I don't see where she said "our opposition"
Posted By: Observing on 2007-10-19
In Reply to: "Our opposition.." You are the voice of the liberal board? - Observer
or where she said she spoke for the liberal board. Can you cite your source for this information?
I took her post to mean she was speaking for other like-minded folks, whether on this board or not. I should think you would have guessed that but perhaps you were too busy laughing hysterically. You seem to enjoy laughing at other people.
Complete Discussion Below:  marks the location of current message within thread
The messages you are viewing
are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select
the boards given in left menu
Other related messages found in our database
"Our opposition.." You are the voice of the liberal board?
Guffaw.
As much as that "our God should beat their god(s)"
Plenty of pastor shame to go around. Why do you suppose McCain has put Rev. Wright on his "off limits" list?
So you brook no opposition. I see. sm
Although I was totally respectful in my post, you viciously attacked me. I see that is a pattern for you no matter what. Rest assured, this is a board I will not visit again.
If you would be as honest in your postings to opposition..
as you are in postings to those who agree with you, and post in a civil manner the same way you post to Lurker...i.e., you state above (I know we TRY to take care of our poor)...but you certainly did not say that to me. You made it sound like we do nothing to take care of our poor. I personally think it should the be responsibility of individual Americans through private donations to take care of our poor, not the responsibility of the government through taxation. The reason that does not work is that while many pay lip service to the poor, they are not willing unless forced to do just that. And that happens on both sides of the aisle. It is not a political party thing. It is a human nature thing. In a perfect world, if you could trust exactly what people say is what they would do, then the Democrats in this country alone could take care of the poor through personal donations. I do not mean they should do it alone...I am trying to make a point here. It should not be necessary to tax people in order to take care of the less fortunate. We should also not put in place, in my opinion, a welfare system that keeps people impoverished and beholden to the government for everything. I believe every program ought to have a job and responsibility attached to it...in other words, no freebies. If there is no incentive to better yourself, why should you? That is in full obvious view to anyone in this country who cares to actually go visit the poor neighborhoods and actually talk to those involved. If you want some real enlightenment, you should work in the welfare offices for awhile. You would get a much better picture of the real story out there.
I do not say this to be hateful, but I think it would behoove you to, along with reading your books and doing your research, that you try to talk to someone other than me, because obviously you think I am a demon from the nether world, but perhaps someone without a political agenda who has worked for years in welfare (as I have) and get a real picture of how it works. To use your words, it is a great disservice to people to keep them in poverty through programs instead of trying to help them to a better life off a check. The problem is Teddy...there are thousands if not millions who prefer the life on the check. And that is no one's fault but yours and mine and everyone else's who has not sought to really help them...to provide the checks and balances you described.
The opposition is going to fight the other side...
no matter who it is. George Washington was the only president that did not face opposition to his being the president - at least for the first term. Mind you, he was not elected to his first term and after his first four years when he was asked to serve another four, he was beaten down from both sides so much so that he swore he would never enter into politics again. This is the father of our country - the man who helped win our freedom from England! If he can't escape from being shot down at every turn, what makes anyone else who runs for president think they can? It's the nature of the beast and comes with the job.
What's the old saying? You can make some of the people happy some of the time, but you can't make all of the people happy all of the time.
Yeah, right. Hamas squelches any opposition, so you can't
really call their elections democracy in action.
Yeah, right. Hamas squelches any opposition, so you can't
really call their elections democracy in action.
I found several opposition articles and will post the high points....
and actually I was surprised to see that there were some common concerns and actually very little concerning *a move toward socialized medicine.* This is what I found:
Proposals to expand coverage to children from families earning three or four times the federal poverty limit ($61,940 and $82,600, respectively, for a family of four) also highlights the question of just how many should be subsidized, necessarily at others' expense. The $61,940 eligibility limit would cover median-income families in 14 states, and the $82,600 limit would do so in 42 states. Parents earning such incomes do not need additional subsidies for their children to get health care.
************************
Baucus, Grassley Comment
Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and the committee's ranking Republican Chuck Grassley (Iowa) jointly requested the CBO study but "had divergent views of its findings," according to CQ Today.
Baucus, who supports spending $50 billion over five years to expand SCHIP, said the report validates the program. CQ Today reports that Baucus "expressed little concern" that people would leave private insurance plans to enroll in SCHIP, saying that every public health insurance program provides coverage to some people who might be able to obtain private health insurance (CQ Today, 5/10). Baucus said, "The fact that uninsurance for children in higher-income families has stayed about the same means that SCHIP is helping the lower-income families it's meant to serve."
