Here is an exerpt from an email sent to me today from the Heritage Foundation:
October 23, 2009 By Amanda Reinecker
First Senate health care vote flops
President Obama has repeatedly claimed that America is closer to passing health care reform than ever before. But proponents of big-government health care nevertheless suffered a major setback on Wednesday when the first Senate floor vote on health care legislation failed with only 47 votes in favor.
Senators voted not to act on a $247 billion "doctors' fix" that would have blocked scheduled costs savings in Medicare. This legislation is formally separate from the health care "reform" proposal, but it's nonetheless an integral part of the overall package, so its defeat is telling.
The vote, which Heritage Foundation expert Brian Darling dubs "round 1 of the battle over Obamacare," represents a major victory for conservatives who, from the beginning, have argued that real reform should be principled, fiscally responsible and bipartisan.
Detaching this legislation from the broader health care reform bill was part of a White House "strategy to smooth passage of President Barack Obama's $1 trillion-plus health care overhaul by transferring a quarter of its cost into a separate, and completely unpaid for, bill," explains Heritage's Conn Carroll in The Morning Bell.
Every Republican Senator and 13 fiscally-conscious Democrats (including Connecticut's Joe Lieberman) saw through this "transparently dishonest shell game" and voted down the measure.
A long history shows that promised Medicare cuts -- an effort to control runaway spending on the entitlement program -- rarely come to fruition. The cuts are either frozen or, when implemented, are undone after the fact. And, as in this case, lawmakers rarely offset the cost of the restored Medicare spending with cuts elsewhere, which simply adds to the budget deficit.
"The moment this became a fiscal and moral gut check, the people prevailed and the special interests lost," writes Heritage Vice President Michael Franc on National Review Online.
This was the first real demonstration of bipartisanship in the health care debate, and the Left lost. "A bipartisan majority rejected the Democrat leadership's attempt to add another quarter-trillion dollars to the national credit card without any plan to pay for it," McConnell said. "With a record deficit and a ballooning national debt, the American people are saying enough is enough."
> Other Heritage work of note
Heritage experts are working harder than ever to make sure the public has access to the facts and conservative principles on issues like health care, big-government spending and the war on terror. For example, since January, Heritage experts have made nearly 1,000 television appearances, conducted over 1,700 radio interviews and been cited over 6,800 times in print and online news publications. With several months left in 2009, these numbers already significantly surpass those from all of 2008. » Watch Heritage's recent television appearances.
Top administration officials are attacking Fox News for its bias, with even President Obama saying the network "operat[es] basically as talk radio." Of course, this ignores other media outlets' strong liberal bias. And as Heritage Vice President Mike Gonzalez explains, "with news commoditized," networks differentiate themselves by their opinion content. The administration wouldn't be "doing the nation or democracy any favors by depriving it of the only national television outlet that breaks the left's monopoly on news."
Social networking is nothing new, writes Heritage national security expert James Carafano. What used to be done at cocktail parties and weekend picnics is now done online through tools like Twitter and Facebook. But though the medium is new, the risks of these interactions remain the same for those in government: secret, dangerous or false information can be easily disseminated. "As Washington embraces social networking, it needs to think more about how it will protect against these kinds of anti-social activities that will inevitably make their way online," Carafano argues.
At the core of American constitutionalism is the rule of law, the notion that all laws apply to everyone equally. "But one powerful group in our democracy rarely misses a chance to exempt itself from laws that apply to the rest of us," writes Heritage Vice President Stuart Butler. "We're talking about members of Congress." Many lawmakers support proposals that would give Big Labor the upper hand in organizing elections joining unions. But this wouldn't apply to Congress' own workers, perhaps because members of Congress understand the downsides of unionization. If it's a great idea for the private sector, Butler maintains, "then presumably it's a great idea for Congress as well."
> In other news
A federal judge has upheld Craigslist's right to display ads for prostitutes on its online listing service. The website has agreed to require credit cards and contact information for those posting such ads.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, a strong defender of the former administration's national security policies, is now accusing the current administration of libeling its predecessor and spreading untruths about its interrogation policies.
Iran is unwilling to renounce its right to enrich uranium to weapons-grade purity.
The White House is walking back its extraordinary claims about the "stimulus" legislation. A top administration economist admits that the $787 spending bill will likely have minimal effects going forward. In addition, she said unemployment will remain above 9.5 percent for another year -- this after the administration claimed the program would cap unemployment at eight percent.
As a result of the federal government's spending binge, Congress will soon have to increase the national debt limit to more than $13 trillion. A more serious reform would rein in runaway spending and pare back waste.
> Coming up at Heritage
To attend these or any other events at Heritage please RSVP at Heritage's website. Or you can view these events live online. All times are Eastern.
On Friday, October 23 at 11 a.m., Heritage senior fellow Helle Dale will host the event Past and Present: Estonia and U.S. Partnership with former Estonian Ambassador to the United States Hon. Sven Jürgenson and former U.S. Ambassador to Estonia Hon. Aldona Zofia Wos, M.D.
Amanda Reinecker is a writer for MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. Nathaniel Ward, the Editor of MyHeritage.org, contributed to this report.
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