Congressman Peter Roskam, the Republican representing Illinois’ 6th Congressional District in Chicago’s western suburbs, this week launched his campaign to repeal the landmark healthcare reform legislation recently signed into law by President Obama. Roskam, who campaigned vigorously against the bill and who voted against its passage, complains that the legislation raises healthcare costs and taxes on the middle class, piles on to the national debt, and interferes with the doctor-patient relationship.
Roskam’s complaints, are, of course, baseless. The health reform legislation will provide subsidies for low- and middle-class families to make health insurance more affordable, reduces the deficit by $132 billion over 10 years, and does absolutely nothing to disrupt the relationship between patients and physicians. And it will make health insurance available to millions of working Americans who do not have access to coverage today – 32 million by 2019. Roskam, however, is determined not to let that happen. He says the plan is a radical government takeover of healthcare. It isn’t. It is simply sound insurance regulation coupled with subsidies to make insurance more affordable. In fact, as the President has pointed out, the health exchanges that will be created under the new law are very similar to a plan created by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has produced a couple of excellent resources to help you understand what is covered under the new healthcare legislation and the timeline over which changes will take place. If we had real representation in Congress, your Congressman would be helping you to understand this information. Since he will not, we will try to help to the degree that we are able.
Roskam’s opposition to the healthcare bill appears to be rooted in large part, not so much in the details of the reform plan, but rather in an overwhelming desire to see the President fail in order to advance his own party’s electoral prospects. Roskam is also a steadfast opponent of any kind of consumer-friendly industry regulation, be it in the realm of healthcare, banking, or the environment. We have all already seen the disatrous results of the Republican deregulatory ideology in creating the recent banking and credit crisis with the resultant recession. Now Roskam, if he has his way, would replace the Democratic reform legislation with a massive deregulation of the health insurance industry that will do nothing to help working people but will help line the pockets of the insurance companies that fund his campaigns.
Though his his claims about the dangers of the healthcare reform legislation are without merit, Roskam has enormous resources at his disposal. His Congressional office gives him tremendous access to corporate media eager to help him in his misinformation campaign and his Congressional budget and franking privileges allow him to produce mailers like we saw last summer designed to scared district residents about reform. We will have to be strong and fight hard to keep him from taking away our hard-won health benefits.
We encourage you to contact Peter Roskam to voice your support for healthcare reform and to ask him to cease his efforts to take away your benefits. You can reach him at (630) 893-9670 in Bloomingdale or at (202) 225-4561 in Washington.
Roskam has also taken to Twitter as part of his efforts to kill health reform. You can talk back to him directly there. He is @PeterRoskam and he is tweeting about repeal using the tag #218hcr. We are doing are best to counteract his misinformation there.
Just finished watching the video of President Obama’s Q&A session at the GOP House Issues conference today. The President was brilliant. He called the GOP to account for for their campaign of misinformation about healthcare reform and the economic stimulus, but did it with respect and a sincere invitation to Republicans to work with him in the nation’s best interest. The President was articulate and knew his facts, including detailed knowledge of Republican counter proposals. He was warm and human in demeanor and gentle but firm in his criticisms, using self-deprecating humor effectively to put the room at ease. I have never seen a more brilliant performance by a President. Never.
You can hear Congressman Roskam pose his question at about 67:15.
More mail from Peter Roskam yesterday. This time a piece designed to scare me about the national debt. On the back, next to Roskam’s signature, it tells me “This mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense. This is a service to the the citizens of the Sixth Congressional District of Illinois.” Right next to the pretty glossy photo of rich white people walking in a park, probably in Wheaton.
So how is this a service? A service to the residents of the sixth might be a mailer that told the victims of the Bush financial collapse how to get job re-training and unemployment benefits, and food stamps, and suicide counseling. No, this is a political message, designed to help Roskam’s party defeat the efforts of President Obama to make things better for ordinary Americans. Pretty ironic when you think about it – Roskam’s spending our tax dollars to print and mail this political message railing about the national debt and excessive spending. What an ass. Based on their polling, Roskam and his Republican colleagues believe that debt and budget deficits are one area where President Obama is potentially vulnerable and so they’re wasting our money on propaganda like this.
