Posted on 07/23/2009 6:57:14 AM PDT by bestintxas
There are rules regarding franked mail which apply equally to Democrats as to Republicans. Just imagine if there was no way to block misleading and inaccurate mail sent by Democrats on the taxpayer dime.
well now, first of all, the Democrats would not ask permission, and second, even on the off chance they did or Republicans found out about it by chance and told them they couldn’t, do you really think for a second the demonrats would pay any mind to it?
Nothing in this congress is being applied equally. Look at rule 16...
Take out ads in every major city.
Fact is, we have abject marxists running the government who have been put into positions of high public trust all the way up to the President. They are now using those positions to benefit their radical friends, advance their radical ideology, and ride rough shod over the laws and constitution of this nation.
OUTSTANDING answer to the question asked by their Marxist hero, Lenin: "What is to be done?"
I think the democrats will eventually allow this to be mailled. This is just a delaying tactic, hoping that when the mailing does occur, the vote will already have been taken, therefore the letter cannot do the damage intended.
bookmark
Agree. This is about stopping the bill from hell (and I am not saying that lightly) from being exposed, not so much about cost. Evil will stop at nothing.
Just because the Democrats are more vicious than Republicans when it comes to the rules doesn't mean you should repeal the rules. Just imagine if they'd repealed the filibuster rule those few years ago because the Democrats were using it to stymie the GOP agenda every so often - what an utter and unmitigated disaster that would have been!!
The word is getting out, anyway. Our local liberal newspaper posted an article about Obama’s press conference along with a link to to this Fact Check article.
WASHINGTON President Barack Obama’s assertion Wednesday that government will stay out of health care decisions in an overhauled system is hard to square with the proposals coming out of Congress and with his own rhetoric.
Even now, nearly half the costs of health care in the U.S. are paid for by government at all levels. Federal authority would only grow under any proposal in play.
A look at some of Obama’s claims in his prime-time news conference:
OBAMA: “We already have rough agreement” on some aspects of what a health care overhaul should involve, and one is: “It will keep government out of health care decisions, giving you the option to keep your insurance if you’re happy with it.”
THE FACTS: In House legislation, a commission appointed by the government would determine what is and isn’t covered by insurance plans offered in a new purchasing pool, including a plan sponsored by the government. The bill also holds out the possibility that, over time, those standards could be imposed on all private insurance plans, not just the ones in the pool.
Indeed, Obama went on to lay out other principles of reform that plainly show the government making key decisions in health care. He said insurance companies would be barred from dropping coverage when someone gets too sick, limits would be set on out-of-pocket expenses, and preventive care such as checkups and mammograms would be covered.
It’s true that people would not be forced to give up a private plan and go with a public one. The question is whether all of those private plans would still be in place if the government entered the marketplace in a bigger way.
He addressed some of the nuances under questioning. “Can I guarantee that there are going to be no changes in the health care delivery system?” he said. “No. The whole point of this is to try to encourage changes that work for the American people and make them healthier.”
He acknowledged then that the “government already is making some of these decisions.”
OBAMA: “I have also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it.”
THE FACTS: The president has said repeatedly that he wants “deficit-neutral” health care legislation, meaning that every dollar increase in cost is met with a dollar of new revenue or a dollar of savings. But some things are more neutral than others. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag told reporters this week that the promise does not apply to proposed spending of about $245 billion over the next decade to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients. Democrats and the Obama administration argue that the extra payment, designed to prevent a scheduled cut of about 21 percent in doctor fees, already was part of the administration’s policy, with or without a health care overhaul.
Beyond that, budget experts have warned about various accounting gimmicks that can mask true burdens on the deficit. The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget lists a variety of them, including back-loading the heaviest costs at the end of the 10-year period and beyond.
OBAMA: “You haven’t seen me out there blaming the Republicans.”
THE FACTS: Obama did so in his opening statement, saying, “I’ve heard that one Republican strategist told his party that even though they may want to compromise, it’s better politics to ‘go for the kill.’ Another Republican senator said that defeating health reform is about ‘breaking’ me.”
OBAMA: “I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”
THE FACTS: The facts are in dispute between black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the white police sergeant who arrested him at his Cambridge, Mass., home when officers went there to investigate a reported break-in. But this much is clear: Gates wasn’t arrested for being in his own home, as Obama implies, but for allegedly being belligerent when the sergeant demanded his identification. The president did mention that the professor was charged with disorderly conduct. Charges were dropped.
OBAMA: “If we had done nothing, if you had the same old budget as opposed to the changes we made in our budget, you’d have a $9.3 trillion deficit over the next 10 years. Because of the changes we’ve made, it’s going to be $7.1 trillion.”
THE FACTS: Obama’s numbers are based on figures compiled by his own budget office. But they rely on assumptions about economic growth that some economists find too optimistic. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, in its own analysis of the president’s budget numbers, concluded that the cumulative deficit over the next decade would be $9.1 trillion.
Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.
bttt
I think, as others here do, they should just mail it with RNC and pac funds.
I think most things that come out of Congress are misleading.
this is a disaster...there isn’t a what if...this current congress is destroying our country.
If the rules were applied fairly as they were intended there wouldn’t be a problem.
The chart in question isn’t necessarily misleading - they haven’t ruled it is misleading...it is under investigation and they will bury it in committee.
The only people being misleading are the ones pushing this health care bill.
No, they use the ‘frank’ funds. You know the democrats are doing it to support their position, even as we speak. I hope one or many of the republican lawmakers will just go ahead and mail it, the democrats be damned! The house mail office cannot stop it, it would be a federal crime, to interfer with the delivery.
“Democrats argue that sending the chart to constituents as official mail would violate House rules because the information is misleading.”
***
My Congressjerk sends me mail all the time, particularly around election time, and I’m willing to bet that at least 99% of the contents of these mailings is bogus. But it’s all right for him to send these propaganda pieces, but not ok for Republicans to send their own.
Sounds like some Constitution violations here.
Wouldn't this likewise apply to virtually every communication coming from the Democrats?
A partisan majority in congress leads to tyranny, especially when it involves the socialistic democrats. I do not remember the Republicans doing any of this when they had the majority a few years back.
Clearly the dims don’t want this chart in the hands of the public, which means this chart is a gold mine for those who really believe in transparency. This is reason enough to make sure it gets out there. Send it via campaign or party money.
One would think they could have heard about Youtube by now.
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