September 22, 2007; Page A10
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Hillary Clinton is patting herself on the back for proposing a health-care plan that is much more politically astute than her 1993 Rube Goldberg effort. She told an audience in New York this week: "I think I have successfully thought through all of the objections and pre-empted them."
She may want to think again. Last January, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed an eerily similar plan using the same rhetoric and even the same slogan adopted by Mrs. Clinton to describe hers: "Shared Responsibility."
That's no coincidence. Both ArnoldCare and HillaryCare 2.0 are the product of the same advisers. But despite all of its clever political compromises, ArnoldCare is bogged down in trench warfare in California's liberal Democratic legislature. If anything passes, it will likely be only a shell of a bill without any financing component. Legislators will hope voters approve a general tax increase to pay for it in November 2008.
The two plans have many features in common. ArnoldCare's $12 billion-a-year price tag represents about a 10th of Mrs. Clinton's estimate for the costs of her plan, roughly in line with California's share of the national economy. Both include mandates to buy health insurance, a ban on premium differences based on health status, Medicaid expansion, and a requirement that insurers have to offer policies to all applicants.
All of this is the brainchild of Laurie Rubiner, who directed health-care issues at the liberal New America Foundation until she left in 2005 to become Mrs. Clinton's Senate legislative director. She was replaced by Len Nichols, who in 1993 served as the liaison between President Bill Clinton's budget office and Mrs. Clinton's health-care task force. Ms. Rubiner isn't taking direct credit for selling Mr. Schwarzenegger on her plan, but aides to the governor confirm her role. Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation acknowledges that Ms. Rubiner "incubated and hatched" the ideas at the heart of the governor's plan. Ms. Rubiner declined to respond to a request for an interview.
Given the similarities, here are some political lessons that ArnoldCare might teach us about how Mrs. Clinton's plan might be received:
Even so, making certain people have insurance is easier said than done. California has had a law mandating that drivers have car insurance since 1970 and has required physical proof of insurance to register a car for a decade. Even so, the Insurance Research Council says 25% of the state's drivers remain uninsured.
Criticism of the governor's plans to cover illegal aliens forced him to drop the idea, but this week he fumed at those who raise such "Mickey Mouse"-type concerns. Mrs. Clinton's plan could be caught between populist forces opposing health care for illegal aliens and liberals who will insist on it.
"The governor got significant parts of the business community to sign on, from Safeway to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce," one adviser to the governor told me. "But that didn't move the anti-tax Republican base."
Sen. Clinton claims she now realizes she'll need actual votes to pass something. But traces of the old Hillary remain. "I wish it were possible to just wave a magic wand and say from the White House, 'Here's what I want.' But that's not the way it works," she told the Associated Press.
The real test may be her willingness to accept some market-oriented GOP proposals such as tax-free savings accounts for health care and a curb on frivolous liability lawsuits as the price for the bipartisan support she now claims to want. Now that really would be a New Hillary.
rebelcause
11 Comments
Everyone may get health care, but it very sub-standard.
"Then there's Hillary Clinton. Many of you may have missed this, but Ms. Rodham was talking to a retirement group last week when she promised to save Social Security. No surprise there. That's why the Social Security system exists in the first place ... so that Democrats can promise to save it every time an election rolls around. This time though Hillary went just a bit further. She promised her audience that there would never been any Social Security privatization so long as she was in office. Then she added that "privatization isn't the answer to anything."
Now think about this. If privatization isn't the answer to anything, then that means that something else must be the answer to everything. And just what would that be? Why, government, of course! The only choice other than privatization is governmentization. Remember what the Democrats were saying years ago when the debate over the formation of the Department of Homeland Security?
I forget which Democrat came up with this gem, but the word was "you don't professionalize unless you federalize." Democrats love government over the private sector most of the time, and Hillary has just told us that she loves government over the private sector all of the time. That, my friends, would be the definition of a Socialist.
But because she has $4000.00 she is denied her Social Security. WTF!! She is WAITING to hear back on her disability- she also couldn't qualify for food stamps because $4000.00 in the bank is TOO Much. Now- realize this is ALL she has right now- she has NO income and plenty of medical bills/physical therapy.
