House Passage of Health Care Reform Now Appears Imminent by Gregory Hilton

The American people are the clear losers tonight. There were excellent alternatives to improve health care but the Democrats were not interested in compromise. Democrats admit the bill costs at least $1.3 trillion but they still say this will reduce health care costs. Speaker Pelosi and her allies are creating a bureaucratic beast that will end the American health care system as we know it. It will kill millions of small business jobs at a time when our nation’s unemployment rate has exceeded 10%. It will also cut Medicare, pile massive debt on future generations, and increase costs.
Our health care system does need revamping, but we do not need to reinvent the wheel. The House bill ignores tort reform and insurance companies will not have the ability to provide coverage across the United States.
If the Pelosi plan is so good then why doesn’t the Congress adopt it for themselves rather than keeping their Cadillac Plan?
This bill will cut reimbursements to physicians and hospitals, and the backlash will be fewer primary physicians or, those who take Medicare/Medicaid will cease to do so. If reimbursements to hospitals decrease, the far reaching effect will be lay offs for nurses. There are already nursing shortages, nurse patient ratios are now unacceptable to the point of being dangerous.
Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, today commented on the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) more detailed cost estimate of the House health reform bill.
Senator Gregg stated, “The CBO estimate released last night finally sheds light on the smoke and mirrors game the majority has been playing with the cost of their health care reform proposal. Over the first 10 years, this legislation builds in gross new spending of $1.7 trillion – and most of the new spending doesn’t even start until 2014. Once that spending is fully phased in, the House Democratic bill rings up at more than $3 trillion over ten years.
“Additionally, this bill cuts critical Medicare and Medicaid funding by $628 billion, accounts for nearly $1.2 trillion in tax and fee increases and will explode the scope of government by putting the nation’s health care system in the hands of Washington bureaucrats. The $3 trillion price tag defies common sense – we simply cannot add all this new spending to the government rolls and claim to control the deficit.
“If we continue to pile more and more debt on the next generation, they will never be able to get out from under it. The health care system needs reform, but this massive expansion of government, financed by our children and grandchildren, is the wrong way to proceed.”

Book Review: “My Boyfriend’s Back: 50 True Stories of Reconnecting with a Long-Lost Love” by Donna Hanover.

As a New Yorker and Rudy Giuliani fan I was fully prepared to dislike this book, but I ended up enjoying it. From 1994 through 2001 the author was First Lady of New York City. She and Giuliani were married for 18 years and had two children. She was the lead anchor for the 10 p.m. news on WPIX Channel 11 for much of the 1980s. She previously was an anchorwoman in Miami and also appeared on the syndicated Wall Street Journal Report.
Donna Hanover and Mayor Giuliani had a public and messy divorce in which she refused to move out of NYC’s Gracie Mansion. The theme of the book is encountering the romantic past, and many of the couples had not seen each other since high school or even grammar school. They claim these rekindled relationships have erased the decades. The stories are mostly, but not all, happy endings. The age ranges of the reunited couples range from 20s thru 70s. It includes regular folks and some celebrities.
Among them are Carol Channing, who married her high school sweetheart, Harry Kullijian, in 2003, when they were in their early 80’s. Suzanne Pleshette and Tom Poston, both of “The Bob Newhart Show,” were wed in 2001, 45 years after their romance went bust. The designer Nicole Miller also reconnected with an early love, as did Carole Keeton Rylander. She called herself “one tough grandma” when she won re-election to the state comptroller’s job in Texas in 2002. In August 2003, Donna Hanover, 53, married Edwin A. Oster, whom she met in high school at a debate team competition in Northern California.
Her point is that a romantic interest from the distant past leaves an imprint on your mind that never goes away. It is not that you just happened to meet the right person at 15. The sharing of roots is very significant. These couples have things in common from growing up the same way. The fantasy is that you see this person the way they were. You look at an 80 year old woman and see an 18 year old. There is plenty of scientific evidence to support Hanover’s thesis regarding the impact of early romances.
Hanover relies heavily on the work of Nancy Kalish, a psychology professor at California State University in Sacramento and author of the 1997 book “Lost & Found Lovers: Facts and Fantasies of Rekindled Romance”. Kalish has spent 11 years collecting data from more than 3,000 adults who tried reunions
In Kalish’s initial sample of 1,000 lost-and-found lovers, ages 18 to 95, nearly three-quarters remained together after a decade of study. When these past lovers married each other, their divorce rate after four years tallied in at no more than 1.5 percent. Usually, second marriages are relatively fragile: In the public at large, nearly one-quarter of all couples who remarry get divorced again within five years.
If you are seriously interested in this topic you should read Kalish. If you want light reading with amusing anecdotes than Hanover is the best choice.
The first chapter of Hanover’s book includes the following dialogue:
“It was August 2002, a stifling hot afternoon in New York … Nothing stood out about that day until the phone rang. “Donna, it’s Ed Oster.” I sat down. Ed Oster was my high school love. He was also my college love – until he broke my heart. I tried to hear Ed’s voice over the pulse pounding in my ear.
“I was wondering,” Ed asked tentatively, “if you’re planning to go to the Stanford reunion.” This was interesting to say the least. What was going on here? This was the guy who had dumped me freshman year and had spoken to me for maybe two minutes at our reunion five years ago.
“Yes,” I said and then waited. Silently I prayed, “Please don’t let this be about fund-raising.” “Well, the reunion isn’t until October,” Ed said, “but my work is bringing me to New York next week. I was wondering if I could take you out for coffee.” I thought to myself, “I gotta call somebody – no one’s going to believe this.” Oh-so-casually I responded, “Let me check my calendar.” After flipping through several weeks of blank “date” pages, I said, “I think I can free up a little time.”

