By Jim Martin Chairman, 60 Plus Association

It is downright amazing that the most momentous, and contemptible, piece of legislation Washington has seen in the last 50 years passed without tempting one Republican in the entire Congress to cross the aisle and join in. History will forever recall that Obamacare, in all its budget-busting and government-expanding glory, is entirely a creation of the Democrats, from the secret meetings where all 2,700 pages were drafted, to its final passage. And the GOP stayed unified throughout; not a single cat was lost in the herd!

With Democrats cloaked in Obamacare like Rod Blagojevich in prison orange and the law gaining in unpopularity by the day, is it any wonder they are starting to buckle on this issue? And why shouldn’t they? In the 2010 midterm elections they lost more than a quarter of their caucus in the House, in large part due to public opposition to Obamacare. Much of that opposition came from seniors, who, while only 13% of the voting public, comprised 23% of the midterm electorate. Liberal Democrats like Barney Frank, Fortney “Pete” Stark and even Allyson Schwartz, a member of the House Democratic leadership, are part of a small but growing group of Democrat survivalists joining the GOP and voicing opposition to specific tentacles of the new law.

This is why I am so puzzled, even miffed, by the recent public opposition of conservative Don Corleones like Sen. Jim DeMint and Rep. Steve King to the Republican-led charge to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), the 15-member panel of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who will be given carte blanche to ration care by their unilateral decisions. Yes, I know, Congress has the “final say,” if you can imagine two-thirds of Congress agreeing on anything. A bill to repeal IPAB recently passed Chairman Fred Upton’s Energy and Commerce Committee and currently has 20 Democrats as co-sponsors, including the three noted above. The GOP has maintained a unified front, so why go rogue now when so many are on board against IPAB?

On the surface, the argument by DeMint and King seems reasonable: killing portions of Obamacare undermines and confuses the real goal — killing the whole thing, stem to stern, in one fell swoop. Attacking parts of the law, they claim, may appear to signal complacency with mending it, and indicate we are okay with a watered-down version and risk being seen as the “party of some of Obamacare.”

But this simply is not true. As DeMint and King point out, the 2012 election will yield either a pro-Obamacare or anti-Obamacare result based on which party prevails, and total repeal of the law remains a pillar of the Republican 2012 platform without exception. No Republican working to push IPAB off a cliff will settle for less, so the choice is not mutually exclusive and the framing of the election is not affected. Voters still know that the GOP is the party for total repeal, and with continued unanimity long since settled, taking on IPAB strengthens, not weakens, the party’s image on the issue. Seniors understand the stakes, and favor attacking IPAB just as much as repealing Obamacare as a whole. Pronouncements like these from up above fall upon deaf ears.

What the public effort to repeal IPAB does accomplish is three-fold. First, it keeps the issue on the front-burner, reminding the public that we still don’t know what’s in this mammoth-sized law, or what is waiting for us around the corner. The more despicable components of the law we can expose, the more the Democrats have to play defense and answer to their constituents for a bill none of them bothered to read. Republicans employed this strategy in the ’90s, keeping the heat on Bill Clinton until he finally agreed to welfare reform by continually underscoring its wasteful and immoral trappings until he finally relented.

Second, IPAB assists our side in the public relations battle to highlight the pain and suffering inherent within Obamacare, in a way that engages and motivates the public far more than arguments against its “unconstitutional mandate.” The Heritage Foundation recently obtained a memo from the Obama administration outlining a coordinated public relations campaign to support the law, which is sure to feature weepy-eyed citizens falling to their knees, praising Obama for saving their lives. Our side needs to engage in this PR battle and bugle all of its ills, from higher premiums, to people losing coverage, to its trillions in cost, and on and on. IPAB and its rationing panels are central to this strategy.

Finally, the real fear shouldn’t be visions of a diluted Obamacare surviving minus IPAB, but IPAB setting up shop without Obamacare. It is quite conceivable that Republicans may prevail in 2012 and repeal the health care law, only to see Democrats revive the IPAB blueprint years from now in an attempt to re-assemble nationalized health care. Having a public debate on IPAB can help settle the matter for good, much like the “Harry and Louise” ads turned public sentiment against Hillarycare in the early ’90s. Those ads, and the debate they generated, have had such a lasting impact that Obama and congressional Democrats were forced to conceal their agenda to pass Obamacare against the wishes of the American public.

The approach that Sen. DeMint and Rep. King are advocating would not only yield the moral high ground to the Democrats, it would be a failure of leadership. Note that we have not seen Democrats try to revive “catastrophic health care” legislation in the 23 years since a group of angry seniors rocked the car of House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski so hard he was still being treated for motion sickness years later. When politicians see an uprising, they tuck tail and keep it tucked. Exposing IPAB now while it is still law and ripe for exposure can help ensure we never see its ugly head again.

