Tax Increases for Gov Healthcare, Fed cannot account for $9 Trillion, GOP at Loss for Words

1) Senators weigh tax hikes to pay for health care WASHINGTON – Senators are considering limiting — but not eliminating — the tax-free status of employer-provided health benefits to help pay for President Barack Obama's plan to provide coverage to 50 million uninsured Americans. If they do that I WILL cancel my health benefits with my employer!  Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said Tuesday that there are no easy options. Senators began grappling with how to finance guaranteed coverage, a cornerstone of Obama's plan to overhaul the health care system. Independent experts put the costs at about $1.5 trillion over 10 years. …Employer-provided health insurance is considered part of workers' compensation, but unlike wages, it is not taxed. The forgone revenue to the federal government amounts to about $250 billion a year. “FORGONE REVENUE?!?!?!!?” It is not theirs to take! See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090513/ap_on_go_co/us_health_overhaul 1a) Obama's Healthcare Numbers Don't Add Up …Outside experts estimate the taxpayers' tab could total between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Some go as high as $1.7 trillion. Obama's budget proposal includes a down payment that may cover less than half the bill. See: http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/obama_health_care_numbers/2009/05/11/213227.html 2) Federal Reserve Cannot Account for $9 Trillion The Federal Reserve apparently can't account for $9 trillion in off-balance sheet transactions.  When Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Orlando) asked Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman of the Federal Reserve some very basic questions about where the trillions of dollars that have come from the Fed's expanded balance sheet, the IG didn't know.  Worse, nobody at the Fed seems to have any idea what the losses on its $2 trillion portfolio really are.  "I am shocked to find out that nobody at the Federal Reserve is keeping track of anything," Grayson says. See: http://moneynews.newsmax.com/financenews/feds_lost_nine_trillion/2009/05/12/213463.html 3) Obama’s dangerous budget leaves GOP at loss for words Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it. …Republicans are facing that obstacle as they try to explain the dimensions of Obama’s spending plan. The GOP pollster told me he tries to explain it by asking people to think of a dollar as a second — one dollar, one brief tick of your watch. A million seconds, the pollster explained, equals eleven days. A billion seconds equals 31 years. And a trillion seconds equals 310 centuries. The task of educating voters got a little more urgent Monday, when the government announced the not-terribly-surprising news that federal tax revenues will be smaller this year than previously thought. After a review of the Obama budget’s numbers before formal submission to Congress, Budget Director Peter Orszag said this year’s deficit will be $1.841 trillion — $89 billion more than previously estimated. If you’re listening to the ticks of your watch, that’s about 570 centuries. You may remember last week that Obama proposed, with much fanfare, $17 billion in budget cuts. Now, his budget director announces that the deficit will go up by $89 billion. “A paperwork change increased the size of the deficit more than five times greater than the savings they proposed last week,” one key Republican Senate aide told me. The deficit will likely grow again in a few months when the budget office does a routine midyear review. …In the Obama scenario, health care reform equals recovery, an argument that leaves some Republican critics shaking their heads. Think back to last fall and the economic crash. There was a lot of talk about an overleveraged society, about Fannie Mae, about credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. Amid the emergency, was anyone saying, “We will never recover from this downturn unless we enact universal health care”? Obama is pulling off the world’s biggest change-of-subject. See: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Obamas-dangerous-budget-leaves-GOP-at-loss-for-words-44754742.html 4) Social Security and Medicare finances worsen WASHINGTON – Social Security and Medicare are fading even faster under the weight of the recession, heading for insolvency years sooner than previously expected, the government warned Tuesday. Social Security will start paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes in 2016, a year sooner than projected last year, and the giant trust fund will be depleted by 2037, four years sooner, trustees reported. Medicare is in even worse shape. The trustees said the program for hospital expenses will pay out more in benefits than it collects this year, just as it did for the first time in 2008. The trustees project that the Medicare fund will be depleted by 2017, two years earlier than the date projected in last year's report. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090513/ap_on_bi_ge/us_social_security 5) Everyone Has ‘Skin in the Game’ Except Government Employees… It's A Good Time To Work For Uncle Sam President Obama's call last year for "shared sacrifice" doesn't extend to federal employees, at least based on the details of his administration's 2010 budget released this week.  At a time when the official unemployment rate is nearing double digits, and 6.35 million people are receiving unemployment benefits, the U.S. government is on a hiring binge.  Executive branch employment — 1.98 million in 2009, excluding the Postal Service and the Defense Department — is set to increase by 15.6 percent for the 2010 fiscal year. Most of that is thanks to the Census Bureau hiring 102,000 temporary workers, but not counting them still yields a net increase of 2 percent in one year.  There's little belt-tightening in evidence in Washington, D.C.: Counting benefits, the average pay per federal worker will leap from $72,800 in 2008 to $75,419 next year. …Some of the Feds' hiring increases have been stunning. If you look at the four-year period from 2006 to 2010, the number of Homeland Security employees has grown by 22 percent, the Justice Department has increased by 15 percent, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can claim 25 percent more employees. (These figures assume that Congress adopts Mr. Obama's 2010 budget without significant changes.) See: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/05/12/business/econwatch/entry5007862.shtml 6) Liz Cheney Assails Release of Detainee Abuse Photos as 'Siding with Terrorists'  The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State For Near Eastern Affairs Liz Cheney, took to the television airwaves today to assail the decision by President Obama to release photographs, as ordered by a judge, showing detainee abuse by American soldiers and/or CIA operatives in Afghanistan and Iraq.  "I have heard from families of sevicemembers, from families of 9/11 victims, this question about, you know, 'When did it become so fashionable for us to side, really, with the terrorists?'" Ms. Cheney said on Fox News Channel. "You know, for us to put information out that hurts American soldiers?" See: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/05/liz-cheney-assa.html Rush’s comments on above: RUSH: Well, here's another outrage. Obama is going to go ahead and release more interrogation photos to prove what a rotten, mean bunch of SOBs the US Military and the CIA is. There's no law requiring him to do this. It's not Obama has to. It's not Obama must. It Obama wants to. I guarantee you there is nothing good that can come from this, and that's precisely why he's going to do it.  See: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_051209/content/01125104.guest.html 7) 'Gay' gene claim suddenly vanishes American Psychological Association revises statement on homosexuality A new publication from the American Psychological Association includes an admission that there is no "gay" gene, according to a doctor who has written about the issue on the website of National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality.  A. Dean Byrd, the past president of NARTH, confirmed that the statement from the American Psychological Association came in a newly published brochure that updates what the APA has advocated for years.  Specifically, in a brochure that first came out years ago, the APA stated: "There is considerable recent evidence to suggest that biology, including genetic or inborn hormonal factors, play a significant role in a person's sexuality."  However, in a new release of the information in a brochure now called, "Answers to Your Questions for a Better Understanding of Sexual Orientation & Homosexuality," the APA's position changed.  The new statement says:  "There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles..." See: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=97940