FederalRepublic.net

All the buzz these last two months has been health care. It’s a scary situation thinking that a Democratic president is willing to force a great “safety net” upon the population, stifling liberty and choice in the process. It’s interesting that we’re often forced to buy products we seldom use in this country - products like car insurance, life insurance, immunizations, etc. All these for the “common good.” And now, we may possibly be forced to get health care, either through a current provider or a government-run plan. For a country we tout as the most free in the world, it sure feels like we’re slowly becoming economic slaves to both state and federal government.

Even with all the talk about health care plastered on our television screens on a daily basis, I’d like to share a few thoughts about how the United States Congress could work to bring about reduced costs as it relates to health care. As a sidenote, few of these have even been considered by the mainstream media or the GOP in general.

1. Tort reform: A huge portion of health care costs derive from the costs of malpractice insurance. By limiting or creating criteria for limiting monetary malpractice lawsuits, we can instantly slow the growth of health care costs. I’d also recommend a “loser pays” system.

2. Expand truth in billing and policy ownership: I think this could be a large part of the reason why health care costs continue to climb. When was the last time you checked how much it cost to go to the doctor? How much was that flu shot you had or that crown you had put in at the dentist? Most people don’t ask these things unless they pay for their own health care. We figure the insurance company will take care of the bill as long as I pay my $20 co-pay. The truth is, everything has an economic cost and we just can’t assume insurance companies or medical providers will automatically let us know how much is charged for any given medical service. Basically, I would propose that we slowly eliminate employer-based healthcare, expand HSAs, and deregulate the market. This would transform health care services to a competition-based model, treating health insurance like car or life insurance is today. That means competitive rates and quality products from any number of insurance providers.

3. Portability: Art. IV, Section 1 of the Constitution reads “Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.”

Using this clause as the basis for health insurance portability, Congress may ensure that health insurance purchased in one state may be honored in another without penalty or reduction of benefits. This is also a deregulation of the market in itself, which would instantly allow consumers to carry health care coverage wherever they go.

Feel free to add your ideas to the comment section.

Where are the conservatives we need in Congress? Unfortunately, many are on the sidelines preaching truth about the true nature of our Federal Constitution. It’s funny - those in Congress take an oath to support the Constitution, yet they throw it in the trash can on a daily basis. Check out the vid…

H/T HotAir

As conservatives, many of us believe in supply-side economics. For those who don’t really know what supply-side actually is, Florida State University professor James D. Gwartney describes supply-side economics as a process in which “changes in marginal tax rates influence economic activity. Supply-side economists believe that high marginal tax rates strongly discourage income, output, and the efficiency of resource use.” Many supply-side economists believe lower marginal tax rates can increase output, thereby leading to economic growth on a larger scale. This is why many conservatives stress that tax cuts create jobs and increase monies coming into the treasury; with more money available to invest or spend the economy will grow. When you cut off incentive to buy or sell by decreasing the amount of money one has available to spend or invest, one may predict stunted economic growth. Many have turned to the famous Laffer Curve as an illustration for such a process:

As a general tread, real incomes have been rising since the turn of the 20th century, while saving has been going down. In fact, Americans now have entered a period of negative savings, i.e. they spend more than they bring in. While this is a somewhat disturbing trend, this illustration shows that the more money people have, they more they’ll spend. This brings me to the main point of this blog; that we can see the supply-side in everyday life.

It’s 5 o’clock and I feel like having a few beers. Odds are, there are more than a few bars or restaurants in my area offering happy-hour specials. If it’s Tuesday, Wednesday, or Saturday nights, many more are offering 25 cent pitchers or “bomb” specials. Now why would any bar do this? Because it’s profitable to offer it. The whole premise of offering discounted drinks on special nights is that people will tend to buy more alcohol as a result of being driven in by drink specials. If this assumption wasn’t at least half true, there would be no incentive for bar owners to offer drink specials at all. Thus my point - generally, the more money people have at their disposal, the more they’ll buy. If people didn’t buy more drinks as a result of being driven in by drink specials there would be no profit incentive for bar owners.

