The Smoke Break

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Why They Didn’t Want It Read

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Democracy “is an obstacle to the suppression of freedom which the direction of economic activity requires.”
(Friedrich Hayek)

 

As Americans await the Supreme Court’s decision on the legality of Obamacare, dissection of the monstrous behemoth and analysis of its dangers continues.  The most chilling and therefore most compelling comes from the Cato Institute, which takes a close look at the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).

This board is the reason the Democrats wanted the legislation passed before anyone read and digested its contents.  The IPAB is deliberately designed to shatter the Constitutional separation of powers, its checks and balances; effectively turning the United States of America into the USSA of Amerikka.

  • The IPAB will consist of 15 voting members, each earning upward of $165,000 per year, appointed by the president without any bipartisan requirements and confirmed by the Senate (subject to “recess appointments”).
  • IPAB proposals automatically become law.
  • There is no requirement for ANY input from anyone.
  • They have the power to regulate beyond just Medicare.  Including the laying of taxes as it alone sees fit.
  • Proposals may only be blocked by the House, Senate and president all agreeing upon a substitute.  There is no allowance for congressional action or oversight, no ability for a presidential veto, no requirement for any sort of administrative or judicial review.
  • Citizens may not challenge any proposal in court.
  • The only opportunity to get rid of the IPAB is one, single 7-month window in 2017 and then by a 3/5 majority in both chambers.  Miss that and nothing it ever does may ever be altered by Congress.
  • Even if Congress does manage to get rid of the IPAB during its designed, tiny window of opportunity, it still won’t go away for six more months.

 Some excerpts:

When the unelected government officials on this board submit a legislative proposal to Congress, it automatically becomes law: PPACA requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to implement it.  Blocking an IPAB “proposal” requires at a minimum that the House and the Senate and the president agree on a substitute.  The Board’s edicts therefore can become law without congressional action, congressional approval, meaningful congressional oversight, or being subject to a presidential veto. Citizens will have no power to challenge IPAB’s edicts in court. 

Worse, PPACA forbids Congress from repealing IPAB outside of a seven-month window in the year 2017, and even then requires a threefifths majority in both chambers. A heretofore unreported feature of PPACA dictates that if Congress misses that repeal window, PPACA prohibits Congress from ever altering an IPAB “proposal.”  By restricting lawmaking powers of future Congresses, PPACA thus attempts to amend the Constitution by statute.

 The IPAB “…is anticonstitutional.  Congress’s legislative powers do not include the power to alter the constitutional procedure required for the passage of laws.  Nor does it include the power to entrench legislation by preventing it from being altered by future Congresses.”

In some cases, PPACA vests IPAB’s powers in just one individual. If there are 14 vacancies on the board, the Act allows the
sole appointed member to constitute a quorum, conduct official business, and issue “proposals.”  The greater danger, then, is not that a president might pack the board with multiple party loyalists, but that he might appoint only one. Or none:  if the president fails to appoint any board members (or the Senate fails to confirm the president’s appointments, or a majority of the board cannot agree a proposal) the Act authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to exercise the board’s powers unilaterally.  These powers include the ability to appropriate funds to her own department to administer her own directives.

The Board could propose, for instance, to require states to implement federal laws or to enact new state laws in order to receive federal funding. The Board need only demonstrate that its proposals and recommendations relate to Medicare in some undefined way.

There is [NO enforcement mechanism behind PPACA’s prohibition on taxes]. The Act exempts the Secretary’s implementation of IPAB proposals from administrative and judicial review, so no one could sue to block it. The president could not shelve it, because IPAB submits its proposals directly to Congress. If the Secretary submits a proposal in IPAB’s stead, PPACA requires the president to submit the proposal directly to Congress. The Act allows Congress and the president to block that tax increase by offering a substitute or by mustering a three-fifths majority in the Senate but that merely shows that IPAB’s tax increases and spending cuts are on an equal footing.  If Congress and the president fail to reject IPAB’s tax increase or to enact on a substitute, the Act requires the Secretary to implement it, with the help of funds that IPAB may itself appropriate.

The Act states that Congress may only repeal IPAB if it follows these precise steps:
1. Wait until the year 2017.
2. Introduce a specifically worded “Joint Resolution” in the House and Senate between January 1 and February 1.
3. Pass that resolution with a three-fifths vote of all members of each chamber by August 15.

The president must then sign that joint resolution.

