For the first time in the history of our Republic - on a vote of 220-215 Congress has said that to maintain your liberty as a citizen you will be required to purchase something which has been approved by that very government.

What kind of freedom is that?

The Health Care bill which just passed the House of Representatives requires all citizens to purchase health insurance or face upwards fines and up to 5 years in prison. Yes, you read correctly. It will be a felony to not have health insurance. No longer will you be able to vote, no longer will you be able to own a gun, no longer will you have your most fundamental rights. All because you did not purchase still broken health insurance.

That my friends is not freedom.

Our current health care system is obviously broken but requires real, honest reforms. Yet rather than address the current health care market distortions imposed by flawed government policies, H.R. 3962 merely expands Washington’s heavy hand and exacerbates that which is already broken in health care.

The bill includes fundamental changes to the American health care system – creating a public health insurance option to compete with private insurers and for the first time, requiring employers to offer health insurance.

This legislative measure is front loaded with taxes, and back-loaded with spending in the first ten years. Since most of the spending in the House bill does not fully go into effect until 2014, the 10-year cost estimates based on the preliminary CBO score (for years 2010 through 2019) only account for six years of new spending under the plan. Once it is implemented (over a full 10-year window from years 2014 to 2023), the giant House health bill carries a price tag of $2.4 trillion.

This massive expansion of the federal government’s role in the delivery of health care relies heavily on a number of mandates and tax penalties. H.R. 3962 will impose $729.5 billion in new taxes on families, employers and workers.

Yet the battle is not yet over. The path ahead remains shaky – for the bill and for many of the Democrats who voted to approve it. Make your voices heard. Let those who represent you that what Americans want are common-sense, responsible solutions that address the rising cost of health care and other major problems.

Let them know that the Democratic plan is neither a responsible nor common-sense approach to reform. In fact, it carries with it serious constitutional issues that should worry any American.

Be heard.

While Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic majority has said that we can't afford not to reform America's Health Care system, one fact remains:

There is NOTHING affordable about the Pelosi Plan!

Via the Foundry...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership are frantically trying to find enough votes to pass their giant 2,032 page health care legislation this weekend. But before Speaker Pelosi and liberals in Congress pass their big bill, the American taxpayers should be fully aware of the full price tag of this monster.

As Heritage analysts noted earlier in the week, the Congressional Budget Office released its preliminary score of the bill (H.R. 3962) but too many in the media have not been reporting its true cost. The true cost is not the net spending on only the coverage related provisions ($897 billion) but rather the total gross spending for the coverage provisions ($1.05 trillion) as well as any additional spending in the bill (approximately $217 billion). That would raise the plan’s price tag to about $1.5 trillion when including the roughly $210 billion cost of the “doc fix” is included. The “doc fix” refers to the undoing of the flawed Medicare payment update formula, which Congress created but has routinely stopped from being enforced. Under current law, that formula would result in a 20 percent reduction in doctors’ pay under the Medicare program.

The real story about the true cost is even more dramatic. The bill is front loaded with taxes, and back-loaded with spending in the first ten years. Since most of the spending in the House bill does not fully go into effect until 2014, the 10-year cost estimates based on the preliminary CBO score (for years 2010 through 2019) only account for six years of new spending under the plan. Once it is implemented (over a full 10-year window from years 2014 to 2023), the giant House health bill carries a price tag of $2.4 trillion, or as much as $2.6 trillion with the “doc fix.”

The GOP has this out as part of the “Holding Democrats Accountable” effort.

Simply put: a picture is worth a thousand words. The only information missing from this chart is the $787 billion we spent to no effect whatsoever on job losses:
U.S. Congressman Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, released the following statement today after the Department of Labor announced the national unemployment rate reached a 26 year high 10.2% during the month of October:

“Families across this nation are devastated by the reality of a 26-year high unemployment rate. It’s hard to find a friend or a neighbor who hasn’t been touched by today’s news that the national unemployment rate is 10.2 percent. The challenges facing our families and small businesses are obvious to those who are listening. Unfortunately, the Democrat leadership has turned a deaf ear to the concerns voiced by countless citizens, and the American people are paying the price.

“The American people want to know why Congress is forcing through the Pelosi plan for a government takeover of health care instead of a plan that will help create jobs. Concerned citizens don’t understand why their elected officials can’t work together to create jobs and bring relief to families hurting in the city and on the farm. It is time Democrat leaders abandon their endless pursuit of government-run health care and begin working on bipartisan solutions that will put the American people back to work.”

We already know that the Democrats Healthcare Reform plan will cost $1.5 TRILLION.

