President Obama said today exactly what's at stake in the health care debate when he said "it's about what kind of country we want to be." I would suggest we should choose the traditional American kind of country characterized by individual liberty, innovation, and prosperity rather than the ephemeral security of a European-style cradle-to-grave welfare state.

The first step in any Democratic strategy to pass their wildly unpopular health care bill is for the House to pass the existing Senate bill. Then they will try to make changes to it, but whether those changes pass or not, the basic structure of Washington's health care takeover will already be law. That's why we have to win the next key vote in the House.

News that the White House now supports changing the rules of the Senate to force through a Washington takeover of health care is just the latest evidence that this administration is willing to abuse the lawmaking process to get its way. It is also bypassing Congress entirely on global warming regulation at EPA and Internet regulation at FCC, and trying mightily to accomplish elements of the card check bill without a vote of Congress. Congress needs to stand up tot he White House and reject all these power grabs, or be held responsible by voters.

Don't worry about coming being bipartisan. Do not compromise in the direction of government control of health care or get distracted by process arguments, as bad as the process has been. Stick to the key policy questions, explain that the solution is more power for patients, not politicians, and you will carry the day.

The EPA now plans to delay implementing its stationary source regulations for global warming under the clean air act. Delay past the election, that is, but still go through with its sweeping power grab eventually. This is an effort to provide political cover to Democrats on the key upcoming Senate vote on the Murkowski Resolution, SJ Res 26. This ploy must be rejected. The only real solution is to vote YES on SJ Res 26 and stop the EPA's power grab completely. To send your senator a message, go to: http://bit.ly/9wD3zZ

On stimulus and health care, today was more of the same, with the Senate invoking cloture on yet another unaffordable stimulus bill and the President dressing back up the same Washington takeover of health care as something new.

One year later, the stimulus failed as it was destined to fail. Government spending cannot stimulate the economy or make us rich, because every dollar the government spends is taken out of the private economy. We are relaunching NoStimulus.com to fight against another stimulus or "jobs bill." Join us.

Despite disingenuous claims to merely be enforcing the law in its effort to use the 1970 Clean Air Act to regulate the entire U.S. economy, the Obama administration is doing everything possible to prevent Congress from clarifying its intent so that the EPA can actively pursue this radical agenda.

Questions answered from Nick Loffer on Al Gore's lockbox and blaming Bush, Bronwen Dodd Schorle on a shout out to her sister, and Brandt Gibson on influencing Congress and the administration.

France and Germany may bail out Greece and calm financial markets for now, but the sovereign debt problem isn't going away. And the United States is running up deficits frighteningly close to Greece's, with nobody standing by to bail us out.

News that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand plans to share a stage with self-professed communist and disgraced former Obama Green Jobs Czar Van Jones raise questions about her political ideology and the direction she wants to take our country on jobs. if Jones is too radical for the Obama administration, why is Sen. Gillibrand happy to appear with him?

Questions answered from Joanna Kerpen on the snow, Ann Saladino Lindholm, on DADT, Steve Lebowitz on AFP donors, Marilyn King-Okon on reconciliation, and April Witkowski on cap-and-trade n the budget.

Scott Brown is now officially sworn in as a United States Senator, just in time to block the Democrats from forcing through the nomination of SEIU's Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, where he wants to impose Card Check without a vote of Congress.

Obama's budget sets new records for deficits and spending while imposing huge new tax increases just as our economy has finally entered into recovery. It's a blueprint for tipping us back into recession and should be defeated.

A big part of so-called "terminations, reductions, and savings" are actually huge energy tax hikes, not spending cuts. And the budget actually has a BLANK LINE for cap-and-trade, creating a mystery slush fund for an unknown--but huge--package of tax hike and spending not included in the already eye-popping overall budget numbers.

Listener questions answered from Mark Moulds on student loan relief, Terri Vaughn on meeting with Dem leaders, Linda Zumpano on high-speed rail, and Marilyn King-Okun on making the Bush tax cuts permanent.

While there were some highlights--including an acknowledgment that government must tighten its belt and proposals to cut capital gains taxes and boost offshore drilling--the overall thrust of the speech was an unrepentant continued push for big government programs. Obama still believes he knows better than the American people what's best for us.

President Obama will try to put himself on the side of populist anger, but will likely fail because on the specifics his actions to date and his plans going forward won't support that stance.

The bad news is the president is proposing to freeze only a very small amount of federal spending--excluding the hated bailouts--and to freeze it at a very high level after enormous increases over the past two years. The good news is he seems to have conceded that federal spending is an economic problem, not our salvation, which I hope we can use in the fight against yet another stimulus bill.

Obama seems to think the solution to the majority of the American people rejecting his far-left agenda is to go back on the campaign trail and move even harder left. He already has the most polarized poll ratings in history, and this move to the left will fail politically. Unfortunately it may do huge economic damage to the country along the way, and that's why we need to keep fighting.

Questions answered from Rick Shaftan on what the left is pushing next, Alex Siegel on center-right success, Joseph Nowlin on Obama's change in demeanor, Chris Tuthill on the next left-wing priorities to fail, and Chris again on whether Obama or Congressional Democrats get the blame.

On the same day Obama proposed regs to make big banks smaller, Senate Dems voted to extend the TARP program to keep them big at our expense. They really want to keep the banks political giving going D.

Obama will now likely have no choice but to finally address what people really care about--jobs and the economy. Unfortunately his big government philosophy means we'll get more failed stimulus spending and green jobs scams, not real private sector growth.

The clear lesson of Massachusetts is that the Democratic health care bill is political poison everywhere, even in the bluest of states. Nonetheless, Obama, Pelosi and Reid remain committed to pushing it. But will their rank and file members swallow what we now all know is political poison? If we keep the pressure on, I think they won't.

His explanation that it is recapturing taxpayer funds lent out under is highly misleading because his fee taxes banks that have already paid back those funds with interest, and it doesn't recover taxpayers losses where they really are--AIG, GM, and Chrysler. It's an excuse for a huge tax hike that will deny the economy of badly needed risk capital.

Word of a sweetheart carve-out for union workers at the expense of the rest of us epitomizes everything that's wrong with the corrupt, special-interest approach to health care the White House and Democratic leadership have been pursuing.

Reid's comments should not only that he has a low opinion of the American people but that he's completely out of touch.

The first key public comment deadline on the FCC's attempt to take over the Internet is this Thursday, January 14th. Listen to this call to action for how you can fight back.

Marilyn King-Okon on whether petitions are read, Patrick McCann on the health care outlook, and Brandt Gibson on Interpol and Washington State.

Retirements show rank-and-file Democrats are being marched off a cliff by left-wing ideological leadership and the political tide is now turning.

The American people deserve to have the Democratic promise to let the American people see and hear what's being done to their health care. Join our petition effort to help C-SPAN get their cameras and our eyes into the room where secret negotiations are underway. www.LetTheCamerasIn.com

Obama's decision to apply the National Environmental Policy Act to global warming means potentially thousands of key highway, bridge, and other construction projects will be delayed or derailed because of their carbon footprint. That's a crazy prioritization at a time of 10 percent unemployment in a country with serious infrastructure needs.

While the House-passed bill included the so-called public option, designed as a path to achieve a single-payer, socialized system, the Senate-passed bill's reliance on a mandate to buy private insurance is not much of am improvement. The Senate bill is fascism to the House bill's socialism, and what we really need is freedom.

When the American people weren't paying attention, Obama's Treasury Department announces on Christmas Eve that the $400 billion cap on Fannie and Freddie bailouts will be lifted to create an open-ended taxpayer exposure.

If you're not from one of the handful of states that got huge buy-offs to secure the Senate votes to get the health care takeover bill past the finish line, as a taxpayer you're probably as angry as I am. We need to bring all the pressure we can to get Congress to reject these corrupt deals.

Now is the time to muster all of the grassroots energy we've seen all year for a final push to stop a Washington takeover of health care and start over with real reform. The first key vote could be Sunday night/Monday morning at 1AM.

Two free-market heroes, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, took to the Senate floor today and objected to Democratic efforts to force through amendments and ultimately their Washington takeover of our health care. We must support them and encourage other senators to stand with them.

My take on today's Code Red Rally and where we stand on health care.

The House and Senate both recently passed HR3288, a trillion-dollar-plus pork-barrel-packed omnibus spending will that increases Congressional allowances 8.4 percent and boosts agency spending an average of 10-12 percent. The bill also has over 5000 pork-barrel earmarks, an indication that neither party has yet learned the lessons of the 2006 and 2008 elections.

Charlene Daye on net neutrality, Kai Gibson on Obama's citizenship, Gary Gross on H.R. 4173, Shelly Ruggiero Casaretti on Medicare at 55, Mike Nelli on stopping ObamaCare, and Joanna Enstice Kerpen on the best part of my Copenhagen trip.

The new so-called compromise is a disaster, and contrary to rumors this fight is far from over. Everyone paying attention, including the American public, is opposed to this bill. This thing needs to be flat defeated before we can start real reform.

I hope you were able to join our successful webcast from Copenhagen today on www.AmericansforProsperity.org. Protesters failed to stop us. Listen to my tied wrap-up.

Recap from today and the clear push for Obama to bypass Congress. Also a reminder to please join us tomorrow on Americans for Prosperity.org at Noon Eastern, 11 Central, 10 Mountain, and 9 Pacific for our special national grassroots rally of opposition.

Obama is committing the U.S. to severe greenhouse gas emissions reductions that will cripple the U.S. economy. He plans to impose the crippling restrictions, after he promises them to U.N. bureaucrats at Copengagen, via EPA regulation, not a vote of Congress.

Nick Loffer on Obama and Wheaties, Bob Heckmann on the permanent campaign and Colward Piven, Marilyn King-Okon on TARP money for stimulus, Barbara L. Magro on General Electric, and Nick Loffer on climate data.

This is an urgent KerpenCast. Democrats are trying to rush key amendments to their health care takeover bill through with a minimum of debate and without the public having an opportunity to understand them and comment on them. But under Senate rules they can only do this with unanimous consent. That means even ONE Republican objecting would be enough to slow them down and give the American people at least two days of debate on each amendment. Please contact your senators today and ask them not to consent to rushing amendments through. We deserve the right to know what they're doing to our health care.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus today admitted that without their timing gimmick the real 10-year cost of the Senate health cill is a staggering 2.5 trillion dollars. Money we don't have and can't afford to borrow from abroad.

The House this week will vote on legislation, HR 4154, to bring back the death tax permanently at a rate of 45 percent. With repeal now just 1 month away, this is outrageous and must be stopped.

With health care on the Senate floor this week, an impending jobs summit to justify another push for wasteful stimulus spending, and the Obama administration plotting to commit us to steep energy restrictions at Copenhagen, we need to hit the ground running this week and fight back.

The good news is the republic is safe for a week, as Congress has left town for Thanksgiving break. Rest up, enjoy the holidays, but come back next week and through December ready to fight to protect our health care freedom.

Questions answered from Rose O'Connor on beating the Reid health care bill, Charlene Hanner Bell on nullification, Sally May Baranovitz on Reid's "opt-out," Marilyn King-Okon on the financial transaction tax, and Diane E. Ballou on where to sign a petition (Hint: www.JoinPatientsFirst.com).

