JOHN BOEHNER

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), in a meeting with President Obama and Congressional leaders at the White House today, asked President Obama to provide the American people with a  progress report on the implementation of his Executive Order which purports to ban taxpayer-funding of abortions.  Leader Boehner noted that in her recent “progress report” to Congress on the implementation of ObamaCare, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius did not make any mention of efforts by the administration to implement the president’s Executive Order (EO).

Abortion opponents widely viewed the EO as a disingenuous maneuver made by the Administration in the final hours of the health care fight to buy off “pro-life” Democrats instead of passing the anti-abortion Stupak amendment, which would have prevented federal subsidies for abortion under ObamaCare.  A recent analysis by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops confirms that under the new law, “federal subsidies will be used to help expand access nationwide to abortion coverage” and that all Americans, regardless of one’s personal convictions, will be forced to “pay a nominal fee for full access to elective abortions - not to be estimated at less than ‘$1 per enrollee, per month.’”

While the Obama Administration plows ahead on implementing what it regards as the “popular” aspects of ObamaCare, Administration officials have been coy about their aims for putting into practice the President’s EO on taxpayer-funding of abortion.  Leader Boehner is still awaiting a response, other than a cryptic reply that EO guidance was still being developed, to the questions he raised in his May 13 letter to Secretary Sebelius:

Has the Department provided guidance to states to implement the president’s Executive Order on abortions?  When does the Administration expect to issue the directive on abortions?  Will the new federal high-risk pools touted by the Administration also ensure that abortions will not be covered?  Millions of Americans care deeply about this aspect of the new law and its implementation, and no progress report is complete without detailed information about it.

The answers to the aforementioned questions will determine the extent to which taxpayer dollars fund abortions, which is why it is so troubling that the Administration continues to kick the can down the road on this issue. 

House Republicans continue to stand with the American people, to repeal and replace ObamaCare with commonsense solutions focused on lowering health care costs and protecting life.  The Republican health care solution would codify the Hyde Amendment and prohibit all authorized and appropriated federal funds from being used to pay for abortion. And under the Republican plan, any health plan that includes abortion coverage may not receive federal funds.

After Americans have repeatedly rejected it time and time again, yesterday the White House re-launched yet another “an all-out blitz” - according to The Hill - to “sell” ObamaCare to a skeptical public.  The fact remains that a majority of Americans have been opposed to the Democrats’ government takeover of health care since last July, and the latest survey from Rasmussen indicates that 58 percent of the American public wants to repeal ObamaCare. 

But Democrats are intent on changing the American people’s minds, as The Oklahoman editorialized today:

Think it can’t snow in June? Think again. The Obama administration and its allies are preparing one humdinger of a snow job to try to convince Americans of something that months of congressional debate, many presidential speeches and countless town hall meetings couldn’t: Obamacare will be a good thing….Obama will do his part from the bully pulpit, but so will an army of private groups, raising money to fund an echo chamber for the president’s pro-health care message.

The “blitz” includes a “$125 million campaign that White House allies are rolling out to defend health care reform amid growing signs Democrats are failing to get political traction on the issue,” according to a report in Politico yesterday.   As the Oklahoman noted further: “When someone hits Obamacare, proponents will hit back.  One thing about it, it’s what this president and this White House do best: campaign. Governing has been pretty hairy for them, but they know how to mobilize donors, rile up supporters and conduct a rapid-response strategy.”

But the White House’s latest PR campaign isn’t convincing small business owners.  The Columbus Dispatch pointed out in an editorial last Sunday that ObamaCare is bad for job-creators:

Last month, the nation’s most prominent small-business association joined in a lawsuit against the health-care overhaul signed into law earlier this year by President Barack Obama. The National Federation of Independent Business concluded that the law will be harmful to small businesses and to prospects for small-business job creation. Small business is the economy’s employment powerhouse, because new jobs are created disproportionately by this sector.

