Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Senator Durbin, the Majority Whip. Gotta love this guy. A heart tried and true.



Everyday, Senator Durbin is on the job. He is there at morning call and anytime when the Democratic majority needs representation. I have listened to his statements regarding the Senate Health Care Reform Bill and he is correct.

This Health Care Reform initiative is a Democratic responsibility. It is where Democrats live and hopefully where they always live. They identify with 'the little person' in our society and seek to make their quality of life better and their struggle less of a burden. Basically, Democrats come to the aid of the Middle Class in recognizing it is where we can find the strength of our economy and the beauty of the American spirit being lived out everyday.

To that understanding, the Senate Bill is a responsible act of legislation to relieve the American people of ever encroaching higher health care costs and health care insurance. We have not witnessed any legislation being pursued by any Republican or any Republican majority that would even begin to fend off the attack on the American citizen by the Health Care Insurance Lobby. To them the American citizen is fair game for any and all ruthless tactics and we have witnessed and/or experienced plenty of that.

This is the burden of the Democratic Party. They accept their burden graciously, but, they are always criticized for moving such measures forward in the first place, as if the market place is supposed to take care of everything. As if there is written in some law somewhere, the market place is the absolute answer to every American citizen's problems.

Well, if that were true we wouldn't have had to bailout Wall Street, we won't have Health Care Insurance Administrators signing the death certificate of their members and we wouldn't have lead an illegal war in Iraq and Halliburton would have sued Dick Cheney.

So, the issues that are at the forefront of the Democratic Party agenda are always unpopular. They sometimes require adding new taxes. This time, they got off easy. They only had to add taxes to the most wealthy of Americans. But, sometimes the justice the populous of the USA needs comes with a price. Nothing in life is free.

As a result, the Can Do Party is attacked for taking money out of people's pockets and robbing candy from babies. The Democrats always have an image problem because they don't 'buy votes' with tax rebates in the form of government checks. It is easy to be a Republican. All they have to do is cut taxes, cut government services and tell folks they have the right to have as many jobs as they need to make ends meet.

Heck, Republicans don't even want the USA to have a government paid military, they rather turn National Security over to Blackwater and allow the drug cartels to build a new drug economy that will prove a better opportunity when they outsource jobs that makes Wall Street happy. And that is the truth of the situation.

So, when I witness Senator Durbin walk to the front of the Senate and I hear him speak to the merits of the Senate Health Care Reform Bill day after day after day, I know someone in this country is a great statesman that upholds the values of the USA Constitution.

The Senate Bill is moving along. Today they will consider the Crapo Amendment. That is Senator Crapo in his state. The suit.



In some ways it sounds as though Senator Crapo means well, when he states there should never be any taxes on people earning $200,000 or less to pay for the Health Care Reform Bill as written by the Senate. However, the methodology in the bill as proposed by his Amendment is not good.

I'll explain.

See, the Senate Bill has aready been moved to the floor for cloture. That means there will be debate and movement toward a vote, which already two weeks long. The Crapo Amendment is an amendment to the bill. So, the bill has to be passed in order to invoke the amendment. That means the Senate bill will pass into law before any of the amendments take effect.

The Crapo amendment is very nonspecific in its approach to being sure there are no taxes on people earning less than $200,000. I'll mention the type of taxes Crapo addresses, but, basically the Democrats have already moved most of any potential tax on people below $200,000 off the bill with a restructuring of funding similar to the House.

But, the Crapo amendment wants to send the bill back to the Finance Committee to be sure there are no taxes on people earning less than $200.000. I don't know if that is even possible. The Senate Bill has moved out of committee. That was by vote of the committees that wrote it. I have never heard any bill being moved back to committee once it is passed into law and that is very poor precedent.

I don't believe the Crapo amendment is constitutional in its methodology as it goes against Constitutional procedure in passage of a bill.

For that reason alone, it would be wrong to vote in favor of the amendment.

But, for sake of argument, let's just say all that is possible. A bill is passed into law and it goes back to the Finance Committee for rework of its financing to be sure there are no Americans under $200,000 earnings that will be taxed in ANY way.

The taxes that are mentioned are primarily 'user' taxes, similar to sale taxes. The taxes called surtax on health insurance are being reworked by the Senate to exclude anyone other than the upper 0.2% of the populous of the USA that earn more than $2.4 million in a year as a single taxpayer or $4.8 million per year as a couple.

So, those surtaxes are being removed from the bill. That was made clear yesterday by Senators from Ohio, Florida and Minnesota. The remaining taxes are 'user of service taxes.' They include taxes on Medical Devices, Plastic Surgery and stuff like that.

Senator Crapo wanted to align himself with the spirit of speech made by President Obama. I thought that was a nice thing to do, however, the methodology that would have to be applied to such taxes would be very complicated and would result in a great deal of problems to the consumer.

Basically what would have to happen is that any consumer of such services earning $200.000 or less in a year would have to carry some kind of 'tax card' stating they didn't have to pay the tax. There is a high degree of fraud and corruption that could occur with such a card and there is the administrative cost of producing such a card.

What can occur and what should occur and why Senator Crapo needs to go back to the drawing board is very, very simple.

Senator Crapo needs to withdraw his amendment and rewrite it to read, "When any individual earning $200,000 per year or any couple earning $400,000 incur taxes affiliated with the Health Reform Bill of 2009, they may take those taxes off their Adjusted Gross Income. That way, those folks earning $200,000 per year would have a method of removing those taxes even though it would be after the fact. They would have to have receipts and there would not have to be an extra worksheet, but, simply an addition of the receipts that would be entered into a new and special place on all tax returns for the reduction of those taxes.

Or better than effecting the Adjusted Gross Income, add it at the end of the tax return as a credit for refund.

Simple. Wouldn't have to go back to committee, won't violate the USA Constitution and it would uphold the spirit of the speech by President Obama.

Senator Max Baucus started the Senate session today and it was with good news.



Senator Baucus stated the Senate bill has passed several tests by government budget offices. The Congressional Budget Office and the Health and Human Services Actuary (Accountant) that oversees Medicare has stated the current Senate bill would extend Medicare solvency for eight additional years. That puts the solvency of Medicare to the year 2025.

Senator Baucus also stated, the Senate bill would bring sincere savings to the Federal Debt, nearly of a tillion US over ten years. These savings would be due to cuts in wasteful spending that are currently built into Medicare.