There is no sense to that damn Social security system or welfare-- when the people who need it can't get it ..and the people who abuse it live off it- there is something SERIOUSLY WRONG!
Sorry- had to vent..
Welfare is so out of control I don't think there's anyway to fix, other than to cut it completely off. A friend of our family has a teenage daughter that became pregnant. She stayed in school and finished and had the baby. When they went to the community college to enroll her, the counselor told her to quit her job and go apply for welfare and get assistance, then she could help her.
It doesn't matter that she had a 3.9 gpa or that she worked to support herself and her baby and no desire to be on any kind of assistance.
Nope, if you live off the tax payer then you're rewarded.
By Monisha Bansal
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
September 17, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - Blaming poverty on liberalism and the federal government, a conservative activist on Friday said: "It is very sad what the liberals have done with their war on the poor in this country."
"After 40 years of failure, they still insist that they want to expand this war, that they think they should pour more money into this war," said Star Parker, president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education. "Already, over $3 trillion has been spent on the war on poverty, and so far, we've not seen results."
Parker said the war on poverty has really been a war waged by liberals on four fronts -- "war on the family, the war on thought, the war on tradition and a war on religion."
"The poverty that we see today is directly related to people having children outside of marriage and then not working to support those children," she said.
"They started with the war on the Black family, and they totally destroyed this family," said Parker at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., on Friday. "They spread this message of moral relativism and welfare dependency.
"Lots of liberals got hold of the Black community and started convincing them that there is nothing wrong with dependence on government -- we started seeing the Black family destroyed," Parker said. "We saw welfare policy enter in with rules that say don't work, don't save, don't get married, and we'll fix all of your life problems for you."
She added that the result of the war on poverty for the Black community has been that two out of three pregnancies are ended through abortion, and seven in 10 children are born outside of marriage.
"What are the implications on society?" she asked. "Seventy percent of our incarcerated are coming from these broken homes. Family breakdown leads to government dependency.
"The message of rights and entitlements equals control for liberals," said Parker. "The best thing we can do is to gradually start dismantling these massive entitlement programs of the 20th century."
But Sheldon Danziger, co-director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, told Cybercast News Service: "These statements are not consistent with 30 years of research."
"Poverty remains high, not because of a shortage of effective anti-poverty policy options, but because the public and policymakers have not made reducing poverty a high priority," he said.
"The primary reason that poverty persists is not because the research of the war on poverty planners was flawed, but because the economy failed to deliver the benefits of prosperity widely," Danziger added.
"For the past three decades, economic forces have increased financial hardships for many workers and prevented existing anti-poverty policies from further reducing poverty," he noted.
"The evidence on the changing relationship between economic growth and poverty, particularly the stagnation of male earnings, refutes the view that poverty remains high because the government provided too much aid for the poor and thus encouraged dysfunctional behaviors," Danziger said.
Danziger said income inequality has meant that economic growth has had a limited impact on poverty. "Given current economic conditions, income poverty will not be substantially reduced unless government does more to help low-income workers and those who are willing to work but cannot find jobs," he said.
Danziger added that government intervention, through Social Security and Medicare, has proved to be effective in reducing poverty among the elderly, which is at an all-time low.
http://www.cnsnews.com/Vi.../200709/CUL20070917a.html
"Parker said the war on poverty has really been a war waged by liberals on four fronts -- "war on the family, the war on thought, the war on tradition and a war on religion.""
Traitors!
Joseph J. Ellis wrote a book called "Founding Brothers, The Revolutionary Generation."
One of the Amazon.com reviews for this book says "This book is really unique in that it gives a really interesting perspective not only on the men [our founding fathers] , but the dynamic between them."
Now in that book by this renowned historian you will find some information on the origination of the word "democrat." our founding fathers were none too fond of the idea of democracy, or, as they viewed it, mob rule.
Here's the quote:
"... the term "democrat" originated as an epithet and referred to 'one who panders to the crude and mindless whims of the masses.'"
Remember- It's the Democrat, not the "Democratic" Party
Hey you know AdGuy always gets the last word! ;)