Global Warming: Why is Al Gore Refusing to Debate? by Gregory Hilton

Al Gore has avoided debating global warming since the release of his 2006 Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” In a rare move yesterday at the Society of Environmental Journalists he took half a dozen questions from reporters. He was asked to address the nine major errors in his film identified by a British court in 2007. The journalist had his microphone cut off by the moderators.
Gore once again avoided having to defend many of his absurd claims such as sea levels rising by 20 feet. Most scientific studies say a worse case scenario is 8 inches. The UN IPCC says 17 inches over the next 100 years. Gore predicted cap and trade will pass the Senate in November and that Obama will attend the UN global warming conference in Copenhagen in December.
I do not believe Gore’s prediction because far too many Senate Democrats have come out against cap and trade. These sensible Democrats do not want to be stuck defending a $1,720 tax on every American family during an election year.

What I Learned From My High School Reunion by Gregory Hilton

This will surprise some of you but I actually did graduate from high school. My class reunion is this weekend but unfortunately I am stuck in a basement in Georgetown. I sure wish I was back with the old gang at Byram Hills High School in Armonk, NY. I received several wonderful letters from former classmates and so many of the people I really want to see are participating in the three days of activities. I have not seen 95% of them since graduation.
I feel awful but Facebook has somewhat lessened the blow. While I am not there in person, I have been communicating with many of them via FB, e-mail and the phone. The result is that wonderful memories have come flooding back. We reminisced about school dances, riding the bus, my cross country team, endless baseball games, summers at the Windmill Club, the boys I sat with in the cafeteria, the seemingly impossible math assignments, my beautiful and popular sisters, bullies, learning to drive, and graduating from high school before the real life problems of college, employment and marriage hit us.
The stories they told me about the kindness of my late parents were especially touching. It has been enjoyable to catch up with people regarding the blur of activities in their lives over the past decades. High school is just one chapter in life, although it remains a unique one. My classmates have a special bond because of the closeness we achieved by going through so many new experiences in suburbia. We all had to struggle toward maturity and make decisions that prevented us from going back to the comfortable places of youth.
French was not one of my favorite subjects but I do remember the expression, plus ca change plus c’est le meme chose – the more things change the more they stay the same. That describes so many of my classmates. The nice kids continue to have pleasant personalities as adults. The good kids are still good. As for the desperadoes such as myself? Well, they seem all right too.
Our class includes a young Dwight Eisenhower (now you know why I am a Republican); a Hollywood actor (Peter Gallagher of Titanic); a rock star (Preston Reed who performs with Lyle Lovett, Bonnie Raitt and Linda Ronstadt); the winner of the Mega-Millions Lottery (Donna French); a rocket scientist (Dr. Wendy Orr); a marathon champion (Meg Kerr); my personal heroes Bob Kinn (who has been in Afghanistan since 2004 helping the less fortunate); Peter Siegel (who dated the two most spectacular women in the class); and the only Republican in his Washington, D.C. precinct (me).
Do I have any wisdom for my students? The experiences of my classmates demonstrate that life is not always smooth sailing, but adversity does build strength. In every ending there is a new beginning.
I recently spoke with a woman who was focused on cheerleading activities in high school. She was devastated her senior year after failing to qualify for the squad, and was then excluded from many of the social activities of the cheerleaders. Her life took a new direction and she instead joined some of the class nerds on the debating team. That was a few years ago. She is now United States Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and says she never would be on Capitol Hill if she had been a varsity cheerleader.