The laughable claim that Reid's bill will reduce the deficit is all based on smoke and mirrors, but even worse than the bill's staggering costs is what this Washington takeover does to patients and doctors.

Some House Democrats are proposing a huge new tax on every financial transaction to fund trillions of additional stimulus spending, a move that would destroy the engine of capital formation, tax away our retirement, and fund even more wasteful, failed stimulus.

Later this week the Senate will vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to the Obama/Reid/Pelosi Washington takeover of health care. If 41 Senators vote no, it's over and we win. It's that simple. The key Senators are Bayh, Conrad, Dorgan, Landrieu, Lincoln, Nelson, Warner, Lieberman, and Snowe. We only need two from that group. Please tell everyone you know in Indiana, North Dakota, Louisiana, Arkansas, Nebraska, Virginia, Connecticut, and Maine to call them now and say "vote no on cloture on the motion to proceed."

The first major vote on health care in the Senate will be a 60-vote cloture vote on the "motion to proceed." Don't be fooled. A vote to proceed is a vote for a Washington takeover of health care, and senators must be held responsible on this first key vote.

Questions answered from Kathy Bungard on deflation and inflation, Diana Angela and Tom McGovern on fetal murder, Carol Barcus and Linda Zumpano on terror trials, Matthew Hurtt on Senate prospects of House health bill, Linda Zumpano on health time line, Chris Tuthill on the constitutionality of the individual mandate, Angela Lash on what states can do on health care.

Sens Vitter and Barasso have exposed language buried in both Kerry-Boxer and Waxman-Markey that would allow the president to order sweeping command-and-control regulation of the whole economy and unprecedented litigation in the name of global warming. These provisions make the already bad cap-and-trade concept much much worse.

The outrageous way Barbara Boxer forced the bill through her committee may have poisoned the well for that bill, but other major threats loom in the Senate.

Both of these huge threats to freedom and prosperity took apparent steps forward in the past week, but the extreme difficulty with which they are advancing gives us great hope to ultimately defeat them.

Questions answered from Kai Gibson, April Witkowski, Joe Postum, Alex Siegel and my take on the surprisingly real possibility that Pelosi may not have the votes for a health care takeover in the House.

My take on today's incredible National House Call in Washington.

Democrats are replaying both the legislative agenda on energy taxes and health care and, so far, the election results they had in the 1993-1994 cycle. If they stay on this path they may be headed for a 1994 repeat.

Kudos to Senate Environment and Public Works Republicans for refusing to participate in a mark-up of the Boxer-Kerry cap-and-trade bill before the EPA has done an economic analysis of the bill. The American people have a right to know what's in the bill and what it costs before their senators cast the first votes to move the bill forward in the legislative process.

Questions answered from Willi Greg on health care bill costs, Gregory Williams on immigrations, Alex Siegel on stimulus accountability, Shelly Ruggiero Casaretti on employer mandates, Tonda Walker on what we can do, and Kai Gibson on capital gains taxes.

Nancy Pelosi's new Washington health care takeover bill is the worst, most expensive, most expansive, bill yet proposed and it must be defeated.

Good news on two fronts as the radical White House Internet Czar Susan Crawford announced her resignation effective the end of this year and Harry Reid's sham so-called opt-out version of a government-run insurance company runs into a moderate buzzsaw.

On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart repeated the same tired story from the angry left that without government regulations to rescue us, big bad phone and cable companies will block our access to web sites. How many years in a row can the left keep ringing this alarm bell before they admit this just isn't a problem? (we're at 7 and counting.) Bottom line is the Internet works well now, so we shouldn't risk heavy-handed new regulations.

Back to basics--the goal of *any* version of the public plan is to deny us choice and eventually force everyone into a government-run health system. Don't be distracted by the changing details.

Questions answered from Tricia Morris on net neutrality, Kai Gibson on impeachment, Brandt Gibson on staying on top of what's going on, Joe Postum on the economy, and Lisa Lukowski on undoing the damage.

Please join the Internet Freedom Coalition by signing our petition on www.InternetFreedomCoalition.org. Our voices are making a difference at the FCC, where their regulatory proposal has been somewhat scaled back. We must keep the pressure on.

The White House is attacking FOX both because FOX has been effectively exposing what they're doing and to change the subject from their crazy power grabs in health care, energy, and the Internet. We're winning and we need to keep up the fight.

The media is touting polls today that purport to show support for the public option rising, but that's only in comparison to the even more hated mandates and subsidies approach of the Senate Finance Committee. It's a false choice and their is a third path: health care freedom.

The angry left is pushing so-called net neutrality regulations that would destroy the private Internet and set us on a path to a government-owned and controlled network. Listen to find out what you can do about it.

Questions answered from Brandt Gibson on schools, Susan Musselman Fink on government's Cadillac Plans, Joe Postum on the Fed, James E Evans on Obama's senior pander payment, and Adam St Arnold on accusations of racism.

There's no cost of living increase because the cost of living isn't increasing--prices have been falling, especially energy prices. Borrowing $13 billion we don't have for a pseudo-COLA is naked political pandering.

Avowed socialist Robert McChesney, who called the United States the world's leading terrorist institution just two weeks after 9/11, is clearly highly influential at the FCC. Why is our government taking McChesney and his group, Free Press, seriously?

Olympia Snowe (RINO-Maine) is destroying Republican efforts to return to being the party of fiscal responsibility by voting for a huge tax-hiking Washington take over of health care. She needs to hear from constituents. http://bit.ly/q8uJr

Big insurance companies now appear ready to defect on their corrupt deal with the administration to accept expensive new regulations in exchange for a mandate forcing people who don't want or can't afford health insurance to buy their product.

Your questions answered from Chris Tuthill, Richard Schultz, Linda Zumpano, Curt Dalton, Joe Postum, Kurt Lehman, Roseanne Yoakum, Kai Gibson.

Shows his "framework" (the actual bill is still not written and will no doubt be worse) costs $904 billion over 10 years (really only 6 that most of the programs are up and running) and will still leave 25 million uninsured!

The ironically-named lobbying group Free Press has enormous influence in the Obama administration, and is pursuing an extremist agenda that will lead to total government control of the Internet, radio, and other communications systems as a precondition for socialist revolution.

The key to the deal between Democrats and big insurance is the mandate to require young, healthy people to buy health insurance even though they don't use health care, giving them lots of new revenue to help them comply with expensive new regulations. The Senate Finance Committee, however, watered down its individual mandate, and if the score comes back showing many people will remain uninsured, that could blow up the deal between Dems and big insurance.

Summary:
We only need to convince 36 more Members of the House to sign the discharge petition to give us a vote on allowing a 72 hour review period for legislation. We need this NOW before a massive health care bill gets rammed through without anyone knowing what's in it. Check out www.WeThePeopleCanRead.org for more information.

Transcript:
We the people can read. Republicans in the House are pushing a discharge petition to try to get the necessary 218 signatures to move forward on legislation that would require a 72-hour waiting period before bills can be enacted into law. This is absolutely critical, and more essential than ever after the way the cap-and-trade bill was forced through the House of Representatives with three hundred plus pages of special interest giveaways that were added at three in the morning the day of the vote. We have a paper by James Valvo on the Americans for Prosperity website that details all the corruption in that bill. The stimulus bill was railroaded through similarly before anyone was aware of what was in it. Senator Specter said that he didn’t even know about all the health care provisions in that bill when he cast the critical vote to move that forward and pass it in the United States Senate. And now, as they move forward to take over one sixth of our economy with a so-called health care reform bill, it is absolutely crucial that we have a period of time, and it really should be a couple of weeks, but the minimum it could be is three days, for people to read the legislation, find out what’s in it before their members of Congress vote on it. Right now, on the discharge petition, there are 182 signers, which means that’s just 36 House members short of having the needed 218 to move forward and guarantee us some level of transparency. Our friends at Let Freedom Ring have an excellent website set up called Wethepeoplecanread.org. Go to that site. If your member of Congress has not already signed the discharge petition, take action on that website, www.WeThePeopleCanRead.org, and tell them we have a right to know what’s in legislation and they need to give us an opportunity, have some transparency, and that Nancy Pelosi needs to finally live up to her promise to create the most honest, open, and ethical Congress in history. It starts with having a 72-hour review period so that we can actually see what’s in legislation, especially this health care bill. www.WeThePeopleCanRead.org. Thanks.

Just realized this didn't post when I recorded it Friday.

Summary:
The EPA has proposed a "tailoring rule" that arbitrarily sets its own threshold for regulations, blatantly ignoring what the plain language of the Clean Air Act actually says. Their rationale actually explains why EPA should leave this whole issue to Congress.

Transcript:
EPA today, I’m sure under the watchful eye of White House Climate Czar Carol Browner, has proposed stationary source regulation of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, under the 1970 Clean Air Act, despite the fact that that act was never designed for such a purpose and its author, John Dingell, said it would create a glorious mess were this ever attempted, and despite the fact that the Act is clear that the threshold for applying the Prevention of Significant Deterioration Program is 250 tons. The EPA is arbitrarily creating their own threshold at 25,000 tons for Phase 1, and 10,000 tons for Phase 2 of the implementation of these regulations. Now, you might think, “Well that’s good, at least they’re not regulating everything all at once,” but understand that they are trying to write the rules as they go along, and ignore what the law actually says so that they can use a law that has no relevant application to the area of greenhouse gases and global warning and avoid having a Congressional vote on this issue or having an actual accountability through the legislative branch of government. The United States Supreme Court in Massachusetts vs. EPA said that the EPA had to either regulate greenhouse gases or explain under the statute why they chose not to do so. It would have been very simple for them to explain that they chose not to do so because it would have been a complete administrative nightmare and would collapse the economy if they tried to regulate everything in the economy that emits 250 tons or more, which the law actually says. Instead of doing that, they are moving ahead with regulations and rewriting the law illegally to set their own thresholds. In their explanation for why they are doing so, they say (quote), “On the basis of the legal doctrines of absurd results and administrative necessity, this proposed rule would phase in the applicability thresholds for both the PSD and Title V programs for sources of greenhouse gas emissions.” They can’t do that. If the results are absurd and administrative necessity requires not using these programs, then that should have been the reason not to regulate greenhouse gases at all. Leave it to Congress to decide whether or not we want to do something on this. This rule is illegal. It ought to be rejected in court, and we need to file comments explaining that it’s wrong. If the country wants to take on greenhouse gas regulation, they need to pass a law specifically for that, not let EPA get away with this mischief. Thanks.

Congratulations, Senators Boxer and Kerry, you managed to write a cap-and-trade bill even worse and more costly than your fellow Californian and Massachusettsian, Waxman and Markey, in the House.

Summary:
Yet another of President Obama's advi-czars is Susan Crawford, driving the push for a Washington takeover of the Internet. This update is from the road in Wisconsin.

Transcript:
Susan Crawford, the White House Internet Czar. Officially, she is the Special Assistant for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy. Wired Magazine calls her, “the most powerful geek close to the President.” The Freedomist Blog has reported that, of course, like most of the Czars, she has ties to ACORN, which is listed as one of the sponsoring organizations of her group, One Web Day, which is modeled on Earth Day, another leftist enterprise. Some of the things she believes: in her paper, she wrote (quote), “We do not have a vigorous marketplace of internet access providers.” Really? It looks pretty vigorous to me, Susan. She also wrote, and this is pretty amazing. She also wrote, just to understand where she’s coming from, that…she stressed that the stimulus money and there are billions of dollars for broadband in the stimulus, she said it’s just a down payment on future government investment in the internet. She said (quote), “We should do a better job as a nation of making sure fast affordable broadband is as ubiquitous as electricity, water, snail mail, or any other public utility.” That’s right, our Internet Czar, Susan Crawford, is talking about an outright government takeover of the internet, in which the government runs it as a highway or a public utility. Think about the implications of that. That means that the government will own and control the network. Not only will there not be innovation as we’ve seen, with the phone companies and the cable companies vigorously fighting, but government will be in a position to decide who can do what, who can say what, and who can offer what types of services on the internet. It is Susan Crawford, the Internet Czar, that is secretly driving the push for so-called network neutrality regulations that would destroy private investment in the internet. The FCC is simply following her orders, as are Members of Congress who support this legislation. We need to continue to research and expose the dangerous Internet Czar, Susan Crawford. Thanks.

Listener questions answered from Chris Coburn about the Constitutionality of Czars, Brandt Gibson about "The Story of Stuff," and Joe Postum about the Tides Foundation.

Under the circumstances the Senate Finance Committee absolutely owes it to the American public to make the bill they are writing public and have it scored by the CBO before they vote on it, but they won't.

Contrary to Democrats protestations, an individual health insurance mandate is a tax. And it must be a tax because that's the only constitutional basis for enacting a mandate. Their problem is such a tax flies squarely in the face of Obama's firm pledge not to raise middle class taxes.

Today's speech made clear that the president is still very much committed to imposing huge new taxes and regulations in the name of global warming, will likely pursue them whether or not Congress passed cap-and-trade, and will use them as a pretext for international redistribution of wealth.

Summary:
The FCC's new proposed net neutrality regulations will likely pave the way for a complete government takeover of the Internet. Such a huge change in public policy that should originate in Congress where it can be subject to public debate, not with unelected bureaucrats at the FCC.

Transcript:
Net neutrality via the FCC. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski today will announce that he is pursuing net neutrality regulations at the Federal Communications Commission, not waiting for Congress to act. We’ve talked before about the implications of such regulations most famously pushed by Robert McChesney, a socialist revolutionary at the group Free Press, who does not mind and in fact likes the fact that these regulations would destroy private investment in the internet, force the government to come in and take over the network, run it like infrastructure, run it like a highway system. That’s right. These regulations are the first step towards a government controlled, government owned internet, sweeping away all of the dramatic innovation, all of the great competition and improvement we’ve seen over the past ten years since the internet has been open to commercial development and competition between the cable companies and the phone companies. The FCC is doing this without Congress passing a law. They are simply asserting the authority onto themselves to make up these rules. The supposed problem that they are trying to solve is that they believe that ISPs, the phone and cable companies will start to block access to lawful websites, will start to force people to go to particular sites that they have contracts with to do particular mischief of that sort. This will never happen. There are no examples of it happening, and if it did happen, the market would discipline them because if the cable company you have starts blocking your access to internet sites, you’ll switch to the phone company. This is an intensely competitive marketplace, becoming more and more competitive as wireless becomes a legitimate substitution for home wire line broadband access, which will be even more the case with 4th Generation LTE deployment. Look, bottom line, this is a huge, huge regulatory power grab that could dramatically transform the internet, lead to more government control, and possibly destroy the internet as a realm for organizing and resistance against government policies that people disagree with. It should not be pursued at the FCC. Any such change should be legislative. It should come out of the elected branch, Congress. Thanks.

Your questions answered on many topics. Includes answers to questions from Kai Gibson, Joe Postum, Brandt Gibson, Patrick McCann, Jane Citizen, Rayna W North, Elizabeth Lerro, Ruth Crone, and Skip Mendler.

The House voted to cut off taxpayer funding for ACORN on a lopsided 345 to 75 vote today, but the most hard-core supporters of a Washington takeover of health care voted to keep funding ACORN. We need to use the ACORN scandals to expose their Congressional allies and the other corrupt groups pushing for a health care takeover.

Summary:
The central provision is an individual mandate that gives politicians and bureaucrats huge control and would also be a big tax hike for anyone who can't afford or doesn't want coverage. The co-op plan is a public option by other means, and the tax hikes on the health care industry will be passed on in higher prices.

Transcript:
Max Baucus’ bill is still a Washington takeover of health care. The legislation is being touted as a compromise, but its central provision is an individual mandate requiring everyone, by law, to purchase insurance that meets the definition that Washington politicians and bureaucrats decide that insurance must meet. That means they can still control every aspect of our insurance. Even worse, if you do not comply with this mandate, you’ll be forced to pay a hefty tax, starting at $750 per person up to 300% of the federal poverty level, up to $950 per person above 300% of the federal poverty level. That’s $3800 for a family of four, and it would be limited at the $3800 level. Everyone up to 400% of poverty would receive huge subsidies at taxpayer expense towards the purchase of health insurance plans. The cost of these insurance plans, the premiums, would increase as much as 95% because of new regulations for guaranteed issue and community rating that are in place in the plan. And the bill would send $6 billion of taxpayer money to seed so-called non-profit cooperatives, which Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, said would be another name for the public option, the government run option because we know that these coops would never be allowed to go out of business. They would always be bailed out if necessary. The bill also includes an employer mandate. Every employer would have to offer coverage. They cut the amount of the employer mandate. It’s not the 8% that it was in the House version. It’s now just $400 per employee. Now on the one hand, that’s good because it’s less costly for business. On the other hand, it means a lot more people will lose their employer based coverage because it’s much cheaper for companies to drop it, pay the $400 penalty, and let them fend for themselves in the insurance exchange that is set up and possibly on that government-run cooperative plan. Now, this bill does not increase the deficit the way the House bill does, but only because there are even bigger tax-hikes in here than there were on the House side. There are huge tax-hikes in addition to that tax on folks who don’t have insurance and the employer mandate. There is a $2.3 billion per year tax on pharmaceuticals, a $6 billion per year tax on health insurance providers, and a $750 million per year tax on clinical labs. $4 billion per year on medical device manufacturers. Huge taxes that will increase the cost of health care, that will increase the cost of insurance and be passed on to the middle class people who are paying for their own, now, mandated health care and the health care of everyone up to 400% of poverty that will now be subsidized at taxpayer expense. This is a bad bill that must be defeated. Thanks.

Not really, but it's not so simple as President Obama suggested. Illegal immigrants would not be eligible for subsidies, but would be subject to mandates, and there is a lack of verification that could potentially lead to fraudulant subsidy claims.

Obama's imposed tariffs on Chinese tires in a blatant union giveaway that makes no economic sense and risks a breakdown of global trade with severe consequences.

16 questions answered in three and a half minutes asked by Brandt Gibson, Suzanna Embry, Linda Zumpano, Joe Postum, Susan Hobbs, Peter Buxton, Liesel Orama Simon, Linda Zumpano, Smartykins Churchill, Janet Barrow, John T. Kennedy, Jack Nadon.

The president moved further left, underscoring support for a public option, fully embracing Hillary Clinton's mandate that he campaigned against, and promoting steeply higher taxes on businesses during a recession. His acknowledgment of the medical lawsuit abuse problem rang hollow.

Tonight Obama will stress his personal support for the public option while making clear that he fully intends to sign the version of "reform" supported by big insurers that will put their smaller competitors out of business and force us all to buy their product. Left and right should unite against this. Join me tonight during the speech in the FoxNews.com Fox Forum Live Chat.

Baucus's new proposal is what the big insurance companies want--mandates that everyone by their products with hefty subsidies from taxpayers. It allows less-expensive catastrophic-only coverage, but only for people under 25. Advocates of real patient-centered reform should say no-deal.

We need to use the Van Jones scandal as a window on the whole concept of green jobs, the latest reincarnation of central economic planning that we know fails.

Summary:
Four questions from Debra Outlaw, Maresi McGuire, Peggy Stephens, and Alex Siegel are answered in the first minute. Second minute is my latest thoughts on Anthony K. "Van" Jones.

Transcript:
Debra Outlaw wants to know if there is anyway the unspent stimulus can be called back. Absolutely there is. We would need to get legislation passed in Congress and I wish that was possible because they’re holding the vast majority of the stimulus money for political spending next year to help people get reelected. I think it would be very difficult to get such legislation passed but we should certainly push for it. Maresi McGuire says it’s unbelievable that we’re drilling in Brazil, what can we do to get the administration to listen to us. Go to the Americans for Prosperity website, americansforprosperity.org, and fill out the comment form on there to demand offshore drilling in the United States now. Peggy Stephens wants to know how we can stop the Obama administration. Keep doing everything you’re doing, stay engaged, and educate your friends and your neighbors. Alex Siegel wants to know how I could support Curt Schilling for Senate? He calls him a blowhard. Look the bottom line is that a celebrity is the only way you could win in a state like Massachusetts if you didn’t get someone like Mitt Romney in the race. Curt Schilling is a conservative and I think he could win and that’s enough for me. Now I’ve got a minute left to talk about my man Van Jones, unbelievable how this has blown up. The first time I talked about Van Jones was back in early July on Fox and Friends. I sent an amazing article I found in the East Bay Express newspaper to Glenn Beck who then had me on his show 4 or 5 times. It blew up into everything we now see. We know that he is a professed communist, we know that he wants to use green jobs as a kernel to destroy capitalism, we know that he’s a 9/11 truther, and we now know as well that he was very closely tied to Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s closest advisor who gave Michelle Obama her first job in politics. Jarrett said they’ve been watching him for years and they love him. He served on the board of the Apollo Alliance with John Podesta who led the administration’s transition team and probably put him in the green job czar position. This goes very deep and he is at the nexus of the cooperation between the unions and the environmental groups. Even if he resigns, we need to continue to expose this story and stop what they’re trying to do especially with cap-and-trade and with the stimulus. Thanks.

Summary:
Parents across the country are in an uproar over plans to have President Obama directly address schoolchildren September 8th, with teachers instructed to ask students what they can do to help the president and to "hold students accountable" for helping the president. This is only the latest, most egregious example of indoctrination in our public schools and the reason parents should control their educational dollars to send their children to any school they choose.

Transcript:
You may have already seen this story. On September 8th, 2009 President Obama wishes to address all of the students in the United States and play a message to them and he even put out lesson plans that the teachers should use during this speech. It includes such instructions as asking students, “Why is it important that we listen to the President? What is the President asking me to do? What specific job is he asking me to do?” This really smacks of indoctrination and it’s a little bit frightening. The most frightening part of this lesson plan is that it says teachers can extend learning by having students, “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the President.” These would be collected and redistributed by the teacher to make the students accountable to their goals. Now the White House has backed away from that and the administration says they will remove that portion, the most objectionable portion, about holding them accountable for what they can do for the President. Peggy Venable, former Reagan administration official and now one of my colleagues as the AFP Director in Texas said that statement “chilled her to the bone.” But even if that is removed, you have to question the mentality of an administration that thinks it’s acceptable to put the President in the face of schoolchildren throughout the United States, in government run schools, where students have no choice but to be there, and to indoctrinate them how to be loyal to the President, what they can do to support his mission and ask teachers to hold them accountable. This mindset is not one of education, it is one of indoctrination, and this just underscores why it is absolutely essential we need have real reform so we break the government’s school monopoly and give all parents the chance the Obama’s had for their own children to send them to private school if that best suits their needs. If we don’t get educational reform, it’s going to be hard to win any of the other policy issues we face because this is only the most egregious example but indoctrination in government school happens regularly and the indoctrination is typically from a far left perspective. Thanks. Tomorrow is Listener Question Friday so get your questions in and I’ll be back then, bye.

Summary:
Next week's speech from the president will be ballyhooed as a turning point, when he recognizes the reality that there will not be a so-called public option in the health reform bill. The media will call this centrist and play up a fake controversy over whether the left will walk (they won't, of course) but the bill will just as surely lead to Washington control of our health care.

Transcript:
I warned about it in the public option distraction and now we’re seeing it play out. Next week we expect President Obama to give a major address, possibly to a joint session of Congress, where he outlines what he wants in health care reform. The big difference this time I think is that he’ll clarify even further that he does not want, need, or require the so-called public option, the government run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers and possibly with access to taxpayer dollars will drive other insurers out of business. Now every special interest that’s opposed to this has been flexing its muscles. That includes all of the insurance companies that fear they would be put out of business. They’ve done a huge lobbying offensive and at the same time the public has been strongly opposed to the entire bill. What the White House will attempt to do next week is to pull the public option and pretend that they’ve addressed the outrage of the general public when of course they have not. They will then allow the government to take over health care completely through a series of mandates and subsidies that will publicly finance health care for a huge portion of the country, require everyone to buy health care that meets a politically defined definition of a minimum benefits package, and that therefore enriches the big insurance companies who will at that point be cut in on the deal. This is a disastrous outcome. Meanwhile, the media will continue to pretend the big controversy is the question of a public option and they will cover a fake story about a revolt on the President’s left about folks who oppose the bill. They will not oppose the bill because they understand that even without the public option, this gives them all the power and control over health care that they want. They could even possibly come back in a couple of years after they’ve completely wrecked the private insurance market with skyrocketing prices, with little competition, and say at that point that they want an explicit government plan. Bottom line, the real controversy is over government control of our health care. That includes mandates and subsidies as a mechanism of control not just a public option. Don’t fall for the distraction. Thanks.

Summary:
Sens. Kerry and Boxer are pushing back introduction of the Senate version, trying to get more time to try to build support and saying Kerry (apparently now the lead author) is too busy to get it done right now. At the same time a new Rasmussen poll shows just 10 percent of Americans willing to pay more than $100 for a climate change bill. The executive director of the Blue-Green (labor unions and environmentalists) Alliance admits the bill is about restructuring the global economy.

Transcript:
News came yesterday that the bill would not be introduced in the Senate next week as originally planned. A statement from Senators Kerry and Boxer was released that said "because of Senator Kennedy's recent passing, Senator Kerry's hip surgery and intensive work on health care, Majority Leader Reid has agreed to provide some additional time to work on the final details of our bill." Couple of implications there: first of all, I think that means that the House bill is dead on arrival, the Senate bill is going to be quite different and it’s going to require a lot of additional work. Second, I think that Senator Kerry is the real lead author here not Senator Boxer who was the lead last year. That's why they have a delay because Kerry is on the Finance Committee, which has been working on health care, and also because of the Massachusetts situation with Kennedy's passing, they said as much. Also, a very interesting development yesterday, a new poll came out from Rasmussen Reports that shows that just 10% of Americans are willing to pay more than $100 a year to stop global warming. That means even the ridiculously understated CBO number, which disregarded the economic impact and said the bill would cost $175, would only be supported by 10% of Americans. That's not going to be enough to call it a crisis and push it through and the rest of it. Also, a very interesting statement from Blue-Green Alliance Executive Director David Foster was released last week. The Blue-Green Alliance, for those who are not aware, is a working group of the big labor unions and the environmental groups. It’s similar to Apollo, and this is the SEIU, the Sierra Club, the NRDC, and the Steelworkers Union. A lot of the same folks that are behind Apollo there are putting big money into this and pushing it on the ground with their union workers, their rank-and-file members, and so on. Their executive director said last week that cap-and-trade is "an economic restructuring bill for the global economy, we should not pretend that it isn’t and instead we should do it right." Give him credit for being honest folks. That’s what this is all about, restructuring the entire global economy according to a politically correct central plan. I think we've got to stop it and now we have more time to do so. Thanks.

Summary:
We need to watch how stimulus funds are spent to ensure they don't go to fuel the left-wing political machine including labor unions, environmentalists, and other special interests. This is the biggest, highest stakes, political fight of the year, and will get even bigger with cap-and-trade.

Transcript:
I think this is the most important question right now politically, not health care. The most important bill of the year politically was the stimulus bill that was passed back in February. The reason for that is that if this bill is used as I anticipate it may be used, it will dramatically fund at a very high level the election and reelection of Democratic candidates and far left political activities. The model here is the 1933 Federal Emergency Relief Act where much of the money was held until 1934 when it was spent specifically in the states where Roosevelt wanted to elect and reelect Democrats. Now, there is a lot of reason to think that this may happen again. The stimulus bill was written by most of the far left constituencies, environmental groups contributing the green jobs language and unions getting the Davis-Bacon provisions in there. This thing was a special interest grab bag. The Wall Street Journal said it was everything on the liberal left’s wish list over the past 40 years. Now all of this money is being held right now for the most part. We’ve only seen a very small percent, about 5% of the stimulus money spent so far. That means that a lot of it is being held for next year, for when it can make a difference in the political cycle. That’s where regular folks come in. It is absolutely essential that people become watchdogs for the stimulus money. Become a watchdog in your state and in your local community. Go to the recovery.org website and scrutinize it. Find where the money is going and see if it’s being used for any political activities or veiled political activities and blow the whistle. Get it on your blog, get it to the conservative groups, and get it out there in the newspapers. If we show how our tax dollars are used for political purposes, I think we can prevent it from happening and I think that should be one of our top priorities right now. I also want to point out that the same radical left that already got a down payment on restructuring the global economy in that stimulus bill, which was in the billions, is trying to get trillions through the cap-and-trade bill. Dave Foster of the Blue Green Alliance, a working group of big organized labor and environmental interests said last week of that bill, “it is an economic restructuring bill for the global economy, we should not pretend that it isn’t and instead we should do it right.” They’re being honest about what this is all about. They’re trying to restructure the entire global economy and they’re trying to funnel money from taxpayers to their special constituents. We need to blow the whistle and show what’s happening so we can stop it. Thanks

Summary:
Questions answered from Eapen Thampy about Glenn Beck, Lavanna Martin on Jimmy Carter, Tom Warner on S2099 (hoax), Sally May Baranovitz on czars, Dan Preston on "it's the economy," and Jonathan Berger on Remote Area Medical.

Transcript:
Eapen Thampy wants to know why I think “engaging nutcases like Glenn Beck is a good idea.” Well Evan, I’m not sure if Glenn is nuts. Although he certainly has an over the top personality and he certainly is an entertainer and sometimes that rubs people the wrong way. But I also think that he’s asking some important questions in particular focusing on the stimulus bill when everybody else is focused on health care. I think the stimulus and the way that it funds organizations on the left makes it the most important political story of the year. More importantly, I’ll talk to anyone who will listen. I don’t turn down T.V. appearances. That’s why I go on Al Jazeera, Christian Broadcasting Network, CNN, CNBC, Fox News, anyone who will have me because I’m trying to get the messages out that I think are important. I’m not about to turn down an opportunity to talk to 2.5 million people, even if some people don’t like the host. Lavanna Martin wants to know if I could draw some parallels between the Carter administration and the Obama administration in terms of unemployment and inflation. Look, inflation was much higher in the 1970s and right now we actually have negative inflation, a deflationary cycle because of the collapse of the financial bubble and all those asset prices that collapsed with it. Inflation was over 10% through 1979 and hit a peak of 14.8% in March 1980. We could be heading back to those levels though because we’re taking on tons of debt that in my view may be monetized in the future and we’re also creating a lot of money in the Federal Reserve System. So after asset prices stabilize, we could be looking at inflation like that again. Unemployment is already much higher than in the Carter years. It peaked at 7.8% in July 1980, but it did go as high as 10.8% in the 1982 recession when we tried to ring all that inflation out of the system. Right now it’s at 9.4%. Tom Warner asks about Senate bill 2099. Seems like a hoax because there is no such bill that has been introduced. Sally May Baranovitz wants to know if there is a legal recourse for challenging the czars. I think there might be an argument under the non-delegation clause of the Constitution that there may be some sort of non-delegation issue. I’m not a lawyer but I think that it would be difficult. We’d have to prove that they have more than advisory authority, which may not be the case. Dan Preston wants to know what happened to “it’s the economy stupid”? I don’t think it went anywhere. I think that’s going to be the big problem in the next election for Democrats. Jonathan Berger wants to know how many L.A. residents were treated by remote area medical. In their 8-day clinic in Inglewood, they provided 90 root canals, 8,775 general medical exams, 650 pap smears, and 706 immunizations. In my view it’s a great success for private charity care. Thanks, I’ll be back Monday.

Summary:
Proponents of a Washington takeover are not likely to pick up any extra votes as a result of Sen. Kennedy's death. Their only likely paths to success are procedurally tricky and perilous reconciliation or more likely a deal with a handful of Republicans to do a mandates-and-subsidies bill that hands the big insurance companies guaranteed profits. Stay focused.

Transcript:
We’ve seen a lot in the media about how Kennedy’s death will supposedly create a groundswell of support for health care reform that will somehow push it over the finish line. But the reality is that you can’t point to any Senators whose positions are likely to be changed as a result of Senator Kennedy’s death. There are still only 2 paths towards passing anything like the current so-called reform bills that have been proposed, government takeover bills. Either the Republicans in the Senate cut some kind of deal, possibly led by Chuck Grassley in the Senate Finance Committee, which paves the way for a bipartisan bill. Likely a total sellout bill that the insurance companies will want, that forces us to buy their products by law, that gives them guaranteed profits while still giving government control to regulate them. Alternatively we may see them attempt what’s called reconciliation. Now if they attempt the reconciliation path, the result will be that they can pass the bill with only 50 votes, with only 20 hours of debate, and with no amendments. However, to do that they are going to have to Swiss cheese it because of Senate rule, they’ll be circumventing the normal process. It will be very difficult for them to get a bill through that way. Most of the things they want, like the actual insurance regulatory reforms that would get away with preexisting conditions can’t be done by the reconciliation route. So they still face the same major challenges they did before Senator Kennedy passed away and they may now be one vote short which becomes especially important if they try to get to 60 with some kind of compromise with just a couple of Republicans. There are still going to be some moderate Democrats that don’t go along. The math really hasn’t changed very much despite all the hype in the media. This thing is still likely not to get through in anything like its current form. The biggest threat remains some kind of a so-called compromise that the insurance industry will strongly support. Let’s keep fighting against mandates and subsidies and let’s get real reform that puts patients first. Thanks.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is again considering a rule that would let the big money left--environmental foundations and union pension funds--exert huge control over corporate boards and accomplish much what they've never been able to get through the political process through the board room. I wrote about this a couple year ago here: http://bit.ly/EnGgK

Summary:
The new White House deficit and employment projections show that our huge borrow-and-spend stimulus approach is not working.

Transcript:
The stimulus policies of this administration have been a complete failure. Their economic forecasts have already been proven to be completely out of line with reality. We’re staring at deficits that will now run 9 trillion dollars over the next ten years according to the White House’s own estimate, 2 trillion more than they forecast earlier this year. A 9 trillion dollar deficit, to put this in perspective, means that every man, woman, and child in the United States will take on 30,000 additional dollars in debt over the next ten years. That means that if you’ve got a family of four, we are going to borrow a new $120,000 of debt that will be on your head over the next decade. Now bear in mind that this comes on top of about 60 trillion dollars of debt and unfunded entitlement obligation that we already have. So the $200,000 that every man, woman, and child already owes is going to increase to $230,000 over the next ten years at least, and those are using the White House projections which have historically been very rosy and optimistic. That means we are going in the wrong direction. We need to be reducing these obligations, not dramatically increasing them when they’re already unsustainable. The employment outlook has also darkened. The White House originally said that if the stimulus bill passed, there would never be above 8.1% unemployment. Of course we are already at 9.4% and Christina Romer, Chief of Obama’s council of economic advisers said, “we do predict unemployment will reach 10%.” Folks, the White House now admits that we’re going to 10% unemployment. We have out of control debt and deficits. They try to spin as good news that the deficit for 2009 is smaller than previously predicted but that’s because most of the stimulus money hasn’t been spent. It’s been pushed into next year when we are going to see the deficit even higher than it was before, that’s just a timing issue. Bottom line, we are headed in the wrong direction and these policies aren’t working and we absolutely should not consider vast new government programs for energy or health care. Thank you.

Summary:
U.S. tax dollars are going to fund offshore exploration in Brazil to the tune of $2 billion while we hold our own resources off limits. That's not right. Our friends at www.consumerenergyalliance.org have a convenient form to make your voice heard on the issue.

Transcript:
Wall Street Journal broke news last week that the U.S. Export-Import Bank has approved a two billion dollar loan guarantee to the Brazilian national oil company, Petrobras, to do offshore energy exploration and production in Brazil. This is astonishing from the Obama administration, which has been dragging its feet for the past year since the offshore moratorium here in the United States was lifted. We now have until September 21st to put in comments on the public comment docket urging them to finally open the offshore areas here in the U.S. to drilling. There is a great group, The Consumer Energy Alliance, which has a website you can use to send those messages in. I recommend that, consumerenergyalliance.org. It is absolutely embarrassing that we would be subsidizing, using our taxpayer dollars, money that is going to be paid back by our children and grandchildren to have offshore energy production in Brazil while at the same time we hold off limits vast areas of U.S. waters that have huge amounts of energy in them. We need domestic energy production and exploration here. We can’t wait until gas prices go back to four dollars, until we have external energy shocks, and then we hear from the left that the lead-time takes seven years, so we shouldn’t do anything. Now is the time to do something. We need to access those resources and we also need an investigation to know what’s going on with this Brazil deal. We’ve all heard the rumors that George Soros repositioned his stockholdings in Petrobras two days before this announced and there may or may not have been some insider information there. That is something the public needs to know and I think that if this Brazil deal goes forward it will be an absolute embarrassment and we must explore our own energy production here in the United States. Thanks.

Summary:
Listener questions answered from Alex Siegel, Traci Thompson, Adam Guillette, Robert Oliveria, Michelle Korsmo, Jonathan Berger, and Howard Fienberg.

Transcript:
Alex Siegel wants to know why budget reconciliation even exists if it is such a gimmick. It exists to make it easier to reduce the deficit by having a streamline procedure and it is not intended to make policy changes. That is the gimmick, trick, and abuse that I’ve been talking about. Traci Thompson wants to know if there are statistics that show the benefits of lawsuit abuse reform. There are. Check out the Manhattan Institute’s Trial Lawyers Inc. reports. They are about 5 years out of date right now but they’ve got the total cost at about $3,300 per family of 4 with more than 10% of that coming in the health care area. That was a 2004 study where health care was the fastest growing area so health care is probably even more expensive right now and we need to reform abusive lawsuits. Adam Guillette wants to know how many more years until the Mets win a World Series. At this rate, it will be forever. Robert Oliveira wants to know if the House passes a public option bill and the Senate passes a bill without it and they cannot agree on a compromise, which will get the blame. He gave me a bunch of choices, but I’ll say all of the above. There will be a lot of hand-wringing in that scenario and everyone will be trying to blame everyone else and I think it will open Democrats up for substantial losses in next year’s election. Michelle Korsmo wants to know why Kennedy doesn’t ask for a repeal of the 17th amendment and allow state legislatures to select Senators again. I think that is completely outside the mainstream right now and I think people want the democratic process of electing Senators so I think the way the vacancies are filled will be a much smaller scope than challenging the 17th amendment. Kennedy of course wouldn’t be inclined to give state legislatures more power because they’re close to the people; he’s a Democrat and supports centralization of power in Washington. Jonathan Berger wants to know why so many Americans believe that the U.S. health care system is the best in the world. I think they believe that because the standard of care is in fact very high in the U.S. despite all the problems we have on the payment side. People understand that the statistics that show us relatively low in a lot of the international rankings are the result of different demographics here that account for most of it, not the quality of care. I would also point out that there is some national pride at stake as well. The same reason that England and Canada are rallying to defend their systems as they’re under attack from the U.S. when just a few years ago they were under attack domestically. People just want to believe that their own system is the best and there is some patriotism in play. Howard Feinberg wants to know what the television show House would be like if it were in Canada. I think it wouldn’t have nearly as many exciting and cutting edge procedures if it were true to life but they might just show it all anyway to be good public relations for the country. Thanks and I’ll be back Monday.

Summary:
New numbers on employment and the deficit show that we're expanding government payrolls as the private sector continues to shrink, a recipe for higher taxes and unsustainable borrowing.

Transcript:
New study came out today from the Nelson Rockefeller Institute of Government showed that since the recession began, the private economy has lost 6.9 million jobs. At the same time, government has added a net of 110,000 jobs. So we have a dramatically shrinking private sector that is being forced to support a growing public sector. Government is not tightening its belt the same way that private taxpayers, citizens, and companies are. That means there will be an ever greater burden of government on those people who still have jobs and making it that much more difficult to start to create jobs again. There is also some news on the deficit. Finally, the White House has released budget projections for 2009. They’ve said that the deficit is going to be $1.6 trillion and are touting this as a great success because earlier they were projecting $1.85 trillion. This is still by far a record, in fact double the record for any previous year. It’s also important to note that this not any improvement in the budget outlook. This is a result of them being unable to spend stimulus dollars that were supposed to be spent this year that have now been pushed into next year. It means that the real deficit number we need to look for is the one for 2010 which is probably still going to be an even higher record total and of course every penny of it is borrowed mostly from abroad and will have to be paid back with interest. So the real thing to watch for next year is the 2010 deficit number. There is also some news on cash for clunkers. The supposedly successful stimulus program, which pays people to destroy a productive asset, is literally the broken window fallacy in action. The incompetence of the government has led some dealers to pull out of the program now. Increasingly in New York and Maryland we are seeing dealers say that they are not going to participate in this program because the government has been so slow to reimburse dealers for that credit they are offering to buyers. Almost no checks have gone out from the federal government for this program and it’s been an administrative disaster. I think that just shows if they can’t get the simplest things right, we certainly shouldn’t turn over energy or health care to them. Thanks.

Summary:
Story in the NYT today says Dems may "go it alone" on health care, which means using a procedural trick called reconciliation to ram the bill through with just 20 hours of debate, no amendments, and just 50 votes instead of the usual 60. This trick must be stopped.

Transcript:
Front page headline in the New York Times today says that Democrats are ready to go it alone, i.e. not wait for a bipartisan agreement from Republicans, not even the handful of Republicans likely to go along with them. What does that mean? Well in practice, it probably means they’re going to have to use a trick called budget reconciliation to get it through the Senate with only 50 votes. In theory, they could get all 60 Democrats but there are a number of Democrats very unlikely to vote for their plan so I think it means reconciliation. Now reconciliation means only 50 votes, only 20 hours of debate, and no amendments. They would make a huge change to 1/6th of our nation’s economy potentially having the government take it over or strictly regulate it without having time for amendments, without having debate, without having any input from the rest of the United States Senate. Robert Byrd, the Senator from West Virginia, killed this dead in its tracks when Bill Clinton proposed it on health care back in 1993. At the time he said it would be a gross abuse of the reconciliation process and he had enough clout to stop that from happening and he still thinks it is a gross abuse. In April of this year he said, “I oppose using the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform. As one of the authors of the reconciliation process I can tell you the ironclad parliamentary procedures it authorizes were never intended for this purpose.” There is more. Senator DeMint put a budget amendment in that would have preserved the 60-vote hurdle for health care reform. That passed 79-14. 79 U.S. Senators wanted to preserve the 60-vote hurdle, the normal order of the Senate. That means in order to go ahead and do this with just 50 votes they would only need to have 29 people who voted against using budget reconciliation change their minds and vote in favor of using it. It would be utter rank hypocrisy. This procedure would be a trick, a gimmick, and the American people deserve better. They deserve to see the normal Senate process used so that there can be debates, so that there can be amendments so we don’t that end up with a health care system that has not even been examined through the normal legislative process. Contact your Senators and tell them not to abuse the reconciliation process to force through health care.

Summary:
The Senate HELP Committee voted its health care bill out on July 15th but still refuses to release the bill for public scrutiny. This is an outrage that should not be tolerated.

Transcript:
Everyone’s focusing on the House health care bill, H.R. 3200 that has hundreds of offensive provisions that have people up in arms all across America. Some Democratic Senators are deflecting questions about the bill by saying, “well that’s not the Senate bill. We don’t have a Senate bill yet.” That is false. There is a Senate bill; they just wont let us read it and wont release it to the public. There isn’t a Senate Finance Committee bill, that’s true but there is a bill from the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee. They completed a marathon month long markup of this on July 15th,. On July 15th, over a month ago, they voted a bill out of the Senate HELP Committee. It’s completed every way except the funding mechanism, which they are waiting on from the Senate Finance Committee. So other than the tax hikes, we should know everything about the Senate health care bill but they won’t release the bill. This is unprecedented and it’s now been more than a month and they wont release this thing. Now of course we can look at the draft as it went in and look at all the amendments and try to piece it together ourselves but there were hundreds of amendments. They worked on this thing for a month and it would be impossible for anyone to piece it all together with any confidence. The legislative counsel of the HELP Committee needs to release the bill as voted out by committee so the public can scrutinize it, so that we have time during the August recess to ask Senators questions about it. This is basic transparency and basic democracy. We have an administration that promised to be the most transparent in history and yet we have a bill on the most important topic in the entire country right now voted out of a Senate committee a month ago and it still hasn’t been released to the public. Contact Senator Kennedy’s office, he’s the Chairman of that committee. Contact Senator Dodd’s office, he’s the acting Chairman while Kennedy is in the hospital. These guys need to feel some heat to release the bill so that we can read the thing and ask them questions about it. This is absolutely crucial. Thanks.

Summary:
So it looks like public plan will be replaced by co-ops, with the details forthcoming. But health care co-ops have failed where they have been tried, which means these will almost certainly be taxpayer-subsidized forever, presenting all the same problems as public option and a likely path to government takeover. We shoudl recall that health insurance purchasing co-ops were the centerpiece of HillaryCare. Even if co-ops are removed or allowed to fail, the individual and employer mandates would still allow government to indirectly control health care.

Transcript:
We found out over the weekend that the administration is willing to replace the public option part of the health care plan, the transparent path to a single payer system, with a system of regional cooperatives instead that would be taxpayer funded initially but would then lose their subsidy and compete on a level playing field over time. I don’t buy it for one second. Look, health care co-ops have never succeeded in the past, they have been tried many times in this country, and to the extent that they exist it will be solely because taxpayers will massively subsidize them. They will be a government run plan all but in name. If you look at the words used by Kathleen Sebelius, the HHS secretary, she said, “I think there will be a competitor to private insurers that’s really the essential part.” This is just a result of focus-grouping showing that the term public option is not a winner. However, this is not a major change in policy. I’ll also point out that the centerpiece of the HillaryCare plan was regional health insurance purchasing co-ops. Now we don’t know if these new Conrad co-ops are going to be actual health insurance plans or if they’re going to be purchasing cooperatives but it seems they moved far to the left so that they can then compromise back to where Hillary was in 1993. This is a bad deal. With that being said, I think that this will be defeated precisely because people will see that its another version of the same public option plan that is going to lead to a government takeover and a socialized system. We need to do the work to do that, but do not rest on beating socialism in this bill. As I’ve recently been saying, if you remove the socialist elements of the bill, and you simply have a government mandate that employers must provide health insurance, a private individual mandate that you must purchase, we will effectively have fascism because government will strictly regulate the products that are available, the profits will go to the big insurance companies, the ones that can afford to meet these new regulations and everyone will be required by law to buy the product. It’s still a disaster and we have to defeat this entire bill. That means all the mandates, all the subsidies, the public option, and of course co-ops. Thanks.

Summary:
Four Senate Democrats have now said they don't want to vote on cap-and-trade this year, dealing the bill a huge blow. Also, your questions answered.

Transcript:
Before I get to your questions, big news on cap-and-trade today as 4 Senate Democrats - Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan from North Dakota - came out and said we do not want to vote on cap-and-trade this year. They’d like to see an energy bill without cap-and-trade centering on a renewable electricity mandate. This is a huge victory if they hold firm and I do not believe that the Democrats will have the votes to move forward in the Senate on cap-and-trade. We must remain vigilant however as negotiations can change, the situation is fluid and the renewable electricity mandate itself is a disaster that would require every state to get 15%-20% of its energy from politically favored renewable sources like wind and solar which most states do not have an adequate supply of in order to meet that mandate. Going to still be a big problem we are going to have to fight against but for today it’s a huge victory. Now for some questions, Brendan Delaney wants to know if I’ll visit the Schenley Café at Pitt on this trip. Probably not, and while Abdou Cole will not be speaking at the event he is a great American hero and is certainly an example of the American dream. Jonathan Berger wants to know why polls show so many birthers. He references the Daily Kos poll; a partisan poll that I think is pretty biased. Regardless of that, I don’t believe these numbers are being driven by anything other than dislike of the administration. I don’t think there’s a genuine belief that he wasn’t born in the United States. I think the administration is stoking this by not releasing a lot of the documents. They like the idea that people are obsessing about this instead of his policies, so I’m not going to dignify on this any longer in this Podcast or anywhere else. Let’s focus on the policies. Howard Feinberg wants to know if I prefer the Dirty O or the Primanti Brothers. I’d go with the Dirty O but probably some pizza and fries upstairs. Thanks folks and I’ll see many of you here in Pittsburgh.

Summary:
Two new letters from Democrats show rifts on cap-and-trade. Nine Democrats want to ban Wall Street Banks from the trading scheme, and ten want a protectionist tariff. We need to keep the pressure on to exploit this rifts and kill the bill.

Transcript:
Let’s not lose sight of cap-and-trade with all the talk about health care lately. It’s still the largest tax in U.S. history and it’s still something President Obama himself said will make electricity prices skyrocket. Fortunately there is some good news for opponents of cap-and-trade. The U.S. Senate has strains within the majority, within the Democratic caucus, about how to move forward with this. Today came a letter from nine democrats saying they would oppose any carbon trading by Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. That might make sense. I don’t want the guys on Wall Street to make a fortune off this scheme anymore than anyone else does but that also shatters the democratic support for the bill. Senators like Charles Schumer see this as a way to get banks and Wall Street traders rich. It also raises the question of, if not those guys, which other guys will get rich off of this. Will it be people like Al Gore who has invested in a carbon trading scheme through his venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins. Will it be people like General Electric; a huge beneficiary of everything else this administration has done that also has a carbon trading emissions subsidiary. So even if they try to address this problem, someone else will get that money because it’s an inherent part of cap-and-trade. There is a trading scheme that is supposedly the market based mechanism that is supposed to make this work. But, a lot of Democrats don’t want that to exist and its going to undermine the bill. Another letter was written by 10 Democrats yesterday saying that they would oppose the bill if there are not protectionist tariffs in it to protect us from foreign competition. Obviously if we make U.S. energy prices much more expensive, that will make it more difficult to compete manufacturing abroad and we’ll send a lot of jobs to places like India and China. They think that a tariff, that going back to protectionism will protect us from that. Of course tariffs have a horrible track record and it will cause retaliation abroad, its probably illegal under the World Trade Organization, it could collapse global trade and commerce, and it could bring us back to the Smoot-Hawley days of the 1930s. It would be a complete economic disaster and fortunately I think there a lot of the members of the Senate including Democrats who understand that, including the president who said that he strongly opposes that provision. So this is another big fault line. We have an opportunity if we put the pressure on these guys to get this whole thing to fracture and collapse in the Senate. There are a lot of people who are skittish about moving forward on this. They saw the pushback after the House vote. They saw the heat they were taking on health care. Keep the pressure on cap-and-trade. Thanks.

Summary:
According to my friends at Americans for Tax Reform, today is the day Americans stop working to pay the cost of state, local, and federal spending and regulations. It took seven and a half months this year, almost a full month longer than last year. 224 days working for government, leaving just 141 days to work for ourselves and our families, and that's BEFORE a potential Washington takeover of health care and a cap-and-trade energy tax.

Transcript:
Sorry I didn’t get to the podcast until the afternoon today, that’s because I was at the Americans for Tax Reform Cost of Government Day press conference. Now what is the Cost of Government Day? This is the day of the year when we stop working to pay for state, local, and federal government and begin working for ourselves and we get to keep what we earn. This year it comes by far the latest that it’s ever come since they started conducting these, almost a full month later in the year than last year when it was July 16th. That means that for 224 days out of the year you work just to pay for the cost of federal, local, and state government spending and regulations. 61.3% of the national income in this country goes to comply with regulations and to pay for government spending. It really makes you wonder what will happen in this country if we keep going down the direction that we’re on: if we have cap-and-trade, if we have a nationalized health care system, if we have more stimulus spending, if we have more power and more money running through Washington and running through the state capitals. The folks who support these things call it progress but it seems to me that it is the least progressive idea in the history of the world to have more centralized power over our lives, to have more rulers dictating to us what we can and can not do, and to order around more of our economic resources that we created through our work and productivity. I hope that this astonishing date for Cost of Government Day, reaching into mid-August, will be the high-tide for this growth of government and that we’ll turn it back and return to a government that’s more affordable and more limited to the proper areas the government ought to take care of and give people more time during the year to work for themselves and for what they want for their families and to run their own lives. Thank you.

The White House now denies that it has any deal to protect pharmaceutical companies from price control or other heavy-handed government regulation, despite the much-ballyhooed pact in which PhRMA agreed to provide discounted drugs in exchange for being otherwise left alone. Even though the White House denies a deal, PhRMA still believes it has one, and jsut announced another $150 million in TV ads supporting ObamaCare. PhRMA needs to wise up and stop digging its own grave.

Summary:
Kerpen responds to the accusation from Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer that opponents of a Washington takeover of health care are un-American.

Transcript:
Very high-profile op-ed in today’s USA Today from our Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and our Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, in the U.S. House of Representatives. They say that health care reform should be subject to much scrutiny and debate. I agree. They say that we need to have a dialogue between elected representatives and constituents, which is at the heart of our democracy. Again, I agree. However, Nancy Pelosi like her fellow Californian Barbara Boxer apparently believes that the only legitimate protesters, only the people who can legitimately use their right to petition government for redress of grievance are dirty hippies. Middle class people who show up and are well dressed should be disregarded, that they are being disruptive and outrageous and the rest of it. We all know that the reality is that the violence we’ve seen in places like Tampa and St. Louis has been instigated by the SEIU, by the foot soldiers that are carrying out this government health care takeover. We all know that the substantive facts are all on the side of those who oppose this government takeover. Pelosi and Hoyer say that the plan allows every American who likes his or her plan to keep it. We know that’s a lie. Every analysis of this bill shows that many people will lose their existing coverage. How many? Lewin Group says it’s somewhere around 85 million. That’s the more conservative number. The more left-leaning group, the Urban Institute, says it’s about 45 million. That’s still a very big number of people who will not be able to keep their plan. They also say that their plan lowers cost. They say that their plan lower costs by using a public health insurance option, i.e. a government plan. But Medicare is 36 trillion dollars in the whole and the Congressional Budget Office says the new plan will cost more, not less. They also say that the President won on a specific promise of change envisioned in this bill. Actually, he won the primary opposing an individual mandate requiring health insurance by law, the centerpiece of the house bill, Hillary was for it, and he was against it. He won the general election by opposing the taxation of health insurance benefits, now something that is very likely to be included in the Senate bill. There is no mandate for this. The facts, as people learn them, are heavily against everything that the Democrats selling this plan are saying. That is why they have to try to delegitimize the legitimate criticisms that are coming from folks back in the states. The targets of all of their pitches are Congressional Democrats. They are trying to convince moderates and Blue Dogs that it’s safe to ignore their constituents and do what the hard left ideologues want. I would suggest that the centrist Democrats would be well advised to not listen to Nancy Pelosi and not follow her off this cliff, especially not after doing so just recently on the cap-and-trade vote. Thanks.

Summary:
Health care questions answered from Paul Siegel, Alex Siegel, Robert Oliveira, Suzanna Embry, Alan Cobb, Allen Brooks and non-health care questions answered from Jonathan Berger and Seton Motley.

Transcript:
Paul Siegel wants to know, under the current plan if an employer already provides health insurance, will they have to pay a penalty. The answer is yes. If the plan they offer does not meet the new requirements for a qualified plan in the Democratic bill, which very few plans currently do or they can change the plans to meet the qualifications but that would probably be more expensive than what they pay now. Alex Siegel wants to know why alternatives like the Wyden-Bennett plan and the one from the Bipartisan Policy Center aren’t getting more attention than the Democratic bills, which are currently moving forward. They are not getting more attention because they are not what’s on the margin of actually passing right now and I think the Wyden-Bennett plan in particular has a lot of problems. Robert Oliveira wants to know how you define the public option without sounding like an alarmist or using the word socialist. I think you just say that its government run health care. You say that Jacob Hacker who designed the public option, designed it as a way to get to a Canadian style single payer system. It simply what it really is about and you don’t have to be alarmist. Suzanna Embry wants to know how do Pelosi and Obama come up with this idea and why is it good enough for us but not for them. Very good question and it sort of answers itself. I think that the unwillingness of most members of congress to put themselves and their families in this plan is one of the major sticking points that’s preventing the public from supporting them. Alan Cobb wants to know if the left really thinks that the emotion is manufactured. I think a lot of them do. They think that they know better than ordinary people, how those people should live their lives. They think that people can be manipulated and they know that they often do it. They simply assume that the right does the same thing but of course we’re really not organized that way. Allen Brooks wants to know if the current state of the health care market works. Not very well and a lot of it is not really a market. We need a lot more competition, a lot more choice, we need to empower people to control their own health care dollars, and we need to give them more choices than they have now where there in restricted single state insurance markets and where a lot of people have a plan through an employer which they have no choice in. Jonathan Berger wants to know if the birthers reflect today's mainstream GOP. Obviously not, no more than the 9/11 truthers represented the mainstream of the Democrats during the Bush administration. Seton Motley wants to know why we drive on parkways and park on driveways. Parkways are surrounded by parkland on either side so that it can be a pastoral experience driving on it. Robert Moses built a number of great ones in New York. Driveways it’s because you drive your car on that to get to your house. He also wants to know why cargo is by ship and shipment by car. Cargo is from the Spanish word cargar which means to load and usually refers to pretty large items that wouldn’t fit in a car and shipment can be by any means of transportation. Thanks folks I’ll be back next week.

This is a very special Podcast with information about the RightOnline conference in Pittsburgh August 14th and 15th, including a special limited-availability HALF-PRICE code for Podcast listeners. This amazing event will feature Michelle Malkin, Pat Toomey, Steve Moore, Erick Erickson, Jim Pinkerton, Grover Norquist, and many other world class speakers. It is your opportunity to push back against the radical left on the Internet. I hope to see you there. www.RightOnline.com

Summary:
The accusation originated on the Soros-funded blog of the Center for American Progress, was promoted by the DNC, and picked up by every left of center outlet from the New York Times to the White House. It is false.

Transcript:
My group, Americans for Prosperity, has been accused of being AstroTurf, of being fake grassroots and manufacturing the anger that we see at townhall meetings. Now where did this talking point come from, because I think it’s a manufactured talking point. It came from the Center for American Progress blog on Friday, thinkprogress.org, funded by George Soros. Basically this Center for American Progress blog is about 10 people who sit in a room all day paid hefty salaries by George Soros who write these ideas, attacking people on the right like us. Now as soon as this blog post went up attacking Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, the Democratic National Committee immediately emailed it around to their entire list of all of their insiders and allies, that’s how they disseminate the talking points from the Soros-funded Center for American Progress. After the DNC sent them around, it was only a matter of days before the story showed up in the New York Times, in the mouth of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and in every left of center website across the internet. Now who is manufacturing anger and outrage? I would maintain that it’s the left that’s pushing this story that has this theme that started from the top, that started with money, that came from a high dollar donor, that was moved through a seemingly grassroots type website then pushed around through every organ of power on the left. When the unions brought all of these folks to Washington to demonstrate in favor of big government health care reform, nobody called that manufactured anger or fake and all of those were bused in by unions. The reality is that all we’re doing is sending information to folks so that they can learn about what’s going on and get involved if they want to get involved. We haven’t told anyone to be disruptive, we haven’t told anyone to act inappropriately, and the left should not get away with trying to disregard the genuine anger that exists out there right now especially not when they are manufacturing their outrage about so called manufactured anger. Thanks.

Summary:
Despite the full-throttle support pharmaceutical companies have offered for ObamaCare, House Democrats inserted price controls into the bill on Friday that would destroy the industry and stop new miracle cures from being developed.

Transcript:

One of the major changes that was made to the health care bill on Friday in the House Energy and Commerce Committee was the addition of what they call Medicare Part D price negotiation. This was in the so-called Unity 2 amendment. What this means is that Medicare Part D will go to the drug companies and “negotiate for the price that they want to pay.” The problem is that Medicare is such a huge buyer with control of a huge amount of the market and the government does not really negotiate. They’ll say what price they want to pay and the drug companies will be forced to take that price and they can make money on the margin that way. The government will pay them more than it costs them to make a pill. The manufacturing of a pill is not very expensive but what it will do is the same thing that’s happening in the rest of the world. It will force prices too low to cover the cost of researching, developing, and testing new drugs which is very expensive for a number of reasons not the least of which is the burden of FDA regulation. In effect, the de facto price controls that will go into Medicare under a regime of negotiation will mean that no new miracle drugs will be developed anymore in the entire world. The whole world is free riding off of the ability to earn market prices here in the United States. That will be destroyed by this provision. It’s kind of amusing because PhRMA and the big pharmaceutical companies have tried to buy themselves into ObamaCare. They’ve been running the Harry and Louise ads on TV, they cut this deal with the $80 billion discount for the White House, and still House Democrats want to defect on them and put price controls in that will destroy their industry. I think it’s an important lesson for any other businesses in this debate, any other parts of the health care industry, do not make a deal with the devil; you will end up getting burned. Thanks, I’ll be back tomorrow, bye.

Summary:
This program is completely crazy. We actually think that destroying automobiles will make us richer. This almost exactly the broken window fallacy in action, and the Senate should not waste more billions on this program.

Transcript:
Think about how crazy this is. We are actually paying people to give up cars so that we can destroy those cars. We are destroying something that has value on the theory that this will somehow make us wealthier. This is almost literally the broken window fallacy that Frederik Bastiat famously explained. Yes, if you destroy a window the shopkeeper will have to buy a new window and that will create economic activity for the glazer who will create the window and he in turn will buy something else with the money and so on. But that ignores the fact that if the window hadn’t been destroyed the shopkeeper would have spent the money on something else. Actually destroying things can not be economically productive. If it is actually good for the economy to destroy hundreds of thousands of working automobiles then it would be great for the economy if a bomb blew up in a city or a hurricane hit us because we would have to rebuild those things. Of course, that’s crazy. We are literally destroying value in this program and not only that, but the people who are most hurt are lower income people, people who would buy inexpensive used cars that have now been destroyed and taken off the market. Of course we are being told that it’s for the environment but we’ve been told for decades that used cars are better for the environment because they don’t have the huge costs associated with creating all that steel in terms of emissions and all of the other things that go into an automobile. Anyway you look at it, this a crazy program and I hope that the Senate will vote not to extend it this week. Thanks a lot, bye.

Summary:
Listener questions answered from Alan Cobb about the NL Central, Alex Siegel about the Red Sox, Robert Oliveira about the stimulus, Mike Demokovich about cap-and-trade, Mary Beth Weiss about government intervention in education and health care, and Alina Morris about moving abroad.

Transcript:
First question. Alan Cobb wants to know who I think will win the NL Central. I’ll go with the St. Louis Cardinals. With the Holliday addition, they’ve got Khalil Green and Troy Glaus coming back and I just wouldn’t ever really bet on the Cubs. Alex Siegel wants to know if Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz testing positive for steroids in 2003 casts a light over the Red Sox World Series victory. That one sort of answers itself doesn’t it? If two of your main guys are cheating and you win, it isn’t that much of a win. Robert Oliveira wants to know if I saw the AP report on stimulus. I did, and I’m not surprised to find that stimulus money is not going to desperately needed repairs on bridges and other real transportation priorities because the whole impetus is with spending money as quickly as possible and when you do that you don’t have time for engineering, you don’t have time to properly set priorities, and that’s why the vast majority of the money is going to repaving projects, some of which may be needed but I wish we would actually prioritize and do the things that we need to do in terms of infrastructure instead of just shoveling as much money out the door as quickly as we can. Mike Demkovich wants to know, if cap-and-trade were a baseball team, which team would it be and why? I’ll say the Washington Nationals because cap-and-trade is one of the most hapless worst ideas ever, it is completely incompetent and bungling, and so are the Washington Nationals this year. Maybe the 1962 Mets if we want to take a historical perspective on that one. Mary Beth Weiss wants to know why the areas where government has been most involved in the economy, education and health care, have the biggest problems with cost containment and quality in terms of education. I would contrast them to the areas with the most competition and where markets have been most competitive. Things like apparel, things like electronics where there is intense import competition we’ve seen falling prices and rising quality. I think the reason is simply because when there is government involvement there aren’t properly aligned incentives for there to be investment and innovation, and for new ideas to really drive the market forward. I think we’ve seen that where government is more involved that’s where we have the worst outcomes. Alina Morris wants to know where we would move if we got exiled from the U.S. What other countries are worth going to. First of all, I don’t think my wife would ever agree to leave the U.S. But if we did leave, I’d probably go with New Zealand. It’s number 3 on the Economic Freedom of the World Index and we love Flight of the Conchords. Have a great weekend everyone, bye.

Summary:
Beating the Democrats' Washington takeover of health care, or even delaying it, may be the key to stopping cap-and-trade, and holding members of the House who voted for cap-and-trade accountable may be the key to beating the health care takeover. We need to keep fighting both to beat either.

Transcript:
Health care and cap-and-trade fights are linked. You probably didn’t notice it in the news yesterday with all the talk of health care going on but Senator John Kerry said something very interesting to a reporter at a news conference. He said that “We may not have Senate action on cap-and-trade before the Copenhagen International Climate Negotiations in December because the Senate is so busy on health care we may not be able to get to the cap-and-trade bill.” I think that underscores why the outcomes here are linked. If we can beat them on health care or even delay them for months and continue to make this a knock down, drag out, bloody fight to get any action on in the Senate it will push all of the other far-left priorities off the agenda including cap-and-trade which they are already anticipating potentially not getting to. We can also link the two in our recess activities in August when we go after the House members who voted for the disastrous cap-and-trade bill. We can say they better not sell us out again on health care and layer on another multi-trillion dollar bureaucracy on top of us at the same time they voted to do that on us in the energy sector. If we link these two fights on the House side, we can make this much much more difficult for them to pass this in the House and drag out the timetable and even if we lose in the House then have a much better shot to beat health care in the Senate and then take away all of their momentum and also beat cap-and-trade. Even if we lose on health care, dragging the fight out will make it that much more difficult for them even to attempt to fight on cap and trade. I know a lot of folks are concerned about one or the other of these two issues but we really need to fight both of them throughout August in order to be effective and beat both of them because these fights are now linked. Remember tomorrow is listener question day on the podcast. Please send in your questions on Twitter or Facebook and I’ll try to answer as many as I can. Thanks.

Dems have apparently reached a deal that will get 4 of 7 Blue Dogs on Energy and Commerce to support the bill and get it out of committee, but the changes are minor and mostly just steer more resources to rural districts. Fortunately, the deal also delays a House floor vote until September, and we must keep the pressure on throughout August.

There are rumors that three Senate Republicans are close to a sell-out deal that will still give Washington effective control over health care. They are Chuck Grassley, Olympia Snowe, and Mike Enzi. If you know anyone in Maine, Iowa, or Wyoming please tell them to contact these offices immediately.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn has filed a discharge petition to force a vote on her excellent legislation, HR 391, that would stop the EPA from shoehorning vast global warming regulations into the 1970 Clean Air Act. All members of Congress must be encouraged to support her effort and take control of this issue away from the EPA and return it to the elected branches.

Excellent questions from Tom Jenney, Joanna Kerpen, and Alex Siegel regarding why centrist Dems are fixated on fiscal aspects of health care, White House pressure, and legendary Mets manager Bobby Valentine.

You do, of course. President Obama has now explicitly opened the door to middle class tax hikes, along with major business tax hikes and cuts to health care for the poor and elderly.

We're $200K in the hole for every man, woman, and child in the United States. Maybe it's time to stop spending.

Why big business, including big insurance companies, support the huge health care bill, which is economic attack on small business and regular Americans.

If card check is removed from the ridiculously-named Employee Free Choice Act, as now appears to be the case, the bill is still an economic disaster. The forced arbitration provisions are the real threat.

Questions from Jeremy Dunlap on real health care reform and deficit reduction, Bret Jacobson on who the key Senate targets are right now on cap-and-trade, and Marlene English on Joe Biden.

Unions plans are not only exempt from new regulations under House Dems bill, they also get a huge bailout at taxpayers expense. No wonder unions provide all the foot soldiers pushing for the bill. Help us read the bill at www.examinethebill.com.

The House Democrats' draft health care bill is an even worse economic disaster than expected, with sharply higher taxes on employers, investors, and workers that will deepen and prolong our economic difficulties.

The six month deficit topped a staggering $1 trillion, the recession marches on, and some in Washington are trying to push for yet another big-spending stimulus bill. This is a crazy idea and NoStimulus.com has been relaunched to top it.

Democrats latest tax hike is an old-fashioned income tax hike on high income earners--a surefire disaster for the economy and revenues during an economic downturn.

I answer questions from Christian Chessman, David All, Steve Evangelista, Beau Phillips, Steve Mancuso, Peter Klein, Allen Brooks, Lewis McCrary on a wide range of topics including watermelon, Twitter v. Facebook, baseball, broadband stimulus funds, stimulus 2, and TV's Law & Order.

Obama's budget chief was correct that giving big businesses cap-and-trade permits amounts to corporate welfare, so how can Obama support the Waxman-Markey bill?

The Government Accountability Office says states are misusing funds already while some Democrats are calling for another round of big government spending under the guise of stimulus.

With baseless anti-trust probes of this highly competitive industry and other rumblings from Capitol Hill, it looks like it might be.

As the Senate debates Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, I hope they will focus on her views regarding the rule of law--mainly her belief that the law should be experimental and unpredictable--which is at the center of many of the problems we are seeing now in our economy and political regime.

I discuss the new jobs report and the apparent failure of the stimulus.

Franken's election as the 60th Democratic Senator makes a Specter-led card check "compromise" likely, but Specter's proposal could be even worse than the original bill and must be stopped.

Summary:
From the Denver airport I explain how single payer was Plan A, "public option" is Plan B, and employer/individual mandate are Plan C, but all are just means to the same Washington takeover end.

Transcript:
Democratic so-called health care reform is all about the government takeover, straight up. The original plan was the Canadian-style single payer system, which President Obama repeatedly said in the run-up to the election last year that he would favor if it were politically feasible. Seeing that it’s not politically feasible, Plan B is the public plan option designed by a professor at Yale named Jacob Hacker, who says that the theory behind it is that you use it as a step toward single payer by giving people the illusion of choice while the so-called public plan runs the private firms out of business and you end up with everyone in the government plan anyway. If we beat that, which now looks possible in the next couple of weeks, they’ll go to Plan C, which is an employer or individual mandate that you must have health insurance, along with guaranteed issue and community rating which means that everyone will be paying the same amount regardless of whether they have pre-existing conditions and regardless of what their health risks are. It’s the socialization of health care, and we’re going to have government regulation that will mandate that all of these nominally private plans will essentially look the same. At the end of the day, Plan C is just like Plans A and B. It is a completely government run system and it must be stopped for that reason. Thank you.

The Senate fight is going to be tough and down to the wire, but if we educate and mobilize we can win.

If they care at all about restoring the brand and reclaiming the mantle of fiscal conservatism, Republicans must vote no on HR2454, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. These Congressmen need to hear from constituents: Bono Mack, Castle, Tim Johnson, Mark Kirk, Bartlett, Ehlers, Frelinghuysen, Lance, Peter King, Dent, Gerlach, Platts, Petri. Call here: http://tinyurl.com/la96rt

As the massive global warming tax bill moves towards a House floor vote Friday, Democrats avoid any mention of "global warming," and Obama vows to go after seltzer water: "At a time of great fiscal challenges, this legislation is paid for by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink."

A backroom deal between key Democrats has apparently paved the way for a vote on the massive cap-and-trade energy tax in the House later this week. This podcast explains what's going on and how to stop it!

Bailouts, government takeovers, arbitrary interventions, and now a health care takeover represent a breakdown of the Rule of Law and a new, chilling return to the arbitrary rule of man.

Phil Kerpen's latest Washington Update

The president now supports exactly what he campaigned against in both the primary and the general, and huge new taxes on everyone are coming to pay for a Washington takeover of health care.

Senate Environmental and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer made it official yesterday: Senate will wait till Fall to take up cap-and-trade, and the Waxman-Markey House bill will be the vehicle used.

Proponents of big government are looking to take over the Internet. At the FCC and in Congress, once-unthinkable heavy-handed regulatory approaches are being considered that would reduce Internet service providers to old-fashioned regulated utilities.

From the road in Baton Rouge! Answer questions from Joanna Ensticve, Kendall Kaut, Eapen Thampy, Christine McCoy.

Speaker Pelosi is trying to strong-arm Chairmen Rangel and Peterson to move cap-and-trade out of their committees and pass it in the House, Tensions are high, but the real fight will still probably be in the Senate.

In the midst of huge policy changes reversing much of Reagan's impressive legacy, Capitol Hill will today be focused on the Great Communicator as his statue is unveiled in the Capitol Rotunda.

The White House claim that universal health care will be a big economic winner ignores the huge cost to taxpayers and fails to explain any way to cut costs other than delaying and denying care.

The GM bankruptcy deal is a straight up government takeover. Expect this country to be government-run and politicized for a long, long time at huge expense to taxpayers.

High speed edition. Bret Jacobson on GM, Susan Staub and Kendall Kaut on card check, Alina Morris on California, Trevor Leach on China, Matt Muir on marijuana, Jeff Rosenfeld on the gold standard, Lori Callaghan Macomber on the national sales tax, and Howard Fienberg on New York senators trying to stop NHL team in Hamilton.

New projections from the Energy Information Administration show demand and prices soaring in coming years. We need to rebuild the grassroots groundswell to unlock American energy resources.

The White House floats the idea of a value-added tax--a kind of national consumption tax on top of all our current taxes--as a funding mechanism for their health care takeover in today's Washington Post. Very bad idea.

The increasingly likely, deeply-flawed funding source for the Democrats' Washington takeover of health care.

Questions answered from Larry Ward, Robert Oliveira, Jimmy Kandylas, and Eapen Thampy.

With bailouts soaring to over $100 billion and political control increasing daily, the auto companies are starting to look like government agencies.

New proposed standards will increase deaths on the roads and wallop U.S. economy.

The Court agreed to hear Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB, a case that could take down the entire Sarbanes-Oxley law, unlocking public capital markets and helping drive a financial and economic recovery.

The cap-and-trade national energy tax bill faces a key test in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. These key Democrats are considering no votes and need encouragement: Ross (Ark.), Green (Texas), Matheson (Utah), Melancon (La.), Barrow (Ga.), Butterfield (N.C.), Engel (N.Y.), Gonzalez (Texas), Rush (Ill.).

Questions from Daniel Erspamer, Robert Oliveira, CPinDC, Steve Mullins, and Megan Barth relating to bailouts, deficits, spending, and inflation.

Another terrible idea in the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.

Is there anything they won't tax? Democratic proposals look frighteningly like Hoover's 1932 tax hikes.

Obama's only-tax-the-rich promise is already broken and bigger middle class tax hikes are baked into the cake with huge spending increases.

So-called Clean Water Restoration Act would delete the word navigable from the Clean Water Act, giving EPA and the Army Corps regulatory authority over all the water in the U.S. and all the land water flows over, which is everywhere. This enormous threat is moving in Senate committee this week.

Robert Oliveira asks about AIG, Steve Mancuso asks about Reagan and Bush failing to balance the budget, and Michael Long asks why anyone would lend to unionized companies after what happened to the autos.

Feinstein proposal and other so-called compromises are bad deals. Bottom line is nobody should be forced to join a union who doesn't want to.

Centerpiece of Democratic reform plan is a backdoor to complete government health care takeover.

So-called conservative members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will be tested on energy tax hikes in today's meeting. They should sign the NoClimateTax.com pledge.

Today's proposed tax increased in foreign-sourced income of U.S. companies is exactly wrong. It will send more companies running for the borders.

The left calls itself progressive, but there is no progress in taking away control over people's lives. Freedom is the truly progressive idea.

The White House solution for Chrysler is for the UAW to own a majority stake in the company, as if the problem was that the union just didn't have enough control before. Probably a very bad thing from Chrysler, but possibly a learning experience.

The No Climate Tax Pledge is the key to finding out who is trying to use a global warming bill to hide a tax hike.

What it means and how to stop it.

The little-noticed good news in the budget--we might actually get a death tax cut.

Skyrocketing rates are largely a result of new regulation, and Obama's intervention will only make things worse.

Environmentalism has become a watermelon, green on the outside and Communist red inside.

Conversion to common shares tightens government control and frees up TARP for more meddling. Cap-and-trade is another huge bailout.

Inaugural KerpenCast on the strategy of holding the economy hostage to EPA greenhouse gas regulation to promote cap-and-trade.