Roskam says that “we’re at near historic debt levels, the likes of which have not been seen since WWII: the national debt is over $11 trillion dollars and growing rapidly.” Well, that’s true enough. But where did all that debt come from? The New York Times’ David Leonhardt did a great job analyzing the growth of budget deficitsback in June: America’s Sea of Red Ink Was Years in the Making.
It all began when George Bush took office in 2001. As the last Democratic president left office, he handed President Bush a booming economy and a budget surplus projected at $800 billion annually through 2012. Under Bush, the nation plunged into recession in 2001 and the country was forced to increase spending on economic relief while tax revenues decreased. Meanwhile Bush started two expensive wars, one of them inargueably elective, and spent billions on a Medicare prescription drug benefit that was largely a gift to insurance and pharmaceutical companies. So as spending soared and tax revenues decreased, what does Bush do: why give huge tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, further decreasing revenues and increasing the deficit.
Bush’s economic policies resulted in his second recession, the present one, that began in 2007. Again tax revenues plummeted and safety net spending increased. And then then the mortgage and banking crisis, a product of Bush’s anything goes anti-regulatory policies. Bush is forced to bailout the banks, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac to prevent a global economic collapse, further increasing the deficit. Bush leaves office and hands President Obama a $1.3 trillion deficit, two wars with no end in sight, and an economy in ruins.
Leonhardt breaks down responsibility for the deficit like this:
You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.
The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.
About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.
Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.
So about 10 percent of the present deficit is attributable to President Obama’s policies: 7 percent to economic stimulus to pull the nation out of the economic crisis he inherited from an incompetent Repupublican administration and 3 percent related to his new domestic programs. 3 percent!
If Peter Roskam were serious about reducing the deficit he would:
Stop wasting tax dollars on political mailings and telephone campaigns
Start working to repeal the irresponsible Bush tax cuts
Start working to disengage the country from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that he has supported and to reduce military spending to reasonable levels
Get behind the President’s efforts to fix the healthcare system
Stop working for more tax breaks to the wealthy like an end to the estate tax
But then we all know that Roskam is not serious about reducing the deficit. His only interest is in using it to make things more difficult for the President in hopes of boosting his party’s political fortune.
Foreign Policy’s The Cable published this piece on Peter Roskam’s recent trip to Honduras to meet with Roberto Micheletti and other members of the right-wing junta that overthrew Honduras’s Democratically-elected president in June. Roskam was interviewed for the article:
Congressman Peter Roskam, R-Ill, also spoke with The Cable just after returning from Tegucigalpa to talk about his delegation and the strategy behind the GOP’s controversial engagement approach…
Although the State Department tried to prevent the delegation from going, U.S. consular officials did assist the delegation logistically, but did not participate in the meetings, Roskam said. The delegation also had a tense meeting with U.S. Amb. Hugo Llorens, in which Roskam described him as being “very defensive.”
“The very consistent theme that was coming across was a sense of bewilderment from all the Hondurans we were meeting with at their treatment by the United States,” Roskam related.
Micheletti acknowledged to the group that he did not have the authority to physically remove Zelaya from the country, but he seeks communication with the U.S. government and was not pleased that the State Department had cut him off.
The conclusion Roskam drew from the trip was that the problem in Honduras won’t be solved until the Nov. 29 election, in which neither Micheletti nor Zelaya is running — that is, if it can meet reasonable standards of freedom and fairness.
U.S. trade with Honduras is at stake, Roskam argued, and is needed to counter the expanding regional influence of anti-American forces such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.
This is unbelieveably arrogant, and, I believe, treasonous.
First off, the Republican Party is not entitled to conduct an alternative foreign policy. They lost the Presidential election in November, in no small part because of the horrible mess they made of U.S. relations with the rest of the world. They are neither competent to or empowered with conducting foreign policy. That is the role of President Obama.
Second, the policy of the United States of America, as defined by the President, is that Manuel Zelaya was illegally deposed from power and that the government of Roberto Micheletti is illegitimate and must restore Zelaya to power. Micheletti admitted to Roskam that he lacked authority for his actions. This policy is shared by the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the European Union. The men Roskam met with constitute a criminal regime and consequently are enemies of the United States.
