ACORN LEGISLATION THIS WEEK

On Thursday, Republican Senator Mike Johanns of Nebraska introduced a bill (click here for details) to cut all funding to the organization called ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) due to the scandals that have plagued them in recent days.

This is Senator Johanns’ third bill, the strongest yet; on Monday he sponsored an amendment S.AMDT.2355 (click here for details) to the bill H.R.3288 that banning federal ACORN funds in the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development spending bill, which passed the Senate by an 83-7 vote.

Then on Tuesday he sponsored another amendment, S.AMDT.2394 to H.R.2996 (click here for details) prohibiting federal ACORN money in the Interior and environment appropriations bills, which pass by an 85-11 vote on Thursday. Lawmakers have “answered the call to defend taxpayers against waste, fraud and taxpayer abuse,” Johanns said Thursday. You can read more details here on Senator Johanns’ website.

Also on Thursday over in the House of Representatives they overwhelming voted 345-75-2 to pass a GOP amendment to a student loan bill, the “Defund ACORN Act”, which would completely defund all monies to ACORN. The ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Darrell E. Issa, who is the Republican Representative from California’s 49th district reported that “since 1994, more than $53 million in federal funds have been pumped into ACORN, and under the Obama Administration, ACORN stands to receive a whopping $8.5 billion in stimulus funds.”

House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) said Thursday afternoon that “the writing is on the wall for ACORN”. Although Senator Issa technically offered the resolution that was adopted by a majority of the House on Thursday, the language was that of a measure that Senate House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio introduced on Wednesday. In less than 24 hours of submitting his stand-alone bill, Boehner had nailed down 140 co-sponsors. Because Senator Issa has really taken the lead on calling for investigations into ACORN’s scandalous practices, Senator Boehner let his colleague offer the amendment, which was overwhelmingly adopted 85-11.

This bill, if signed into law is a strong measure that cuts off all funding to the organization, its state affiliates and individuals related to the community organizers, a number of whom have been found guilty of committing voter fraud. Boehner, Issa and other leading Republicans attribute the massive support to completely defund ACORN, to a decision made last week by the Census Bureau Director Robert Groves, where he severed ties with ACORN on all Census related matters; they were originally going to have an enormous role in collecting the 2010 National Census data. In the letter sent to ACORN President Maude Hurd on Sept. 11.Groves wrote, “Recent events concerning several local offices of ACORN have added to the worsening negative perceptions of ACORN and its affiliation with our partnership efforts.”

Next Steps

The approved bills will be drafted into final legislation using a conference committee, which is typically a difficult time consuming step that spans months to accomplish. However, if Senator Johanns’ recent bill is approved, this should greatly streamline the process because both houses of Congress will have passed amendments that completely defund ACORN.

Then the last step is to obtain the Presidential signature to have it signed into law; until then funds still are, and will continue to, freely flow into Acorn like nothing ever happened.

“This bill indicates that the writing is on the wall for ACORN,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) said Thursday afternoon. When asked what the President thinks of these bills halting funding the President’s press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “the President shares the outraged of what he saw on the tapes and I’d leave it at that.”

Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe on Fox News and BigGovernment.com

Hanna and James Posing as Prostitute and Pimp. Photo: BigGovernment.com

The reason for this swift bipartisan support is surprisingly not because its ACORN has admitted to numerous voter fraud scandals that successfully pumped thousands upon thousands of illegal votes toward President Obama’s election in key states. Sadly, this was not motivating enough to outrage the public and Congress to move toward action.

No, it took two young journalists, Hannah Giles, 20, and James O’Keefe, 25, armed with only a few bucks in their pocket, a video camera, and loads of true American grit, have probably altered history in an enormous way. Halting $8.5 billion and stopping ACORN’s involvement into the 2010 Census, have immeasurably altered history. Two people and a camera, and they have changed American history by bearing light on these shadowed issues within ACORN.

The huge ACORN scandal broke when a series of four secretly recorded videos aired on Fox News during the past several days. Hannah Giles dressed up like a prostitute, and James O’Keefe portrayed himself as her pimp. They traveled the many coastal cities and visited them to see if they could get assistance to help set them up for an illegal prostitution ring that included trafficking and using under-age girls smuggled in from El Salvador for sex-trade use. In each of the public cases Acorn representatives were recorded assisting them in some way with their illegal plans. Assistance ranged from tax and business advice to hide the true purpose of their operation from authorities, to talking about the possibility of assisting with the smuggling operation.

