Gee, Maybe They Should Have Read the Bill

Couldn't listen to those frothing teabaggers at townhall meetings, right? Why, they didn't know any better.

A leading Senate Democrat vowed Friday to introduce legislation killing a part of the new healthcare reform law that imposes new tax-filing requirements on small businesses.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Finance Committee and a leading architect of the reform law, said a provision requiring businesses to report more purchases to the IRS will impose undue paperwork burdens on companies amid an economic downturn when they can least afford it.

Baucus, who had pushed legislation scaling back the requirement earlier in the year, now wants it repealed in full.

“I have heard small businesses loud and clear and I am responding to their concerns," Baucus said in a statement. "Small businesses are the backbone of our economy in my home state of Montana and across the country, and they need to focus their efforts on creating good-paying jobs — not filing paperwork."

Since the midterm election, Democrats have signaled a willingness to change the provision.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Friday that the 1099 requirement is one of the rare provisions of the healthcare law where the two parties agree that a change is needed.

"That's probably the first place we could go together," she told NPR's "Morning Edition."

Last week, President Obama also conceded that the filing provision threatens to put too much strain on businesses.

"The 1099 provision in the healthcare bill appears to be too burdensome for small businesses," Obama said at a White House news conference the day after Democrats were trounced in midterm elections. "It just involves too much paperwork, too much filing. It's probably counterproductive."

Gee, ya think?

Wasn't it Nancy Pelosi who said they had to pass ObaamCare before we could find out what was in it?

Oh yes, it was.

President Seen With Another Womanizer

Keeping in line with a story over at Hot Air about how public sector, i.e., gubmint is increasing not only the number of people on their payrolls, they are making quite a few of them part of the evil rich in this country we have more details coming out in whole Max Baucus (D-MT) affair which revolves around his nominating a girlfriend for a position as a U.S. Attorney.

Today Politiico has a story about how he took another girlfriend on a trip to Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates while also giving her a little $14,000 pay raise. His staffers however see nothing wrong there.

Baucus defended his decision to nominate her for U.S. attorney, saying she was highly qualified. But Politico.com reported that Baucus also hiked up her salary by nearly $14,000 in 2008 when she was his state director. And he took her on a trip to Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates.

Baucus' office denied giving Hanes preferential treatment and said "virtually our entire staff" had salary increases at the time, some in line with Hanes'.

And the office said it was appropriate for Hanes to go to Asia and the Middle East with Baucus.

For the clueless in Washington. No, it is not alright for congress critters to be flying their play toys around at taxpayer expense. While I realize the pay raise in question occurred prior to our current financial meltdown, it is yet just another example of how disconnected those in Washington are from the rest of us. The article doesn't say if her salary came from private funds or taxpayer dollars, given the position she held as a state director, of what I don't know, you almost always have to wonder where the money came from. Hell it could have been campaign contributions for all we know, which should make all of you who contributed to his campaign coffers real happy.

Is it just me or does Obama sure seem to show up in a lot of pictures with guys who have a lot of girlfriends? How long before Michelle gets wise?

Friday Night News Dump: Baucus Nominated Girlfriend to Judgeship

This will be a non-story by the time the SUnday morning news programs roll around? Why? Simple, he's a Democrat.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus’ office confirmed late Friday night that the Montana Democrat was carrying on an affair with his state office director, Melodee Hanes, when he nominated her to be U.S. attorney in Montana.

According to a source familiar with their relationship, Hanes and Baucus began their relationship in the summer of 2008 – nearly a year before Baucus and his wife, Wanda, divorced in April 2009. The Senator had informally separated from his wife in March 2008 and they were living apart when he began dating Hanes, according to Baucus' office.

Hanes ended her employment with Baucus in the spring of this year.

Hanes, who is divorced and now lives with Baucus in the Eastern Market neighborhood of Washington, D.C., ultimately withdrew her name from consideration for the U.S. attorney position in order to move to Washington, and she now works in the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention as a counselor to the administrator.

Baucus spokesman Tyler Matsdorf said the relationship was not the cause of Baucus’ divorce and that Baucus did not arrange for her current position with DOJ.

“In no way was their relationship the cause of their respective divorces. When Senator Baucus and Melodee Hanes, his former state director, realized that their relationship was developing beyond a purely professional nature, Melodee began the process of resigning her Senate employment,” Matsdorf said.

Oh yeah, the fact he's banging this woman had absolutely nothing to do with this sneaky move.

Sure.

The Coming Train Wreck

We report. You decide.