American Troops Are Coming Home From Iraq by Gregory Hilton

After a year in Iraq the 250 soldiers of the 146th Signal Battalion came home to Jacksonville, Florida today. They suffered no casualties. They faithfully answered our nation’s call and the U.S. mission to foster a free and secure Iraq is almost complete. Our troops pulled back from all of the Iraqi cities and towns in June.
The tremendous change was demonstrated this week when Prime Minister Malaki announced his unity slate for the January 16th elections. It includes Sunnis, who turned on al-Qaeda, Kurds, tribal leaders, religious minorities and, of course, the dominant Shi’ite’s. The campaign will be difficult and the opposition National Alliance could win. That is what democracy is all about.
There is still violence and basic services have not been restored everywhere, but Iraq is now safer, more orderly and farther along the path to liberty than ever before. For six years American soldiers stood between the elements of a fledgling free market democracy and the forces of destruction. Now the Iraq Army is standing up and the baton is being passed. We are witnessing the dawn of a new Middle East and we should be proud and eternally grateful for the sacrifice of our armed forces.

The $787 Billion Stimulus is Failing by Gregory Hilton

Unemployment hit 9.8% today. This chart compares actual unemployment with what the Obama Administration promised in February from the $787 billion Stimulus. The Stimulus was enacted without a single Republican vote in the House and only two in the Senate. You should pay attention to this chart when listening to the Obama projections regarding deficit reduction, and the costs of health care reform as well as cap and trade.
Consumer confidence is down, we are expecting poor holiday sales, and many companies will have to struggle to survive the next six months. Robert Reich and Larry Summers are saying high unemployment will be a significant factor for years to come. That is a projection I believe.
Many of these unfortunate people are tapping or depleting their 401K’s and other retirement plans. There will not be an easy fix to this.
According to the Congressional Budget Office the true cost of the stimulus is $3.27 trillion over ten years, and 100% of this money is borrowed. The bill gives American workers $13 a week in their paychecks in exchange for passing along a $1 trillion debt to their grandchildren.
Spending for the entire New Deal in today’s dollars is only half of what this one bill costs. The New Deal equaled no more that 2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product while the stimulus is over 5 percent, and this is just the beginning of the Obama expenditures. The Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. David Obey (D-WI), acknowledged this by saying “The bill is the largest change in domestic policy since the 1930s.”
There is an excellent case for a stimulus and this was acknowledged by Republicans. Wiith the markets functioning so poorly, we proposed ways to jump-start the economy. Less than a third of Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act meets the definition of stimulus — namely, that it is timely, targeted and temporary.
The legislation is 25 years of government spending proposals jammed into one bill and labeled stimulus. That is why not one House Republican voted for it. We had an outstanding stimulus in 1997 when Bill Clinton signed legislation lowering capital gains rates from 28 to 20%.