All four videos were published on BigGovernment.com by Mike Flynn, Editor in Chief, and aired on Fox News. The videos outraged the public and both houses of Congress acted quickly to shut down funding for Acorn.

How Congress Voted

Listed below are the Senators and House Members who voted Yes, to continue funding Acorn despite these videos, or did not vote. I would urge you to write or call your representative and ask them why.

SENATE

The two approved Johanns Amendments in the US Senate (#2355 to H.R. 3288) passed 83-7 and (#2394 to H.R. 2996) passed 85-11; both proposing to halt funding of some federal dollars to ACORN, but not all—the third ammendment proposed by Senator Johanns must pass for all funds to halt.

For each of the two Senate ACORN bills that were voted on this week, here below are the US Senators who did not vote (no vote) and or voted NAY to halt ACORN funds—a NAY means YES, keep funding ACORN. A blank indicates that they voted YEA, so blanks indicate they voted to halt funding to ACORN.
It’s important to note that no Senators were a ‘no vote’ for both of these votes, so they are all on record with an opinion either supporting ACORN with a NAY vote or halting their funds with an YEA vote. Notable ‘no votes’ came from Senator’s John McCain and Lindsey Graham who were at a town hall event at the Citadel in South Carolina, and Kay Bailey Hutchinson was in Texas during Monday’s vote; but they got back in town to get recorded as YEA’s for Thursday’s vote.

US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

The US House of Representatives voted 345-75-2 in agreement to stop Acorn’s funding as well.

This is a much stronger than the Senate bill, it completely bars Acorn from getting any federal funding.

You can see the results of the official US House of Representatives vote by clicking here.

Representatives who voted NAY to halt funding, which means YES to keep funding them are:

Representatives who rode the fence and only voted “Present” rather than Yes or No were:

And those Senators not voting were:

Healthcare Basics

Healthcare does have some complexities, but there are some basic fundamentals that the industry is founded upon, which unfortunately get clouded up in the news media, and sadly by politicians.

Insurance Pool

The most important concept to healthcare insurance is the Insurance Pool. It’s so obvious that people miss it—but this is vital if we’re serious about keeping costs low.
It’s a simple concept: vast numbers of healthy people pay into a system for the few who become sick and the handful who become catastrophically sick. We all hope that we won’t need it, but it’s there if we do.
If there are high numbers of sick people with high medical costs, then the average cost per member, per month (PMPM) will be high, which forces high premium costs;  and if the PMPM costs are low then we can have low premiums. The only way to accomplish low PMPM is to have large numbers of healthy people and to lower costs for those who become sick.

Multiple Pools

There is a misconception where people, especially politicians and editorial columnists, want to break out different insurances pools for various “good ideas” that they dream up—it’s not a good idea. Here are a couple examples that sound good, but are not:

• Let’s offer a 3-tier pricing system based on how healthy you are; discounted rates for really healthy people, average rates for most people, and a higher rate for those who have high medical costs.
• Let’s offer big discounts to large groups of insurance; e.g. large unions, companies, coops, state employee, etc.
  If you do this, it’s called Diluting the Pool, which rapidly drives up the costs for those who are sick or don’t belong to a large union or group.

Let’s take the first example. The healthy people will enjoy cheaper premiums, but the sick people would not be able to afford the premiums that it would require to support their huge PMPM costs.

Anyone who wants to break up separate tier structures just doesn’t understand the simple premise for insurance: we all pay a small premium to pay for the few people who are sick—it’s something that we pay and hope that we don’t need, but we’re happy that it’s there if we need it.

The healthy pay for sick, and there’s no way around that, other than kick sick people to the curb to die because you want cheaper health premiums, or magically for someone else to pay the bill.

What about the person who says, “I represent XYZ union, with 20,000 members, we want a deep discount.” The insurance company has a pool of a million people or more! Competition drives each insurance company to charge the cheapest rate that they can for everyone or they will go out of business. If they give too many discounts to large groups then they will have to offset those revenue losses by charging more for the unfortunate individuals who don’t belong to a large group—in essence the individuals will be subsidizing the large union’s premiums. That doesn’t sound fair.

What Does This Mean

The best, fairest way, is for each insurance company to keep their PMPM costs down for one large insurance pool. It also means that we need to lower our PMPM costs, and that’s accomplished through the following:

• Increase competition by allowing insurance companies to easily do business nationally
• Work with the states to create more uniformed laws in the healthcare industry, especially with tort reform
• Streamline electronic medical records into a single format
• And SUCCESSFULLY come up with prevention concepts that work—we save money and people live better live when we prevent sickness in the first place