Story Of Obama

Obama’s “Victory” Will Defeat Him

http://www.dickmorris.com/obamas-victory-will-defeat-him-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/

 

From The RNC

Today, the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare. While this may come as a devastating blow to the millions of Americans who rallied against the government's infringement on their health care and basic freedoms - the fight's not over. It has just begun.

We can't afford Obamacare.

Obamacare hurts the economy, limits Americans' choice in health care, and interferes with the doctor-patient relationship. Hidden among the 2,700 pages of Obamacare crafted behind closed doors is a web of new government rules and regulations liberals disguised as cost cutting measures. In reality, health care costs continue to rise, and Obamacare will cost taxpayers trillions in new federal spending.

America needs real health care reform, and that means repealing Obamacare.

We need market-based solutions that give patients more choice, not less. The answer to rising health care costs is not, and never will be, Big Government. We must protect Americans' access to the care they need, from the doctor they choose, at a lower cost. We must enact commonsense, step-by-step reforms based on the free market and not dictated by government bureaucrats.

Without a change of leadership, Americans will continue to suffer.

Today's Supreme Court decision sets the stakes for the November election. Now, the only way to save the country from Obamacare's budget-busting government takeover of our health care and intrusion on our basic freedoms is to elect Republicans who understand the economy, respect free enterprise, and can provide the leadership we need.

There's still much more to do - the stakes are too high. On November 6, we must elect Mitt Romney and Republican candidates and put America on the path toward a brighter economic future and successful health care reform.

 

Gingrich: Obamacare Repeal 'Defining Issue of Fall Campaign'
By Martin Gould and John Bachman

The Supreme Court ruling in favor of President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul will do little to reduce the uncertainty that is preventing employers filling job openings, former GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich predicted.

Instead that doubt will continue at least until November when voters will decide whether to install a Republican president and Congress that would repeal the law, he said in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV.

Speaking from Italy, the former House speaker said, “Unless the Congress repeals it, it’s going to be law. And unless Obama is defeated for president, it’s going to be law.

“So that guarantees that the uncertainty continues at least until November.

“It also means that those businesses that have refused to hire people because of their fear of the cost of the mandates are going to continue to refuse to hire people.”

But Gingrich said he was hopeful that Democratic senators facing elections in November will put pressure on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to put the issue to a vote this summer. The GOP-controlled House has already scheduled a vote for the second week of July.

“You’ll see pressure in the Senate,” he said. “You’ll see Sen. Reid on behalf of the Democrats trying to block a vote in the Senate.

He named Sens. Bill Nelson of Florida and Jon Tester of Montana as two who are up before voters who will now be “in the hot seat” over a vote.

“The voters are going to have their attention focused, once again, on Obamacare,” he said.

“People were sort of assuming the Supreme Court would solve the problem for them and now it’s put back in the lap of the American people and of their legislative and presidential leadership.

“There was a pretty in-depth Pew poll about a week ago that said that clearly, the Republican version of what this bill is about, has been winning and it’s clear the American people are increasingly opposed, by about a 20 point margin, something like 56 to 36 in favor of repeal of the act.

“When people actually calculate how big a tax the mandate is, the whole reason Obama didn’t want to consider it a tax, is that the bill will become tremendously unpopular.

“People realize that this is a giant government-imposed tax and future Congresses could raise that tax and make it even higher.

“When those numbers come out in the next two or three days you will see an even deeper opposition to Obamacare,” he predicted.

Gingrich said that Chief Justice John Roberts’ reason for siding with the liberals on the bench was “the worst possible grounds for Obama.”

“I’m very surprised that he came down like this. I had not contemplated the tax solution because Obama had been so adamant that it was not a tax.

“This ruling could go down as a major mistake by Roberts or as an extraordinarily clever move and we won’t know for a long time which it is. He clearly has upheld the law, which must make Obama and his supporters happy, but on the other hand, he’s upheld the law on the worst possible grounds for them.”

Gingrich said Roberts had “placed before the country a firm, clear choice. If you want the largest tax increase in history, keep Obamacare. If you want to repeal the largest tax increase in history, repeal Obamacare.

“Now it’s appropriately up to the elected legislators and the elected president and this will … become the defining issues of the fall campaign.”

 

Congress: ‘It’s Not a Tax.’ SCOTUS: ‘Yes It Is.’
by Michael F. Cannon

The Supreme Court ruled that ObamaCare’s individual mandate is not constitutional under the Commerce Power, which was how Congress framed the mandate to avoid a political backlash from calling it a tax. Congress and the president swore up and down that the mandate was not a tax. Yet the Court upheld the mandate as a valid use of that disavowed taxing power. What Congress said the individual mandate is, the Court said is not constitutional. What Congress said the mandate is not, the Court ruled is constitutional. Everybody got that?

Where does that leave us?
1.The Supreme Court just enacted a law that Congress never would have passed.
2.The Court just told Congress it is okay to lie to the people to avoid political accountability.

