Highlights of the interview:
- Yeah, so they do a lot of double counting so there’s lots of savings that come into this law that are being counted twice. And so if I could show you this chart real fast – let me show you, is this the right angle here? So they claim it’s $138 billion dollars in deficit reduction. They take premiums from a new entitlement called The Class Act. The Class Act is new long-term care insurance entitlement which, by the way, the chief actuary of Medicare says is already unsustainable, will not be paid for fully. They take $70 billion in premiums that are supposed to go toward paying that insurance and they use it to pay for this new healthcare bill. Then they take $53 billion dollars and after Social Security taxes, which are supposed to go toward paying Social Security benefits, and put that into this new entitlement. CBO is also telling us it’s going to cost $71 billion dollars in discretionary appropriations to run and fund various discretionary programs to implement this new law.
- They’re also saying $398 billion dollars from a Medicare trust fund will not go to Medicare solvency, that’s tax increases in Medicare cuts; that will instead go toward funding this new program.
- The Speaker three days ago said that they’re going to pass what we call a Doc Fix. Medicare doctors are going to get cut 21 percent in April unless that’s prevented. She is saying in April we’re bringing a bill to the floor to do that. We asked the CBO to include that in this bill because that was included in these earlier versions of the bill.
- This is a government takeover of our healthcare system. It is the government basically running the entire healthcare system, turning large insurers into de facto public utilities, depriving people of choice, depriving people of options, raising people’s prices, raising taxes when we need new jobs. And they’re taking all this money out of Medicare and they’re not using it to make Medicare more solvent, they’re treating Medicare like a piggybank to fund this other entitlement. And I don’t think people on Medicare are going to look too kindly on that.
- I said look we’ve got to be adults about this. This is a serious situation, this isn’t something that we politicize. This is something if we start making, we shout things, yes in basketball games you hear things like this. We don’t do that. We’re grown ups. Look, my favorite kind of people up here are people who believe in something, people who are passionate about their beliefs and fight for their beliefs and are sincere about that.
- Now the people running the government right now, I believe are people who are very left of center who believe we should replace the American idea with this kind of cradle to grave society. They think it’s the right thing to do. I don’t think they’re evil, I don’t think they’re sinister. I just think they’re wrong and I think they’re really liberal. So to me don’t hate these people, don’t treat them in such a way. I engage on debate on the facts and the merits and have a tenacious debate but treat one another with respect. That is the way I was raised. I think that’s the way we ought to be.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34844.html#ixzz0j1SJxiL5
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