Budget Deficit: The U.S. Would Not Qualify for EU Membership by Gregory Hilton

At the beginning of 2008 no one would have imagined the French Senate would soon be lecturing us about the need for fiscal responsibility. Unfortunately, they do have a point. Our budget deficit is now worse than Cuba’s. Because of our spending programs we would not be eligible for membership in the European Union. The European Union’s Stability and Growth Pact adopted in 1997 requires a budget deficit to be less than three percent, and requires a national debt beneath 60 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The necessary U.S. reductions are massive. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the 2010-19 deficits would total $9.3 trillion; the debt-to-GDP ratio in 2019 would be 82 percent. This is a ratio of publicly held federal debt to gross domestic product (GDP, or the economy). This is highest since 1950 (80 percent) when we were recovering from WW II.
Treasury Secretary Geithner and NEC Chairman Larry Summers are refusing to rule out a tax increase, and in a complete reversal from last year, Obama supporters are now saying this is necessary. Economic recovery has returned to Wall Street, but not to Main Street. As soon as it does, senior officials of the Federal Reserve are telling us interest rates will be raised in order to avoid inflation.
The U.S. banking system has increased surplus reserves from $1.8 billion in 8/08 to $832 billion in 8/09. Private sector liquidity is vapid, and a tax increase could wallop our nation into a disaster.

If The Public Option is Dead, Democrats Killed It by Gregory Hilton

Democrats have a veto proof majority in the U.S. Senate but the health care public option still went down to defeat yesterday in the Finance Committee. The demise was due to the opposition of Democrats Max Baucus (MT), Kent Conrad (ND), Blanche Lambert (AR), Tom Carper (DE) and Ben Nelson (NE). Liberal organizations ran powerful TV ads in Montana against Finance Committee Chairman Baucus, but it was not enough. A major reason for the defeat is the shift in public opinion. Lambert emphasized health care in her two previous Senate campaigns. She is up for reelection in 2010 and does not face a well known GOP foe. Nevertheless, she is losing to all four Republicans. Lambert will not vote for cloture on any bill that has a public option. Conrad and Baucus obviously do not want it, and Nelson is telling Senate Democrats not to pass health through the reconciliation process. The public option can survive in the House, but I am skeptical it will be added back in a House/Senate Conference. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is telling the Senate Democrats that a bill requiring mandates with no public option will result in a 2010 election setback for her party.
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich responded: “An amazing number of Democrats voted no, and I think it puts them in a position where there’s a clear signal to the House Democrats that unless you’re suicidal, you’re going to drop this because why would a marginal House Democratic member vote for a government option in the House knowing that it is absolutely dead in the Senate?”

The Return of Jay Leno by Gregory Hilton

Tonight ends the first week of Jay Leno’s return on NBC-TV. The critics have not been kind but audience clearly loves him. His comments on ACORN and prostitutes have already become a classic. Leno is averaging 18 million viewers to CBS’ David Letterman’s 4 million. Leno should keep wearing that flag lapel pin, and his political balance is admirable. It is a pleasant change from Letterman who can not stop bashing George W. Bush, and obviously has a loony left agenda. I always look forward to Jay’s monologue, Headlines and Jaywalking.
I used to think Letterman was fun and quirky, but stopped watching him a long time ago when he turned so mean-spirited. CBS’ Craig Ferguson comes on after Letterman. He is also a liberal but he does not have Letterman’s mean-spirited outlook. CBS would be wise to move Ferguson into the 11:30 pm time slot where he would be a tough competitor for The Tonight Show’s Conan O’Brien.
This is not related to his ability as a talk show host but I also admire Leno for being married to the same woman for 30 years. They were married when he was not a big shot. Long term marriages are rare in Hollywood.
Too many times money and prestige have led to divorce. Leno has also done considerable charitable activity such as the free shows earlier this year for the unemployed. Car buff’s really enjoy his many videos at: www.jaylenosgarage.com

The U.S. Constitution Was Signed 222 Years Ago Today by Gregory Hilton

It was 222 years ago today in Philadelphia that the U.S. Constitution was signed. The Constitution is our supreme law and it provides the blueprint for the greatest form of government the world has ever known, and guarantees the freedoms we enjoy today. The idea of self-government is in the first three words: “We the people.”
I teach very intelligent students but I cringe to think of their responses to a citizenship test. Our schools have significantly cut back courses on topics such as history, government and civics. A student who has never been introduced to these concepts would find the test difficult.