Stop the Government Takeover of Health Care in the Senate

At 11:30pm on Wednesday night, Sen. Harry Reid released his version of the health care bill. Clocking in at 2,074 pages, the table of contents alone is 14 pages deep.

Reid’s government-run health care experiment costs over a staggering $2.5 trillion after ten years of full implementation – which equates to $1.2 billion per page, $6.8 million per word.

This bill is overwhelming in terms of its size, complexity, impact on our quality of life and our economy. It will raise taxes, cut Medicare benefits for seniors, raise health care costs, and lead to government interference in doctor-patient relationships. Chock full of legal jargon and political loop-holes, even the most steadfast members of Congress will be hard-pressed to comprehend this arduous bill before debate on it begins on Saturday. Adequate time for a responsible, thorough

The Obama team is already on defense about the lack of accomplishments from the President’s failed Asia tour, so they are returning to their traditional standby answer of lashing out at the Bush administration.  Before even leaving for Washington, the Obama Administration accused President Bush of failing to lead on critical issues in Asia.  Not only is the White House trying to rewrite the impact of Obama’s trip to Asia, they are also trying rewrite the Bush Administration’s strong record on foreign policy issues in the region, claiming, “American leadership was absent from this region for the last several years.”

As one of our Founding Fathers, John Adams, once said, “facts are stubborn things.” They are indeed, and they speak for themselves: 

• In 2008 President Bush signed the landmark United States-India Civilian Nuclear Agreement,

White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod must be on cloud nine right now; or at least his head is.  Yesterday, Axelrod spoke about President Obama’s town hall in China, saying "The fact is that he had the first-ever town-hall meeting in China -- broadcast in Shanghai, streamed on our website, a text of which was on their website and widely read.”  However, a quick glance at Obama’s predecessors’ trips to China reveals that there was nothing “unprecedented” about this meeting.  As Josh Gerstein of Politico reports: 

• When President Bill Clinton visited China in 1998, he took questions from Chinese students while visiting and speaking at Peking University (Beida). The following day, Clinton fielded questions from a radio audience as part of a call-in talk show in Shanghai.
  
  
• And when President George W. Bush visited China in 2002, he also