass it to find out what was in it!
The Supreme Court can request to hear a case if the court deams it necessary to avoid a constitutional crisis.
Or rather than attempting to make one person look like a crazy woman (like you just did) we can accept, that just like liberals decry the appointing of a conservative supreme court judge, so do the conservatives decry the appointing of a liberal one, and the reason is that LIBERAL or CONSERATIVE dominated judicial courts make DRAMATICALLY different rulings.
It’s not win or lose cases based on the better arguement. To say so is foolish. In most cases the issues like this end up being decided by one of the two sides, whichever had greater numbers, and were it not for being either ruled by more democrats or republicans an act would not have gone through. Example: Roe vs Wade. You’re going to tell me that if the conservatives had more judges it still would have ended the same?
I’m going to tell you both “ha” and “ha”. Your point is actually a typical liberal debating tactic. Try to make both sides equal, while giving an edge to one side: Democrats. Republicans do absolutely dislike liberal judges. And liberal judges do make more liberal decisions. Whether or not Sarah is correct in her ideals, your comment is pointless, incorrect, and screams “holier than thou” polarization tactics.
Very bad point Other Point Of View.
D and Watcher and the Other point of view,
All of you sound like lazy Greek union members protesting the austerity package. One day soon, you will all understand we are broke and can not afford more programs or the money we print only devalues what we have. Also, the general welfare clause does not mean that the government has to feed you cloth you and house you and provide you with all of the healthcare you desire. Sorry liberals but WE ARE BROKE!
Move to Greece if you like Government programs.
Sarah, let’s try to stick to the conventional point-counterpoint format instead of creating strawmen and then bludgeoning them with cliches. Thanks in advance.
Sincerely,
The Moderates
LOL Sarah, actually, the example you cited, Bush v. Gore is a well established case of conservative judicial activism. First, teh court did not step in and rule on an emergency basis. Yes, they ruled quickly, but only after the case was appealed to them. The “process” works. But the Suprme Court doesn’t just step in and decide cases. Second, you ask “Who settled the matter? Why did they settle it?” That’s where conservative judicial activism kicks in. The Supreme Court decided to throw out what the Florida Supreme Court had ruled. The Florida Supreme Court said “count the votes.” That was the law. The U.S. Supreme Court made a policy decision to stop the recount. So, just so you are aware, judicial activism is not a one-way street. Conservative judges push their agendas too.
And one day soon you will understand that we wouldn’t be broke if we would just revert to the tax rates in effect when Clinton was President…you know, back when unemployment was low and we had a balanced budget.
I love it how Republicans cut taxes and cut taxes and cut taxes and then they say “hey, we don’t have enough money…we’re broke.” Duh!
Oh the other point of view! How sad you are!
If you knew anything, you’d know JFK did one of the largest tax rate reductions in history (other than Reagan). The receipts were barely affected. Using Clinton (the abnormality in revenues research, which everyone knows is due to the global economy at the time) as the grade for all revenues is absolutely insane. If JFK dropped the rates by 20% on the top marginal rate, instituted caps on the death tax, estate tax, etc and it had very little effect on the tax revenues, do you honestly believe 3% is what made the tax surplus vs deficit? Again: Both “ha” and “ha”. JFK’s tax cuts were similar, touched on the same areas as Bush’s, and were far more extensive. Please do some research. 3-5% in comparison to 20% should have made little difference so you have to look for the “anomoly” that caused there to be a difference in revenues that was larger with Clinton than JFK, and it wasn’t the tax rates. It was the economy that pulled in the higher revenues, and the whole world I might add was in a boom at the time, not just Clinton, so no Clinton and or the republicans at the time did NOT cause the boom (that is what we call being fair in politics, I don’t even give credit to the right). I might add the congress in 1995 was republican, and there was a gridlock in spending because the republicans refused to pass anything Clinton wanted so even if it did cause it (which it didn’t) it would be republicans who did it. Clinton did NOT make the 1996-2000 budgets. A republican congress did. You might also want to look into Canada. They had a crises. They lowered taxes and decreased spending. They had almost TEN years of surpluses, and paid off a portion of their DEBT. Not deficit. DEBT. The U.S. did not do that under Clinton. Their corporate tax rate is less than half of ours right now. And their corporate tax revenues are pretty much double ours on a consistent basis (except now during their recession, which again, is GLOBAL so Bush didn’t cause it). Do you think that might show the effect of higher taxes on economy? They have studies on it, showing the hinderance of higher taxes on economy and numbers showing the %’s of busineses that have put their operations in Canada since they lowered the corporate tax rate in comparison to the U.S. But…Liberals here ignore those studies. Liberals in Canada however…Started those studies (there’s the kicker! Showing I’m not biased on the right). It was started by a liberal prime minister in the 90’s who recently urged the U.S. to follow suite. Look into global politics. The world does not revolve around Clinton’s or United State’s presidential or political decisions. Many countries in the 90’s, if not the plurality, cut taxes. Clinton did not, and he has even stated that in his presidency he did not keep our rates competitive. And Canada did better than us. There is no doubt. They are the only G7 country who has paid off a portion of their debt in the last 20 years. So when they say lower taxes to increase revenues, we should listen.