Third, since Roskam is clearly not acting on behalf of the United States, on whose behalf is he acting? Well, clearly, the criminal dictator Micheletti, who seized power and then terminated the constitutional rights of the press and the people of Honduras. But Roskam told us who he was really acting for when he said this was about trade. He is acting on behalf of the huge U.S. based corporations that do business in Latin America and don’t like the democratically-elected governments because they are supportive of higher wages and better working conditions for those who they employ, endangering their obscene profits.
So Roskam’s project in Honduras is to subvert the legitimate foreign policy of the United States, and give aid and comfort to its enemies, the criminal junta in Honduras, on behalf of another power, the multinational corporations.That sounds like treason to me.
And he complains that the U.S. ambassador is defensive??
Fortunately, in this country, we have the possibility of free and fair elections, at least while the Republicans remain in the minority. 6th District voters should overthrow the treasonous Roskam at the polls in 2010.
Peter Roskam appeared on Fox Chicago Sunday yesterday and, I must say, our Congressman was looking particularly dreamy. The friendly Fox News team quizzed Pete again about the Joe Wilson outburst during President Obama’s speech last week and Roskam describes the “thud” he felt at hearing Wilson cry out “you lie” to the President when Obama said his plan would provide no coverage for undocumented workers. When I look at the pictures though, I’m pretty sure that the only “thud” Roskam experienced came much later when he saw his picture in the New York Times. In the picture that showed Wilson shouting, Roskam exhibits no reaction to Wilson. It does look like he’s reacting negatively to the President himself, though not shouting like his buddy from South Carolina. And notice in the interview how Roskam quickly changes the subject when the interviewer comments that, in the picture, Roskam didn’t look at Wilson:
Roskam only does safe interviews and this one was no exception. Fox gave him free air time to rehash his same tired obstructionist Republican talking points.
Roskam remarks that we need more clarity regarding the issue of coverage for illegal immigrants. I really don’t know how you can get any more clear than the President:
There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.
Personally, I feel undocumented workers should be covered. They are human beings who work hard for us, they pay taxes too, and we are all presently paying through the nose for ineffective care for them in emergency rooms. Why not provide them with lower cost effective health care while they are among us. But I know that won’t fly. Roskam seems to think that the paltry 30 million uninsured Americans remaining after you eliminate the undocumented are hardly worth bothering about.
Roskam says that polls show that the majority of Americans are opposed to a public option. But in a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, “76 percent of respondents said it was either “extremely” or “quite” important to “give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance.” A CBS News/Nework Times poll in June found that 72% of respondents support a government-sponsored health care plan to compete with private insurers. Even a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted this month after all the August teabag nonsense shows 55% support. (A poll of Congressmen receiving hefty campaign contributions from the healthcare industry would probably show weaker support). Roskam’s assessment of public opinion is, at best, disingenuous.
Listen to the Fox interviewer helpfully remind Roskam of his principal talking point that a public option “is opening the door to single-payer in the United States”. Apparently Roskam had gone off script. A single-payer plan is not, of course, what the President is proposing:
Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business. They provide a legitimate service, and employ a lot of our friends and neighbors. I just want to hold them accountable. And the insurance reforms that I’ve already mentioned would do just that. But an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange. Now, let me be clear. Let me be clear. It would only be an option for those who don’t have insurance. No one would be forced to choose it, and it would not impact those of you who already have insurance. In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5 percent of Americans would sign up.
Despite all this, the insurance companies and their allies don’t like this idea. They argue that these private companies can’t fairly compete with the government. And they’d be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public insurance option. But they won’t be. I’ve insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits and excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers, and would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better, the same way public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities.
Now, it is — it’s worth noting that a strong majority of Americans still favor a public insurance option of the sort I’ve proposed tonight. But its impact shouldn’t be exaggerated — by the left or the right or the media. It is only one part of my plan, and shouldn’t be used as a handy excuse for the usual Washington ideological battles. To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades, the driving idea behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage available for those without it. The public option — the public option is only a means to that end — and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal. And to my Republican friends, I say that rather than making wild claims about a government takeover of health care, we should work together to address any legitimate concerns you may have.