 

Obama's Pyrrhic Victory
By DICK MORRIS

Today, Barack Obama won the battle, but will lose the war. The Supreme Court decision makes Obamacare the central issue in the 2012 election, just like it was in the 2010 election. And we know how that turned out.

The Court has sustained the individual mandate. That imposes on us a mandate: To defeat Obama and take the Senate. Now that is the only way we can kill this horrible law.

Public opinion has rejected this law for two years now by about the same margin: 40% support; 55% oppose. While the Court decision may give the law a short term positive bump, the underlying reality of the costs of the program and the increases in everyone's health insurance rates it is already triggering will eliminate any near term gain. Ultimately, it will still be 40-55 against the law.

Right now, presidential polls show Romney and Obama both in the mid-40s. The single most unpopular thing Obama has done is the health care law. Now it is going to be the lynchpin issue. It means that the election itself will increasingly be polarized around opinions of the health care law - a fifteen point loser for the Democrats.

In a real sense, the Supreme Court did not let Obama off the hook by striking down the law. Now he will have to defend it during the election.

Remember what this law does. It requires everyone to spend upwards of 7 percent of their income on health insurance or pay a fine of several thousand dollars. Neither is an attractive alternative for the young and the poor who are the president's political base. And, with the expansion of Medicaid rejected by the Court, the government will not be there to help them.

In 2010, Democrats running for Congress (most of whom lost) did not even attempt to defend Obamacare. They put as much distance between themselves and the law as they could. But now, neither Obama nor his Senate and House candidates will have that option since the Supreme Court has kicked the football back into political play.

The rejection of the Medicaid expansion is huge. This mandate - which would have quadrupled the Medicaid population in some states (like Texas) would have forced all states to pass income taxes and required those with them already to raise them substantially. It required coverage of about a quarter of the country under Medicaid, something the states cannot afford. Some saw it as a way to equalize the north and the south in taxes, eliminating the competitive advantage the south has long enjoyed.

As an American, I would have rather seen the individual mandate thrown out. As a partisan, I'm thrilled that we still have the issue to beat Obama with.

 

Rebuttal To Obama’s Negative Ad On Romney’s Record As Governor

http://www.dickmorris.com/rebuttal-to-obamas-negative-ad-on-romneys-record-as-governor/

 

"Obama Approval Ratings Rise Tracks Increasing Consumer Confidence

"WASHINGTON -- On Thursday, the Gallup Daily tracking poll marked a symbolic milestone. For the first time in more than a month and only the third time since last July, Gallup reported an approval rating for President Barack Obama (49 percent) that was slightly higher than his disapproval rating (46 percent).

"On Friday, the Rasmussen Reports automated tracking survey marked a similar landmark. It showed Obama's approval rating at 50 percent or greater nationwide for the fifth consecutive day, a popularity not matched on the Rasmussen poll since January 2011.

"The two daily tracking surveys are not alone. National telephone polls released in the past week by Fox News, ABC News and the Washington Post, Ipsos/Reuters, and the Democratic Party-affiliated Public Policy Polling (also sponsored by the website DailyKos and the Service Employees International Union) have all found increases in Obama's approval rating since October. Most of the increases range between 4 and 6 percentage points; the Ipsos/Reuters survey found a smaller rise.

<img src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2012-02-10-Blumenthal-obamaapprovalaverages1.png">

"The improvement since the fall has also been evident in state polls, including such likely battlegrounds in the general presidential election as Ohio, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia.

"Given the recent upward blip in the two national daily-tracking polls, some have looked for explanations in the events of the past week, particularly last Friday's Labor Department report of a rising employment rate. While positive economic news is the most likely reason for Obama's improving job rating, the upward trend in his ratings did not begin in February. In fact, most of the surveys have tracked a gradual increase in Obama's ratings that began in late October.

"The HuffPost Pollster chart, based on all available public polls, shows a slow, steady rise of roughly five percentage points in the president's job approval rating since it hit its all-time low in early October."

<img src="http://i.huffpost.com/gen/496142/thumbs/r-OBAMA-APPROVAL-large570.jpg">

 

Obamacare Becomes Obamatax

http://www.dickmorris.com/obamacare-becomes-obamatax-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/

 

ObamaCare's Now a Bigger Mess
by Michael D. Tanner

If the new health care law wasn't enough of a mess before last week's Supreme Court decision, that ruling actually added another layer of cost, complexity and political contentiousness to the bill.

By striking down part of the law that required states to expand their Medicaid programs, the court tossed a very hot potato into the laps of state lawmakers everywhere.

ObamaCare required states to increase eligibility for Medicaid to 133 percent of the poverty line, or roughly $30,000 per year for a family of four. The expansion would also make childless single men (a notoriously high-cost group) eligible for Medicaid for the first time. In all, about 40 percent of all the people projected to gain coverage under ObamaCare would do so via Medicaid.

But this imposed real costs on states. For example, the Medicaid expansion would cost New Jersey taxpayers roughly $35 billion over 10 years, and New Yorkers as much as $52 billion.

