Leave the Kids Out of It

The AP story about Rudy Giuliani's daughter's Facebook page really disappointed me. Here's a bit of the story:

On her Facebook profile, 17-year-old Caroline Giuliani listed herself as a member of Obama's Facebook group, "Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)." She left the group Monday morning after the online magazine Slate sent an inquiry and later in the day, a spokeswoman said she did not intend to comment on the 2008 race.

[snip]

Her profile can be viewed by Facebook users who have access to New York City's Trinity School or Harvard University networks. Caroline, who is Giuliani's daughter with his second wife, Donna Hanover, recently graduated from Trinity and will attend Harvard in the fall.

So a reporter looking for a story decided to target a minor's Facebook profile. Nice. This sort of gotcha political reporting is a big chunk of the media's responsibility in politics as usual and the politics of personal destruction. The kids, especially the minors, should be left alone.

"The Record" Makes Misrepresentation "Fact"

Well, our Representative Scott Garrett's false positioning of himself on the fight over the FAA proposal has found its way into the main stream media. Today, The Record covered the on-going fight. Garrett has taken credit for Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen's amendment, and in turn the Record gave him credit for it.

The congressman introduced an amendment last week to the 2008 funding bill for all Transportation Department agencies that would have barred the FAA from using any funds to execute its airspace plan.

Except that he didn't. The Record going along with Garrett's deliberate misrepresentation of the truth is disappointing.

I don't discount Garrett's role in fighting against the FAA on this; he's been involved along with others and it's a fight I hope our community can win. I wouldn't even mention it in a negative context if he wasn't trying to play on people's emotions for his own personal gain.

However, by taking sole credit for efforts to stop the redesign of the airspace that's exactly what he's doing. Receiving such credit by the largest paper in the District is equally wrong.

Garrett's Speech Against SCHIP

In checking for his thoughts on being the only Representative from New Jersey to vote against the energy bill, I discovered a speech that did not come up in Thomas the first time I looked. Here's Representative Scott Garrett's speech against the State Children's Health Insurance Program:

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, throughout this debate, we have heard a vote against this bill is a vote against the children, a vote against the poor, a vote against those who need the help most; and had this legislation merely reauthorized the current law, the arguments might have had an element of truth to them. But with this unconstrained growth in a welfare entitlement bill that this expansion has become, what we do know is that this bill now undermines the health care of millions of uninsured children and insured children and does so at the expense of American seniors.

Supporters of this bill would say that by no means is this a back door to a mandatory, socialized, government-run health care system. I say, not the back door, but, as PAUL RYAN might say, it's a front-door approach to a socialized, government-run health care system. Also, it opens the windows and the garage door as well.

This bill does not set a cap on the annual income levels of the families it covers, it does not include an asset test to ensure that millionaires are not eligible, and it expands the program to cover childless adults.

It is entirely conceivable, and, actually, it probably will occur, that the States can enroll as many people in this program as local politics will make expedient. A benchmark figure that has been bandied about is 300 percent. They want to enroll families up to 300 percent above the poverty level.

Just what would that system look like? According to the Census Bureau, and I just got these numbers a little while ago, of the 300 million or so people in this country, 48.3 percent, or roughly 145 million people, live at or below the 300 percent of the Federal poverty level. So we're now considering a new entitlement program for early half of the entire population of this country. And if you add to that number the 44 million people who are currently enrolled in Medicare, what does that mean? That means, with this bill, almost two-thirds of the entire population of this country will be on a government-run, socialized health care system, two-thirds paid for by one-third.

Mr. Speaker, make no mistake about it. This proposal is a large step towards a single-payer, Washington-run State health care system.

Props to Menendez & Garrett

In my earlier post about the '08 hopefuls health care plans, I noted that no one makes a strong case on our behalf about the differences in cost of living when it comes to Federal programing and tax rates. Well, our own Senator Bob Menendez did make the case with regard to the State Children's Health Insurance Program. He distributed a chart showing the differences between several locales and it was reprinted in the Record.

And, for all of you who enjoy Greenwood Lake or rely on it for your business, Representative Scott Garrett secured $250,000 in funding to help clean it up. In his press release he had this to say:

“I’m proud to be a part of this community-wide effort to preserve and protect Greenwood Lake. The growth of the aquatic weeds has reached a critical state, putting the Lake at risk, and with it, the creatures that inhabit it and the businesses that rely on it as a regional tourist attraction.”

On these issues, we have been well served by our representation down in Washington.

Calling the Kettle Black

In looking for a floor speech on the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) expansion, I found that Representative Scott Garrett once again was without substantive comment. Before Garrett voted to continue raiding the Medicare trust fund to subsidize insurance companies and cut Medicare payments to doctor's 10%, he did give a soundbite to Herb Jackson of the Record, but no Floor speech.

Despite the fact we once again have to wait to see if Garrett submitted a written essay to the House Clerk instead of giving a speech, I did find this minute long speech he gave yesterday.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. America, your freedom of speech was trampled on yesterday. This new Democratic leadership quashed any semblance of free speech here on this House floor. This is not just a procedural matter, mind you. This is a matter for all Americans.

You see, each Member of Congress represents 600,000 constituents. That is 600,000 American voices that were quashed yesterday. As I say, this is not just a Republican issue, for their voices were quashed, but so were Democrat and Independent voices as well.