Shutting off the miracle-drug spigot
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right last week when she called her latest health-care-reform proposal a "historic moment": After decades of life-saving and cost-cutting scientific innovations from drug and medical-device companies, the government is about to step in and stifle the R&D that is our best hope for improving health outcomes.

Pelosi's bill may cost pharmaceutical companies $150 billion over a decade -- nearly double the amount they conceded when they cut a White House-approved deal with Sen. Max Baucus this summer.

The Pelosi bill is a prescription for fewer new life-saving drugs. By stifling innovation, it would hurt not only industry, but also all of us who'd benefit from new-drug development.

Democrats in Washington are out to cut health-care costs at the expense of the research-intensive (as opposed to generic) pharmaceutical industry. Yet drugs often improve the span and quality of life in a remarkably cost-effective way.

Innovative new drugs have helped many patients avoid costly hospitalization, for example. From 1980 to 2000, the number of days in the hospital per 100 people fell from 129.7 to 56.6, a drop of 56 percent -- so that Americans avoided 206 million days of hospital care in 2000 alone, according to Medtap International, which provides health economics and outcomes-research services.

And a study in 2000 sponsored by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research concluded that increased use of a blood-thinning drug would prevent 40,000 strokes a year, saving $600 million annually. A 1997 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found the costs of treatment per episode of major depression fell by 25 percent from 1991 to 1995, largely as a result of new medicines.

New drugs are also generally better than older ones at reducing mortality. In a study of patients who took drugs between January and June 2000, those who took newer medications were less likely to die by the end of 2002.

Yet Washington has grown increasingly hostile to the industry. R&D investments per new-drug introduction nearly doubled between the early '80s and early '90s -- but government approvals have been dropping. Even after drugs are approved for marketing, only about three in 10 now recoup their development costs.

And now Congress is out to make the climate for new-drug development significantly worse. The president has bragged that he intends to eke out huge cost savings at drug companies' expense: "The pharmaceutical industry has already said they're willing to put $80 billion on the table," adding, "We might be able to get $100 billion out or more." The industry was willing to "give" back its profits because it was told it wouldn't have a seat at the negotiating table if it didn't go along.

But now Pelosi has set up her own "negotiating table" -- nearly doubling the amount Washington would confiscate from the industry and planning vast cuts in what Medicare would pay for drugs -- a provision that the industry was assured was off the other table. Give 'em a hand, they'll take an arm.

And if going after the evil pharmaceutical companies isn't enough, let's go all out to cripple -- if not kill -- another vital component of American healthcare.

Nor are the drug companies the only target. The Pelosi bill has $20 billion in "user fees" (read: taxes) on medical-device manufacturers. New devices such as artificial joints, pacemakers and insulin pumps are often developed by small startup companies -- those least capable of paying these punitive up-front regulatory expenses. And the working Senate bill aims at $40 billion from the industry.

The tactics employed by the administration and Congress add up to sheer bullying -- and while they're battering the drug industry, patients are the ones ultimately getting beaten up.

Jeff Stier is an associate director of the American Council on Science and Health. Henry Miller, a physician and Hoover Institution fellow, was an FDA official from 1979 to 1994.

The Ministry of Public Enlightenment & Propaganda was unavailable for comment.

Via The NY Post

How's that for change, kooky komrade kommandante markos?

Great News! Obama Now Wants to Tax Your Health Benefits

Hmm, I distinctly recall him excoriating John McCain during the campaign over such a suggestion.

"For the first time in American history, he wants to tax your health benefits," Obama said in September. "Apparently, Senator McCain doesn't think it's enough that your health premiums have doubled. He thinks you should have to pay taxes on them, too."

Well, now that he basically raped our economy and nationalized a good chunk of the auto industry while we've lost well over a million jobs, he wants to tax your health benefits.

Change!

President Barack Obama is leaving the door open to taxing health care benefits, something he campaigned hard against while running for president, according to senators who met with him Tuesday.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., raised the issue with Obama during a private meeting with the president and other Democratic senators and later reported the president's position: "It's on the table. It's an option."

They quickly backtracked, but honesty, can you believe a work these people say?

I didn't think so.

Baucus wants to look at limiting — but not entirely eliminating — the tax-free status of employer-provided health benefits.

"It was not in our plan, it was not in our budget," White House budget director Peter Orszag said earlier Tuesday. "We are saying we want the legislative process to play out, and that's all we have to say on that right now."

Obama is leaving the details of crafting a health care bill to Congress and used Tuesday's meeting to urge senators to swift action.

Swift action. In other words, before anyone realizes a freight train has just run them over.

We are in deep, folks. If this doesn't wake up the suckers who voted for Obama, nothing will.