Not surprisingly, many states balked — and now the high court has agreed: Congress can't strip all Medicaid funds from states that refuse the expansion, as the ObamaCare law threatened.

So what will state legislators do now?

If they agree to expand their Medicaid programs anyway, they'll be choosing to pile new costs on their state budgets and new taxes on their constituents.

And if a state doesn't expand its Medicaid program, most of those who would've been eligible for Medicaid will now become eligible for subsidies through ObamaCare's health-insurance exchanges. And those subsidies are paid in full by the feds.

Thus, New York, for example, would shift most of that $52 billion in new costs back to the federal government.

Of course, if states do shift those costs back to the feds, that will cause the federal cost of ObamaCare to skyrocket. If every state were to refuse to expand its Medicaid program, the feds would save roughly $130 billion in their share of Medicaid costs in 2014, but would have to pay $230 billion more in new exchange-based subsidies — for a net added cost of $100 billion. And that's just for the first year.

Remember, this is a law that already will cost as much as $2.7 trillion from 2014 to 2024, and will add more than $823 billion to the federal deficit — estimates that assumed state taxpayers would be picking up some Medicaid costs. How will Congress react if billions or perhaps trillions of dollars in new costs are added to the federal budget?

Here's another complicating factor: Most states have not yet set up an exchange. Many, especially ones with Republican governors or legislatures, may refuse altogether. By most estimates, as few as 15 states are likely to have exchanges in operation by the 2014 deadline.

ObamaCare gives the feds the authority to step in, setting up and operating an exchange in any state that doesn't set up its own — but there is reason to doubt that they have resources to do so in so many states.

Anyway, federal subsidies are available only through exchanges that the states set up. The feds can't offer subsidies through a federally run exchange.

Thus, if states neither expanded Medicaid nor set up exchanges, that would effectively block most of ObamaCare's new entitlement spending.

One last wrinkle: It is those subsidies that trigger the penalty under ObamaCare for employers who fail to provide workers with insurance. So states that don't set up exchanges could also escape the "employer mandate."

That is, ObamaCare requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance or pay a fine...er, tax. But that tax only kicks in if at least one employee qualifies for subsidies under the exchange. Since subsidies can only be provided via a state-authorized exchange, a state that refuses to set one up could end up blocking the employer mandate altogether. At the very least, expect some employers to sue on this point, leading to yet another Supreme Court challenge.

And if, as expected, ObamaCare drives up the cost of insurance, many employers could end up dropping their current health insurance. So the end result of all this could be even more uninsured than before the law passed.

In short, the Supreme Court's ruling not only guaranteed that ObamaCare will be an issue in this fall's federal elections; it dumped a mess in the laps of governors and state legislators, too.

 

Support for Obamacare skyrocketing:

"Republicans Start to Panic as ObamaCare Reaches 50% Approval

"By: Jason Easley - July 2nd, 2012

http://www.politicususa.com/republicans-start-panic-obamacare-reaches-50-approval.html

"According to a new CNN poll, Americans are still divided on ObamaCare. Fifty percent of those surveyed agreeing with the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the law, while 49% disagreed. This represents a two point increase from a Reuters/Ipsos poll released yesterday that found that 48% support the Affordable Care Act. Support for the ACA has increased from 34% in the fall of 2011 to 43% before the Supreme Court decision to 50% supporting the court’s decision today.

"Republicans quickly tried to turn their Supreme Court defeat into political ammunition by reviving many of the same attacks they used against the ACA in 2009 and 2010. GOP congressional leaders like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner revived their government takeover of healthcare talking points and called for immediate repeal of the law, but a funny thing is happening on the way back in time to 2010.

"Support for the law, and the decision that ruled the law constitutional, is growing. Instead of emptily repeating the Republican cries for repeal, the media has been asking the GOP exactly what they intend to replace ObamaCare with.

"When pressured by Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday on what he was going to do about the uninsured if he repealed the ACA, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell got flustered and stated that the uninsured in America aren’t an issue. As bad as McConnell’s performance was, he was outdone by Speaker of the House John Boehner. Speaker Boehner was left clinging to his general talking points about common sense reform as CBS’s Norah O’Donnell continued to pressure him to specifically state what parts of the ACA he would keep, and which parts he would repeal.

"Boehner was so broken by the whole experience that a few times during the interview he actually raised his voice and yelled his answers at O’Donnell. Evidence of the GOP backtracking on the ACA can be found in the fact that when pressed Boehner and McConnell both admitted that there are good points in the law that should not be repealed.

"The Republican answer to the ACA is repeal and replace, but things quickly fall apart when they asked the question, replace with what? The fact that the ACA has gone from being widely unpopular to a virtual 50/50 split in the days since the Supreme Court decision is a major problem for the GOP, and odds are that the law is going to continue to grow in popularity as insured Americans begin to receive their share of the $1.1 billion in insurance premium rebates.

"Time and political momentum are working against those who are advocating for repeal. There was panic in Boehner and McConnell’s interviews, and that panic will only grow if the public continues to get comfortable with “ObamaCare.”