Why We Must Fight This Health Care Bill

Friends,

For over a year, I’ve been fighting the government-run health care policy that President Obama and Congressional Democrats have sought to impose on America.  However, as conservatives in America made our case to the public and won enough support to stop the policy, we have seen Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others subvert the process and undermine the rule of law to impose their will.

Yesterday, 222 Democrats in the House voted to allow the use of an unconstitutional legislative trick known as the Slaughter Solution. This trick allows Nancy Pelosi to “deem” the Senate health care bill passed out of the House without actually having members of Congress vote on the bill.  I thought I had seen the worst abuse of power when the Democrat leaders in the Senate began buying votes to pass their bill, but if Nancy Pelosi successfully ducks a vote in her bid to provide political cover for vulnerable House Democrats, she will have undermined the democratic process, the integrity of the Congress, and trampled on the Constitution.

As the 72 hour clock ticks down to Sunday’s final vote, it is important to remember why the House wants to avoid voting on the Senate bill.  The special deals that were made during the Senate vote sale on Christmas Eve 2009 included, but are not limited to, the infamous Cornhusker Kickback and Louisiana Purchase, and less known deals like cash for union health care, fee exemptions to politically connected insurers, and longshoreman becoming exempt from the health care tax—all secret backroom deals given to Senators willing to sell their vote on so-called health care reform.

And the secret sweetheart deal-making continues even now in the eleventh hour.  In the last week, we discovered that the health care reform bill suddenly includes a government-takeover of the student loan industry, which threatens the jobs of thousands of Hoosiers employed by Sallie Mae.  To add to this onion of corruption, a single bank in North Dakota will be exempt from the provisions of the student loan takeover—North Dakota’s lone Member of Congress has long been undecided on how to vote on Obamacare.  They call this one the Bismarck Bank Job.

Who pays for all the horse-trading?  At a cost of over $1 trillion in deficit spending, $569 billion in job-killing tax increases, and $523.5 billion in Medicare cuts, it’s Hoosiers in the 5th Congressional District, taxpayers across the country, seniors, and future generations who will be forced to pay through taxes, job-loss, and debt-induced inflation for a government takeover of health care and student loans.

I know millions of Americans are waging a war against this bill with phone calls, letters, and emails to Congress.  As you continue to fight, I recommend arming yourself with the following facts about this bill:

•    The new version released yesterday has over $1 trillion in new entitlement spending, $65 billion more than the Senate-passed bill

•    Hits the American people with over half-a-trillion in tax hikes

•    Uses Medicare as a piggy bank – nearly half-a-trillion in Medicare cuts to pay for the new entitlements

•    Allows federal funds to pay for elective abortions and denies adequate conscience protection to individuals and institutions

•    Mandates a massive expansion of Medicaid, and 500,000 Hoosiers would become newly eligible, costing Hoosier taxpayers billions more in state taxes, and causing one in four Hoosiers to be on public assistance

•    The Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) would be eliminated as the new federal rules would force the 45,000 families who are currently covered into the Medicaid fee-for-service delivery model

•    Many Hoosiers who currently have health insurance will pay higher premiums – the Congressional Budget Office estimates an average increase nationally of $2,100 for some families, and a study of the effects in Indiana showed premium increases ranging up to 78%

•    A job killing tax of $2,000 per employee will be levied on many companies which cannot afford or choose not to provide health insurance to their employees

The American people don’t want this, and you deserve better than this.  While this bill might pass on Sunday, I promise my fellow Hoosiers that I will be fighting for liberty and constitutional government, and to kill these government-takeovers now, and in the future.

Sincerely,

Dan Burton