Tax, spend and regulate -- no solution on health care
July 17, 2009 | By Nathaniel Ward
While the media focused its attention on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, liberals in the House of Representatives introduced a health care "reform" package that will cost $245 billion a year by 2019.
Heritage Foundation blogger Conn Carroll digs into an alarming aspect of the legislation: it will effectively regulate your private health insurance plan out of business. Here's how it works, as Carroll explains:
[A]ll health insurance plans must confirm to a slew of new regulations, including community rating and guaranteed issue. These will all drive up the cost of health insurance. Furthermore, all these new regs would not apply just to individual insurance plans, but to all insurance plans. So the House bill will also drive up the cost of your existing employer coverage. Until, of course, it becomes too expensive and they just dump you into the government plan.
And all this will come at a huge cost to taxpayers. According to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, the price tag of these "reforms" will soar after 2012, reaching as high as $245 billion in 2019. (Curious, isn't it, that the costs increase only after 2012? What happens in 2012?)
Not only that, but the plan will cost taxpayers more than $800 billion in new taxes over the next decade. If you count state income taxes, the top marginal tax rate will top 50 percent in many states—and five states will have higher top rates than any European country except Denmark. (France's top rate is 45.8 percent, and Germany's is 47.47 percent.)
Needless to say, this will be a disaster for the economy. "This runaway spending, coupled with the Democrats plans to raise taxes, will kill our struggling economy and leave us with double digit unemployment for years to come," Heritage's Conn Carroll writes. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office comes to a similar conclusion.
Audio: Ed Meese and Jim DeMint on Sonia Sotomayor
On Tuesday, hundreds of Heritage Foundation members and supporters tuned in to hear Heritage's Ed Meese and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) discuss Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court. Listen to the audio of the teleconference.
The full Senate is expected to vote on her confirmation in the next few weeks.
Delivering Constitutions to Congress
Thanks to the support of Heritage Foundation members, our interns hand-delivered a copy of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution and a pocket-sized Constitution to every Senator's Capitol Hill office on Wednesday.
The interns snapped photos as they made their deliveries to key liberal Senators. View the full slideshow on MyHeritage.org.
Petition to President Obama on defense
Yesterday, we invited our members and supporters to join Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and other leaders in signing a petition to President Obama urging him to maintain defense spending levels.
In other news
- Suicide bombers struck hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia today, killing eight people. This should serve as a reminder that terrorism remains a grave international threat.
- The Senate has approved a measure that "expands federal hate crimes to include those perpetrated against people because of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability," the AP reports. Heritage's Brian Walsh explains why this is neither a proper role for the federal government nor a good idea.
- President Obama told the NAACP Thursday that disparate outcomes for African Americans reflect structural inequities rather than outright discrimination. He did, however, rightly urge self-improvement and a stronger role for parents.
- Facing a massive budget deficit, California closed many government offices today to save money.
- Even though the federal government has spent hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to prop up the economy, foreclosures continue to rise.
- Vice President Joe Biden told a town hall meeting that the federal government needs to spend even more taxpayer money to—er—keep the federal government from going bankrupt. CNS News has the audio. Heritage's Brian Riedl will discuss this claim on Fox News' "O'Reilly Factor" tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern.
- "A Social Security Administration motivational management conference held at a high-end Valley resort last week cost $700,000," Arizona's ABC 15 reports.
Coming up at Heritage
To attend these or any other events at Heritage please RSVP at Heritage's website. Or you can view these events live online. All times are Eastern
- On Monday, July 20 at 10:00 a.m., former House Speaker Newt Gingrich delivers an address on defense spending at The Heritage Foundation. This event is at capacity; no space remains to attend in person. Watch a live webcast on Heritage.org.
- On Tuesday, July 21 at 10:30 a.m., a panel of experts discusses the merits of the new Strategic Economic Dialogue with China.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. Amanda Reinecker contributed to this report.
