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"Bass EPA vote comes under fire"
The Nashua Telegraph, Letters, March 14, 2011
Granite Staters voted for many things in November, but they certainly did not vote for more asthma attacks and more contaminated drinking water.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what Rep. Charlie Bass helped bring upon New Hampshire by voting for the outrageously anti-environmental House funding bill (HR 1).
Passed under cover of night on a Saturday, this bill endangers the health of New Hampshire’s children, elderly citizens and other vulnerable populations by blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from doing its job and cleaning up coal-fired power plants and other large sources of dangerous carbon dioxide pollution.
It also cuts EPA’s overall budget by the largest percentage in 30 years, severely threatening the agency’s ability to ensure that all New Hampshire residents have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.
To his credit, Rep. Bass did vote against amendments that made this atrocious legislation even worse. He opposed efforts to block clean-up of mercury pollution in our air and water, as well as cuts to funds that protect wild places.
Nevertheless, New Hampshire is the tail pipe of the nation. I am dismayed that Rep. Bass voted in support of a final bill that eviscerates our core environmental and public health programs that protect us from Midwestern emissions.
Jessica O’Hare
Program Associate
Environment New Hampshire
Concord
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"Bass and Guinta vote to Overhaul Medicare and Medicaid"
By Matt Laslo, NHPR.org - April 15, 2011
New Hampshire’s two Republican House members have voted to overhaul Medicare and Medicaid. NHPR Correspondent Matt Laslo has the story from Washington.
The vote on the Republican budget resolution for next year includes big changes to the nation’s historical social safety nets. The legislation would provide seniors with a check that would go to an insurance company instead of a doctor. President Obama and Democrats claim the change would burden seniors with thousands of dollars in extra health care costs.
First District Congressman Frank Guinta calls that claim the Democrats' “talking point.” And he said the legislation would decrease the nation’s health care costs.
“A more free market choice approach where the individual has greater power in the decision making process. And when that happens you typically see people more aware of what they are purchasing.”
The proposal also turns Medicaid into a block grant program that unwinds federal standards for how it’s administered.
The Second District’s Charlie Bass also supported the sweeping changes.
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"Medicare should not be taken down"
By Ann McLane Kuster, May 15, 2011
When I read about Congressman Charles Bass voting to abolish Medicare as we know it, I thought about the impact on the lives of seniors all across New Hampshire and I thought about my own family.
My 87-year-old mother-in-law lives on her own in a small apartment on a widow’s pension and her Social Security. A few weeks ago, she was hospitalized for a few days with pneumonia, and her hospital stay was covered by Medicare.
In 2008, over 200,000 people in our state received benefits from Medicare, which is why I am so disturbed that Bass and his colleagues voted to jeopardize the health and well being of future retirees. In order to pay for a large tax cut for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, the Republican budget would replace the successful Medicare program with a system of private insurance vouchers, leaving tomorrow’s seniors without adequate coverage when healthcare costs inevitably continue to rise.
This private mandate and voucher system sets up an unstable, hurtful, and discriminatory system for seniors. In essence, the only element it keeps from our current, successful program is the name “Medicare”.
At town hall meetings across New Hampshire in the days after the vote, Bass defended his vote by attempting to argue that his plan relied on “premium support systems,” not “vouchers”. It was Washington-speak from his partisan leadership’s talking points — and we flinty constituents in New Hampshire are not buying it.
Even FOX’s Chris Wallace, no Democrat by any stretch, called the bill Bass voted for “a major overhaul of Medicare and turning it into a voucher system.”
And according to Kathleen Hennessey of the L.A. Times, who covered a town hall discussion at the American Legion Post 59 in Hillsborough, Bass “struggled with the tax part of the plan, flatly denying that the proposal would cut taxes on wealthy individuals and saying incorrectly that the reduction applied only to corporations.”
Hennessey concluded, “Now, it’s hard to separate how much of the muddying is Bass honestly not understanding the budget he voted for, and how much is him deliberately obfuscating. But when you’re trying to convert abstract beliefs into support for wildly unpopular particulars, obfuscation is pretty much the only play.”
Even in this day of cynicism, that’s a sorry commentary on the motives of our elected officials.
I am a frugal Yankee, and I do believe we need to cut spending when it is truly wasteful. We can find prime candidates for those cuts in the billions of subsidies for oil companies, the corporate tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, and the billions more spent on redundant weapons systems that our military leaders have identified as wasteful and not needed. These are all expenditures that Bass has voted to support in his seven terms in Congress — including his votes as recently as this winter.
But ending Medicare as we know it in order to make room for corporate tax breaks? No way. That’s not the America I want to pass on to my sons. It’s not the country that Nanny worked hard for her whole life, nor the country that is looking out for her now. We can do better.
Democrat Ann McLane Kuster of Concord was a candidate for New Hampshire’s 2nd District House Congressional seat in 2010.
Source: www.sentinelsource.com/opinion/columnists/guest/medicare-should-not-be-taken-down-by-ann-mclane-kuster
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"From Bass, an appalling vote"
The Concord Monitor, Letters, May 9, 2011
Rep. Charlie Bass blames "outside special interest groups" for scaring seniors about his vote to cut Medicare. Well, I'm not a special interest group. I'm a 29-year New Hampshire resident who recently enrolled in Medicare, and I'm appalled by Bass's vote.