I can’t think of very many times I’ve disagreed with Sen. DeMint and Rep. King, both of whom I’ve personally campaigned with in their states. Whether on conservative principles, policy or the pronunciation of tomato and potato, we’ve always been in agreement. But on this matter, I believe they have it wrong. Obamacare isn’t Julius Caesar and Congress isn’t Brutus. The issue will be decided at the ballot box after a vigorous campaign that covers all of the law’s failings, IPAB included. Caesar’s fate would be ideal for Obamacare, but a death by a thousand cuts would work just as well.

The battle over Obamacare is really like a boxing match; a jab to the body, a hook to the jaw, and try not to let the Democrats take a bite from our ear. While our side remains unified, the Democrats are starting to show cracks in the facade. This is the debate our democracy requires. Come Election Day this November, the choice belongs to the American people.

Jim Martin is chairman and founder of the 60 Plus Association, which represents 7.l million seniors nationally.

Read the article here: http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/20/gop-will-need-multiple-votes-to-repeal-obamacare/#ixzz1pfUpBpaH

The D.C. rumor mill of late has President Obama dropping Joe Biden from the ticket this year in favor of Hillary Clinton, but I don’t buy this for a second. If Obama drops Biden for anyone, it’ll be for Oprah.

Cracks in the cloak of secrecy surrounding my yet-to-be-confirmed suspicion of an Obama-Winfrey ticket emerged last week when the president shifted into campaign rhetoric that verged on the mushy side of the Lifetime Network. That’s right, Obama finally addressed the plight of that long-forgotten and all-too-neglected segment of the American population — “the children.”

While campaigning in Iowa, Obama said, “Part of what 2012 is about is … framing this larger debate about what kind of country are we going to leave for our children and our grandchildren.” I know, this is typical campaign pabulum, but as a working mother of three children who range in age from less than a year old to five years old, this caught my ear.

And despite the fact that at times I get a little frustrated with my little ones for grinding Cheerios into our upholstery, I don’t need the president to remind me that, like all parents, my husband and I spend nearly every moment of our time that isn’t claimed by REM sleep thinking about our children, their futures and what kind of country we’re leaving them.

Obama’s posturing as the nanny-in-chief of his ever-growing nanny state isn’t a surprise. But what is a surprise is just how much crummier Obama’s record appears when viewed in light of its effects on our children. Nearly all of the horrendous consequences of his policies will explode in the future, when he and his caddy will be far from the blast zone.

In the world that Obama plans on leaving our children, the U.S. military will be as imposing as the Jamaican bobsledding team, Americans will be some of the Brazilian oil industry’s “best customers” and everyone will drive glorified golf carts that have an annoying habit of randomly catching on fire. Obama is also leaving each of our children with a $62,500 bill to pay for the $5 trillion he will have added to the national debt by the end of his first term. This record is about as kid-friendly as story time with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

As parents, we all strive to teach our children crucial life lessons and impart whatever wisdom we can, regretting that most of what they learn will come from life experience, the cornily named “school of hard knocks.” But our kids’ world isn’t going to make much sense to them when they become old enough to reflect upon this president, the man who at one point held their futures in his hands, then splayed his fingers.

Unless the liberals succeed in scrubbing clean from our schools all memory of the great men who built this nation — from Washington, to Jefferson, to Rockefeller and Carnegie — future generations will wonder when we liquidated America’s exceptionalism, and why.

That’s a question I hope I never to have to answer. The “for the children” rhetoric is the refuge of the morally bankrupt and the intellectually dishonest. While the pandering Obama employs children as campaign props, his policies make clear that he views children as nothing more than the adults of tomorrow, compliant citizens who in time will be ripe to be controlled, taxed and indoctrinated into a world where greatness is a relative concept and liberty is a hazy memory.

President Obama’s glib words perfectly illustrate the dangers the liberal “what about the children?” crowd represent. While people of all political persuasions customarily give politicians a pass when talking about “the children,” we ought to hold in the forefront of our minds during the 2012 campaign that nearly every word and deed of Barack Obama’s first three years in office has gone toward creating an America that no sensible mother would approve of.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/09/obamas-record-isnt-kid-friendly/#ixzz1j4CnQTMx

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the new Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, recently described Republican Congressman Paul Ryan’s proposed conversion of Medicare into a premium support system as a “death trap” for seniors, somehow failing to note that it doesn’t even apply to current seniors. Given that it only applies to those 54 and younger, it can’t harm seniors in the least, let alone be a death trap.

Democrats’ latest “Medi-scare” attempt is to be expected in today’s hyper-partisan environment, but what is truly outrageous is their blatant hypocrisy considering the new health reform law does harm current seniors with more than $1 trillion in Medicare cuts that are already being implemented.

