By Guest Column Dr. Paul Murdock —— Bio and Archives January 7, 2010
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"I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process."Current health care discussions are far from being televised on C-SPAN. In fact they are hid behind closed doors, and are bypassing committee. So much for open discussion. Although President Obama pledged otherwise, this is not the only example of broken promises. President Obama has also made many executive declarations. For example, "When there is a bill that ends up on my desk as the president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it." Despite this pledge, Obama signed the 1,000-page $787 billion stimulus bill on February 17, 2009. This occurred one business day after it was passed through Congress. Let’s see how long it takes him to sign the health care bill into law. President Obama also declared to improve the economy. According to the Heritage Foundation, Obama is following the same course as the hated Bush. President Bush expanded the federal deficit by $700 billion and created an $800 billion Medicare drug entitlement. In the space of a year, Obama has added a trillion to the deficit and proposed a $634 billion down payment on new health care spending. With the health care bill looming, the federal deficit is destined to grow by trillions in the years to come. How about Obama’s attempt to reach across the table to republicans? (i.e. Senate’s 60-39 recent health care vote.) But wait, that’s not what he wrote about in his own book The Audacity of Hope:
“Genuine bipartisanship,” he wrote, “assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained — by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate — to negotiate in good faith.”So much for the exacting press corps, good faith, and informing the electorate! His administration even declared that Fox New Corp was not real journalism! Despite his promise to “fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington” and to “demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent,” President Obama has done the complete opposite. According to the Washington Post, many in Obama’s administration have supported increased taxes such as a “A European-style value added tax, or VAT.” The Post further indicated that “This tax would apply to every level of production or service, and it is beloved by politicians in Europe because it raises so much money so easily without voters noticing. Ezekiel Emanuel, a White House aide and brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has advocated a 10% VAT to finance national health care.” In addition to transparency, economic, and bipartisanship lies, here is a list of other broken promises:
Items of notes and interest from the web.