Oh and OPV:
Yeah, you see it is a case of Conservative Activism because the conservatives won in that case…But Conservative Activism was not what started that.
I believe her point was the democrats deemed it necessary to push a ruling at the time and started the whole battle on that one. When it was to their benefit they fought. Just like the republicans are fighting this. She’s saying the demorats rushed it then, why not now? I believe it’s a good point. Though I also understand the ruling does not take place until 2014, we should also expect there to be a hell of a lot of process, so they should hear it immediately. Not 2013 in December.
I should have said that first, but your blatant disregard to decent political comparison just got me focused on the part where you made blatantly unresearched or poorly researched comments.
Sarah is a bit heated, as am I, because we have a left leaning society who lets bashes the right far too much. Sarah is not a republican. If you have paid attention to her posts she is entirely a different party. She’s also not tea party. You could ask her, I do know. But you labeled her. And I imagine she doesn’t like it. She’s heated due to a lot of crap in this country, and does not need to have some guy come in lol’ing with poor research attempting to appear balanced while trying to paint her as being inept.
And more to add: Another reason not to wait to hear it: We want to put in a good plan if it’s going to be thrown out right? If there’s even a chance it will be thrown out, we need time to put in something for people who need healthcare reform, and time to debate new options and to be thinking about this, not forcing a year and a half do nothing period while we wait. We should not be waiting to hear this.
I don’t know about you but anytime someone starts with labels and name-calling, I quit the conversation and go golfing. Credibility is not built on being louder or poisoning the well. It is a damned shame that because of the explosion of information and the complete unfettered access to that information, that we have lost the concept of fact checking to make sure we know what the real issue is. Too many folks rely on 15 second assertions, soundbytes, for their “proof”, instead of using their brains to parse out the issues. and allowing pundits to hide behind the cloak of “entertainment” to hurl insults and falsehoods only makes it worse. Just because you read it somewhere or because you can hide behind an anonymous nom-de-plume is a shame. Know your facts, know your justification, and keep civil and maybe we won’t have to rely on the Supreme Court to decide what is just a way to control costs; the individual mandate is a means to ensure everyone who participates has a means to pay. Otherwise we allow freeloading…why isn’t that lambasted by you politicos?
Absolutely correct. I would add that all it takes is a modicum of research to learn that the “mandate” was an idea that originated by the Heritage Foundation (a Republican think tank) and was proposed as an alternative to the plan put forth by the Clintons in the 1990’s. The mandate is a Republican idea! But when Obama announced he would support it, the Republicans decided to waffle. Why? Because they have repeatedly stated that their goal is to make sure he is a one-term President. How many times did you hear the words “I hope he fails!”?
That’s why in 2010, they ran on “jobs, jobs, jobs” and when they took control of the House, they didn’t introduce a single jobs bill, but spent their time trying to defund Planned Parenthood. They don’t want to imrpove the economy until after they get a Republican in the White House.
