iamct01 asked:


Could you imagine a Republican having to tell a large corporations like Visa the they are going to loose a ton of profit due to Dave Ramsey stopping bad habits.

karen star asked:


Now, I know that some will say they cost too much and leave it there, so let’s just agree to disagree on that, since I’m firmly convinced that doing nothing will cost us all more.
To avoid being told that I’m lazy and want handouts, let me make it explicit that I am a retired teacher currently caring for loved ones. I might also point out that I worked hard all my life, own my home, have little in the way of debt, and qualify for absolutely no means-tested government programs. I would be among those taxed for the proposed program. Now that we can dispense with some of the name calling, let me ask the actual question:

What exactly is wrong with having federal regulations of health insurance rather than 50 different sets of state regulations? It’s regulated in either case, but federal regulations will simplify applications and make coverage more portable from state to state. If the insurance companies all get their applicants from a common nation-wide pool and we have access to applying for those policies regardless of where we live, won’t it increase competition, and also increase the choices available to the vast majority of us? If not, please explain exactly why not.

Another proposal I don’t see as harmful is the elimination of rescission. After I assume I’ve done my due diligence and protected myself and my family by buying health insurance, why should the company have the right to come back when I get ill and say, “Oops, my bad. We shouldn’t have accepted you 9 years ago….You are now officially not on our insurance any more.”

I would also like to know what is wrong with eliminating exclusions for preexisting conditions. I know that doing so would likely decrease the profitability of the policies, but isn’t the point of insurance to INSURE people, not just to generate profits for the company?

Can you tell me why this is actually a bad thing?
I should have copied your handle before I started typing – the guy who said “there is a difference between reform and government take over.” Okay…I agree that there is a difference. However, the government already took over Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare is a single payer system, and seems to work pretty effectively. Old people have the option of opting out of Medicare and using private funds to pay for their own health care if they want to. As far as I can see, few actually do, and many will hide assets so that they don’t have to.
Odd, Chebrew – the people from England I’ve met are puzzled by the hysteria, since in England they do everything possible to “do right by the people” when it comes to health care. Individual clinics may have problems, but we have similar issues right here in the US. Did you see the video of the woman who was sitting in the chairs of an emergency room and PASSED OUT AND FELL OUT OF THE CHAIR? People passed her…medical personnel stepped over or around her. She died on the floor in an emergency room after waiting for hours to be seen. We have problems NOW.
FLBeach – your freedoms are limited all the time, and not just by the government. WHAT specific freedom do you think is being trampled? None of the things I want to see in the final reform bill are addressed in your answer.
There is not DEATH PANEL. Sheesh. No government buearacrat is going to determine your health care. Insurance companies do that NOW…my cousin will probably die from stage 4 cancer because her insurance decided not to pay for the MRI she needed to confirm the diagnosis until it went from stage 2 (more likely curable) to 4 (Almost certainly fatal.) Is that “tweaking” the system?
Water over Gold, the tenth amendment says “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” That means that laws can be passed by the people to do pretty much what-ever needs to be done. Many many things are regulated on a national level rather than a state level. Can you imagine state regulation of banks or of monetary systems? It was that way once, but no longer. Interstate commerce is regulated at a federal level. Purchase of insurance across state lines would simply be interstate commerce. Where did you get the idea that it required an amendment?

Eyeswideopen asked:


http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-global-tax-proposal-up-for-senate-vote/

“Global Poverty Act” (S.2433) through his committee. The legislation would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends.”

” The legislation itself requires the President “to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day.”

phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion OVER AND ABOVE what the U.S. already spends!
Can we really afford this when we still have, according to most liberals, poverty at home and insurmountable debt? Obama = economic disaster!

Michelle Obama asked:


Republicans and taxpayer watchdogs are railing against the thousands of earmarks included in the omnibus spending bill that passed the House Thursday and is awaiting a vote in the Senate.

Republicans and tax watchdog groups are railing against the thousands of earmarks included in the omnibus spending bill that the House passed Thursday and is awaiting a vote in the Senate.

The $1.1 trillion bill includes $447 billion in operating budgets for 10 Cabinet departments. Mixed in are more than 5,000 earmarks totaling $3.9 billion, according to watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Pork-watchers are only just beginning to sort through the earmarks, which typically are goodies set aside for the districts of members of Congress, as the bill tracks toward a final vote. So far, they’ve uncovered gems ranging from $700,000 for a shrimp fishing project in Maryland to $30,000 for the Woodstock Film Festival Youth Initiative to $200,000 for a visitor’s center in a Texas town with a population of about 8,000.

“Let’s stop the madness,” House Republican Leader John Boehner said, before the bill passed without any GOP support. Twenty-eight House Democrats also opposed it.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., wrote to President Obama urging him to veto the bill, and pledging that Republicans would stand by him if he did.

Obama in March waved off controversy over a $410 billion spending bill that also was riddled with earmarks, arguing that it represented “last year’s business.” This time around, Boehner said, the president needs to ***** down on the pork under his watch.

