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Videos of health care summit speeches by Ryan, Blackburn, Coburn and Alexander

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Obama met with Republicans to discuss his health care plans. The Republicans selected a team of experts including three of my favorite conservatives, Marsha Blackburn, Tom Coburn and Paul Ryan. How did they do against Obama? Did we win?

Marathon Pundit has the scoop.

Selected quotes from leftists CNN:

  • CNN’S DAVID GERGEN: “Intellectually, the Republicans had the best day they’ve had in years. The best day they have had in years.” (CNN’s “The Situation Room,” 2/25/10)
  • CNN’s DAVID GERGEN: “The folks in the White House just must be kicking themselves right now. They thought that coming out of Baltimore when the President went in and was mesmerizing and commanding in front of the House Republicans that he could do that again here today. That would revive health care and would change the public opinion about their health care bill and they can go on to victory. Just the opposite has happened.: (CNN’s “Live,” 2/25/10)
  • CNN’s GLORIA BORGER: “The Republicans have been very effective today. They really did come to play. They were very smart.” (CNN’s “Live,” 2/25/10)
  • CNN’s GLORIA BORGER: “They took on the substance of a very complex issue. … But they really stuck to the substance of this issue and tried to get to the heart of it and I think did a very good job.” (CNN’s “Live,” 2/25/10)
  • CNN’s GLORIA BORGER: “They came in with a plan. They mapped it out.” (CNN’s “Live,” 2/25/10)

Video from CNN: (H/T Hot Air)

We won. By a landslide. And even the left-wing media admits it.

Now how did we win?

Lamar Alexander

Lamar Alexander makes the opening statement. He is fairly moderate, and has a history of stepping across the aisle to work with Democrats.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Marsha Blackburn

Marsha Blackburn makes Barack Obama admit that his refusal to allow people to buy plans out of state with no mandated coverages means that they will be paying too much for health care. Obama replies that he is happy with redistributing wealth from healthy young people to older people who ought to have saved their own money for their own health care expenses.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Paul Ryan (H/T Gateway Pundit)

Paul Ryan asks Obama how the implications of Obamacare on the federal budget. Why is Obama ignoring the analysis done by his own Congressional Budget office? Why does the government have to control health care? Why can’t people buy the health care that they choose with their own money?

Tom Coburn

Coburn talked about ways to reduce the cost of health care without having the government take it all over. I’ll post Tom Coburn’s full video when I find it.

Here’s the last 95% of the speech, just missing the first paragraph, really.

The full transcript is here.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin’s latest column evaluates the health care summit.

Excerpt:

When he wasn’t cutting off Republicans who stuck to budget specifics and cited legislative page numbers and language instead of treacly, sob-story anecdotes involving dentures and gall stones, President Obama was filibustering the talk-a-thon away by invoking his daughters, rambling on about auto insurance, and sniping at former GOP presidential rival John McCain. “We’re not campaigning anymore,” lectured the perpetual campaigner-in-chief.

After ostentatiously disputing the GOP’s claims that health care premiums would rise under his plan, Obama walked it back. Confronted with more GOP pushback on the failure of Demcare to control costs, Obama told GOP Rep. Paul Ryan that he’d rather not “get bogged down in numbers.” Not numbers that he couldn’t cook on the spot without staff consultation, anyway.

Obama and the Democrats labored mightily to create the illusion of almost-there bipartisanship by repeatedly telling disagreeing Republicans that “we don’t disagree” and “there’s not a lot of difference” between us. But the dogs weren’t riding the ponies in this show.

Obama must be so shocked to find that not everyone in the world is a racist/communist/terrorist/tax cheat. This is his first exposure to a different point of view. He’s in shock.

News

Moderate George Will loves Paul Ryan’s plan for economic recovery

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Rep. Paul Ryan

Editorial from the Press Telegram. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Ryan would eliminate taxes on interest, capital gains, dividends and death.The corporate income tax, the world’s second highest, would be replaced by an 8.5 percent business consumption tax. Because this would be about half the average tax burden that other nations place on corporations, U.S. companies would instantly become more competitive – and more able and eager to hire.

Medicare and Social Security would be preserved for those currently receiving benefits, or becoming eligible in the next 10 years (those 55 and older today). Both programs would be made permanently solvent.

Universal access to affordable health care would be guaranteed by refundable tax credits ($2,300 for individuals, $5,700 for families) for purchasing portable coverage in any state. As persons under 55 became Medicare eligible, they would receive payments averaging $11,000 a year, indexed to inflation and pegged to income, with low-income people receiving more support.

Ryan’s plan would fund medical savings accounts from which low-income people would pay minor out-of-pocket medical expenses. All Americans, regardless of income, would be allowed to establish MSAs – tax-preferred accounts for paying such expenses.

Ryan’s plan would allow workers under 55 the choice of investing more than one-third of their current Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts similar to the Thrift Savings Plan long available to, and immensely popular with, federal employees. This investment would be inheritable property, guaranteeing that individuals will never lose the ability to dispose every dollar they put into these accounts.

Ryan would raise the retirement age. If, when Congress created Social Security in 1935, it had indexed the retirement age (then 65) to life expectancy, today the age would be in the mid-70s. The system was never intended to do what it is doing – subsidizing retirements that extend from one-third to one-half of retirees’ adult lives.

My last post on George Will is here: Moderate George Will lauds the virtues of Michele Bachmann. He’s actually quite moderate, not at all a conservative, so this is very interesting.

ECM also send me this article from the American Spectator.

Excerpt:

Ever since his back and forth with President Obama during last week’s question time at the Republican retreat, Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future” has been gaining attention as a plan that the Congressional Budget Office has projected would actually solve our nation’s long-term entitlement crisis.

[…]“The lower budget deficits under your proposal would result in much less federal debt than under the alternative fiscal scenario and thereby a much more favorable macroeconomic outlook,” CBO writes in page 14 of its analysis of the Ryan plan.

CBO projects “real gross national product per person would be about 70 percent higher in 2058 under the proposal.” But after 2058, the CBO’s model completely breaks down when trying to project current trends, “because deficits become so large and unsustainable that the model cannot calculate their effects.” By contrast, the model shows the Ryan plan continuing to achieve economic growth in the decades that follow. This is demonstrated by the CBO chart below.

So the CBO is backing up Ryan’s calculations.

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Obama’s spending freeze saves 250 billion out of 43 trillion in spending over 10 years

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Article from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

The latest idea for reining in the federal government’s runaway spending is to “freeze” nondefense discretionary outlays for three years. That may sound good, but it’s just another gimmick.

We try not to be too cynical about politics, but the White House’s proposed freeze will do nothing to address America’s budget problems.

Last year alone, the U.S. deficit hit $1.4 trillion on record spending of $3.7 trillion. The freeze will apply only to $447 billion in spending — just 12% of the total. Next year, if the freeze goes into effect, it will save just $15 billion — and $250 billion over 10 years.

Compared with the $9 trillion in new debt and $43 trillion in spending expected over the next decade, it’s a pittance — not even a down payment on our gaping shortfalls.

[…]According to the CBO, the $250 billion in savings amounts to a negligible 0.5% of the $43 trillion in spending over the next decade. But it will no doubt be put to good political use, as congressional Democrats suddenly style themselves as fiscal conservatives during the 2010 campaign for passing a meaningless freeze.

Let me be clear. Obama never has been a fiscal conservative, and he isn’t going to start to be one now. It’s just words on a teleprompter that he reads so that you stop calling your representatives.