Looking at a simple illustration of a bar drink special can help illustrate what conservatives have known for some time - that economic growth comes by letting people keep more of their own money. What is true at the bar is true for the country at large; that is, economic growth rests not on drying up incentive or increasing tax rates, but letting people do with their money what they please.

Even though I don’t agree that Mike Huckabee should be President of the United States, his new campaign ad is still pretty darn funny. Take a look:

So a man in Michigan has been fined $400 and given 40 hours of community service for piggybacking off a coffee shop’s wireless network without actually going into the coffee shop:

He got on the Internet by tapping into the local coffee shop’s wireless network, but instead of going inside the shop to use the free Wi-Fi offered to paying customers, he chose to remain in his car and piggyback off the network, which he said didn’t require a password.

He used the system on his lunch breaks for more than a week, and then the police showed up.

“I was sitting there reading my e-mail and he came up and stuck his head inside my window and asked me who I was spying on,” Peterson told FOXNews.com.

Someone from a nearby barbershop had called cops after seeing Peterson’s car pull up every day and sit in front of the coffee shop without anybody getting out.

“I just curiously asked him, ‘Where are you getting the Internet connection?’, you know,” Sparta Police Chief Andrew Milanowski said. “And he said, ‘From the café.’”

Milanowski ruled out Peterson as a possible stalker of the attractive local hairdresser, but still felt that a law might have been broken.

“We came back and we looked up the laws and we figured if we found one and thought, ‘Well, let’s run it by the prosecutor’s office and see what they want to do,’” Milanowski said.

Ok, so the guy broke the law and the police caught him. But there is something that just doesn’t sit well with me when I read this story. Instead of simply telling the man he’s not allowed to surf the Wi-Fi near the coffee shop, the police went looking for a law that was broken because they simply *had a feeling* a law had been broken:

Milanowski ruled out Peterson as a possible stalker of the attractive local hairdresser, but still felt that a law might have been broken.

So I feel like the police, in an effort to make the surrounding people feel “safe,” simply went law shopping until they actually found a law they could hit the guy with. For some reason, this does not sit well with me and feels so unjustified. It’s like the police used some type of “ex post facto” enforcement scheme. I mean, just because you have the feeling a law has been broken, doesn’t mean one actually has been. Yeah, the man was doing something illegal under the law, but the police went back and made sure they found a violation they could deliberately hit him with. This just doesn’t sit well.

Definately a surprise out of Harry Reid’s Senate:

Members of Congress convicted of serious crimes would lose their taxpayer-paid pensions, sometimes totaling more than $100,000 a year, under a measure unanimously approved by the Senate Friday.

The 87-0 vote to deprive lawbreaking lawmakers of their retirement benefits was part of a comprehensive ethics and lobbying bill that the Senate has taken up as its first piece of legislation in the new Democratic-controlled Congress.

-Snip-

Currently, a lawmaker can lose his or her pension only if convicted of crimes such as treason or espionage. The Kerry provision would extend that to cases of bribery, conspiracy to defraud the United States and perjury.

Read more at Foxnews.com

This is a very good surprise out of the Senate, and even for liberal John Kerry. This is a small step to correct an enormous problem of corruption in Washington, but every little bit of corrective legislation helps. Props go out to the bipartisan efforts in the Senate to pass this bill. Let’s hope the House does the same.

A funny story from the beltway:

Chanting “de-escalate, investigate, troops home now,” the protesters disrupted a briefing aimed at outlining priority goals when Democrats take over the House and Senate on Thursday.

-Snip-

“We didn’t put you in power to work with the people that have been murdering hundreds of thousands of people since they have been in power,” Sheehan said. “We put you in power to be opposition to them finally and we’re the ones who put them in power.”

I find it hilarious when leftists start eating their own. Let’s hope this continues.

When I heard the Democrats had taken control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, I immediately lost my appetite. I couldn’t eat my breakfast and the headache I had earlier got worse. Now that Democrats have their “mandate” from the American public, not only will my appetite suffer, but so will my wallet.

Democrats propose the following:

A boost to the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage would be the first since 1997. Democratic leaders have proposed raising it in stages to $7.25 an hour.

