The two sentence bill, and I’ll have a Big Mac

What can be accomplished in this world in two sentences?  Most people would agree that very little can be done.  You can’t even place an order at McDonalds without using more than two sentences.  However, the Congressional Republicans have tried to repeal the health-care law in a two-sentence bill on January 26^th 2011.  The repeal passed 245-189 — with only three Democrats voting in favor of it. But the Senate, still controlled by Democrats, will not allow it to pass into law.

The two sentence bill, if it ever became law, would do the following:

1. Add 230 billion to the deficit by 2021 according the Congressional Budget Office.
2. Reduce the number of Americans with health insurance by an estimated 32 million.
3. Allow for health insurers to deny coverage for those individuals who have pre-existing conditions.
4. Deny parents from keeping their children’s coverage up to the age of 26.

By using fewer words than ordering a Big Mac and fries House Republicans are trying to do away with a two-year debate in which both parties invested lots of emotional capital–capital that most Americans, according to the latest poles, do not want spend anymore.  Most Americans want to move forward and end the debate.

The real issue for most Americans is how we can honestly reduce costs while protecting patients’ rights.  These right now include banning health plans from rescinding coverage, eliminating annual coverage limits and lifetime limits, and preventing plans from turning down children with pre-existing conditions.

Moreover, a report released by the US Public Interest Research Group, earlier this month, states that “repeal would strip tax credits from over four million small businesses” and drive up the costs of the individual market by 20% by 2016, leaving 57 million American’s with pre-existing conditions to face coverage denials and price discriminations.  The report estimates that by the end of the decade nearly 4.5 million jobs could be lost due to rising employer health care costs.

No one can really predict what will happen over the next decade in the health care industry.  To repeal the new health-care law after all of the debate that went on in this country isn’t right.  Rather, it seems more advantageous for us to build upon the new law and refine it wherever necessary.  No law is perfect.  So, let’s not dismiss it with a two-sentence bill that requires as little thought as ordering a Happy Meal.

The Politics of Not Raising the National Debt Limit

Recently, Speaker of the House John Boehner reiterated his party’s intention not to raise the limit on our nation’s national debt.   Boehner called for action to “cut spending and end the job-killing spending binge in Washington.” in effort to distract the American people from what got us in the predicament in the first place, mainly the fleecing of our economy by U.S. banks.  These banks were over-leveraged and under-regulated by all rational accounts.

So what happens if the Republicans get their way and refuse to raise the debt ceiling?  Senator Lindsey Graham, who is straying from his ilk on this issue, told CNN point-blank, “Let me tell you what’s involved if we don’t lift the debt ceiling: financial collapse and calamity throughout the world. That’s not lost upon me.”

A letter sent by Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, to the new Congress outlined the urgency to lift the debt ceiling.  Failure to do so would force the Treasury to default on legal obligations and payments to bondholders here and abroad “causing catastrophic damage to the economy,” Mr. Geithner said.  Stopping payment on the debt would threatened many federal benefits from military salaries to Social Security and Medicare.

“Given the gravity of the challenges facing the U.S. and world economies, the world’s confidence in our creditworthiness is even more critical today,” Mr. Geithner said.

Currently, the U.S. is approximately $335 billion from its authorized debt ceiling of $14.29 trillion. The debt ceiling would need to be raised by the end of March and no later than by mid-May to skirt default.  Like the recession of 2008, the worst since the Great Depression of 1929, missing a debt payment is unprecedented in our country’s history.

One of the first actions taken by the new Congress was to approve new rules, thus making it harder to pass a debt-limit increase. No longer will an increase be automatic with passage of a budget resolution; it will have to be voted on separately.

Is not lifting the debt ceiling just a political ploy by the new Congress to make us think that all of this spending has led this country to 9.4% unemployment rate?  When in reality we know what really happened.

Maintaining our economic strength as a country is vital to our prosperity as a people.  It is imperative that we stand behind our debt obligations and signal to the rest of the world the U.S. is still a viable, global economic power.   Let’s not lose sight of what is important.  Let’s cut through all of this political posturing in Washington and do the “right” thing.  Let’s not play around with the”full faith and credit of the U.S. government,” and our country’s future.