With a $14.3 trillion debt and climbing, and unsustainable entitlements like Medicare at the heart of the problem, cuts to the program are inevitable and are components of both “ObamaCare” and “RyanCare.” But as always in public policy, the devil is in the details.

The detailed reality is that ObamaCare’s Medicare cuts will lead to:

1) Half of seniors with Medicare Advantage will lose these popular plans.

2) Fifteen percent of hospitals will shut their doors.

3) More and more physicians will refuse to see Medicare enrollees as the program’s reimbursement rates falls below Medicaid’s abhorrently low levels. That coupled with the impending doctor shortage will prompt many physicians to only see patients with higher-paying private plans.

Under ObamaCare, Medicare is set to join Medicaid as a medical ghetto with limited access to high quality care and greater access to low quality care.

Add this to the pile of public policy disasters, there is something else in the ObamaCare law called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a body unlike Congress, which the public can not hold accountable for its actions.

IPAB is a board of 15 unelected bureaucrats charged with keeping Medicare below a hard spending cap and unilaterally empowered with the tool of reducing provider reimbursement rates in order to stay below that cap. Quite simply, it is a Medicare rationing board. It begins its work in 2015.

About 17 percent of doctors (and 31 percent of primary-care physicians) already limit the number of Medicare patients they see due to Medicare’s low reimbursement rates. Once IPAB institutes further cuts, more physicians will refuse to see Medicare enrollees. In fact, a November survey from the Physician’s Foundation found that 52 percent of physicians said ObamaCare would force them “to close or significantly restrict their practices to Medicare patients.”

Shockingly, the President recently proposed empowering IPAB even further, specifically calling for reducing the spending cap even further.

Thankfully the American people recognize the threat of such a powerful unelected board, with a recent Let Freedom Ring survey. It found that 64 percent disapprove of it, including 48 percent of self-identified Democrats.

And seniors aren’t fooled by the Democrats “Medi-scare” tactics either. Last week Gallup found that 48 percent of seniors support RyanCare, while only 42 percent support ObamaCare.

Seniors clearly understand that while ObamaCare jeopardizes their access to care, RyanCare actually keeps our generational promise to them, and further, gives them the peace of mind that there will be a sustainable Medicare program for their children and grandchildren.

Martin is Chairman of the 60 Plus Association and Hanna is President of Let Freedom Ring.

Washington Times   
January 5, 2011

The Obama administration still hasn’t gotten the message voters sent on Nov. 2. The lame-duck 111^th Congress didn’t enact the intrusive energy and environmental laws the administration wanted. So now the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency plan to end the hydrocarbon and nuclear era in America by executive fiat – and force a conversion to “renewable” energy.

Beginning Jan. 2, they started using job-killing, economy-strangling regulations and edicts to slash carbon-dioxide emissions, impose “clean energy standards,” and hobble the vehicles, electrical generating plants, refineries and factories that form the backbone of our nation’s economy, jobs and living standards.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa P. Jackson claims these actions are needed to ensure “environmental justice” for poor and minority families threatened by “manmade global warming.” Meanwhile, the United States and entire Northern Hemisphere are enduring yet another nasty winter – while businesses, workers and families face injustice, bankruptcy and worse at the hands of their government.

The Congressional Research Service says average U.S. households will pay almost $1,000 this winter just for heat. That’s average: Alaska to Florida, Hawaii to New York. Northern states residents could pay double or triple that. Businesses, schools and hospitals will also be hammered. And this is before the feds actually implement their carbon-dioxide limits and other plans.

To see what’s in store for millions of Americans, one need only look at the planet’s sole country that still obstinately clings to draconian climate-change goals, regardless of costs.

Across Great Britain, household energy bills could double to $3,900 a year by 2020, EnergyHelpLine.com has warned. Gasoline prices are likewise soaring, and most United Kingdom companies will see their natural gas and electricity prices skyrocket by 100 percent between 2012 and 2016 – on top of a carbon-tax bill of “at least” $65,660 annually – according to Carbon Masters.

Moreover, most of Britain’s older coal-fired and nuclear-power plants are scheduled to be shut down, with little to replace them, even as electricity demand rises. That could bring widespread blackouts, said the Daily Mail, and cause hundreds of thousands of jobs in the United Kingdom to be outsourced to countries where energy costs are much lower and air pollution and CO2 emission standards far less stringent. Brits will freeze in unemployment lines, while global atmospheric CO2 levels continue to climb.

More than 5.5 million households will be plunged into “fuel poverty” by early 2011 – forced to spend more than 10 percent of their family incomes on energy – National Energy Action and other charities said. That’s more than one-fifth of all households in the United Kingdom and a huge increase from 4.5 million families in 2008.