We also know that there are serious and significant constitutionality issues with the proposed legislation that should be enough to frighten any freedom loving American.

But now BigGovernment.com has just released an astonishing piece of news confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail:

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail.

The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

In response to the JCT letter, Camp said: “This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail. It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately.”

Key excerpts from the JCT letter appear below:

“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.” [page 1]
- – - – - – - – - –
“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…” [page 2]
- – - – - – - – - -
“Criminal penalties
Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses. Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:
• Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.
• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]

When confronted with this same issue during its consideration of a similar individual mandate tax, the Senate Finance Committee worked on a bipartisan basis to include language in its bill that shielded Americans from civil and criminal penalties. The Pelosi bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail.

“The Senate Finance Committee had the good sense to eliminate the extreme penalty of incarceration. Speaker Pelosi’s decision to leave in the jail time provision is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15,000 premium her plan creates. Fortunately, Republicans have an alternative that will lower health insurance costs without raising taxes or cutting Medicare,” said Camp.

According to the Congressional Budget Office the lowest cost family non-group plan under the Speaker’s bill would cost $15,000 in 2016.

The Department of Labor announced today the economy shed another 190,000 jobs in October, pushing the unemployment rate to 10.2 percent and the running Obama jobs deficit to 5.7 million.

When a tragedy occurs the last thing on most people's minds is a "shout out" - not so for the President. Today before addressing the nation after a heinous crime was committed against our troops at Fort Hood, President Obama thought it appropriate to give a "shout-out"related to a recent conference.

The president then went on to tell the audience what great admiration he has for the men and women in uniform…

I want to thank my Cabinet members and senior administration officials who participated today. I hear that Dr. Joe Medicine Crow (ph) was around, and so I want to give a shout out to that Congressional Medal of Honor winner. It’s good to see you.

As Ben Johnson aptly notes, the quotation says it all: our commander-in-chief feels there is no event so serious that it cannot be prefaced by a moment of glib hipness, no solemn loss so sacred he will deny himself a moment of wry self-indulgence. Soldiers were killed? Let’s say hi to Joe first.

President Bush used to break into tears when addressing soldiers and was reviled as a stone-hearted warmonger; Donald Rumsfeld was demonized for using a machine to sign notification letters to fallen soldiers’s next-of-kin. President Obama gives out rounds of virtual fist-bumps to his buds before even mentioning a slaughter of American soldiers, perpetrated by Americans, in mid-America.

After more than eight years of lengthy war zone rotations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army personnel are experiencing record rates of suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other mental health problems, as well as worsening alcohol and drug abuse.

The psychological toll on the all-volunteer force today is unprecedented. Couple those issues with the worst mass shooting at an American military base in history - the President's remarks are only made all the more callous. At a time of tragedy and great loss to this nation, it is a sad and disgraceful mistake for any president to make such glib and flippant remarks.

Recently California GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Steve Poizner met with conservative bloggers at the Western Conservative Political Action Conference in Newport Beach.

As first reported by GatewayPundit, Poizner took a few moments in one of the meet and greet sessions to slam Obama and democrats over their plan to take over the health care industry. Poizner, a successful California businessman, asks, “Do you really want government to start up a new agency?… The numbers don’t even jive… The democrat’s plan should raise red flags for everyone.”

If you're unframiliar with Poizner take a few moments to look at his10-10-10 Plan which would do three things: 1) Cut the state sales tax, corporation tax, and personal income tax by 10%, 2) Cut spending by 10% during his first two years in office, and 3) Create a $10 billion Rainy Day fund by the end of his term.

From our Polls of Hope and Change, a majority of Americans now see President Barack Obama as governing from the left. Specifically, 54% say his policies as president have been mostly liberal while 34% call them mostly moderate. This contrasts with public expectations right after Obama's election a year ago, when as many expected him to be moderate as to be liberal.

The latest findings from a USA Today/Gallup survey, conducted Oct. 16-19, also show that fewer Americans today than in April say Obama is keeping the promises he made during the campaign.

The decline in the percentage saying Obama has kept his promises is seen among all three major parties, dropping from 92% to 77% among Democrats, from 54% to 41% among independents, and from 45% to 22% among Republicans. To some degree, of course, the longer a president serves, the more opportunities there are for people to see him as breaking promises, which may account for some of this shift since the early months of Obama's presidency.

The Bottom Line: President Obama is not enjoying the same broad appeal and centrist image that he did in the afterglow of his election last November. The percentage of Americans that view him favorably continues to decline. The common perception that he would govern as a moderate has given way to a heightened belief that Obama's policies are mostly liberal. There can be little doubt that in the light of Americans' generally conservative leanings, this will become an ever increasing political problem for the President.

