Energy and Commerce worked until midnight last night, and will reconvene at 10am this morning. They are expected to finish their health care markup sometime this afternoon.
Last night’s most heated debates in E&C revolved around publicly-funded abortions. Lois Capps was able to pass an amendment permitting the Democrats’ government plan to cover elective abortions. Reps. Pitts and Stupak followed that up with an amendment of their own, prohibiting abortions from being covered under the government plan. That amendment passed. Finally, Chairman Waxman reconsidered the vote–switched Bart Gordon’s vote–and defeated the amendment. The result of all of this dizzying maneuvering? Taxpayer-funded abortions are indeed covered by the Democrats’ bill.
In case you missed it, Jack spoke on the floor yesterday and read a letter from a constituent in Douglas which asks, “Where are the jobs?” To view the clip, click below:
Town hall meetings have been scheduled for August to discuss healthcare. For more information, click above or click on each city for more information on that event.
Department of Justice grant to fund new officer for three years
Congressman Jack Kingston (GA-1) today announced a $106,901 grant for the Alma Police Department. The funding will be administered by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).
“We’ve seen from experience that local initiatives go a lot further toward solving local problems that policies set in Washington,” Congressman Kingston said. “This funding will provide tax relief by savings local tax dollars and, under the stewardship of Chief Livingston, will go a long way to fight crime more effectively through community policing.”
Department of Justice grant to fund new officer for three years
Congressman Jack Kingston (GA-1) today announced a $138,286 grant for the Jesup Police Department. The funding will be administered by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).
“We’ve seen from experience that local initiatives go a lot further toward solving local problems that policies set in Washington,” Congressman Kingston said. “This funding will provide tax relief by savings local tax dollars and, under the stewardship of Chief Takaki, will go a long way to fight crime more effectively through community policing.”
President Obama’s czars leave more questions than answers
In its day, czarist Russia had just 18 czars in 300 years. In just seven months, President Obama has nearly doubled that number. At this rate, we’ll have 272 czars by 2012.
Who are these people and why are they necessary? Why do we need an Energy Czar and a Secretary of Energy? Why do we need a TARP Czar and a Secretary of Treasury? Why was a 31 year old with no background in the auto industry and who drives a foreign car appointed as the Auto Recovery Czar? What qualifies a college professor to set executive salaries?
We don’t know the answers to these questions because unlike cabinet secretaries, judges, and hundreds of other presidential appointments, these czars have bypassed Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution which mandates the advice and consent of the Senate when the President appoints principle officers.
In case you missed it, Jack spoke on the floor of the House about the need for real debate on healthcare reform. Be it President Bush’s failed Wall Street bailout or President Obama’s failed “stimulus,” we’ve seen the dangers of rushing through legislation based on the “Washington knows best” mentality. If we’re going to enact meaningful reform, we need real debate.
Apparently President Obama apparently doesn’t remember this. He thought planning a government healthcare takeover would be easier, but it’s not going as smoothly as he would hope.
The President claimed that “special interests” were stalling on healthcare reform. This isn’t true. Now, he’s blaming Republicans. The Hill reports:
“President Obama sharply criticized Republicans on Tuesday for following a ‘familiar script’ to ‘block healthcare reform.’” (The Hill, 7/21/09)
Democrats have a 77 seat majority in the House of Representatives and hold a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. So how can he blame Republicans for stalling when his party controls Congress and the Senate?
Even House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) knows why healthcare has stalled.
“I want to make it very clear that there’s progressives, Blue Dogs and everybody in between who have expressed concerns, and we’re working on that.” (ABC News, 7/21/09)
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) makes it clear that if Americans don’t like a government-takeover of health care, it has only Democrat fingerprints on it – as Republicans weren’t allowed to have any input in the bill.
“In the House of Representatives, meanwhile, we are explicitly told not to work with Republicans.” (Huffington Post, 6/18/09)
Blaming Republicans won’t work. The truth is, the President’s plans for healthcare have stalled because of opposition from Democrats.
In case you missed it, Jack appeared on MSNBC’s Dayside with Carlos Watson today to discuss the ongoing healthcare debate and the need for a truely bipartisan debate. To view the clip, click below:
Jack spoke on the House floor today about the “Washington knows best” approach taken by President Obama to force through his socialized medicine proposal. It was this same mentality that President Bush and Secretary Paulsen used to rush through the failed Wall Street bailout and that President Obama along with Speaker Pelosi used in January to rush through the President’s failed “stimulus”. If Washington knew best, these would have worked. It’s time to slow down the discussion and look at the failures of the past so we don’t repeat the same mistakes again.
President Obama changes course on the stimulus. Where are the jobs? House Republicans offer a real plan to create jobs and get our economy moving again. To view the Obama vs Obama video click here.
Health reform legislation released by House Democrat leaders includes numerous tax increases to finance significant expansions of government-run health care. One of these tax increases amounts to a tax on jobs—an 8 percent payroll surcharge for businesses who cannot afford to purchase coverage for their employees. In 2007, Harvard Professor Kate Baicker published an analysis demonstrating that, of the millions of workers likely to be impacted by the new tax on jobs, minority workers were twice as likely to lose their jobs as their white counterparts:
Most economists agree that the cost of health insurance—including any benefits mandated by the federal government, or a payroll tax on jobs intended to finance the same—is passed on to workers in the form of lower wages. However, as the Congressional Budget Office recently noted, “a pay-or play provision could reduce the hiring of low-wage workers, whose wages could not fall by the full cost of health insurance or a substantial pay-or-play fee if they were close to the minimum wage.”
The 2007 analysis found that “33 percent of uninsured workers”—5.5 million total—“earn within $3 [per hour] of the minimum wage, putting them at substantial risk of unemployment if their employers were required to offer insurance.”
The study also found that “among the uninsured, those with the least education face the highest risk of losing their jobs under employer mandates.”
When calculating job losses, “more than 60 percent of [workers losing jobs] would be racial or ethnic minorities and about one-third would have less than a college education. The burden of the mandate would fall disproportionately on these groups since, for example, racial and ethnic minorities are only 30 percent of the workforce in this sample.”
The Baicker paper only analyzed the impact of employer mandates on full-time workers. However, as the House Democrat bill extends this new tax on jobs to both full-time and part-time employees, many more than the 5.5 million workers cited in the article could be affected. Moreover, the 2007 analysis was conducted under much better economic conditions—meaning that job losses could also be higher now due to the economy’s current fragile state.
Similarly, the Baicker analysis does not examine the impact of the half-trillion dollar tax increase on small business being proposed under the guise of a “surtax.” More than half of all high-income filers are small businesses reporting significant business income, and these additional taxes on small business owners—on top of the taxes on jobs imposed through the employer mandate—could destroy many more jobs than the 2007 paper projected.
At a time when more than one in seven African-Americans and nearly one in four teens are unemployed, these harmful tax increases would hurt exactly the low-wage and minority workers that health reform is intended to help. Further, raising taxes to finance new entitlements would help not control health care costs or rising federal spending and debt.
Jack has joined with a growing number of congressmen who have pledged not to support any healthcare reform legislation that he has not read in its entirety and that has not been available, in its entirety, to the American people on the internet for at least 72 hours, so that they can read it too.
In case you missed it, Jack appeared on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight to discuss his ongoing efforts to increase transparency and accountability for President Obama’s many czars. To learn more about Jack’s efforts, visit http://kingston.house.gov/czar
