PRESS RELEASE Monday, August 17, 2009

For Immediate Release

Monday, August 17, 2009

Contact : Matthew Hunter at 540.222.6318 or Larry Ward at 202.558.6640
mhunter@socialsecurityinstitute.com campaigns@politicalmedia.com

SSI President Lawrence Hunter Joins “Hands-Off-My-Healthcare Express” on
Five-Day Bus Tour Across Montana, Wyoming and Iowa

Warrenton, Virginia (August 16, 2009)—Today, the Social Security Institute (SSI) joined with Patients First to carry an urgent message to three critical states: ObamaCare as originally conceived is dead, and the real danger now is ObamaCare Lite, which the Administration is trying to smuggle into law disguised as a “bipartisan compromise.” The purpose of the tour is to convince critical Republican Senators in these states that the time has come to abandon unrealistic and potentially dangerous efforts to negotiate a bipartisan compromise. Instead, the Congress should put consideration of major healthcare reform on hold for at least a year until the economy improves and the supercharged political environment settles down. The only bipartisan agreement Senators should be seeking at this time is to abide by the 60-Vote rule for health reform the Senate TWICE voted (by unanimous consent and 79 yeas respectively) earlier this year to apply to the healthcare debate.

In a statement released yesterday, Hunter said:

“The American people have rejected ObamaCare. The President knows it, which is why he changed the definition of ObamaCare from ‘healthcare reform’ to ‘health insurance reform’ and why he pivoted from promoting a mandate that requires employers to provide health insurance to their employees to a direct federal mandate that individuals purchase insurance or pay a fine. The president also is repositioning himself to accept health-insurance co ops, the medical version of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—call them Frannie Med—as a means of smuggling in a public option and eventually a single-payer system.

“The Hands-Off-My-Health Care Express is touring Wyoming and Iowa because Senators Mike Enzi (R-WY) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) are two of the three most important United States Senators in the land right now. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) is the third, and SSI is in the process of putting together a Maine tour before the Senate returns to session in September. These are the three Republican Finance Committee members trying to negotiate a so-called ‘bipartisan compromise’ on healthcare.

“We are concerned that the three Senate Republicans locked inside the hothouse of Washington, DC negotiations do not become so obsessed with the quixotic quest of forging a grand “bipartisan compromise” that they lose sight of the economic, political and fiscal realities of the situation and lose touch with the views and opinions of their constituents. The simple fact is, there is no way the Obama framework for reform within which Senate Republicans are being forced to negotiate can produce a solution that comports with the values and principles that most Americans hold dear; nor can that framework for reform produce a solution that will actually improve the healthcare system and be fiscally responsible. ObamaCare violates the fundamental laws of economic, and therefore it is time to go back to square one.

“Instead of trying to rush to enact a plan the American public is severely split over, Senators should come to a bipartisan consensus to abide by the 60-Vote rule for health reform the Senate TWICE voted to apply to the healthcare debate earlier this year. In Senate parliamentary terms, this means agreeing on a bipartisan basis NOT to ram health reform through the Senate by a simple majority vote under the special budget procedure known as Reconciliation.

“Reconciliation was devised as a special BUDGET PROCEDURE exclusively to facilitate annual budget legislation NOT for major reform of almost one fifth of the U.S. economy, which is at stake in healthcare reform. The Senate already has voted twice to maintain the REGULAR ORDER on health reform, i.e., NOT ram health reform legislation through under Reconciliation. These two overwhelming votes were ignored when the Senate Budget Committee Chairman (Senator Conrad-ND) took it upon himself to allow the 60-vote provision to be removed in the dead of night from the Conference Committee Report on the Budget Resolution despite a bipartisan vote of 79 Senators instructing the conferees to insist on the Senate’s 60-Vote provision.

“The integrity and tradition of the Senate require that Senators of both parties abide by the Senate’s cherished rules of unlimited debate unless 60 Senators agree to cut off debate and bring a matter to a vote. Senators who refuse to abide by the REGULAR ORDER in the Senate are resorting to legislative trickery and back room maneuvering to cram government healthcare down America's throat.”

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