Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Economy, Health Care, Law, Liberalism, Politics | Tags: False Statements, False Statistics, Refuses to Negotiate
Here is Senator Barack Obama explaining his 2006 vote against raising the debt limit.
From Senator Obama’s Floor Speech, March 20, 2006:
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
Senator Obama was urging Congress not to tolerate an increase that would bring the debt ceiling to $9 trillion. Under President Obama, the debt ceiling has raised to $14.3 trillion. Without counting most of the unfunded liabilities, the national debt is now calculated to be nearing $16.7 trillion, and increasing by about $1.86 billion per day. But things often look different from the other side of the fence.
Today the president said:
So Americans who’ve lived for years in some cases with the fear that one illness could send them into bankruptcy, Americans who’ve been priced out of the market just because they’ve been sick once, they’ll finally be able to afford coverage — quality coverage — many of them for the first time in their lives.
Some of them may be sick as we speak. And this is their best opportunity to get some security and some relief. Tens of thousands of Americans die every single year because they don’t have access to affordable health care. Despite this, Republicans have said that if we lock these Americans out of affordable health care for one more year — if we sacrifice the health care of millions of Americans — then they’ll fund the government for a couple more months. Does anybody truly believe that we won’t have this fight again in a couple more months? Even at Christmas?
So here’s the bottom line: I’m always willing to work with anyone of either party to make sure the Affordable Care Act works better, to make sure our government works better. I’m always willing to work with anyone to grow our economy faster, or to create new jobs faster, to get our fiscal house in order for the long run. I’ve demonstrated this time and time again, oftentimes to the consternation of my own party.
It would be refreshing if the president could speak honestly, without demagoging an issue. I was curious about the president’s constant repetition of the idea that everyone is only minutes away from medical bankruptcy. This is a difficult subject because bankruptcy laws are different in each state.
An essay from The American magazine from the American Enterprise Institute says : “There is no evidence to indicate that a government run healthcare system in the United States will reduce personal bankruptcies.”
Democrats are trying to push the idea that everybody is going bankrupt because of a sudden immense medical bill. They are also assuming that bankruptcy is a very bad thing. Yet our bankruptcy laws are designed to protect people from going off to the poorhouse, as they once did. There’s a big difference between medical expenses being a factor in a bankruptcy and medical expense being the cause. When someone has to go through bankruptcy because they cannot pay their bills, medical bills might be just one of the bills. Democrats will always stretch to reach for the scariest statistic. A comparative analysis of Canadian and U.S. statistics suggests that bankruptcy statistics are being exaggerated and distorted for political purposes.
An article by Sally Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute, points out President Obama’s claim that the cost of health care causes a bankruptcy every 30 seconds.
But the alleged link between health costs and bankruptcy is about as real as the tooth fairy. The overwhelming body of research shows that medical costs play little or no role in the vast majority of U.S. personal bankruptcies. …
The study also reviewed Warren’s early research on medical bankruptcies and found that medical spending was a factor in no more than 17 percent of U.S. bankruptcies.
A detailed analysis by The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle further discredited the link between bankruptcy and medical expense. She found that Warren’s team classified a filing as a medical bankruptcy whenever unpaid medical bills were resolved through bankruptcy proceedings — even if other debts were far bigger contributors to insolvency.
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American Elephants 
I was asked just today by a local high school student who I thought the least important official in government was. I thought for about 2 seconds and answered, “Right now, unfortunately, the President of the United States.” You see, my regular answer, the Vice-President, has a function – breaking tie votes in the Senate (something that might be slightly above Biden’s skill set, but he’s ready for it). Obama, on the other hand, has abdicated all responsibility. He’s delegated all of the functions of his office to other people, his foreign policy is a joke, he refuses to negotiate with a branch of Congress, has, to my knowledge, NEVER put forth an affirmative policy agenda, is irresponsible, immature, and childish, and believes not so much in leading as he does in coercing (and it seriously annoys him when the people he trying to coerce don’t go along with it).
And I really don’t think people really have considered how much damage Obama is doing… to the Democrat Party. There are no major issues where he isn’t underwater, all the name Democrat leaders (Pelosi, Reid, even the Clintons) are taking their cues from him (although Bill is starting to try and put a little distance between Hillary and Obama for the sake of her political future… it won’t work, because while HE has charm and political skill, SHE doesn’t – but I’m digressing), and the Democrats will face two choices in 2016; either they will run on a continuation of the policies of Obama (which will be a dead end, because those policies will be seen to be failures, and if the Republican candidate can nail the Dem candidate down to specifics, the policies will kill that candidate) or they will try to take the Democrats in a “different direction” (which won’t work because not only would it be interpreted as a repudiation of Obama, but it would fragment the base). So even with the apparent infighting going on in Republican circles, as long as the Republicans nominate a fighter with knowledge, certainty, and purpose, Obama will already have done the heavy lifting.
So maybe I’m wrong, and Obama has a function after all.
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Comment by Lon Mead October 1, 2013 @ 12:15 amI don’t know. Democrats seem never to admit error of any kind. They may not wax enthusiastic about Jimmy Carter, but they don’t criticize him either. It’s a different Democratic Party. If you love your country, you don’t want to “fundamentally change it.”
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Comment by The Elephant's Child October 1, 2013 @ 12:46 am