The ongoing controversy over President Obama’s universal female-contraception entitlement decree reportedly found Vice President Joseph Biden, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, former chief of staff Richard Daley, and five Democratic senators opposing Obama’s fusillade against religious liberty and economic freedom. (It is tyrannical to force faith-based organizations to commit what they consider sins and dictate to insurance companies that they deliver a service for free — namely, birth-control coverage — for which they normally charge money.) This is the latest example of Democrats, in whole, or in part, giving the cold shoulder to Obamacare.
Congressman Barney Frank, the crusading Massachusetts liberal, recently co-sponsored H.R. 452, joining California’s Joe Baca and Loretta Sanchez, New York’s Timothy Bishop, Pennsylvania’s Chaka Fattah, and ten other Democrats. This measure, introduced by Representative Phil Roe (R., Tenn.), would terminate the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Dubbed “the real death panel” by its critics, IPAB would begin work in 2014. Its 15 appointed members would control Medicare costs by deciding which treatments are cost-effective and which aren’t, essentially rationing care. Its recommendations would become federal law unless Congress found other ways to match or exceed its spending cuts. Alternatively, 60 senators overrule IPAB’s advice — no small task.
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Representative Frank’s spokesman, Diego Sanchez, says that his boss’s opposition to IPAB has been “consistent and firm.” As far back as January 15, 2010, Frank — along with California’s Pete Stark, Texas’s Sheila Jackson-Lee, Georgia’s John Lewis, and dozens of other stalwart Democrats — signed a letter to then-speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) spurning “legislation that would place authority for Medicare payment policy in an unelected, executive branch commission or board.”
Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, Senator Ben Nelson (D., Neb.) asked the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office to find replacements for Obamacare’s individual mandate, the new law’s most constitutionally dodgy provision. “I never thought the mandate was a particularly good way to do it,” he told Politico. Senator Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) also frets about the mandate. “There’s [sic] other ways we can get people into the pool — I hope — other than a mandate, and we need to look at that,” she told MSNBC.
Obamacare’s chief mandate has enraged Democrats across America.
“Examples around the country show that people on both the left and the right oppose the unconstitutional individual mandate,” says Christie Herrera, director of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Health and Human Services Task Force. “Support for an individual’s right to decide whether or not to purchase health insurance free from government force is a question of the proper role of government, not what side of the aisle you sit on.”
Last spring, for instance, Missouri attorney general Chris Koster (D., Missouri) filed an amicus curiae brief backing anti-Obamacare litigation filed by Florida and 25 other states.
“If Congress can force activity under the Commerce Clause, then it could force individuals to receive vaccinations or annual check-ups, undergo mammogram or prostate exams, or maintain a specific body mass,” argues Koster’s brief in the case, which the Supreme Court will hear in March.
Koster’s filing poses this magnificent rhetorical question:
“When Henry Thoreau set about to idly chronicle the summer of 1845 alongside Walden Pond, could Congress assert that Thoreau’s season of reflection was, in fact, an active decision not to fish Walden’s waters, regulate his negative decision under the Commerce Clause, and thereafter penalize his failure to fish under the theory that everyone has to eat?”
Missourians voted 71 to 29 percent on August 3, 2010, to prohibit any law that compels “any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system.” This anti-mandate initiative won nearly 100,000 votes from citizens who did not cast Republican ballots in that day’s primary election. “When one in six Democratic primary voters decides they want the state of Missouri to defend them from the signature issue of the Democratic Party, you’ve got a recipe for electoral disaster,” RedState concluded.
St. Louis County, a Democratic stronghold, voted 59 to 40 percent for Obama over Senator John McCain (R., Ariz.) in November 2008. However, Obamacare proved far less popular than its namesake. Missouri’s largest city voted 62 to 38 percent for Proposition C.
Whether these Democrat "critics" are posers or poseurs matters not. They did not vote against the bill, nor were vocal critics if not in a position to vote, when it counted. Even then, Commissar Pelosi permitted a few House members to vote against it once the necessary numbers were achieved there, and those "critics" should not be forgotten in November, either.
Bipartisan critics?
Not just the TEA Party any more?
This is what is wrong with reality today. Although some Democrats are finding it politically prudent to oppose certain aspects of OBoehnerCare at the moment, they have no problems with the program itself. They are not objecting to the power it gives the President or the fact that Congress now needs to pass legislation to STOP government from acting, instead of passing legislation ALLOWING government to act. They are not objecting to the Executive branch of our government now decreeing policy law, bypassing Congress.
Yet now, TEA Party objections to Constitutionality and freedom, are equated with execution of provisions within the law?
With pieces like this supporting the opposition to OBoehnerCare, is it any wonder we have not heard much talk about repealing this law in the last year? Why if this keeps up, it wont be long until we are reading that we TEA Partiers are proposing even more borrowing and tax hikes so we can replace those cuts to Medicare under the law and pay for more exemptions from pieces of it!
What are you talking about? OBoehnerCare? What does that even mean?
In case you missed it, and obviously you did, the House passed a bill repealing Obamacare and it now sits in the Senate, gathering dust, in Harry Reid's desk.
The real premise behind this "plot" to kill any sort of health care reform in The United States is really based on a stinky Social Darwinism that invaded our society a long time ago. The general feeling among the Liberal and Conservative Elite (all of whom are secure in every way including health care), is that if you can't afford health insurance you probably don't deserve it anyway. Add a generous dollop of even stinkier Calvinism and you have our very own American recipe that basically says" "Too bad you aren't rich you smelly peasant". It's not much different than European feudalistic thinking except it is more sophisticated. Let's say it's the modern version of the same mentality. In any event, the United States is not Number One on the list of nations who have really good health care. Of course the counter-argument is that living here is much better than expiring on the street in India.
