HEALTH CARE ALERT!

THE WORD FROM DC is that the House will vote on the exact same bill the Senate passed on Christmas Eve. It has been given a House bill number – HR 3590 – but it is the SAME bill, including the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, etc. There will be no reason for the leadership to go back and fix the bill once it passes, so their promises are empty and meaningless. Any future changes are hypothetical. You must contact your House member and say vote no. This is especially vital in the 3rd and 2nd Districts, Congressmen Brian Baird and Rick Larsen. 

THIS BILL, HR 3590, spends too much ( $2.5 trillion the first ten years ), raises taxes on Cadillac plans, insurance and drug companies ( so much for lower costs ), has an individual mandate, taxes employers of 50 fulltime workers or more if insurance is not offerred, expands Medicaid, costing the states more, still allows insurance companies to invoke yearly limits, cuts $120 billion for Medicare Advantagre, limiting choices for seniors, creates a huge Federal bureaucracy and does not mention tort reform.

Time to call, email, fax, stand up for liberty and true health care reform. NO ON HR 3590.

OUR STATE FINANCIAL TRAIN WRECK IS NEAR…

I AM ALIVE, JUST VERY busy after spending time at CPAC and then trying to establish Americans for Prosperity ( www.americansforprosperity.org – please sign up today ). I attended a meeting in Olympia today and the news is not good.

ON THE FINANCIAL FRONT, we are, as a state, on a path to disaster. Unfunded retiree health benefits are between $8 and $10 Billion ( that’s a B ); the budget defecit is $2.8 Billion; a lot of Federal money has disguised our true deficit the last two years, and that money may not be there in the future; our Insurance Commissioner has said that the Health Care Authority, the body which oversees state health care programs, has lost so much money, that if it were a private company, it would be ” subject to reeivership proceedings, potentially mandatory; and, our state pension fund is so underfunded,  the State Actuary has said it could take 20 years to recover the investment losses in the fund alone.  Oh, and the Legislature skipped payments to the fund for 2003-2005.  The Legislature recently reduced their scheduled contributions due to decreased revenue flows due to the recession. The Actuary said that contributions by employees and employer ( us ) may have to triple for the next 12 years to balance everything.

THEN, THERE IS THE REST of the news. State tax revenues are declining as you all are spending less and more of you are unemployed.  The numbers of people receiving unemployment are reaching record levels in some counties; the total number of unemployed statewide is 634, 411.  Another indicator of how shaky the economy is:  the number of foreclosed homes for sale in Snohomish and King counties is in the area of 12,000. Those homes will have to sell, at least a lot of them, before new construction will take off and lift the economy. This is not on the horizon.

AND, EVEN THOUGH THE SPENDERS are crying about cuts, the state will spend more money this year than last year, and is projected to spend more next year than this year. Will you? Actually, indirectly, you will, becaause the state can’t spend a dime it doesn’t get from you. And, all those shortfalls and underfunded pensions and the like, you are responsible for every penny.  Not a pretty picture.

THERE IS SOME GOOD news out there. Newsweek magazine has an astonishing cover story this week on Iraq, headlined Victory At Last.  It reports that something close to democracy is taking root in Iraq and mentions the stability and functional electoral system, as well as the growing economy. It will be hard for the Left to admit it, but  Bush was right.

BTW, THERE WAS another Iraq story last week which got no coverage in the American press: the discovery of another mass grave in the Kurdish areas near Kirkuk. The bodies of 234 children, all under 16 were found. It was left over as part of Saddam’s campaign in the ’80s against the Kurds. Another vindication for W.

FORBES MAGAZINE RECENTLY studied the financial condition of the fifty states and guess what they found: ” Of the 10 states in the worse financial condition, eight are among a total of 23 defined by Gallup as ’solidly Democratic’, meaning the Democrats enjoy an advantage of 10 percentage points or greater in party affilaiation”. Suhprise, suhprise, suhprise. Oh, and the chairman of JP Morgan Chase has warned that California is a greater financial risk than Greece.

More later. I promise to be more faithful in posting, but CPAC and filling in on KTTH last week ( thank all of you who listened and thanks to David Boze, Michael Medved and the management of KTTH, particularly Rod Arquette ) and setting up AFP ( join today – www.americansforprosperity.org  and if you really want to get involved, email me – kirbywilbur@hotmail.com ), I had little time for this. I will do better. Get involved, 2010 is shaping up to be a very important election, in fact I believe the most important since 1980.  If you need ideas on how to be involved, let me know. We need to win in November, but it can’t be done without you. Get involved and say yes we can so on November 3, we wake up and say yes we did.