Southern Colorado Patriots Club: Blog

Most people, when shown how much our most honorable servants in Congress make each year for part-time work, demonstrate expressions somewhere between shock and rage.

Care to guess how much they make?  (No, I mean how much the taxpayers pay them, not what the lobbyists and other folks pay them beyond taxpayer money.)  What do they make officially?

The lowest paid this year will be $174,000 (!).  Not bad, eh?  And that's not including the fat benefits paid to federal employees.  How about Madam Pelosi?  The Speaker of the House makes $223,500.  Again, this is the official salary, and with all the recesses they take, it's for part-time work, according to TheCapitol.Net.  It's also for the only branch of our federal government with approval ratings (think "performance review") staying near 20% these past few years!

I get this information from a nice article posted at About.com, if you'd like to read more details.

Labels: Congress, Pelosi, salary

What?  Seriously?  Did they get the memo in Washington that they'll be out of a job next term unless they stop these criminal back-room deals and listen to the people?  Frankly, I'm surprised anyone there appears to be taking heed to the clearly-expressed will of the people anymore after such a glut of non-representation.

Here's the article from the New York Times expressing what's suddenly not the priority in Washington.  I could hardly believe my eyes when reading it.  I mean, don't you remember how urgent it was that this be pushed through before Christmas break?  Urgent, urgent, urgent!  No time to read the bills, we've got to make sure this passes the House and Senate!  What happened to that urgency?  Here's an excerpt from the New York Times piece:

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, deflected questions about health care. “We’re not on health care now,” he said. “We’ve talked a lot about it in the past.” He added, “There is no rush,” and noted that Congress still had most of this year to work on the health bills passed in 2009 by the Senate and the House.

Mr. Reid said that he and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, were working to map out a way to complete a health care overhaul in coming months. “There are a number of options being discussed,” Mr. Reid said, emphasizing “procedural aspects” of the issue.

At the same time, two centrist Democratic senators who are up for re-election this year, Blanche L. Lincoln of Arkansas and Evan Bayh of Indiana, said that they would resist efforts to muscle through a health care bill using a parliamentary tactic called budget reconciliation, which seemed to be the simplest way to advance the measure.

The White House has said in recent days that it would support that approach.

Uh, really?  I guess the silver lining to these guys playing this game for their own benefit is that the threat of being thrown out of office has a bit of clout with them.  What good is it to be an unemployed career politician, sharing in the misery of so many unemployed fellow Americans, after all?

If you've called or sent letters to your representatives (as I have), I commend you.  Great work!  It appears these folks understand the feeling of the door hitting them in the rear as they're ushered safely out of office, and are now willing to abandon the principles they supposedly upheld with health care reform to keep that from happening.

We the people!

Labels: health care, Pelosi, Reid, Washington

You may have wondered whether our representatives have been taking the Constitution seriously lately.  There seems to be so much evidence to the contrary--that the Constitution is ignored, despite the fact that each of our representative servants takes an oath to uphold this document while in office.

In an editorial at the Las Vegas Review Journal, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi laughs off the question of whether provisions of health care bills being debated in Washington are constitutional:

When a reporter for CNSNews.com last Thursday asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., where the Constitution delegates Congress the specific power to order Americans to buy health insurance -- a mandate included in both the House and Senate versions of Obamacare -- Ms. Pelosi responded: "Are you serious? Are you serious?"

"Yes, yes I am," the reporter for CNSNews.com replied.
   
Ms. Pelosi shook her head and took a question from another reporter, never giving an answer. Her spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then advised CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandate that individual Americans buy health insurance was not a "serious question."

"You can put this on the record," said Mr. Elshami. "That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question."

As you can see, whether proposed legislation is or isn't in accord with our Constitution is simply a silly question to ask.  What oath?  What Constitution?

One of the missions of the Southern Colorado Patriots Club is to educate our citizens about what--specifically--the Constitution says.  And in doing so, we hope to turn our nation around and once again see this nation governed by this powerful, simple document.

When you contact your representatives, ask them about the conformity of what they do or propose with the Constitution.  After all, they  took an oath to uphold the Constitution.  Don't you think they should honor that oath?

Labels: Congress, Constitution, patriots club, Pelosi

Gee, thanks, representatives! The Congressional Budget Office has confirmed expected costs of H.R. 3962 (Pelosi's health care bill) are expected to cost each family a minimum of $15,000 per year by 2016. Here's an excerpt:

Although premiums under H.R. 3962 would vary by geographic area to reflect differences in average spending for health care and would also vary by age, the table shows the approximate national average for that lower-cost reference plan—about $5,300 for single policies and about $15,000 for family policies in 2016. Enrollees could purchase a more expensive plan or more extensive coverage for an additional, unsubsidized premium—and CBO anticipates that many enrollees would do that, so the average premiums actually paid in the exchanges would be higher (although average cost-sharing amounts could be lower than those shown in the table). The figures are presented for 2016 in order to illustrate the likely situation after the proposed changes in insurance markets were fully implemented. (A downside of that approach is that the figures are harder to compare with those observed in 2009.)

Care to opt out? Well, you can do that, but you risk big fines and imprisonment if you don't purchase an "acceptable" health insurance plan. Isn't that nice? Whatever happened to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness anyway?

Labels: CBO, H.R. 3962, health care, Pelosi