Running For Senator In Nebraska

We all remember the ‘cornhusker kickback’ from the debate on Obamacare and the fact that it resulted in Senator Ben Nelson deciding not to run for re-election. The Democrats chose Bob Kerrey to run for the Senate seat that Ben Nelson occupied.

Yesterday Breitbart.com posted a story about Bob Kerrey and some of the positions he has taken in his campaign for the Senate.

The article reports some recent statements:

Democratic Senate candidate Bob Kerrey said Thursday that he hates the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act and that his own businesses might drop employee insurance and pay the federal fine for doing so if the mandate goes into effect in 2014.

 Kerrey said wealthy Americans pay their fair share in taxes. And he said President Barack Obama made a big mistake by not following the recommendations of his own bipartisan budget deficit commission.

That doesn’t sound as if he is in agreement with the Obama campaign.

The article quotes additional comments:

“I hate the employer mandate,” Kerrey said. “I think it’s going to have a counterproductive impact. We don’t have any (insured employee) that costs us less than $7,000 (a year), and the fine’s $2,000. We’ll dump ’em off. We won’t call it dumping, we’ll say … ‘Go get it from the exchange.’”

He said the employer mandate “will accelerate an already breaking-down employer-based system.” That portion of the law should be repealed, he said.

What Bob Kerrey is saying makes sense. Why is it that other Democrats cannot recognize the logic in his statements? If Obamacare stands, we will see the private healthcare industry in America destroyed and the quality of healthcare in America decrease very quickly.

As I have said before, please note that the nastiest parts of Obamacare go into effect after the election this year. We will begin to see the impact in the increased taxes we will all face in January 2013 and other negative things will take effect within the year.

We need to repeal (and replace) Obamacare.

 

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Ben Nelson Is Retiring

Yesterday Investors.com posted an article about Senator Ben Nelson announcing his retirement. Senator Nelson is a casualty of his vote on ObamaCare. He is retiring because it has become very obvious that he will not be re-elected because of his vote for ObamaCare (which was touted as the deciding vote on the unpopular bill). The article at Investors.com sees his retirement as the ticket for the Republicans to take over the Senate. The article points out that if President Obama is re-elected, Republican control of the Senate would give him more opportunity to blame Congress for everything that is not going right. If President Obama is not re-elected, a Republican President and a Republican Congress might be able to restore some fiscal sanity to the government.

Power Line posted a wonderful comment on the subject:

One of the sources of Nelson’s unpopularity in Nebraska was his vote for Obamacare. So this is an opportune moment to recall the Cornhusker Kickback, one of a number of acts of outright corruption on which Obamacare was based. The Kickback provided that the federal government would pick up Nebraska’s tab–but only Nebraska’s–for the new Medicaid recipients that would be created by the statute, apparently in perpetuity. That was the bribe that Obama needed to get Nelson’s vote, and Nelson evidently thought his sweetheart deal would insulate him against criticism for voting for the unpopular bill. One wonders: how can such a special arrangement for a single state possibly be constitutional? But constitutionality was never a big concern where Obamacare was concerned.

To Nelson’s surprise, perhaps, the kickback didn’t entirely placate his Cornhusker constituents. What is wrong with those people? Don’t they know a good payoff when they see one? Maybe Thomas Frank needs to write a new book called What’s the Matter With Nebraska?

I think many Americans are concerned about the rate of spending going on in Washington. The question is, “Can that spending be dealt with?” I think it can if it is dealt with in the next two to four years. Otherwise, when we reach the point where the majority of Americans do not pay income taxes (the number now is about 49 percent), there will be no incentive to cut spending. At that point we will become a third-world country.

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What Happens When Americans Are Not Paying Attention

This is a graph of U.S. gross federal governme...

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The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday:

The U.S. Senate, in an unusual procedure, cleared the way Thursday for the U.S. to lift its borrowing authority by $500 billion to $15.19 trillion, enough to keep the support federal government borrowing through late January or early February.

The action came under an unusual legislative procedure spelled out under the August agreement to raise the U.S. debt ceiling and avoid a U.S. credit default. In a 52-45 vote, the Senate blocked an attempt by Republicans to slow down the process that will result in the $500 billion debt-ceiling increase.

Only one Democrat broke party ranks to vote with the Republicans in trying to slow down the measure–Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat. The article reminds us:

The next increase in the borrowing limit, likely in the first quarter of next year, will be dependent on the ability of a panel of 12 lawmakers to reach a deal that cuts at least $1.2 trillion from federal budget deficits over the next decade.

The procedure used to vote on the increase was part of the debt ceiling worked out with President Obama in August. The bottom line here is that the spending continues unchecked as Congress goes on its merry way. It’s time to replace those in Congress who are continuing the spending with people who understand the fact that they are spending the taxpayers’ money–not their own.

 

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