The individual mandate has layers in it’s error but I’ll go to the main points.
I would normally support a mandate. I however do not support this one. It forces you to buy something that is thereafer counted as taxable income. Are you aware that paid insurance premiums will now be reportable on taxes after the passage of this law? $4,699 is the average cost of a policy per year. First of all: Good luck getting the lower class to pay for that in the middle of a crud economy. There’s going to be a lot of fines. Second of all: Good luck adding $4,699 to their taxable income on someone who earns $20,000-$35,000 a year (the people we are supposedly trying to help right?). That’s $1,080 more taxes a year on the low end, in addition to $4,699 of expenses. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure they can’t afford $5,779. Even if they get 50% of those insurance costs covered through assistance (on the $4,699) it’s still going to be: $3,429.50. You might want to go to the government census website to see that only 5% of the population over 44 is not insured. It’s the 18-44 age group that make up the other 11% making the total about 16% uninsured. Those are government approved facts there son. I prefer not to find opinion articles, but to get government facts, and then make the conclusion myself. This method is extremely flawed and is not about healthcare or “cost”. It’s about “coverage” and gaining “revenues” for people unable to handle the “cost”. Can you see how that automatically makes the plan fail, if the very people we are attempting to help with “cost” we just increased their “coverage” and “cost” of insurance but did not direct the factors contributing to their “cost”?
On to republican jobs plans: First of all, the government can’t make permanent jobs. Businesses can.
Second of all: So you missed the 1 trillion dollars of outsourced jobs debate where republicans agreed with busineses to lower the corporate tax rate to 5.25% and the companies stated if republicans did so they wouuld bring ALL the jobs back to America? 1/14th the gdp, should account for 1/14th the jobs, which would be about 15 million. Even if it’s efficiency was a quarter that of normal economic trends it would still be over 4 million jobs. You also must have missed Clinton agreeing the corporate tax rate needed to be lowered. Obama is the only one out on that loop. You also must have missed the trade agreement suggestions regarding Korea, Panama, China, and a few others and the plans to generate a few more revenues there by making fair trade agreements, and getting our goods on the market over there with a trade plan (as most those countries do not trade with us very much, yet we do print out dollars for them often) I guess you also missed the plan to drill in America (we have the largest untapped oil reserves in the world, the main reason Texas does well with surpluses and jobs is oil, so it would help) and that you also missed that much of the driving force behind Canada’s surpluses and jobs increases came from drilling in their country (A huge portion of our oil imports is Canada. Canada provides more than the middle east. You’d be surprised. We should drill here and would have similar results) and to look into nuclear fusion technology (which produces no nuclear waste, and largely more amounts of energy it’s just hard as heck to sustain a reaction in a way that can absorb and contain the energy). I guess you missed the plan to privatize social security, taking the same dollars we have now and having companies produce profit on those dollars over the course of 25 years (much like insurance companies, who have a 100% pay out on certain types of life insurance plans and still manage profit. How do you think they do that? They already do something similar, and if you don’t believe they can handle the social security better you’re ignoring life insurance statistics and you’re in the field, how sad) You also seem to have missed the Ryan’s plan, pushing medicare dollars into private insurance assistance. Making less government dollars go out, and giving medicare recipients the ability to pay for a better plan. Canada mocks our medicare system, as too often it does not take care of our elderly as well as the private insurance. When the costs of medicare and social security go down, and people have more money, and the tax burden on busineses go down (the higher the taxes all that happens is corporations charge us more, see Canadian studies) we will have more jobs, more revenues, etc. I guess…You missed all the plans? *shrugs* not sure how. I have to ask, what is your news source?
Again, I thank OPV, perfesser, and youngin. For too long these blogs have been dominated by conservative shouters and ranters. Thank you for speaking up and making sense…without name calling. The Greek bit was totally uncalled for. I can only hope Sarah was playing devil’s advocate, but, sadly, i think she was not.
Let’s try to get back to civil discourse, for a change.