Starting today at 1 pm ET, the Republican Party will run a 12-hour marathon to educate people about the 12 truths of the Pelosi Plan for ObamaCare. When they arranged this, they couldn’t have guessed that Pelosi would call for a vote on a bill less than 48 hours after they finish their broadcast at GOP.com — even while the 1990-page bill gets changes and additions. Mike Pence invites people to interact, via e-mail and Twitter, to get their questions answered:

Be sure to take a few moments to read this post about the Constitutionality issue of the proposed health legislation.

In this article, Gibbs Says He Doesn’t Know if White House Has Reviewed Constitutionality of Forcing People to Buy Health Insurance, Gibbs was asked about whether the constitutionality of the proposed health care legislation be taken into consideration. While I really didn’t expect them to consider it, I was shocked by this statement he made:

he does not know if White House lawyers have reviewed whether it is constitutional for the federal government to order individuals to buy health insurance and said that the White House is not seriously considering the concerns of people…who believe the mandate is not constitutionally justified.

In this important video Senator Orin Hatch drives home several valid points regarding the constitutionality of the proposed health care legislation.

Here is the crucial point that we must drive home: once the federal government makes health care coverage compulsory, it will open the flood gates for other compulsory demands that will dictate the live of Americans in the future. Your life and the lives of your children.

It was James Madison that once said: “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

Yet this abridgement of freedom hasn't been gradual nor silent. It's been heading right at us 100 miles per hour down the freeway. Time to wake up, stand up and and fight for your freedom.

One day after top economic advisers met at the White House with President Obama to discuss strategies for creating jobs, the Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said that the Administration is increasingly concerned about the federal government's perilous fiscal situation as swelling deficits threaten the nation's long-term economic health.

The Hill reported:

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag warned Tuesday that large federal deficits will eventually imperil the U.S. economy because they will lead to higher interest rates and more borrowing from overseas.

Orszag, in a speech in New York, said that deficits, expected to add $9 trillion to the current national debt of $12 trillion over the next decade, are “serious and ultimately unsustainable.”

But, that isn’t what he said a few months ago.

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag told Cavuto back on February 26:
“We need a shared sacrifice” and “Deficits are good.”




Hat tip: Gatewaypundit

As George Will noted, Presidents often come to be characterized by particular adjectives: "honest" Abe Lincoln, "Grover the Good" Cleveland, "energetic" Theodore Roosevelt, "idealistic" Woodrow Wilson, "Silent Cal" Coolidge, "confident" FDR, "likable" Ike Eisenhower. Less happily, there were "Tricky Dick" Nixon and "Slick Willie" Clinton.

Unhappy will be a president whose defining adjective is "vain." Yet the latest story from Newsbusters isn't helping any issues concerning the percieved over-the-edge narcissism of Barack Obama.

During the 10AM ET hour of America’s Newsroom on Fox News Channel, fill-in co-host Martha Maccallum told viewers what President Obama watched on election night while Democrats suffered big losses in New Jersey and Virginia: “Robert Gibbs said, well, he was actually watching, you know, the HBO special about his year-long campaign and how it all went.”

On Tuesday night the White House had worked to downplay the Democratic gubernatorial defeats by claiming the President did not watch the election returns. Apparently Gibbs thought it would look better if the commander in chief was watching a self-indulgent fawning documentary about himself. Interestingly, Obama apparently previewed the HBO special a few days earlier, as Gibbs himself explained to the blog Talking Points Memo: “White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says Obama has already seen ‘By the People’...Gibbs told TPMDC Obama’s review: ‘Thumbs up!’”

On FNC, Maccallum noted: “...we know that Michelle and the girls went to the Miley Cyrus concert last night... So he’s all alone in that big house, right? Nothing to do but sit back and watch – reminisce about the long campaign and watch HBO and the special.” The HBO documentary, ‘By the People,’ debuted on Tuesday, in commemoration of the one year anniversary of Obama’s election.



Follow up reads here and here.

Perhaps the big question that arises from todays election is whether or not this was a referendum on Team Obama? Apparently Republican National Committee Charmian Michale Steele doesn't think so. What say you?

It's still early, but here is what early exit polls are telling us:

...majorities of voters in both states (55 percent in Virginia and 60 percent in New Jersey) said President Obama was not a factor in their vote today. Those who said Mr. Obama was a factor in New Jersey divided as to whether their vote was a vote for the president (19 percent) or against him (20 percent). In Virginia, slightly fewer voters said their vote was for Mr. Obama (18 percent) than against him (24 percent).