The ignorance of this post (lest it be satire) is astounding....
Obamacare does nothing for the overall problem which is healthcare cost. In fact, it is going to balloon costs in a rather expeditious manner.
The end result of healthcare insurance is that it reduces direct liability off of the consumer, and places it on the insurance company. What Obamacare is dishonestly not addressing is that when that liability goes up, that cost has to be displaced somewhere....
That somewhere is the more macro economic functions in our country and the world.
Once that happens, true rationing is going to happen, and when you can't go get your "free" services without waiting in line for 2 years, your ignorance will become quite evident even to yourself.
Personally, I never underestimate the ability of liberals to talk out of both sides of their mouths.
After all, today's liberals are proud of the fact that the food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever.
Meanwhile, the National Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, instructs us "please do not feed the animals" because they may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.
Heah - don't put that "stinky elitism" tag on conservatives bud! It wasn't conservatives who sought to create this stupid mess to begin with. And it wasn't conservatives who were stacked in line seeking exemptions like the unions and other Democratic party folks. THAT is where your cynical take rings true - NOT with conservatives.
Plus, it was Pelosi/ Reid who had the exemption for Congress, NOT the GOP. So save your mass meanderings and universal name-calling. the despicable characters who did this are very clear - Democrats!!
"Of course the counter-argument is that living here is much better than expiring on the street in India."
Or England, or Canada, or any of a number of other countries, while you wait around for their nationalized healthcare systems to, hopefully, eventually get around to finding an appointment to see you. If their death panels approve the procedure you might require. If the type of doctor you need is available in your area - or you could do what a lot of them do; travel to the U.S. for your health care.
Just too precious these Democrats, voicing objections to the parts of the law that they know are extremely unpopular across the full spectrum of voters while completely ignoring the fact that an already unsustainable new entitlement becomes utterly ludicrous minus the very parts to which they object! But no matter; it plays well back home and there's an election approaching, so anything goes.
It seems that almost daily another bit of financial legerdemain is discovered in the bowels of the "Affordable" Care Act (BTW, those are not scare quotes, but rather sarcasm quotes; maybe the National Punctuation Board could come up with a new, dedicated symbol for that. Just a thought.) and each new discovery reveals either phony savings or badly underestimated costs. But still we have hypocritical Democrats objecting to the parts of the bill that are designed solely to reduce costs or spread the risk enough to avoid bankrupting the insurers that are coerced into providing unrealistic types of coverage under the act.
Allow me to enlighten these hypocritically backpedaling Dems: What you are really acknowledging is that the entire law is unsustainable, unworkable, fiscally irresponsible, and probably un-Constitutional. Ladies and gentlemen (such as they may be) please show a little courage and intellectual honesty for a change and support the repeal of the whole malodorous thing.
In Colorado's State House, they passed a resolution (HR12-1003), calling for an Article V convention to propose an amendment to the US Constitution that basically reads "Obamacare is repealed." Every Republican and one Democrat supported the resolution. At the state level, even Democrats recognize what Obamacre will do to state budgets.
I used to oppose a Constitutional Convention because it opens the door to Liberal Alterations of the Constitution. I mean, what else would there be to do to a document that limits the power of government? I guess I can support one now since the Left is ignoring the document anyhow!
Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 85 of the state-led amendment process that includes a convention for proposing amendments, “We may safely rely on the disposition of the state legislatures to erect barriers against the encroachments of the national authority."
That is, the convention process was specifically placed into the Constitution to counteract federal overreaching.
If we voluntarily abandon this aspect of the Constitution, there is no longer any barrier “against the encroachments of the national authority." And if republicans are unable to take the Senate and the Presidency, Obamacare will stand, and we will be on a painful and disastrous path to socialized medicine.
Let's create a simple fix. I strongly urge Boehner and his colleagues to put forth the following bill BEFORE the elections.
Wherein the Patient Affordability and Care Act, (aka Obamacare), was enacted by the Democratic party in 2010 with the effect of mandating Americans to purchase healthcare as established by their government, and where the law allowed the Secretary of HHS to offer and provide exemptions from applicability of this law based on his/ her subjective judgment, and wherein this Congress and other Federal workers in all branches of government are automatically exempt from this law, the Congress does hereby declare that since the President and the advocates of said bill indicate the mandate is necessary so that costs may be driven down, that there will be no exemptions granted in any situation. Furthermore, that all such requests will be automatically denied unless approved by Congress. Lastly, that in light of the impact this act will have on the American people, it is only right and correct that all current and former Federal employees, including all sitting and former members of Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Supreme Court will no longer have any exemption of any kind and must contribute on an equal footing as any and every other American.
Put it up for a vote! Then when the Democrats runaway light cockroaches with a kitchen light coming on, let the voters see what these puerile Democrats are really like!!
"Obamacare’s chief mandate has enraged Democrats across America." What?
Where were all these concerned buffoons 2 years ago when the Republicans were screaming from the mountain tops about all this? Oh, that's right - they were too busy demonizing those Republicans as uncaring cretins who didn't want children to have medical care, or wanted senior citizens to die in the streets, or wanted women performing abortions on themselves. I can still hear the sound bites from Obama, Pelosi, even Ben Nelson himself.
Obamacare is the Democrats albotross for now and as long as it is law. No amount of handwringing by these Socialist dweebs should absolve them of their liability for this legislative monstrosity. If we ultimately get stuck with this debacle, it WILL NEVER GO AWAY. The Republicans better make sure that everyone in the country remembers that.
Congressman Barney Frank, the crusading Massachusetts liberal, recently co-sponsored H.R. 452, joining California’s Joe Baca and Loretta Sanchez, New York’s Timothy Bishop, Pennsylvania’s Chaka Fattah, and ten other 