Peter Roskam loves to go on TV and radio and talk down the democratic efforts to ensure that all Americans have access to high-quality affordable healthcare. What we have never, ever, heard from Roskam in all these is his alternative plan for providing healthcare to the millions of Americans who presently go without.
President Obama last week outlined an actual plan. It needs some meat on its bones and I’ll admit to skepticism on some points but he’s laid out a path we can follow to address the problem of the uninsured this year. All we ever hear from Roskam is “no”, “can’t do it”, “won’t work”, “too expensive”. Well the time for “no” is over. If Roskam doesn’t like the President’s plan, he should outline his own plan to provide universal healthcare. Otherwise, Roskam needs to take a heaping dose of STFU and work with the President to enact his.
I have no real hope, of course, that Roskam will do either. The hallmark of Roskam’s brief tenure in Washington has been an appalling lack of concern for those less fortunate than himself. I have no real expectation that he will change now. Not while there is political hay to be made by trying to cause the President to fail.
Healthcare really shouldn’t be so difficult a problem for our country to solve. In case you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend T.R. Reid’s Frontline report “Sick Around the World” below. Reid shows how five wealthy democracies have tackled the problem and have come up with solutions that, while imperfect, are pretty good, and haven’t resulted in a totalitarian state or economic collapse. All the noise that surrounds the effort to provide universal healthcare in this country is the result of obstructionist Republicans like Roskam manipulating their gullible base into working against their own best interests for political gain and to the benefit of their corporate sponsors.
If you watched President Obama’s address to the joint session of Congress last night or have seen the news since, you no doubt heard or heard about Representative Joe Wilson’s inappropriate outburst during the speech. Wilson screamed out “You lie!” when the President stated unequivocally that his proposed health care reform plan would not provide coverage to illegal aliens:
On insistence of the Republican leadership, Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, today apologized for his outburst and his apology was graciously accepted by President Obama.
I was intrigued to see at the New York Times and at TPM this morning , that our own Peter Roskam was seated directly to Wilson’s left during the speech.
It does not appear that they are seated alphabetically, or by state delegation, because they would not fall together. They aren’t seated by Committee because Wilson is not on Ways and Means. They aren’t particularly close in seniority – Wilson was seated in 2001, Roskam in 2007. So either they were seated that way by accident, or they chose to sit together.
I don’t know whether Wilson and Roskam are close. If they were, I would not be surprised. The two have very similar voting records – 93% out of 2318 roll call votes since 2007 were identical according to Open Congress’ nifty new comparison tool as of this writing. Both Roskam and Wilson have been working to defeat President Obama’s efforts to provide healthcare coverage to all Americans. And Roskam has not been afraid to play the illegal alien card himself when he thought it could work to his political advantage.
It would be interesting to hear Peter Roskam’s thoughts on Wilson’s outburst, the nature of his relationship with Joe Wilson, and whether he admonished Wilson himself on his behavior, having been seated right next to him.
And what’s that angry scowl about on Roskam’s face?
Addendum: I just heard Peter Roskam quoted on WBEZ a saying he “cringed” at Wilson’s remarks. But the photo’s don’t seem to show Roskam reacting negatively to Wilson. Rather his attention and his scowl seem to be focused elsewhere. Notably, WBEZ did not quote Roskam as saying he chastised his colleague. Presumably, he did not.
2nd Addendum: The Daily Herald now reports that Roskam was “surprised” and “disappointed” by Wilson’s outburst. The camera does not show that. If Roskam had been surprised we would see him reacting to Wilson at this moment. Instead his expression, IMHO, seems to be a reaction to the President on the podium. Birds of a feather, I believe.
3rd Addendum: TPM has further background on Joe Wilson including his attacks on Sen. Strom Thurmond’s illegitimate daughter (Wilson is a former Thurmond page) and on Rep. Bob Filner who had the temerity to state that the U.S. had armed Saddam Hussein. Its a little frightening, though not particularly surprising, that Peter Roskam would hang out with this guy. Perhaps Peter would feel more at home if he joined the the South Carolina delegation. The climate is nicer (at least for the moment) and South Carolina is a better fit for a 19th century kind of guy like Roskam.
Last Addendum: It looks like, as of this writing, Miller has raised over $750,000 in campaign contributions since Wilson’s outburst on Wednesday night.