He claims that he did not support a "voucher" system for seniors to buy medical insurance. Whatever you call it, giving a fixed amount to an insurance company in my name, a "premium support," might as well be called a voucher. If it's too paltry to buy the insurance I will need (it will be), the balance will be out of my pocket. And if a pre-existing condition makes the insurers refuse me, I will be out of luck.
We all know we have a budget problem. The House Republican budget proposes to cut $30 billion from Medicare over 10 years but it would also repeal the Affordable Care Act, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates would cut the federal deficit by $210 billion over the next 10 years. And repealing the new health law brings back the prescription drug coverage gap known as the "donut hole," passing on $6,000 in additional out-of-pocket prescription drug costs to me by 2020.
This $6,000 per year passed on to us seniors and a "voucher" system that won't even keep up with health care costs is a bad deal for seniors and for working Americans paying into Medicare now.
If Bass and House Republicans get their way, they will increase the deficit and break the promise of guaranteed health care benefits to seniors and people with disabilities. That's not only scary, it's shameful.
M. CHRIS HANSEN
Alstead, NH
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"House rejects debt limit increase without cuts"
By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent, May 31, 2011
WASHINGTON – House Republicans dealt defeat to their own proposal for a $2.4 trillion increase in the nation's debt limit Tuesday, a political gambit designed to reinforce a demand for spending cuts to accompany any increase in government borrowing.
The vote was lopsided, with just 97 in favor of the measure and 318 against.
House Democrats accused the GOP of political demagoguery, while the Obama administration maneuvered to avoid taking sides — or giving offense to majority Republicans.
The debate was brief, occasionally impassioned and set a standard of sorts for public theater, particularly at a time when private negotiations continue among the administration and key lawmakers on the deficit cuts Republicans have demanded.
The bill "will and must fail," said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., the House Ways and Means Committee chairman who noted he had helped write the very measure he was criticizing.
"I consider defeating an unconditional increase to be a success, because it sends a clear and critical message that the Congress has finally recognized we must immediately begin to rein in America's affection for deficit spending," he said.
But Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., accused Republicans of a "ploy so egregious that (they) have had to spend the last week pleading with Wall Street not to take it seriously and risk our economic recovery."
He and other Democrats added that Republicans were attempting to draw attention away from their controversial plan to turn Medicare into a program in which seniors purchase private insurance coverage.
The proceedings occurred roughly two months before the date Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has said the debt limit must be raised. If no action is taken by Aug. 2, he has warned, the government could default on its obligations and risk turmoil that might plunge the nation into another recession or even an economic depression.
Republicans, who are scheduled to meet with Obama at the White House on Wednesday, signaled in advance that the debt limit vote did not portend a final refusal to grant an increase.
The roll call vote was held late in the day, and there was little, if any discernible impact on Wall Street, where major exchanges showed gains for the day. At the same time, it satisfied what GOP officials said was a desire among the rank and file to vote against unpopular legislation the leadership has said eventually must pass in some form.
Republicans said they were offering legislation Obama and more than 100 Democratic lawmakers had sought.
But Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking Democrat, accused the GOP of staging a "demagogic vote" at a time lawmakers should work together to avoid a financial default.
All 97 votes in favor of the measure were cast by Democrats, totaling less than a majority and far under the two-thirds support needed for passage.
For its part, the administration appeared eager to avoid criticizing Republicans.
"It's fine, it's fine," presidential press secretary Jay Carney said when asked about the Republican decision to tie spending cuts with more borrowing.
"We believe they should not be linked because there is no alternative that's acceptable to raising the debt ceiling. But we're committed to reducing the deficit," Carney said.
The government has already reached the limit of its borrowing authority, $14.3 trillion, and the Treasury is using a series of extraordinary maneuvers to meet financial obligations.
By no longer would making investments in two big pension funds for federal workers and beginning to withdraw current investments, for example, the Treasury created $214 billion in additional borrowing headroom.
At the same time, the Obama administration and congressional leaders are at work trying to produce a deficit-reduction agreement in excess of $1 trillion to meet Republican demands for spending cuts.
Political maneuvering on legislation to raise the debt limit has become common in recent years, as federal deficits have soared and presidents of both political parties have been forced to seek authority to borrow additional trillions of dollars.
Because such legislation is unpopular with voters, presidents generally look to lawmakers from their own political party to provide the votes needed for passage. In the current case, though, Republicans control the House, and without at least some support from them, Obama's request for a debt-limit increase would fail.
However, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, announced months ago that he would demand spending cuts as a condition for passage.
"It's true that allowing America to default would be irresponsible," he said on May 9 in a speech to the Economic Club of New York. "But it would be more irresponsible to raise the debt limit without simultaneously taking dramatic steps to reduce spending and to reform the budget process."
He added that any spending cuts should be larger than the increase in borrowing authority, a statement meant to lay down a marker for the deficit-reduction talks led by Vice President Joe Biden.
Few details have emerged from those negotiations, although Biden said recently the negotiators had made progress. He expressed confidence they would be able to agree on specific cuts in excess of $1 trillion over the next decade, and then look to procedural mechanisms known as "triggers" to force further automatic deficit cuts adding up to another $3 trillion or so.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a participant in the talks, said afterward, "I am confident that we can achieve over a trillion dollars in savings at this point, and hopefully more."
Earlier, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., had said the discussions centered on deficit cuts totaling in the range of $150 billion to $200 billion over a decade, but that was from a relatively small category of programs.
Among the areas eyed for spending cuts is the federal pension program, where the White House has signaled it is receptive to a Republican proposal for employees to make greater contributions.
Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Martin Crutsinger contributed to this report.
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