Health Care

[BJean 16]

I understand why you think this way. But it has beern proven that what you want doesn't work at all. Republicans have sold that crap to the Americans public for so long that we're suffering the consequences.

Read my lips, trickle down economics does not work.

Having a strong middle class is what makes us a nation that can compete and grow and prosper.

[BJean 16]

Now why is it that you said that it was mostly Democrats that voted for the war in Iraq?

[pattygreen 5]

Now why is it that you said that it was mostly Democrats that voted for the war in Iraq?

My apologies. It was mostly reps who voted 'yes'. About half of the democratic reps were on board.

But they got the okay to go to war from all of them with a majority vote. It's nothing like the HC bill and practically ALL the reps vote no and they need to scramble for every single vote to get what they want.

[tdslf1 0]

Rethugs can scramble all they want, they won't get it.

[pattygreen 5]

Rethugs can scramble all they want, they won't get it.

Another sign of your lack of self esteem.

Edited January 19, 2010 by pattygreen

[BJean 16]

patty: "My apologies. It was mostly reps who voted 'yes'. About half of the democratic reps were on board.

But they got the okay to go to war from all of them with a majority vote."

No, they did not get the okay to go to war from all of them... a majority vote is the majority of them, not all of them.

The people who were against the war continued to be against the war and have certainly been vindicated by the truth coming out. In fact, they have proven by their records that they had guts and were smart enough not to go along with the intimidation tactics of the Bush administration.

patty: "It's nothing like the HC bill and practically ALL the reps vote no and they need to scramble for every single vote to get what they want."

Well it is a lot like the HC bill in that in order to pass it they will need a majority.

It is nothing like it in that the president is not in collusion with his cronies to get something passed that he and they will financially benefit from. And furthermore, lives will not be lost because of it.

[tdslf1 0]

PG,

Your response is dumb, stick to topic. Rethugs and Demo's.

[Bamablondie1 0]

The Marriage Penalty in Health Care

January 15, 2010

by Phyllis Schlafly

Hidden in Obama's health care bill is a huge marriage penalty. Both the Senate and House bills would set up yet another federal program to provide financial incentives to subsidize marriage avoidance and illegitimate offspring.

Even though all evidence shows that marriage is the best remedy for poverty, lack of health care, domestic violence, child abuse, and school dropouts, federal welfare programs continue to discriminate against marriage and instead give taxpayer handouts to those who reject marriage. This isn't any accident; it is a central part of the Democrats' political strategy that produced 70 percent of unmarried women voting for Obama for President in 2008.

Conservatives have been exchanging email for weeks about the shocking fact that Obama's health care bill discriminates against marriage while financially favoring unmarried couples living together. This fact is finally getting national attention, at least in the Wall Street Journal and on Fox News.

Here is the cost in the House bill for an unmarried couple who each earn $25,000 a year (total: $50,000). When they both buy health insurance (which will be mandatory), the combined premiums they pay will be capped at $3,076 a year.

But if the couple gets married and has the same combined income of $50,000, they will pay annual premiums up to a cap of $5,160 a year. That means they have to fork over a marriage penalty of $2,084.

The marriage penalty is the result of the fact that government subsidies for buying health insurance are pegged to the federal poverty guidelines. Couples that remain unmarried are rewarded with a separate health care subsidy for each income.

When the Wall Street Journal reporter quizzed the Democratic authors of the health care bill, they made it clear that this differential was deliberate. The staffer justified the discriminatory treatment because "you have to decide what your goals are."

Indeed, the Democrats have decided what their goals are. They know that 70% of unmarried women voted for Obama in 2008, and the Democrats plan to reward this group with health insurance subsidies.

The House staffer told the Wall Street Journal reporter that the Democratics can't make the subsidies neutral towards marriage because that would give a traditional one-breadwinner married couple a more generous subsidy than a single parent at the same income level. Horrors! The Democrats certainly are not going to allow traditional marriage to be preferred over couples who just shack up!

Obamacare will thus ratchet up the federal welfare spending that already produces many financial incentives to remain single. These include the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), housing benefits, food stamps, child support enforcement, and the entire Great Society welfare apparatus.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously and accurately explained the disastrous results of welfare back in 1965. The welfare system created a matriarchy with millions of children lacking their father in the home.

It's no wonder illegitimate birthrates are soaring and unmarried mothers now give birth to 4 out of every 10 babies born in the United States. Prior to 1970, most unmarried mothers were teenagers, but by 2007 women in their 20s had 60 percent of all babies born out of wedlock, and women over age 30 had another 17 percent.

Means-tested welfare programs already cost taxpayers close to $1 trillion a year (twice as much as national defense and nearly the size of the federal deficit), and Obamacare is projected to add another $2.5 trillion after all its provisions take effect. There's no end in sight to the increasing costs of these entitlements.

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a liberal firm that consults for clients such as Bill Clinton and John Kerry, admitted: "Unmarried women represent one of the most reliable Democratic cohorts in the electorate . . . leading the charge for fundamental change in health care."

It used to be that a husband was responsible for the financial support of his wife and children, but the feminists' agenda calls for replacing husbands with Big Brother Government. The feminists call their movement "women's liberation," and Obamacare is one more way to help them achieve their goal.

Feminists keep tightening their control over the social policies of the Democratic Party, and Obamacare will be his third payoff to this group. The first bill Obama signed as President, the Lilly Ledbetter Act, enables women to sue employers years many years after any alleged workplace discrimination (when no one is still alive to defend against allegations), and the second payoff was getting Obama to give the majority of taxpayer-paid Stimulus jobs to women even though men have suffered the big majority of job losses in the current recession.

