Washington, D.C. – Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (MN-06) brings light to the $105 billion in government spending that was buried in the ObamaCare legislation which became law last March. Bachmann released the following statement:
“This is a case of legislative fraud of the highest order. We now know that the ObamaCare bill contained advanced appropriations for use in implementing this massive government takeover of health care. This year alone, the provisions are already in place to spend $5 billion on ObamaCare, and another $100 billion will be spent over the next eight years, even without any appropriating actions by Congress.
“More and more we are seeing what Nancy Pelosi meant when she said the bill would have to be passed in order for the American people to find out what was in it. The Obama Administration has already added about 6,000 pages of regulations to ObamaCare, and this funding shows a clear intent to circumvent the appropriations process and make it much more difficult for future Congresses to repeal ObamaCare. When it was passed, Democrats knew they would lose the gavel. But this funding ensures they will not lose their prized government takeover of health care because it’s already well-funded.
“With this information, I am vowing to vote ‘no’ on future Continuing Resolutions to fund the government unless there is specific language included to defund ObamaCare and rescind the funding that has already been appropriated. Defunding ObamaCare, along with defunding Planned Parenthood, must be non-negotiable planks in our budget negotiations.
“I also want to offer a public word of gratitude to former Representative Ernest Istook of Oklahoma, who worked hard to uncover this startling new information about how ObamaCare’s sponsors included several years’ worth of current and future appropriations for the health care takeover.”
For more background click here.
The opponents of any form of “socialized medicine” are fighting the wrong battle.We have a tendency in America to argue for or against a concept based on our own personal philosophy or view of the world, what advances our personal interests, or the interests of our party, family, organization, or region. Perhaps viewing the issue from a management or systemic perspective might result in innovative approaches to the issue. The American national mindset, citizen philosophy, lack of citizen motivation to be proactively healthy, and governance model make the socialization of health care in America very problematic, particularly at this point in time. A country needs to know its limitations.
Thanks for posting this Shane!
OK, I work two full time jobs (including working on the weekend), but decided to spend an hour trying to be a good citizen and track down what Bachman was ranting about. The first thing I learned is that it’s really hard to find out exactly… which Thomas number (version) of the bill got signed into law, because there were several versions.
So I spent just a little bit of time looking through two of them (links to the bills below). I did a search within each document on the word “appropriations”, and started totaling up the numbers. What makes it time-consuming is that there are numerous sections in the bill, each of which has its own appropriations subsection, so it takes forever to add it all up (there is no one bottom-line total cost listed as $105B). So with the time I had, I was able to total up about half of it ($50B).
This proves that there were appropriations clearly listed in the bill for at least half of what Bachman is claiming. The appropriations also clearly state what years they’re good for (in most cases, they cover 2011-2015).
This means that Bachman’s claim that appropriations over several years and several billions of dollars were hidden from Congress or the public just doesn’t make sense. Also, why is she making this allegation right now, and claiming that this is new information?
The assertion that the out-year appropriations were fraudulent is a smokescreen. The recent decision to stop new appropriations for the health care law is considered a victory for the Tea Party. Now that this victory is secured, they realize that it will be undermined because it has no immediate effect. The law will continue unencumbered for another four years, by which time there could potentially be a Democratic Congress once again. What this video does is attempt to mobilize citizens (who don’t know any better) to defund the existing out-year appropriations so that the Tea Party momentum will be apparent and potentially forward-moving to next year’s presidential race. It’s not a bad strategy for a party with not much to lose. Let’s see how ignorant the American people really are, though.
Here are the bills. If any of you can find the fraud, please let me know (I think the last one is most recent):
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hr3200rh/pdf/BILLS-111hr3200rh.pdf
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/PDF/hr3590.pdf
http://docs.house.gov/rules/health/111_ahcaa.pdfSee More