The White House claims that the plan will help small businesses because it includes health-care tax credits for these enterprises, but the NFIB says that the credit applies to fewer than a third of small businesses and the application process is daunting. Worse, the association points out, health-care costs are permanent, but the tax credit lasts only six years. The group also predicts that new taxes contained in the overhaul, such as one imposed on health-insurance companies, simply will be passed along to small businesses in higher health-insurance costs.

No matter how glitzy the latest push for ObamaCare is, the American people understand that the Democrats’ government takeover of health care will increase costs, ration care, and hamper job-creation at a time when the American people are asking, “where are the jobs?” That’s why House Republicans are fighting to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with common-sense reforms focused on lowering costs and protecting American jobs.

President Obama went to Pittsburgh yesterday, and when he wasn’t blasting Republicans in his hyper-partisan speech, he spent his time doubling down on the Democrats’ national energy tax.  Trying to “take advantage of the national anger over the gulf oil spill…saying that his best chance to get such a bill passed is now,” as the New York Times put it, is one thing - but doing so in the heart of a region that would be so adversely affected by a massive tax on American energy is just tone-deaf. 

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported today that:

The proposal continues to meet heavy opposition in coal-dependent regions such as Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia…Three of the state’s four Public Utility Commission members, two of whom still serve on the board, sent a letter to the state’s congressional delegation in May 2009 warning about ‘a profound adverse impact on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,’ including ‘a net loss of as many as 66,000 jobs.’

And the Heritage Foundation’s Foundry blog noted today that, “In Louisiana itself, the effect of the [Democrat’s national energy tax] would mean a loss of over 15,000 jobs, gas price hikes and skyrocketing consumer electricity rates.” In fact, even the Obama Administration admitted last year that their national energy tax would cost families nearly $1,800 a year, “the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent,” according to CBS News.

Yet the President said yesterday that “the only way the transition to clean energy will ultimately succeed is…by finally putting a price on carbon pollution.”  In other words, the only way his “cap-and-trade” scheme will succeed is by making the price of carbon-based energy cost prohibitive - sending energy prices through the roof and American jobs overseas. 

There is a better way.  House Republicans have introduced the American Energy Act, the fastest route to a cleaner, more reliable and secure energy future.  The GOP plan would increase environmentally-safe energy production here in America; promote the use of alternative fuels that will reduce carbon emissions, such as nuclear, clean-coal, and renewable energy technologies; and encourage conservation to preserve and protect our natural resources.  It would also establish a renewable energy trust fund that would use revenues generated through increased American energy production to support innovation in renewable and alternative energy sources, like wind and solar technologies.

Unfortunately, President Obama didn’t embrace this common-sense approach yesterday.  As House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said:

It’s clear from his harsh partisan rhetoric today that President Obama has run out of excuses for his broken promises on the economy.  Instead of creating the jobs and prosperity he promised, President Obama’s ‘new foundation’ consists of more spending, more debt, more job-killing policies, and more permanent bailouts, which is really no foundation at all.

The President talks about building a new foundation, but his promises of job-creation (see “stimulus“) have failed to live up to expectations, leaving many Americans asking the question, “Where are the jobs?“  One thing is clear about his “new foundation,” however: it will destroy the jobs and livelihoods of the very people he was addressing yesterday.  How out-of-touch can you be?

Last Wednesday, Douglas Elmendorf, the independent, non-partisan head of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provided further confirmation that ObamaCare will increase health care costs, noting that “the health legislation will increase the federal budgetary commitment to health care…by nearly $400 billion during the 2010-2019 period.”  The CBO director’s finding comes on the heels of a Towers Watson study, which found near unanimity among businesses that ObamaCare will accelerate health care costs, and a devastating report by the Obama Administration’s own Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that concluded the law will raise Americans’ health care costs.  For Democrats who have been claiming that their new entitlement program will lower costs, this is just the latest blow to their credibility. 

Republicans are fighting to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with commonsense solutions focused on lowering health care costs.  That’s why House Republicans introduced the Reform Americans Can Afford Act which the CBO said would  lower health care premiums by up to 20 percent, compared to ObamaCare. 