But in fact, this is nothing new for the new Democrat leadership. Just a week ago we had to come to this floor to make sure we could fight to keep the radio waves and the media opening dealing with the Fairness Doctrine. Prior to this, we had to fight to make sure that the centuries-old tradition of bipartisanship would not be broken. Prior to that, we had to fight to make sure that there would be transparency in earmarks, and all the Republicans fought on the side of openness and freedom of speech.

The Democrats say they tolerate all diversity, but apparently diversity not of thought and speech.

Garrett really does go out of his way to make a hypocrite out of himself sometimes. This from the man who attacked a member of his own party for not following in lockstep. This from the man who came to Washington during the Tom DeLay authoritarian era, and followed along faithfully enough to have a voting record more conservative than 97% of his colleagues.

Also, one cannot forget Garrett praised the President for not reaching out to Democrats and Independents during the State of the Union; even though Independents outnumber members of both parties in our District combined.

Where was this criticism when the Republicans maintained a majority of the majority rule to bring forward a bill? Where was this criticism when committee chairmanships were no longer doled out based on seniority, but instead whether you kowtowed the party line? The sad reality is that the Republicans did more to destroy the centuries-old tradition of bi-partisanship than anyone could have imagined; but you didn't see Garrett standing on the floor defending the right of the Democrats to be heard.

It's unfortunate the House Democrats limited debate on SCHIP, as once again they don't have a bill that can withstand a veto. The Senate version is bi-partisan in nature and has much broader support (the AMA, AARP, and the Insurance Industry). In all likelihood the final bill sent to the President will more closely resemble that one.

In the meantime, Garrett has once again slammed the Democrats for mildly repeating the sins of the Republicans over the last six years. I'm not sure if it's institutional amnesia or not, or if Garrett just likes to call the kettle black.

No Oops; Garrett Does it Again

As noted last week, our Representative Scott Garrett has disingenuously positioned himself as the lead dog on fighting the FAA's airspace redesign plan for our area. In his initial release, he made it sound like he introduced Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen's amendment to squash the plan. However, he did mention Frelinghuysen and Representative Shays, who also co-sponsored the Frelinghuysen amendment.

This is the start of Garrett's latest Garrett Gazette:

Last week, I offered an amendment that would have prohibited the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) from implementing its preferred alternative forairspace redesign in the New York-New Jersey area.

So not only does he take sole credit for Frelinghuysen's amendment, he doesn't even mention him. That's just not right, but that's our Garrett.

I was getting ready to write about no Gazette this week, thank goodness it got e-mailed to me.

Health Insurance & Taxes

Well, Rudy Giuliani sent out his health care plan today. so there are now three visions for voters here in the Fifth and the rest of the nation to pick from.

Giuliani's plan hinges on a $15,000 tax credit for families to buy their own insurance. I'm not sure if Giuliani's staff realizes the median gross income for families in the United States was slightly over $46,000 in 2005. The idea of half the nation having to put up roughly 32% of their income up front and wait for a refund check the following year could have disastrous implications for the economy. To me, it seems this is another area where a theoretical fix doesn't meet the reality of the situation.

Right now, we have 15% of the nation uninsured. How many more would lose their coverage and not be able to front the $15K is a mind blowing figure to contemplate. It's tough to gauge how many people that is, but even if the plan is more like TransitChecks there is only so much a family can lay out for health care up front. Would lack of demand for services start to bring costs down? Maybe, but it's more likely more people would have to wait until they're in the emergency room and the hospital crisis would worsen at light speed.

Speaking from personal experience, this plan is a non-starter for me. If my employer chose to drop my health coverage since I get a $15,000 tax cut, I wouldn't have insurance due to cost. It's that simple. On another angle, a small family business owner I know currently pays over $60,000 a year for his coverage, so it's a start for him but once again he's laying out a tremendous amount of money.

I'm still working through the John Edwards plan and the Barack Obama plan. From a practical standpoint, even with their shortcomings each seems more likely to work in the real world. However, of concern to our District is that both candidates intend to fund their respective plans by allowing tax breaks to expire that particularly affect our District.

Whenever the national discourse turns to wages and income, no one ever talks about cost of living. If I made what I make and still lived in West Michigan, I'd own a small house as opposed to looking for an apartment with my brother. It costs roughly 34% more to live in North Jersey than in West Michigan, not including the astronomical property tax difference, and 40% of households achieve what the IRS deems as the top 10% of earnings (over $104,000). Simply looking at the numbers blindly doesn't work if we're talking about fairness and shared responsibility.

The government has formulas to determine government aid caps based on location. If income taxes are how we're going to fund healthcare, then there needs to be a better formula of taxation as opposed to simply looking at numbers on a page. If that gets developed, the AMT would also need to go away otherwise the reforms wouldn't apply to our District.

As far as our District goes, the fact our current Representative Scott Garrett ranks in the bottom 5.5% of the influence on Capitol Hill is not going to help us make the case for some sort of cost of living adjustment to be in there. The fundamental questions for our District should be what do we want, and do we have a Representative capable of getting as much of it as possible? Right now, the answer to that second part is probably not.

Health care reform is coming, one way or the other. It has to, as costs are wrecking the budgets of families and our nation's economic competitiveness. It should be an interesting debate to watch.