Grassley said the report supports his argument that SCHIP eligibility should not be expanded beyond 200% of the poverty level. He said, "This report tells us that Congress needs to make sure that whatever it does, it should actually result in more kids having health insurance, rather than simply shifting children from private to public health insurance" (CongressDaily, 5/10).
****************************
SCHIP is a joint state-federal program that provides health coverage to 6.6 million children from families that live above the poverty line but have difficulty paying for private insurance. Already, the program is generous. A family of four with an income of more than $72,000 (350% of the federal poverty level) is eligible for SCHIP's subsidized insurance. Now, Congress wants to expand coverage even further, to families making up to 400% of the federal poverty level ($82,600 for a family of four). But, according to the Congressional Budget Office, 89% of families earning between 300% and 400% of the federal poverty level already have coverage. The CBO estimates that some 2 million kids already covered under private insurance would be switched over to government insurance. The only purpose of all of this seems to be to turn children's health insurance into an outright entitlement — part of the Democrat's broader push to move all of America's health-care industry under government control.
Along with expanding SCHIP coverage to include people higher and higher up in the middle class, the Democrats' bill would also give states incentives to sign up aggressively new "clients," by loosening requirements to join the program and encouraging states to market the program (anyone who rides the New York City subway knows how active the Empire State is already being on this front). How is all of this to be funded? Well, the bill would impose a 61-cent increase in the 39-cent a pack federal cigarette tax, bringing it up to an even dollar. We've written before on how corrupt is the government's interest in the cigarette business. It turns out that the government needs to keep people smoking; the Heritage Foundation estimates the government would need to sign up some 22 million more Americans to take up smoking by 2017 to fund this increase in SCHIP. To add to the irony, most smokers are low-income Americans, meaning that the poor essentially will be funding the health insurance of the middle class. Mr. Bush would be right to veto it while working to increase access to private insurance through tax breaks and deregulation.
****************************
So, it would appear to me that the major problems some have against it are: it will shift children who are now covered by private insurance onto a program unncessarily; it will allow for more adults on the program, something that was never intended; that paying for it with a tobacco tax targets the very people who need the assistance, the lower income families as statistically that is where the most smokers are...essentially shifting the burden for adding middle class families to the lower income families...and I think we can all agree that is not a good thing.
In my research I also found something VERY interesting...
I am sorry to say I did not know the particulars of the President's proposal regarding insuring children...only his proposal extends to everyone, not just children...sure have not seen the media report it....
Opposing view: President's plan is better
Extend SCHIP program without spending billions to expand it.
By Mike Leavitt
We all want to see every American insured, and President Bush has proposed a plan to see that everyone is. Congress, instead, is pushing a massive expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that grows government without helping nearly as many children.
The president's plan, announced last January, would fix our discriminatory tax policy so that every American family received a $15,000 tax break for purchasing health insurance. If Congress acted on the president's plan, nearly 20 million more Americans would have health insurance, according to the independent Lewin Group.
In contrast, Democrats in Congress would more than double government spending on SCHIP and extend the program to families earning as much as $83,000 a year. But their plan would add fewer than 3 million children to SCHIP, and many of the newly eligible children already have private insurance. So instead of insuring nearly 20 million more Americans privately, Congress would spend billions of dollars to move middle-income Americans off private insurance and onto public assistance.
The Democrats' plan has other problems. It would fund SCHIP's expansion with a gimmick that hides its true cost. It would allocate billions of dollars more than is needed to cover eligible kids. And it would allow states to continue diverting SCHIP money from children to adults. This is a boon for the states but costs the federal government more.
Ideology is really behind the Democrats' plan. They trust government more than the free choices of American consumers. Some in Congress want the federal government to pay for everyone's health care, and expanding SCHIP is a step in that direction.
SCHIP is part of the fix for low-income children, and Congress should put politics aside and send the president a clean, temporary extension of the current program. Expanding SCHIP is not the only way or the best way to insure the uninsured. The president's plan is better. It would benefit many more Americans. It would focus SCHIP on the children who need help most. And it would move us more sensibly toward our common goal of every American insured.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I think a $15,000 tax break would help more American families afford health insurance, thereby covering more kids AND adults, which is the goal, right? And no raising of taxes or targeting the lower income families with a tobacco tax...sounds like a win-win. I don't care if it is Bush's idea or the Democratic Congress' idea...it is a good idea. This time it happened to be Bush's.
Just my take on it.
If you want to find the articles, just put *expanding SCHIP* in a Google search. I read several articles in support of both sides. I did not see much about the income leveling, except in one article, which did mention that New York had a "sliding scale." It did not define it, but I am thinking it is at the purview of the states, and if New York did it others probably could too?
|
