Posted on 09/20/2010 8:52:12 AM PDT by jazusamo
Conservative senator says GOP should run on Rep. Ryan's fiscal 'Roadmap.'
Washington (CNSNews.com) – Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C) said it could take years to repeal the Democrats' $1-trillion health care overhaul mandating the individual purchase of health insurance.
DeMint, in an interview with CNSNews.com during the Values Voters Summit on Friday, also said the Republican Party should run on the economic plan presented by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to address tax policy and solvency for Social Security and Medicare.
“It’s going take a few years” to repeal the health-care reform bill, DeMint told CNSNews.com. “What we can do after this election is delay the funding and implementation of the bill and then get a president in 2012 who understands this is going to ruin medicine and bankrupt our country.”
The Ryan plan, "A Roadmap for America's Future," has only 13 co-sponsors in the House and has not become a platform for the 2010 mid-term elections. CNSNews.com asked DeMint if the Ryan plan should be similar to the 1994 “Contract with America,” the platform that helped Republicans retake Congress that year.
“Paul Ryan’s roadmap to the future is the only comprehensive legislation now that fixes our tax code, saves Social Security and Medicare and fixes our health care system and begins to cut spending over a long period of time,” DeMint said.
“The fact that it has been so difficult to get congressmen and senators to even have a hearing on something like this just tells you that our focus is not on the national interest, it’s on self-serving political interests that are symbolized by this earmark factory,” he added.
The Congressional Budget Office said the “roadmap” would put Medicare on a more sustainable path. The Ryan plan preserves Medicare and Social Security for those 55 and older, but it reforms the program to preserve it for younger generations.
In a campaign season revolving around fiscal responsibility, DeMint said that earmarks would be a top priority.
“The first thing we have to cut is the earmark factory we have in Washington,” he said. “When we’re constantly focused on taking home the bacon, focused on parochial interests, we can’t focus on the national interests. I think when America sees us giving up self-serving earmarks, they’ll start believing that we’re really serious about cutting spending.”
DeMint Ping!
The “focus is not on the national interest, it’s on self-serving political interests”.
******
Well said and so true. CHANGE is needed more than ever.
Why a few years? Just don’t fund any of it....most is unconstitutional and the rest is “make work for UNIONS”. Don’t fund any new health care!
It will indeed take years. So many have become dependent on the Free Fairy Skittles, it would be very disruptive to cut it off suddenly.
We can all think of 1000 places where we could start, though. I suggest giving the car companies back to the rightful shareholders in year 1, along with entirely separating government from Fannie & Freddie in week 1.
demint julep.
Till January 2013, in fact, but we can defund it in January 2011.
He agrees with you. :)
The sooner this monster is destroyed the better. It has already done tremendous damage. Check out the story from the NYT I posted about people over 50 facing possible permanent unemployment. This is a direct result of the high cost of health care and insurance brought on by government interference in the market, and the problem is getting worse due to the specter of Obamacare.
It has taken more than a “Few Years” to work at destroying the foundations of Liberty. To restore it, will take at least as long. We are trying to roll back to before the “Great Society” and FDR and maybe even earlier.
Obamacare is just one tiny part of the destruction we have to mend.
Just GET IT DONE!!!
I’ll personally confirm back through the “Great Society” and from what I’ve read you’re correct on the rest of it.
HEY DEMINT, WHAT ABOUT THE CLASS ACT?????
REPEAL CLASS before it begins enrolling participants and collecting premiums, which could be as soon as January 1, 2011. Is anyone in Congress paying attention?
Obamacare’s largest ticking entitlement time-bomb: the CLASS Act. My new op-ed on the subject is here, and my new report, co-written with Jim Capretta, is here.
CLASS is a new long-term-care insurance program that was inserted into Obamacare so that Congress could raid its $70 billion surplus through 2020 to cover Obamacare’s initial deficits. Like the raided Social Security trust fund, future taxpayers will have to repay that $70 billion with interest when the program falls into deficit later.
Thus, even Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) admits that Congress has enacted “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.”
It gets worse. CLASS is simultaneously 1) voluntary, 2) supposedly self-financing (premiums must be raised to match benefits), and 3) required to charge the same premium to healthy and unhealthy individuals of a given age. This is a recipe for insolvency.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/233658/ready-next-trillion-dollar-bailout-brian-riedl
Thanks for posting and NO, it doesn't look like Congress is paying attention.
Aren't we already "disrupted" already? What's a little more disruption between friends?
Take that long, and see if the ensuing civil war won’t make things happen a bit quicker.
Maybe so BUT................
Congress CAN UNfund And UnderFund everything else from Education programs to Interior dept programs to other programs like anything related to Federal Parks.... OH and endangered animal programs.. There must a couple thousand programs that can be UNfunded or UnderFunded..
They could also make Federal Worker Unions ILLEGAL.. just for starters.. Lets find out whos a socialist and whos NOT...
0bamacare is a house of cards built on sand. I think that we should consider a bill that explicitly allow a religious exemption to the individual mandate. Clearly, the Amish will qualify for an exemption and Muslims (under Sharia law ironically) may also be able to qualify. Why shouldn’t those with philosophic or religious exemptions be similarly allow to opt out through mechanisms such as the Sharing Ministries? In a similar vein, the SCOTUS has ruled that conscientious objectors to war can claim the exemption on philosophic grounds and are not required be a member of a specific religion or sect.
If the individual mandates are eliminated, the entire system will unravel. Conservatives will opt out because of religious reasons (abortion funding), the poor value of the exchanges and the heavily regulated nominally “private” insurance. Those out of the system will use their MSAs (which should also be increased), Sharing Ministries or something analogous, and possibly some form of catastrophic insurance (perhaps a policy could still be purchased abroad). Without the mandates, there will be drastically reduced funding for the exchanges and the nominally private large insurance companies will not be able to profitably sell insurance because of the combination of no mandate and pre-existent exclusion prohibitions.
I don’t expect them to succeed, merely to try. Get a bill to repeal it on the floor, and make Republicans vote on it. Show us who we need to oppose in the ‘12 primaries.
Bump!
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