Meanwhile, the same Democrats who promised that ObamaCare will bring about a renaissance in health care choice and competition are having to answer why President Obama’s nominee to run Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Donald Berwick, is such a fan of the British National Health Service (NHS), famous for its health care rationing.  Politico has the details:

Berwick has called Britain’s National Health Service ‘one of the greatest health care institutions in human history’ and ‘a global treasure.’ He once said it sets an ‘example’ for the United States to follow….’I fell in love with the NHS,’ Berwick said in a 2008 speech of the system that he worked on since the 1990s. ‘To an American observer, the NHS is such a seductress….

‘The NHS is one of the great human health care endeavors on Earth,’ Berwick said in the speech on file with the Senate Finance Committee and circulated by Republicans. ‘It can be an example for the whole world - an example, I must say, that the United States needs now more than most other countries do.’

As Jeffrey H. Anderson noted recently in the Weekly Standard, that sentiment is only natural for supporters of ObamaCare:

In the private sector, costs can be cut through increased competition and choice, which will cause resources to be allocated more efficiently.  But government-run health care can’t control costs except by limiting services. Last April, President Obama said, ‘The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.’  Thus, he said, ‘There is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place.’ Dr. Berwick agrees.  In fact, he’s been involved in that conversation for awhile.

Berwick doesn’t advocate cutting health costs by letting Americans control their own health care dollars, see prices, and shop for value.  Rather, he prefers the approach employed by Great Britain’s National Health Services (NHS) and its National Institute for Clinical Health and Excellence (NICE). NICE, whose name seems to have been inspired by George Orwell’s 1984, decides which care people will get and which they won’t.

House Republicans have been saying all along that ObamaCare will increase health care costs and reduce choices for American families and small businesses - and the American people agree - but Democrats didn’t listen and rammed their government takeover of health care down the throats of the American people anyway.  Now Democrats are running into a buzzsaw of their own rhetoric.

Public calls for repeal of ObamaCare are rising – and House and Senate Republicans are offense, calling attention to steadily-mounting evidence that President Obama’s massive health care law is crushing small business job creation at a time when the American economy can least afford it.  The uprising against ObamaCare has again forced the White House into defense mode, and will gain further momentum Thursday when the House GOP Health Care Solutions Group holds a public forum on the cost of the health care law to small businesses and families.  [A live feed of the forum, which will feature testimony by small business operator Gail Johnson of Rainbow Station, Inc., will be available at http://health.burgess.house.gov; House Republicans will also be live-tweeting the forum at twitter.com/GOP_HCSG as well as twitter.com/RepShimkus, using the hashtag #HCSG.]

As Congress prepares to head home for Memorial Day, Congressional Republicans are harnessing the rising public backlash against the president’s law.  In the Senate, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), an orthopedic surgeon, has joined with other Republican colleagues to launch Second Opinion, a effort to sound the alarm about the harmful consequences ObamaCare is having on the American people.  The House Republican Conference, led by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), has launched a similar initiative, dubbed ObamaCare Flatlines.  And throughout the Memorial Day break, House Republicans will be doing a town hall blitz in support of America Speaking Out, a project aimed at involving the American people directly in the process of creating a new governing agenda.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who on May 20 stood with small business operators from Ohio outside the U.S. Capitol to discuss ObamaCare’s job-crushing taxes and mandates, today called on the White House to watch the May 27 solutions group forum and address the issues it will raise:

I hope President Obama and his aides will respond to Thursday’s forum and offer a legitimate and substantive response to the issues that are raised.  If the president and Speaker Pelosi are truly focused on ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ as they claim to be, then they owe the American people a solution to the roadblocks this new law is placing in the path of America’s small business job creators.

Americans from outside the Beltway are joining with Republicans to speak out on the need to repeal this job-killing law and start over with real reforms that will lower health care costs.  President Obama has an obligation to listen to the American people, who asked him not to sign this law, and were ignored.