Among Corzine supporters in New Jersey, 38 percent said one reason for their vote was to express support for Mr. Obama, while 39 percent of Christie voters said it was to express opposition to Mr. Obama.

In Virginia, among backers of the Democratic candidate, Creigh Deeds, 38 percent said their vote was in part to support the president, while 42 percent of McDonnell voters said their vote was in part to oppose the president.

REMEMBER: The Dems explanation for Deeds' loss was that Deeds didn't embrace Obama enough. Corzine hugged Obama and made the election about Obama in a state Obama carried by 15 points and where Dems outnumber Republicans by a wide margin. And he lost.

Apparntly even children’s shows are not safe from the far left. Their war on Fox News has now enlisted Sesame Street, Big Hollywood reported:

Last week, in a re-broadcast of an episode that originally aired two years ago, Oscar starts his own news network, GNN (Grouchy News Network). An irate viewer calls in to berate him that the news is not grouchy enough:“I am changing the channel. From now on I am watching ‘Pox’ News. Now there is a trashy news show.”

Later in the episode, Anderson Cooper from 4th place CNN, guest stars as a reporter for GNN. He interacts with “Walter Cranky” and “Dan Rather-Not” — Muppets representing real-life liberal news personalities — and they talk about “Meredith Beware-a” and “Diane Spoiler.” But no affectionate nicknames for Fox News personalities; no Spill O’Reilly or Brittle Hume — nope, and the only disparaging characterization of real-world news is reserved for Fox: Fox is a POX. It is trashy. They didn’t even attempt to try “MessyNBC.”

Nancy Pelosi has unveiled the new health care bill in the House after merging together three different versions of legislation. To appease moderate Blue Dog Democrats and to meet President Obama’s oft-stated promise that reform wouldn’t cost more than $900 billion in the first ten years, Speaker Pelosi sought to reduce the $1.5 trillion total cost of the bill. Newsflash:
she failed.

The Congressional Budget Office released its preliminary score of the bill and while some in the media have been reporting its net cost of $894 billion, the total cost of health reform legislation is more like $1.5 trillion. So, Speaker Pelosi is essentially right back where she started—with a huge 2,000 page plan that carries a hefty price tag.

Donald Marron, former acting director of the Congressional Budget Office, calculates that through a variety of provisions there is about $217 billion in additional spending in the House bill. The additional spending in the House bill brings the total cost of the House bill to $1.273 trillion, or almost $1.3 trillion in a ten year budget window.

And let’s not forget the infamous “doc fix” which prevent cuts in Medicare payments to physicians that would otherwise automatically take effect under the “sustainable growth rate formula” (SGR). Despite the Senate’s unsuccessful attempt to pass a permanent fix without paying for it, the House legislation also attempts to pull out the same $245 billion dollar plus provision from the legislative package to create the illusion that the price tag of the legislation is lower than it really is. The American people saw this budget gimmick before when it was tried in the Senate, who do the House leaders think they are fooling?

The House bill costs more than the President’s $900 billion dollar promise and its costs are in excess of $1 trillion. All told, the cost of “reform” legislation is still more than $1.5 trillion.


Material courtesy of The Foundry

Centrist Democrats in the House are moving toward the “yes” column on healthcare reform, triggering optimism by some and concern by others that the Democratic led Congress will soon have the votes to pass their $1.5 Trillion boondoggle.

But is this 1,900 page "reform bill" the worst piece of legislation ever introduced? The Wall Street Journal makes a pretty darn good case that the answer is an easy YES:

Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.

In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.

Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal coverage." The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country's fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity.

•The spending surge. The Congressional Budget Office figures the House program will cost $1.055 trillion over a decade, which while far above the $829 billion net cost that Mrs. Pelosi fed to credulous reporters is still a low-ball estimate. Most of the money goes into government-run "exchanges" where people earning between 150% and 400% of the poverty level—that is, up to about $96,000 for a family of four in 2016—could buy coverage at heavily subsidized rates, tied to income. The government would pay for 93% of insurance costs for a family making $42,000, 72% for another making $78,000, and so forth.

At least at first, these benefits would be offered only to those whose employers don't provide insurance or work for small businesses with 100 or fewer workers. The taxpayer costs would be far higher if not for this "firewall"—which is sure to cave in when people see the deal their neighbors are getting on "free" health care. Mrs. Pelosi knows this, like everyone else in Washington.

Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs with budget gimmicks. It "pays for" about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that.

• Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare—now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future Medicare spending to "pay for" universal coverage. While Medicare's price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options.

As for Medicaid, the House will expand eligibility to everyone below 150% of the poverty level, meaning that some 15 million new people will be added to the rolls as private insurance gets crowded out at a cost of $425 billion. A decade from now more than a quarter of the population will be on a program originally intended for poor women, children and the disabled.

Even though the House will assume 91% of the "matching rate" for this joint state-federal program—up from today's 57%—governors would still be forced to take on $34 billion in new burdens when budgets from Albany to Sacramento are in fiscal collapse. Washington's budget will collapse too, if anything like the House bill passes.

• European levels of taxation. All told, the House favors $572 billion in new taxes, mostly by imposing a 5.4-percentage-point "surcharge" on joint filers earning over $1 million, $500,000 for singles. This tax will raise the top marginal rate to 45% in 2011 from 39.6% when the Bush tax cuts expire—not counting state income taxes and the phase-out of certain deductions and exemptions. The burden will mostly fall on the small businesses that have organized as Subchapter S or limited liability corporations, since the truly wealthy won't have any difficulty sheltering their incomes.

This surtax could hit ever more earners because, like the alternative minimum tax, it isn't indexed for inflation. Yet it still won't be nearly enough. Even if Congress had confiscated 100% of the taxable income of people earning over $500,000 in the boom year of 2006, it would have only raised $1.3 trillion. When Democrats end up soaking the middle class, perhaps via the European-style value-added tax that Mrs. Pelosi has endorsed, they'll claim the deficits that they created made them do it.

Under another new tax, businesses would have to surrender 8% of their payroll to government if they don't offer insurance or pay at least 72.5% of their workers' premiums, which eat into wages. Such "play or pay" taxes always become "pay or pay" and will rise over time, with severe consequences for hiring, job creation and ultimately growth. While the U.S. already has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world, Democrats are on the way to creating a high structural unemployment rate, much as Europe has done by expanding its welfare states,

Meanwhile, a tax equal to 2.5% of adjusted gross income will also be imposed on some 18 million people who CBO expects still won't buy insurance in 2019. Democrats could make this penalty even higher, but that is politically unacceptable, or they could make the subsidies even higher, but that would expose the (already ludicrous) illusion that ObamaCare will reduce the deficit.

• The insurance takeover. A new "health choices commissioner" will decide what counts as "essential benefits," which all insurers will have to offer as first-dollar coverage. Private insurers will also be told how much they are allowed to charge even as they will have to offer coverage at virtually the same price to anyone who applies, regardless of health status or medical history.

The cost of insurance, naturally, will skyrocket. The insurer WellPoint estimates based on its own market data that some premiums in the individual market will triple under these new burdens. The same is likely to prove true for the employer-sponsored plans that provide private coverage to about 177 million people today. Over time, the new mandates will apply to all contracts, including for the large businesses currently given a safe harbor from bureaucratic tampering under a 1974 law called Erisa.

The political incentive will always be for government to expand benefits and reduce cost-sharing, trampling any chance of giving individuals financial incentives to economize on care. Essentially, all insurers will become government contractors, in the business of fulfilling political demands: There will be no such thing as "private" health insurance.
***

All of this is intentional, even if it isn't explicitly acknowledged. The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility. Mr. Obama's own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back "public option" entitlement program is so that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.

As Congress's balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive. Democrats can't regulate their way out of the reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable—especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine.

Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of "change," but we doubt most voters realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the status quo. Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi's handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR's National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.

Patrick Leahy and Nancy Pelosi may pretend that no one questions the authority of Congress to impose a federal mandate to buy health insurance, but one of their colleagues on Capitol Hill certainly does. CNS News interviewed Senator Orrin Hatch, a member of Leahy’s Judiciary Committee, who says that the Constitution never gave Congress that kind of power. In fact, Hatch says that the interpretation of Leahy and Pelosi would create a despotic Congress that could force Americans to do anything:

Planned Parenthood has been a part of Abby Johnson’s life for the past eight years; that is until last month, when Abby resigned. Johnson said she realized she wanted to leave, after watching an ultrasound of an abortion procedure. “I just thought I can’t do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that’s it,” said Jonhson.

The story is here, the video follows:

Since 1995, Gallup has been doing an annual survey of Values and Beliefs among Americans. For the first time in the history of the poll, the survey held that more Americans considered themselves anti-abortion (51%) than pro-abortion (42%) -- a notable difference from a year ago, when 44% were anti-abortion and 50% were pro-abortion.

Flashback: Take a moment to watch this video on theologian John Piper's speech