Whereas Congress can repeal any other federal statute at any time with just a majority vote in each chamber and the president’s
signature, under PPACA Congress has only about 15 business days in the year 2017 to propose this joint resolution of repeal.  Otherwise, the Act forever precludes repeal.  Congress must then pass that resolution with a three-fifths supermajority by August 15, 2017, or the Act forever precludes repeal.  Even if a repeal resolution should clear these hurdles, IPAB would retain its power to legislate through January 15, 2018.  If Congress fails to follow these precise steps, then PPACA states the American people’s elected representatives may never repeal IPAB, ever.

 I don’t know anyone who would put their health care choices and decisions into the hands of only one person, let alone only one bureaucrat.  Yet that is what the Democrats cooked up with the IPAB and forced through their majority-controlled Congress.  And if it can happen, rest assured it will happen.  This group of people who believe it is perfectly all right to kill a newborn baby by calling it some variation of an “abortion” yet will defend the right to live of a convicted serial killer have serious mental health problems.  We simply cannot stand by and continue to let the insane run the asylum.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) must be repealed in its entirety.

Scrambling To A Weekend Vote On HR 3962

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Have YOU read all 1,900-plus pages of HR 3962 yet?  Introduced not quite one week ago, it’s doubtful that all of the unrepresenting representatives in the House have, either.  But nonetheless, debate and a vote is being scheduled for Saturday.

I’ve been reading the bill and analyses of it, and as stated earlier, it’s a disaster.  And I’m being very, very kind.  The devil is, of course, in the details, and common sense tells us that when key details remain unresolved it’s pure insanity to force a vote.  But Washington today is purely contrived insanity, designed to baffle Americans into submission so, personally, I’m not the least bit surprised.

But let’s consider a couple of those critical details; the ones the Democrats want to gloss over since they are well aware the majority of tax-paying Americans want nothing to do with them.

Abortion funding:  there is still no language specifically excluding federal funding for abortions.  There is talk about denying it but including language saying women could pay for an abortion themselves, but that doesn’t exclude the woman’s insurance plan from receiving federal funds.  Adding a “third party” to handle the financial transactions is just needlesslly padding someone’s wallet without addressing the issue.  Bottom line:  a gimmick does not an exclusion make and tax-payer money may be sent around twisting corners to pay for abortions.

Illegal immigrants:  House leaders with an eye on 2010 elections desperately want illegal immigrants to be able to buy health insurance from their government option.  Bottom line:  what part of “illegal” do they still not understand?  Enforce the immigrations laws on the books; don’t force American taxpayers to subsidize the health care of criminals.  To even suggest that criminals paying their own premiums is somehow ok is a most blatant blowing of smoke in the faces of real Americans.  It proves only that those in Washington, Democrats espcially, really and truly believe the American people are stupid.  Health insurance premiums do not now and will never cover the entire cost of anyone’s medical care.  No matter how you try to spin it, this leaves the rest of us picking up the tab to give criminals a benefit of citizenship.

Bottom line of the bottom line:  exactly where in the United States Constitution does it mandate this kind of legislation anyway?  That this isn’t even being question or debated is a sign that everyone in Washington needs to go.  Now.

Pelosi Beats The Socialized Medicine Drum

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CSPAN taped House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talking about the status of the “health care reform” legislation.  In it she states that the “glory days are coming to an end for the health insurance industy in our country.  Their profits are obscene, they have increased enormously over the past few years at the expense of America’s consumers.”

She goes on to gush about how wonderful things will be when the government takes over the business of providing health insurance:

“Think of what that means for the vitality of our economy!  So we can encourage entrepreneurship while people have the confidence they will have health insurance and can take more risk.

“There will be a cap on what you pay to the insurance companies each year, but no cap on the benefits you receive.

“And this makes all the difference in the world.”

That “difference”, dangled like a carrot in front of numbnuts suffering from liberal entitlement-derangement syndrome, is between profit and loss, sustainability and bankruptcy.  If you pay someone a dollar and they give you back ten, they are immediately out nine dollars.  If a hundred people pay someone a dollar and are given back ten, that person is then out $900.  If 1,000 people pay one dollar and get back ten, that person is out $9,000.  And if 300 million people pay a dollar and get back ten, that someone is out $270 million.

It’s a difference that, with the “President leading the way, with us being a drumbeat, an echo chamber of the President’s message,” will kill not only people subject to the government’s control of medicine, but the American economy.