Further reading:

• Health Care Reform
  

[pattygreen 5]

nothing[/b] like it in that the president is not in collusion with his cronies to get something passed that he and they will financially benefit from. And furthermore, lives will not be lost because of it.

The president is in collusion with all the dems in congress to get something passed that the people don't want. That's pretty bad.

[pattygreen 5]

Bamablondie1, great insight, and so true. This is just another point to bring out concerning the Obama plan. I had heard of their anti- marriage agenda, and didn't bring it to light here because most who post here don't care about the moral issues. They'd just say, "So, don't get married. Live together instead."

[BJean 16]

patty don't presume to say what we believe about any so-called "anti-marriage agenda" on the part of the president. And that we would just live together if things aren't good for married people in the legislation that passes. That's condescending and wrong.

And stop saying that the people don't want the health care proposal. YOU don't want it, I'll give you that. You and blondie will dig up everything that you don't agree with and post it here, yeah, I'll give you that.

But we want this president, we elected him and we are demanding that he make the changes that we need.

You all had your glorious moment in the sun when Bush was the president, now you need to let this man do his job. Yeah, I expect you to bellyache, like we did about Bush, but no, I don't expect you to think you can run him out of office or undermine his authority just because you don't like him or the progressive plans he endorses.

Frankly, many of those who voted for him are disappointed that he doesn't just sit back, take names, and kick some booty to get everything WE want pushed through congress. Oh yeah, that's right, Democrats don't work that way - it's the Republicans who do that.

President Obama is the most moderate president that I've ever known. You should be counting your lucky stars. With a Democratic majority in congress and a Democratic president, things could be happening so fast it would make your head spin. But he is doing all he can to be fair to EVERYONE, not just the people who voted for him. So if you were smart, you'd try to find ways to work with what you've got instead of spending the next 3 years beating your head against the wall.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Well, it's finally happened. Someone has quoted that extreme right wing phoney - Phyllis Schlafly who is known well for her lies.

In the 70's-she was very anti the equal rights amendment spreading lies about how it would require unisex bathrooms and women in combat (neither was true). Back in the 70's I used to do public speaking on behalf of the equal rights amendment and wrote almost weekly letters to the editor as I battled one of Phyllis's local disciples (who was a strong John Bircher). I have an album of all those letters and I clearly won because I had the facts on my side.

Also, while Phyllis Schlafly would tout the virtues of stay at home moms & wives who bake cherry cobbler, she herself was out earing big bucks on her book & talk show tours and running for congress. How do you spell phoney? S-C-H-L-A-F-L-Y.

Now, back to the matter at hand: there has always been a penalty in this country for being married. Long before Pres. Obama. The standard income tax deduction for a married couple is not double that of a single person.

You pay into social security without regard to your marital status but you collect it based on your marital status. That is why two elderly people who collect social security will lose some if they get married rather than just live together.

So what was the point of this Eagle Forum posting??? Have all these "concerned conservatives" been in a coma (like the teabaggers) for the last 100 years? Or have they chosen to just ignore our tax laws?

Or more to the point - they are just anti-Obama and are attacking anything associated with him. It does get tiresome.

[BJean 16]

How interesting Cleo'sM. I was present at a Schlafly/Bella Absugg debate. (I don't know why I can't mentally pull up the spelling of Bella's last name - I'm old I guess.) Absug was a soft-spoken, self-assured lady who knew what she was talking about. Schlafly was a pompous, seething, hate monger who accused her debate opponent of wanting terrible things to happen to American women.

Schlafly is one of the most venomous debaters I've ever witnessed - in public. (I don't consider this forum all that public since it panders to a particular segment of the populace.)

I worked for the Attorney General in Richmond when ERA was such a hot topic. I heard both sides of the debate ad nauseum! The women who worked supported the ERA because they knew, very personally, what it was about.

The women who were against the ERA were stay at home moms who bought the crap that Schlafly was selling. And of course there was no end to the conservative men who fought it because they were so threatened by it.

And why? You ask why did people fear the ERA so much? Because they were obstructionists who didn't care about the rights of women and they were willing to make stuff up that was shocking and alarming, but had no real basis in fact. People always tend to be swayed by shocking and alarming so it fell by the wayside.

I continue to be shocked and alarmed everyday by the incredible bias and ignorance of Americans. I'm shocked at how easily they are swayed by misrepresentations and untruths. And we all pay for their ignorance.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

And why? You ask why did people fear the ERA so much? Because they were obstructionists who didn't care about the rights of women and they were willing to make stuff up that was shocking and alarming, but had no real basis in fact. People always tend to be swayed by shocking and alarming so it fell by the wayside.

I continue to be shocked and alarmed everyday by the incredible bias and ignorance of Americans. I'm shocked at how easily they are swayed by misrepresentations and untruths. And we all pay for their ignorance.

So true, BJean. You should read the book "Idiot America" - it explains how lies sell - because they move units (whether it's rush's ratings or sales increases for a product).

All you have to do is repeat something often enough and people believe it. Just spout it as the truth, even when it's a lie. Add some inflammatory words, hatemongering and fear - and well, you have the m.o. of the extreme right wing movement.

Phyllis Schlafly uses these tactics very well.

[BJean 16]

You mean that beeotch is still at it?

I cannot believe that the extreme right wing Republicans have been using lies for so long and people still want to believe them and still join their fight. It's been going on at least since Nixon (before that I was too young to attest to it) and continues today. There must be nothing that can be done to make people understand, laugh and turn their back on them.

People latch onto buzz words that sell units. Even when those units are not needed or wanted.

Good post, Cleo'sM