Republicans, though, have hardly shied away from the earmarks. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., is pushing $200,000 for the Washington National Opera. Sen. Judd Gregg, a fiscal hawk, is behind a $1 million earmark for renovation at the Portsmouth Music Hall.

Taxpayers for Common Sense reports a total of 5,224 earmarks in the 2010 spending bill, which also includes funding for Medicare and Medicaid. Groups like Citizens Against Government Waste, as well as Sen. John McCain’s staff, have drawn attention to dozens of items they consider questionable. Here’s just a sampling:

– $150,000 for educational programs and exhibitions at the National Building Museum.

– $400,000 for renovation of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

– $150,000 for exhibits at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site Foundation in Buffalo, N.Y.

– $500,000 for Mississippi River exhibits at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa.

– $200,000 for the Washington National Opera.

– $30,000 for the Woodstock Film Festival Youth Initiative.

– $2.7 million for the University of Nebraska Medical Center, to support surgical operations in space.

– $200,000 for a visitor’s center in Bastrop, Texas.

– $700,000 for a project called, “Shrimp Industry Fishing Effort Research Continuation,” at the National Marine Fisheries Service in Silver Spring, Md.

– $292,200 for the elimination of blight in Scranton, Pa.

– $750,000 for exhibits at the World Food Prize Hall of Laureates in Iowa.

– $1.6 million for a tram between the Marshall Flight Center and Huntsville Botanical Garden in Alabama.

– $655,000 for equipment at the Institute for Irritable Bowel Syndrome Research in Los Angeles.

Republicans have been on a tear over earmarks and excessive spending over the past week, particularly as Congress prepares to take up a new jobs-creation package and raise the debt ceiling by nearly $2 trillion.

Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., on Thursday named what they called the 11 most wasteful spending projects considered by Congress so far this year.

On Wednesday, four Republican lawmakers demanded an audit of the $787 billion stimulus program following reports of exaggerated or inaccurate accounts of the number of jobs created.

McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., on Tuesday released a report on 100 “questionable” stimulus projects worth nearly $7 billion.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/11/watchdogs-foul-thousands-earmarks-spending/

tacotorch asked:


What do we have to show after 3 out of the last 4 Presidents believing in trickle down? a huge national debt? lots of jobs outsourced? manufacturing gone? It certainly isn’t infastructure improvements or a balanced budget or any of the conservative ideas like the elimination of abortion, Bush 2 had the rubber stamp for 6 years and didn’t make government more conservative, I think we were pumped and dumped.

Lanani asked:


They just irritate most viewers anyway, and appeal to the lowest common denominator. I feel insulted every time I see one. Couldn’t that money be spend on more pressing social issues or put toward the elimination of debt?

(I know it’ll never happen)
That should read “spent.”

extremist asked:


http://www.business.auburn.edu/~whittdo/THE%20ELIMINATION%20OF%20THE%20NATIONAL%20DEBT%20IN%201835.htm

On January 1, 1835, the United States paid off entirely its longstanding public debt. For that year and the next the nation enjoyed debt-freedom, the only two years in its entire history when it held no obligation to creditors. For this reason the years 1835-1836 are unique and significant, but, oddly enough, historians of Jacksonian America have overlooked what this financial circumstance and its anticipation meant to the era. This historiographical oversight is particularly striking because the Jacksonians themselves and their opponents made much of the extraordinary financial situation which materialized during Andrew Jackson’s second term. National debt-freedom was, in fact, a core element of what is commonly called Jacksonian Democracy.

The elimination of the national debt caught nobody by surprise on New Year’s Day, 1835. It had been anticipated for a decade. In December, 1824, in his last annual message to Congress, retiring President James Monroe had announced that, barring any unforeseen emergency, the public debt would be extinguished on that date. Congress had, in fact, been working toward debt elimination ever since the Treaty of Ghent and, after 1824, aggressively adhered to Monroe’s timetable, refinancing debt whenever it could and making sure that the Sinking Fund Commission had the resources to meet interest and principal payments on time. The second Bank of the United States made the actual disbursements to creditors. Consensus, it seemed, existed regarding the need to eliminate the debt. However, when President John Quincy Adams presented Congress in December, 1825, an agenda for road and canal construction, a national university, an astronomical institute, and other federal initiatives—an agenda without cost estimates, timelines, and other fiscal data—he raised the suspicion that he was not committed to debt elimination according to Monroe’s schedule, and this suspicion helped cripple his administration.
I Was Born, no. You are confused about earmarks. Earmarks don’t add anything to a bill. They just appropriate where the money goes. Ron Paul put those in there to give to his Constituents, rather than letting the federal government do with their tax dollars what they wished. Earmarks are added after the amount of money is decided upon.

Moose asked:


With the announcement of the deficit today the dots are connected. McSame: we cannot meet our financial obligations. Bush: the largest deficit ever contributing to an astronomical national debt.

The answer: eliminate Social Security and Medicare.