Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Last Call

A preview of tomorrow's GOP Contract With America 2.0, via Maddow Blog, includes what the GOP really wants to do, including these items:

Repeal the Costly Health Care Takeover of 2010: Because the new health care law kills jobs, raises taxes, and increases the cost of health care, we will immediately take action to repeal this law.

Sure, we expected that. But this is the interesting part:

Ensure Access For Patients With Pre-Existing Conditions: Health care should be accessible for all, regardless of pre-existing conditions or past illnesses. We will expand state high-risk pools, reinsurance programs and reduce the cost of coverage. We will make it illegal for an insurance company to deny coverage to someone with prior coverage on the basis of a pre-existing condition, eliminate annual and lifetime spending caps, and prevent insurers from dropping your coverage just because you get sick. We will incentivize states to develop innovative programs that lower premiums and reduce the number of uninsured Americans.

Which is funny, because all of those benefits are already in the health care plan that the Republicans plan to completely repeal.

So they're not planning to completely repeal the law at all. They just think you're a moron and won't notice.

The other part I found hysterical is this:

Rein In the Red Tape Factory in Washington, DC: Excessive federal regulation is a de facto tax on employers and consumers that stifles job creation, hampers innovation and postpones investment in the economy. When the game is always changing, small businesses cannot properly plan for the future. To provide stability, we will require congressional approval of any new federal regulation that has an annual cost to our economy of $100 million or more. This is the threshold at which the government deems a regulation “economically significant.” If a regulation is so “significant” and costly that it may harm job creation, Congress should vote on it first.

So when Republicans are in charge of the White House, it's "plenary executive" with a need for "robust powers" that "cannot be held back by the other branches".

When a Democrat is in charge, Congress has to vote on everything they do that is "significant".

These guys are hysterical.

And they fully plan to be in charge in November. Do read the whole thing. It's pretty sobering how that the GOP has basically no new ideas on how to actually fix anything, only on how to take power away from Obama between now and 2012. How do they plan to "save money"?

With common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops, we will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone and putting us on a path to begin paying down the debt, balancing the budget, and ending the spending spree in Washington that threatens our children’s future.

Our deficit is ten times that. Way to go, guys! Smoke and mirrors are awesome!

Then again, it's all they have.

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