Nearly 28,000 people died in Britain last winter, most of them pensioners who could not afford adequate heat. Charities say this is the highest winter-death rate in Northern Europe, worse even than much colder nations like Finland and Sweden. This winter has already seen Wales’ coldest December night in 169 years of record-keeping. It was Britain’s coldest December in 120 years.

To stay warm, thousands of elderly are using travel passes to ride buses all day, while others seek refuge in libraries and shopping centers. Others are “putting their health at risk, in an attempt to keep costs down,” by bundling up and turning the heat down or off, said the charity Age UK.

Amid the Christmas and New Year holidays, 2 million homes, schools and hospitals faced fuel rationing. Some could wait weeks before they can get their fuel-oil tanks refilled.

Meanwhile, the British government has cut funding for its Warm Front heating-assistance program, from $470 million this year to $172 million in 2011, Consumer Focus campaigner Jonathan Stearn angrily noted. And because the winds barely blow during the coldest weather, Britain’s shiny, new “green” wind turbines were able to supply only “one-500th of the exceptionally large demand” for electricity during the frigid weather of early December, Sunday Times columnist Dominic Lawson ruefully observed. That’s a tiny fraction of their “rated capacity.”

How do EPA’s actions, perverse notions of “justice,” and government-driven energy-price spikes square with these realities? Or with a 2009 Wilson Research Strategies poll, which found that 56 percent of blacks think Washington politicians and bureaucrats setting climate-change policy fail to consider economic and quality-of-life concerns in the black community? Fully 76 percent are unwilling to pay more than an additional $50 a year for electricity to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

Northern U.S. winters are far worse than even record-setters in Britain. Why would anyone want to impose costly, nightmarish energy and environmental policies on American families, rich or poor?

The outgoing Congress nearly enacted a bill that would have provided much-needed congressional checks on EPA. The bill drafted by Alaska’s Sen. Lisa Murkowski fell just short in a Senate dominated by partisan Democrats. The incoming Senate should be far more supportive of such legislation, especially in the face of EPA and White House attempts to override plain statutory language and the will of the American people.

The Affordable Power Alliance will urge Congress to honor its constitutional duties and prevent the Obama administration from imposing excessive regulations inspired by extreme ideologies. Congress, including Democrats up for re-election in 2012, needs to heed the overwhelming public demand that America’s economy no longer be held hostage by an elitist environmental network – even if that network includes the president of the United States.

Niger Innis is national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality. Amy Frederick is president of 60 Plus. They are co-chairmen of the Affordable Power Alliance (AffordablePowerAlliance.org).

Statement by 60 Plus Association Chairman Jim Martin

Alexandria, VA –On behalf of 5.5 million elderly that we’re honored to rely on for support, and the number is growing at warp speed, I have some news for Congress.

I’ve predicted, since August 2009, that a senior citizen tsunami—a veritable tidal wave— was headed toward Capitol Hill. And, I’ve said all along, unless it subsides a bunch of politicians will feel intense pain at the polls in 2010.  It came ashore today, election day. Why are seniors on the march?

They’re alarmed at the massive $500 billion cuts to Medicare and well they should be. The issue is not whether you’re for or against Medicare. It’s been the law of the land since 1965 and we’re a nation of laws. Seniors, including yours truly, have paid their dues and now face “lower reimbursement payments” to providers, a situation that can only lead to fewer and fewer Doctors accepting Medicare patients. There’s already a Doctor shortage as is.

I’m proud that seniors have spoken out at these townhall meetings starting in August 2009 and continuing until election day. And for them to have been cynically called in August 2009 townhall meetings ‘un-American’ by  Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was the most shameful, most despicable comment I’ve ever heard uttered at any segment of our society. It was bad enough aimed at any group exercising their Constitutional rights, but directed at men and women who’ve served their country on far away battlefields made it even more reprehensible.

These men and women, many  of them veterans of our military, our Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and National Guard, did not deserve  being called un-American, or Nazis or worse. So many of their comrades made the ultimate sacrifice for our country and so many of these surviving warriors have left some family blood and limbs on distant lands, it’s beyond comprehension that they were maligned for speaking out.  And yes, many of them fought the evils of Nazism so it’s even more bitter and disheartening to have heard such disrespectful name-calling.

I came to Washington nearly 50 years ago, in 1962 as a newspaper reporter. I watched many Congresses come and go. This is the worst in its arrogance. There’s change coming to Capitol Hill, a change in House leadership. 60 or more seats will change hands and Republicans will get another chance to do the right thing. I believe they’ve learned their lesson and change–real change–will come to Congress.

Election Day is here. Seniors have long memories and they vote.

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