Allison Bricker

This week Dr. Paul discusses the empty promise made by President Obama during his State of the Union speech last week to “freeze” discretionary spending. While the politicians in Washington are taking notice of the growing discontent as it relates to the ever-expanding bloated federal government and escalating national debt, the establishment and the puppet in Chief who campaigned on “Change We Can Believe In” are merely offering more lip service instead of actually offering a true reduction in spending. (FULL TRANSCRIPT)

Related Material(s)
	Representative Ron Paul “Texas Straight Talk – The Washington Establishment’s Empty Rhetoric of a Spending Freeze (PDF 171Kb)

Source(s): Representative Ron Paul’s House Webpage • Minnesota Chris YouTube Channel

Wire Report

Michael D. Tanner, Senior Fellow

Michael Tanner heads research into a variety of domestic policies with a particular emphasis on health care reform, social welfare policy, and Social Security. His most recent book, Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution (2007), chronicles the demise of the Republican party as it has shifted away from its limited government roots and warns that reform is necessary to avoid electoral defeat in 2008. Under Tanner’s direction, Cato launched the Project on Social Security Choice, which is widely considered the leading impetus for transforming the soon-to-be-bankrupt system into a private savings program. Time Magazine calls Tanner, “one of the architects of the private accounts movement,” and Congressional Quarterly named him one of the nation’s five most influential experts on Social Security.

Sen. Baucus (D-MT) and his fellow “Gang of Six” negotiators have labored mightily and brought forth a mouse—a steroid-enhanced, misshapen mouse, but a mouse nonetheless. In fact, despite months of work, Sen. Baucus has not actually produced a bill, but a 223-page summary of what he hopes a bill will contain. Unfortunately, without seeing actual legislative language, many questions still remain.

Here is some of what we know and don’t know:

The Good:

• The plan drops the idea of a government-run “public option” in favor of co-ops. Government involvement with these co-ops would essentially be limited to providing start-up grants. The co-ops are unlikely to have much, if any, impact on the cost or availability of health insurance, but are far preferable to a government run plan.

• The plan takes the first tentative steps toward allowing people to purchase health insurance across state lines. It would allow states to establish interstate compacts for insurance purchasing beginning in 2015. It would also allow insurers to develop national products that could be sold in any state. National plans would be exempt from state mandated benefits. This doesn’t go far enough, and risks simply transferring regulation and mandates from the state to the regional or national level, but a first read suggests it is a step in the right direction.

The Bad:

• The plan would force states to increase Medicaid eligibility to individuals at 133 percent of the poverty level, and to enroll single, childless adults. The federal government would pick up some of the increased cost; states would be responsible for at least some of the increase, a provision that will undoubtedly strain already tight state budgets.

• While the employer mandate is much watered-down, it is still there. The Baucus plan has no specific requirement for employers to provide insurance. But any employer who fails to do so would have to pay the cost of all subsidies that the government provides his or her workers to help them pay for insurance on their own, up to $400 per worker. Since it will ultimately be the worker who pays the mandate’s cost, through reduced compensation or reduced employment, the government will be giving the worker a subsidy with one hand, and taking it back with the other.

• The bill would cut payments to the Medicare Advantage program. In response, many insurers may stop participating in the program, while others could increase the premiums they charge seniors. Millions of seniors will likely be forced off their current plan and back into traditional Medicare.

The Ugly

• The Baucus plan contains a heavily punitive individual mandate, a requirement that every American purchase a government-designed minimum insurance package. Failure to comply would result in a fine that could run as high as $3,800 for a family of four. Moreover, the mandate may not apply just to those without insurance today. While the summary says that those with “grandfathered” plans would not have to change their current plan to satisfy the mandate, it is vague about what qualifies as “grandfathered.” The summary also says that employer-provided plans would have to be changed within five years to comply with new insurance regulations, and that “grandfathered” plans would not be eligible for any subsidies. It is unclear, therefore, whether people will be able to keep their current plans.

• The Baucus plan imposes a 35 percent excise tax on health insurance plans that offer benefits in excess of $8,000. Insurers would almost certainly pass this tax on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. Roughly half of Americans, mostly middle-class, would be impacted. There are also “fees” on prescription drug companies, medical device manufacturers, and clinical laboratories. This is simply a way of hiding taxes, and will result in higher health care costs that will be passed on to consumers.

Related Material(s)
	Chairman’s Mark – “America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009″ a.k.a “Baucus Bill” (PDF 1.2 Mb)
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	Michael D. Tanner discusses health care reform on WBT’s “The Tara Servatius Show” (Charlotte, NC)

Allison Bricker

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – During a town hall held at the Ward African Methodist Episcopal Church this past Thursday, California Congressional Representative Diane Watson (CA) continued the standard rebuttal to critics of President Obama’s health care overhaul, charging them as “racist”. At the onset of the Congressional recess and the now infamous town hall meetings, Supporters of government intervention into health care originally attempted to dismiss opposition as a staged grassroots effort funded by lobbyists and Political Action Committees (PAC’s) from the insurance industry.