As Sen. Barrasso said in a Fox News interview on May 23:

Now that this thing has become law, the American people are even more opposed to what was jammed down their throats. The American people are very skeptical. The White House has a whole campaign to try to say what’s good about this bill very early on, but so much of what they’re promising, they’re delivering far less. Even the things that they say are good aren’t working out. As we get into the details of this, when they talk about the tax advantages for small businesses, now small businesses are finding out the way to take advantage of some of these tax breaks is that they need to fire employees and pay them less.

Boehner is a former small businessman.  The Republican Leader ran a small company in West Chester, Ohio prior to his election to the House of Representatives.

Earlier this month, the nation’s leading small business organization, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), announced it has joined a lawsuit by 20 states seeking to overturn the president’s job-crushing health law.

During the nearly year-long congressional debate on President Obama’s health care overhaul, House Republicans put forth common-sense alternatives to ObamaCare, which can be seen in detail at GOP.gov.

Presidential Candidate Barack Obama promised American families that any health care bill he signed would lower health care costs by $2,500 - but if there is one thing that the experts agree on, it’s that ObamaCare will increase costs.  A new study by Towers Watson, reported by the Associated Press, recently found near unanimity among businesses that ObamaCare will accelerate health care costs:

94 percent of those that responded believe the law passed by Congress this year will raise costs. Eighty-eight percent plan to pass the increases on to employees, and 74 percent anticipate reducing health benefits and programs.  That could mean insurance co-payment or deductible increases or more high-deductible plans…The survey also found that 43 percent of employers that offer retiree benefits expect to reduce or eliminate them.

Another consequence of ObamaCare was unearthed by the Heartland Institute, which discovered that:

An until-now unnoticed provision of the new health care overhaul law could change the way U.S. businesses-including freelance workers-prepare for tax day, causing an avalanche of additional recordkeeping and reporting….[A]ll businesses will have to issue 1099 tax forms not just to contractors but to any individual or corporation from which they buy more than $600 in goods or services in a tax year….

The two provisions combined could require millions of additional tax forms to be sent out. [Marianne Couch, a principal with the Cokola Tax Group in Michigan] says she’s heard estimates from colleagues on the IRS advisory committee of as much as a fivefold increase in 1099 filings once the new law kicks in.   ‘It’s a pretty heavy administrative burden,’ particularly for small businesses without large in-house accounting staffs, says Bill Rys, tax counsel for the National Federation of Independent Businesses. ‘If you cater a lunch for other businesses every Wednesday, say, that’s a lot of information to keep track of throughout the year.’

Is it any wonder that a recent Rasmussen survey found that 63 percent of Americans support repealing ObamaCare?  Another poll from the Kaiser Foundation found that that the Obama administration’s taxpayer-funded health care PR campaign “has failed to sway a skeptical public-or even kept health reform’s most ardent supporters on board.”  As public opinion has coalesced against ObamaCare, the Administration has dug its heels in, sending out a health care information brochure to seniors that looks more like taxpayer-funded propaganda and attempting to quash Virginia’s efforts to oppose ObamaCare on constitutional grounds. 

Americans didn’t want the Democrats’ job-killing government takeover of healthcare - but Democrats refused to listen, and rammed it through Congress anyway.  Republicans are committed to repealing and replacing ObamaCare with a step-by-step, common sense approach that reduces the cost of health care without dismantling the best health care system in the world.  Learn more about Republican ideas on how to reform health care at HealthCare.GOP.gov.

About a third of Seattle-area executives said it may be cheaper for their businesses to stop offering health care benefits and pay fines in the wake of national health care reforms enacted earlier this year, a Washington State University survey discovered.  When asked if it would be cheaper to forgo tax incentives for offering health care benefits, more respondents (30 percent) said paying the fines would be less costly.

President Obama guaranteed Americans that after health reform became law they could keep their insurance plans and their doctors.  It's clear that this promise cannot be kept.  Insurers and physicians are already reshaping their businesses as a result of Mr. Obama's plan....The bottom line: Defensive business arrangements designed to blunt ObamaCare's economic impacts will mean less patient choice.