BCC NOTES
This afternoon, I participated in a blogger conference call with Reps. Cathy McMorris-Rogers and John Shadegg on the upcoming fight over health care. Of all the noteworthy things mentioned, the most noteworthy, in my opinion, was Rep. Shadegg’s mentioning Sally Pipes’ article in the NY Post. After reading it, I now know why:
CBO makes clear that it’s not dealing with the actual bill (there isn’t one) but a summary. And it assumes Congress will actually make Baucus’ unlikely cuts:
- Radically reduce Medicare spending from current levels.
- Reallocate $162 billion over 10 years from fee-for-service Medicare Advantage to health care for others.
- Cut $45 billion from hospitals that now serve low-income Americans.
- Hold government payments to health-care providers below the rate of inflation when all modern experience tells us that payments will rise.
Baucus also assumes that Americans will shell out $46 billion in new taxes to keep their current insurance. If any of these assumptions fails, the plan will produce large deficits.
As I’ve preached here consistently, these cuts are fiction. Unfortunately, the tax increases couldn’t be more real.
I mentioned that I’d written an LTE this morning in which I highlighted 4 things we should hammer the opposition on: the tons of tax increases in the Democrats’ bills, the Medicaid unfunded mandates, that the tax increases would definitely cause health care spending to increase, not decrease and that the Medicare cuts would hurt the least able among us when they’re depending on Medicare the most.
I told Reps. McMorris-Rogers and Shadegg that the logic behind this 4-pronged approach was to personalize things and talk in what might be called family language. Both said that people taking things personally is what caused people’s intensity to spike in August. They’ll be recommending that House Republicans highlight these points in the interviews they do.
Rep. Shadegg also highlighted the ’special considerations’ that were used to satisfy Sen. Kerry and other influential legislators just to get the bill out of committee and to win Sen. Reid’s approval. Rep. Shadegg then said that this is just the beginning of buying votes with pork or special considerations.
Rep. Shadegg said that it’s easy to make a budget balance when you collect 10 years of revenues but only have 7 years of expenses. I haven’t seen anyone from the fringe media talk about that yet.
Today’s call was mostly about exposing the special deals that Democrats have already given to each other to get this bill moving. It also focused on highlighting the effects it would have on families. I’ve participated in alot of these BCC’s and I’ve learned from each of them but this was the most informative BCC I’ve participated in.
Technorati Tags: Bloggers, Conference Call, Health Care, Reform, Tax Increases, Medicare Cuts, Rationing, Deficits, Inflation, CBO, JCT, Unfunded Mandates, Medicaid, Townhall Meetings, John Shadegg, Cathy McMorris-Rogers, House GOP, Harry Reid, Speaker Pelosi, Quid Pro Quo, Democrats
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog