“‘barack obama is a big fat liar’, illustrated” times two – UPDATE
By American Girl in Italy on July 5, 2009 at 6:30 PM in Barack Obama, Current Affairs, Flip Flopping, Health Care, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Obama's Broken Promises, Sara in Italy, Universal Health Care
I read two great posts from NRO, Barack Obama Is a Big Fat Liar by Jim Geraghty, and ‘Barack Obama is a Big Fat Liar,’ Illustrated, by Guy Benson.
Geraghty writes:
Ever since Barack Obama declared his candidacy for president, it’s been easy — and great fun — to spotlight when his promises and statements come with “expiration dates.” The list is long: Public financing. Renegotiating NAFTA. His promise to support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. His inability to disown Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The release of detainee photos. Denouncing Turkey for genocide.
Flip-flops are nothing new in politics, but every once in a while, a president breaks a promise or an important pledge on such an epic level that it defines him, at least in part: “Read my lips: No new taxes.” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” “We did not — repeat — did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages — nor will we.” Even “I will never lie to you.”
Barack Obama’s sudden about-face on taxing employer-provided health insurance deserves to rank among these classics.
He goes on to talk about how “Obama spent $44 million attacking McCain for an idea that Obama no longer opposes“. Read the rest here.
Guy Benson takes the article a step further, and illustrates with video the flip flopping and attacks by Obama, regarding the issue of taxing employer-based benefits.
But now the White House — desperate for revenue — seems to be changing its tune:
In early October [Obama] went even further, calling McCain’s plan “so radical, so out of touch with what you’re facing, and so out of line with our basic values.”
On Capitol Hill, however, Democrats have long liked the idea as a new form of tax revenue. Obama’s relentless denunciation of the proposal would seem to preclude his signing it into law, but “would seem to” is not “does.” Back in March, White House budget director Peter Orszag said taxing employer benefits was among several ideas that “most firmly should remain on the table,” and some congressional Democrats told the Washington Post that White House officials said Obama would accept such a tax “as long as he didn’t have to propose it himself.”
Finally, during Wednesday’s p.r. push for his health-care plan, Obama refused to rule out the proposal that he once said made John McCain unfit for office.
I went back and found a number of the ads Obama ran against McCain on this front. The impending expiration of this particular campaign promise is especially galling when one actually views the ads themselves — bearing in mind that the risky, out-of-touch, unaffordable, deal-breaking healthcare policies these ads ruthlessly targeted are now on the brink of being embraced by their one-time chief critic. Marvel:
Benson posted these must see videos:
One Word;
Can’t Explain;
Presription Ad;
“This last one’s especially laughable in light of this story” – It Gets Worse;
“Finally, for good measure, here’s top Obama strategist David Axelrod explaining on Sunday why “formulations” may force his boss to, well, change his mind.” – Obama Won’t Rule Out Middle Class Tax Hike.
But the story doesn’t stop with taxing employer-provided health insurance and McCain. Obama spent quite a lot of time attacking Hillary on mandates, an idea that he says he could now support.
Acknowledging that his thinking on the issue has “evolved,” President Barack Obama says he could support a law mandating that individuals purchase health care coverage, with fines for those who do not, but he stressed that there must be some kind of waiver for those who are simply unable to afford it.
“People have made some pretty compelling arguments to me [Hmm perhaps like Hillary did all during the primary???] that if we want to have a system that drives down costs for everybody, then we’ve got to have healthier people not opt out of the system,” the president said in an exclusive interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer today on “Good Morning America.”
During the election campaign, Obama said he was opposed to a federal law mandating the purchase of health care coverage. But earlier this month in a letter to Congressional leaders working on the reform legislation, he said he would consider supporting such a measure, if it has room for exemptions for small businesses and individuals who cannot afford the premiums.
Obama would not say if he was open to taxing health benefits, but indicated that there was a breaking point in the balance sheets where he would say that the cost of reforming the system is too great for the federal government to handle.
Obama even went so far as to attack Hillary’s efforts from 1993.
He’ll run his own Henry and Louise ads?? He did, remember?
Susan covered this last year, Krugman: If Obama Is President, There’s No Chance for Universal Health Care
And many of you probably remember this:
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama agree on most policy issues, but that makes their rare differences all the more revealing. To wit, their running scrap over Mrs. Clinton’s “individual mandate” for health care, which Mr. Obama has now had the nerve to expose for its inevitable government coercion.
Mrs. Clinton’s proposal requires everyone to buy health insurance, along with more insurance regulation, a government insurance option for everyone and tax hikes. Mr. Obama likes all that but his mandate would only apply to children. He argues that the reason many people aren’t insured is because it’s too expensive, not because they don’t want it. Mrs. Clinton counters that coverage can’t be “universal” without a mandate.
But then Mr. Obama had the impudence to defend his views. His campaign distributed a mailer in key primary states that claimed the Clinton plan “forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can’t afford it.” It also featured an image of an anxious couple at a kitchen table. The Clinton apparat went apoplectic, claiming the flyer evokes the famous “Harry and Louise” commercials. A common article of liberal faith is that this “smear campaign” doomed HillaryCare in 1994 — as opposed to, say, its huge cost and complexities. But never mind.
Obama repeatedly attacked Hillary Clinton and John McCain for their healthcare plans, and NOW he is moving towards embracing their proposals. Why? Because what he is trying to do is damned expensive, and THEY knew that. He didn’t. The very idea that he is now considering incorporating their plans just goes against everything he campaigned on. The hours and hours of debates discussing healthcare reform…. his constant arguments and attacks. His cockiness and assurance that his plan was the best, and Clinton and McCain were wrong…. It just shows how little he knew, and how willing he is to break a promise.
On Tuesday, Obama himself sounded almost resigned that taxing health benefits is now front and center in the health-care debate. “This is something that’s going to be debated in the House and the Senate,” he told the Virginia audience. “[Virginia Senator] Mark Warner is going to have to weigh in on it. We’re all going to have to weigh in on it.” The President says he still wouldn’t go as far as McCain proposed and completely eliminate the current exclusion on taxation of employer-provided health benefits. (McCain would have offset that with a tax credit of up to $5,000.) But Obama is indicating a new willingness to go at least part of the way there.
“Nobody at this point is — or not many folks — are talking about taxing benefits or completely eliminating the exclusion,” Obama said. But he noted that taxing benefits above a certain point — citing, as an example, $13,000 a year — would have some benefits in holding down costs overall. “If you get some Cadillac plan that costs $17,000, then what we’re going to do [under this scenario] is you’re going to have to pay taxes on that last $4,000,” Obama said. “And the idea that is being debated in Congress right now is, Is that a good way to ensure that people don’t have these big Cadillac plans but instead have more sensible plans?”
The major reason lawmakers are considering taxing these benefits for the first time: there’s a lot of money involved. Depending on how it is structured, a tax on the most expensive benefits could bring in hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated. But it would be a politically treacherous move that would not affect only the wealthy. Many of those generous health plans are also part of union contracts — and in many cases were negotiated in lieu of higher wages — which means Obama might have to go back on his campaign promise not to raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000 a year.
Today, from the Wall Street Journal:Senate Seeks to Pare Tab for Health Overhaul
A revamped Senate bill aimed at improving the nation’s health system would cost $611 billion over a decade, congressional number crunchers estimate, down from $1 trillion two weeks ago.
But the total cost of the health-care overhaul is likely to increase substantially once a key element to expand insurance coverage is added in.Senate leaders on Thursday unveiled fresh details of legislation aimed at carrying out President Barack Obama’s plans to cover the nation’s 46 million uninsured. The new provisions call for all but the smallest employers to provide workers with health insurance or to pay the government an annual penalty of up to $750 per employee.
Senate Democrats and President Obama, trying to assuage fears about the cost of health reform, yesterday touted new estimates that put the price tag for one bill at $611 billion over the next decade.
But the measure drafted by the Senate health committee falls far short of Obama’s goal of providing insurance to virtually every American. Analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, released in a letter yesterday, shows that it would cover just 39 percent of uninsured Americans in 2019 — or about 21 million of the 54 million people expected to lack coverage if no change is made.
Shikha Dalmia, for Forbes, wrote Obama’s Top Five Health Care Lies, and here are the top two:
President Barack Obama walked into the Oval Office with a veritable halo over his head. In the eyes of his backers, he could say or do no wrong because he had evidently descended directly from heaven to return celestial order to our fallen world. Oprah declared his tongue to be “dipped in the unvarnished truth.” Newsweek editor Evan Thomas averred that Obama “stands above the country and above the world as a sort of a God.”
But when it comes to health care reform, with every passing day, Obama seems less God and more demagogue, uttering not transcendental truths, but bald-faced lies. Here are the top five lies that His Awesomeness has told–the first two for no reason other than to get elected and the next three to sell socialized medicine to a wary nation.
Lie One: No one will be compelled to buy coverage.
During the campaign, Obama insisted that he would not resort to an individual mandate to achieve universal coverage. In fact, he repeatedly ripped Hillary Clinton’s plan for proposing one. “To force people to buy coverage,” he insisted, “you’ve got to have a very harsh penalty.” What will this penalty be, he demanded? “Are you going to garnish their wages?” he asked Hillary in one debate.
Yet now, Obama is behaving as if he said never a hostile word about the mandate. Earlier this month, in a letter to Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., he blithely declared that he was all for “making every American responsible for having health insurance coverage, and making employers share in the cost.”
But just like Hillary, he is refusing to say precisely what he will do to those who want to forgo insurance. There is a name for such a health care approach: It is called TonySopranoCare.
Lie Two: No new taxes on employer benefits.
Obama took his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, to the mat for suggesting that it might be better to remove the existing health care tax break that individuals get on their employer-sponsored coverage, but return the vast bulk–if not all–of the resulting revenues in the form of health care tax credits. This would theoretically have made coverage both more affordable and portable for everyone. Obama, however, would have none of it, portraying this idea simply as the removal of a tax break. “For the first time in history, he wants to tax your health benefits,” he thundered. “Apparently, Sen. McCain doesn’t think it’s enough that your health premiums have doubled. He thinks you should have to pay taxes on them too.”
Yet now Obama is signaling his willingness to go along with a far worse scheme to tax employer-sponsored benefits to fund the $1.6 trillion or so it will cost to provide universal coverage. Contrary to Obama’s allegations, McCain’s plan did not ultimately entail a net tax increase because he intended to return to individuals whatever money was raised by scrapping the tax deduction. Not so with Obama. He apparently told Sen. Baucus that he would consider the senator’s plan for rolling back the tax exclusion that expensive, Cadillac-style employer-sponsored plans enjoy, in order to pay for universal coverage. But, unlike McCain, he has said nothing about putting offsetting deductions or credits in the hands of individuals.
In other words, Obama might well end up doing what McCain never set out to do: Impose a net tax increase on health benefits for the first time in history.
CNN Obama interview on Mandates
How does that make economic sense? It apparently didn’t…
But don’t worry. Remember, Obama said, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
Oh, wait.
At a White House press conference on Tuesday, Obama seemed to back off from his promise that people who like their health care plans will be able to keep them under his plan for reform.
Instead of saying that “no one” will take away any American’s health insurance, Obama said only that the government would not do so, but pinned the possible changes on employers, who may adjust their health care plans due to costs.
“I can guarantee you that there’s the possibility for a whole lot of Americans out there that they’re not going to end up having the same health care they have,” he said Tuesday. “Because what’s going to happen is, as costs keep on going up, employers are going to start making decisions: ‘We’ve got to raise premiums on our employees. In some cases, we can’t provide health insurance at all.’”
This was a shift from what the president said just last week, when he told a gathering of the nation’s doctors, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
Well…ok, so don’t worry about that. Obama thinks his plan is so awesome that he most heartedly endorses this plan, and promises that he would use this for his own family members.
Oh, never mind. Well, it’s good enough for you, anyway.
***
Further reading on taxing health benefits:
From the NY Times: Administration Is Open to Taxing Health Benefits
From the California Health Line: Administration Officials Say Obama Is Open to Taxes on Some Benefits
UPDATE: From the AP/Boston Globe:
Americans who refuse to buy medical coverage could be hit with fines of more than $1,000 under a healthcare overhaul bill unveiled yesterday by key Senate Democrats looking to fulfill President Obama’s top domestic priority.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated the fines would raise around $36 billion over 10 years. Senate aides said the penalties would be modeled on the approach taken by Massachusetts, which imposes a fine of about $1,000 a year on individuals who refuse to get coverage. Under the federal legislation, families would pay higher penalties than individuals.
snip
In a letter outlining the details, Senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut said their revised plan would cost dramatically less than an earlier, incomplete proposal and eventually help expand coverage to 97 percent of all Americans.
The two senators said the Congressional Budget Office put the cost of the proposal at $611.4 billion over 10 years, down from $1 trillion two weeks ago.
In a statement, Obama welcomed the revised legislation.
Big surprise….
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
by 
* (Included in the 
* 
.by David Fredosso who wrote 2008's 
- You'll have access to 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books, as well as ultra-fast Web browsing with Amazon Silk -- faster than iPad. Full e-mail and document access and a keyboard. Fire can transmit what is on your screen onto a connected TV or monitor without an accessory. It runs Flash (iPad doesn't). 