The attempt to raise the minimum wage to help the poor is an absurd idea at best. Not only does this increase the amount of dollars employers must pay out to workers, but it takes away natural incentives to hire new employees, increases supply costs, and decreases capital to invest back into business. Price increases will then trickle through the market, triggering inflation and increased unemployment. Sooner or later, the market will hit equilibrium and the same problems Democrats tried to solve with a minimum wage increase will show its ugly head again. This isn’t a conservative scare tactic, it’s simple economics.

…Democrats eager to keep their promises to pass several pieces of legislation in the first 100 hours of business, including…stem cell research funding.

While I don’t see an inherent problem funding stem cell research, Democrats insist the stem cells of study should be embryonic in nature. There are other sources of stem cells besides dead fetuses, including bone marrow and umbilical cord blood. Democrats thus far have not shown they have the capacity to understand that killing a fetus is the same as killing a human life. It’s murder, plain and simple.

Nearly seven of 10 adults, 69 percent, favor the government taking steps to make it easier for people to buy prescription drugs from other countries, where some medicines cost significantly less than in the U.S.

Like many in the United States, I too wish prescription drugs cost less. However, a large cause for outrageous costs is too much government involvement. Instead of promoting market-based and private approaches to medical care, government bureaucrats tie the American public down with needless regulation and paperwork. The movement in Washington is not to give healthcare back to the people, but to strap the people with higher taxes to pay for universal coverage. Just look at John Edwards’ campaign. Anyway, healthcare is NOT a right and according to the U.S. Constitution, purely a state issue.

The Democratic Party agenda has been said to be centrist; its early attempts at legislation will be bills that most of the American public can support. While it may be true that many Americans can see a good side to Democrats’ agenda, the real truth is that their policies will leave nothing but a gap in real Congressional leadership and a hole in your pocketbook.

As the author of this site, I haven’t written my opinions in some time, but not without reason. As of September 17, 2006, I am stationed in Iraq to support Operation Iraqi Freedom and the War on Terror. I feel honored to be here, helping the United States of America keep its future interests in the Middle East safe from Islamic fascism. I am currently working in a communications unit somewhere in southern Iraq, often working with the sister services and coalition forces. As one with an active mind, I will be working to blog about my experiences in Iraq as much as I can, helping people back home in the states to understand the cause we fight for is worth every cost. We must keep America safe from the madmen in the night. More to come…

By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

WASHINGTON — With Republicans facing a potential backlash at the polls in November, a renewed national debate over gay marriage can only boost the morale of the party’s religious conservative base, which for a variety of reasons is near mutiny, say sources in the movement.

“It could be an issue that may not necessarily bring them back, but it will bring them out, which is the key thing for the fall elections,” said Bill Greene, head of RightMarch.com, an Atlanta-based conservative activist organization.

He described the Republicans’ conservative base as “pretty ticked off” over the way GOP senators have handled illegal immigration reform, the budget and President Bush’s judicial nominations, many of whom are still stalled in the Senate. But Greene said a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage “may be one prong of a multifaceted attempt at re-energizing the base.”

On May 19, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Federal Marriage Amendment. And the Associated Press reported Thursday that Bush will lend support to the amendment in an announcement Monday.

Link

As much as I agree with most Americans that the ultimate definition of marriage should be a union between a man and a woman only, a constitutional amendment is not needed to regulate an issue which I believe, clearly lies with the states.

Republican leadership and the Bush Administration, attempting to pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage, has turned the constitution into a catalyst for social change, something I fear could be harmful to our republic in the long run. I believe the proper place for such social change, like the definition of marriage, lies squarely on the shoulders of the states or the people. The attempt to socialize the constitution, in my opinion, is a cheap trick designed to win votes in the November election, a short term priority for the Republican Party. Passing an amendment to the constitution and changing the basis of our laws altogether is a permanent action, an action that will forever change legislation and hamper the struggle to renew states rights.

Using the constitution as a catalyst for social change cheapens the respect it deserves and shows that officials in our federal government have no respect for a once thriving federalism, but only care about the power of the central government in Washington.