Consequently, after support for President Obama’s plan continued to erode with news of a secret $80 Billion deal brokered by President Obama and top pharmaceutical lobbyist, Bill Tauzin, Congressional supporters of the President’s plan such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (CA) changed strategies and began an attempt to label opponents to government health care as Nazis and “brownshirts”.

Representative Diane Watson however, opted to avoid any references to the Third Reich and instead sought to sum up opposition wholly based on skin color stating:

“So remember they [opponents] are spreading fear and trying to see that the first president who looks like me, fails; don’t misunderstand what is at the bottom line [racism].”

Representative Diane E. Watson
33rd Congressional District, California

Continuing, she then offered her praise for both the communist Cuban socialized medical system and Dictator, Fidel Castro; calling on her constituents to disregard what they may had heard in the past about the Communist dictator, and referred to him as one of the brightest leaders she has ever met.

Whether painting opponents to the President’s plan as racist will stem the dwindling support for a public government run option remains yet to be determined. Perhaps the biggest liability to a government run option may prove to be the cost and projected National Deficit of $17.27 Trillion by 2019 as opposed to the inferences made on opponents’ racial sentiments.

Allison Bricker

Representative Alcee Hastings (D-FL) introduced House Resolution 645, ‘National Emergency Centers Establishment Act’ last Thursday in the well of the House of Representatives.¹ The bill is currently assigned to the House Armed Services and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committees. Neither committee has added the bill to their calendar as of this writing.

The bill directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish at a minimum, six national emergency centers on active or inactive military installations in case of natural disaster or national “emergency.” According to Title XXLI-Chapter 68, Subchapter I-Section 5122, Subsection 1 of United States Code, the term “emergency” is defined as:

(1) Emergency.- “Emergency” means any occasion or instance for which, in the determination of the President, Federal assistance is needed to supplement State and local efforts and capabilities to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in any part of the United States.

Additionally, Section 2, Subsection 4 of the bill is extremely vague in its wording, leaving it to the complete discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security as to how to make use of these “national emergency” centers. For those following the news, the introduction of this bill is just another in a line of recent troubling announcements that began last September when the Army Times reported on the deployment of troops domestically for the first time in American history.

Following the Army Times article, in late November, amidst a nation awash in the historic nature of the Presidential Election, an internal memo leaked from CitiBank² indicating that if/when government bailouts fail, gold will make a Bull Run especially as political instability and domestic rioting becomes a reality. On the heels of the Citibank memo, the United States Army War College published, “Known Unknowns Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development.”³ The author goes on to detail a clear warning against excessive adherence to past defense and national security convention, and argues that future disruptive, unconventional shocks are inevitable. The report also details the need to abandon foreign security threats at the outset of domestic uprising.

Rumors of detention camps have circulated the internet message-boards and YouTube channels ad nauseum, increasing substantially in the last two years. The rumors were dismissed and ignored in large part even after CBS MarketWatch reported back in 2006 that Halliburton subsidiary KBR Construction was awarded a $385 Million Dollar five year option contract to construct detention facilities for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.⁴

However, on January 17th during a radio interview, Gerald Celente of The Trends Research Institute said:

“there are reports moving over the wire about some two-hundred detention camps in the United States that are empty.”

Gerald Celente
The Jeff Rense Show
January 17th, 2009

Unfortunately, the interviewer did not press him for further detail on the statement and thus the interview moved on to the institute’s forecast of complete economic collapse and ensuing revolution. The gravity of such statements is not easily dismissed as hyperbole. Mr. Celente has built a career on forecasting various calamities prior to their occurrence. Additionally, he regularly appears on CNN, Fox Business, the Today Show, etcetera. In fact, CNBC recently said of Mr. Celente and the institute:

“There’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about.”
CNBC

Fellow readers, I must admit as much as my conscious would prefer to dismiss the possibility of a return of detention camps like we saw in World War II with the Japanese and in the 19th Century with Native Americans, I am hard pressed to justify their existence for a completely benign purpose. It is difficult to rationalize the need for at a minimum, six camps on military bases, staffed twenty-four hours a day, three-hundred and sixty five days a year, with “state-of-the-art” fully staffed command and control centers simply for a possible earthquake, flood, or tornado.¹

As of this writing, we are currently awaiting comments on the bill from both the ACLU and the Libertarian Party. Additionally, we will make tracking this bill’s progress through both committees and Congress a top priority. Please make sure to stay with The Smoking Argus Daily for updates on this developing story.

Source(s): ¹GovTrack.us – House resolution 645, ‘National Emergency Centers Establishment Act’ • ²CitiBank Memo Technical Developments in the Foreign Exchange and Asset Markets • ³ Army War College ‘Known Unknowns Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development • ⁴ CBS MarketWatch “KBR awarded Homeland Security contract worth up to $385M”, published Jan. 24, 2006