"The [health care] reform debate, which captivated public interest at town halls across the country in August, now enters a new phase as [five different] bills head toward votes on the House and Senate floors this fall.

"The [Senate] Finance Committee bill must be merged with a more liberal reform plan from the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee... Across the Capitol, three House bills are similarly being merged to send to the floor of that chamber."

"[T]he same Congress and president who want to stop the banks from taking too much risk cannot stop themselves from ever more deficits. Indeed, so intoxicated - nay, hypnotized! - by debt is the current government that it is not even proposing to try to cut back.

"Last week saw, at the same time: 1) the world shuddering about the debt-driven, weakening dollar ('The biggest story in the world economy is the continuing fall of the U.S. dollar, or at least it is everywhere outside of Washington, D.C., the place most responsible for its declining value,' Wall Street Journal) and, 2) Washington cheering Sen. Max Baucus' health bill spending levels ('Health Care Bill Gets Green Light in Cost Analysis,' New York Times).

"That's right. The federal government is 'giving the green light' for the country to drive to the poorhouse. And drive there, I would argue, by way of the lunatic asylum. Are they nuts?"

"We know from past experience that cost estimates of all government health care programs ... tend to understate actual costs. So the Baucus bill -- er, conceptual language -- if enacted is likely to expand government spending by more than the estimated $829 billion. And perhaps quite a bit more. 

"CBO estimaters are constrained by budget rules from guesstimating how costs will skyrocket because of political pressures. The rest of us are not. We can regard CBO's estimate of $829 billion in additional spending not as a ceiling but as a floor.  We can reasonably conclude that the Baucus bill -- or whatever similar measure Reid and Schumer concoct -- would vastly and permanently increase public sector spending and impose a crushing burden on the private sector in a weak economy. That burden would be particularly heavy on low earners forced to buy expensive policies or else pay stiff fines, with money they would otherwise receive as wages or salaries."

"Apparently Nobel prizes [are] now being awarded to anyone who is not George Bush."

"While the media and lawmakers often shorthand a CBO letter as a ‘score’ or ‘cost estimate,’ [the] CBO letter [on the Baucus bill] is neither. Because the bill is still in ‘conceptual,’ or layman’s terms, CBO’s letter ... was a ‘preliminary analysis.’  For it to be an official cost estimate, the bill has to be translated into legislative language.

“And CBO goes to great pains in its letter to make the distinction:

“‘CBO and JCT’s analysis is preliminary in large part because the Chairman’s mark, as amended, has not yet been embodied in legislative language,’ the letter says.”

"[T]he health care bill that the Senate Finance Committee likely will pass today does not contain any mechanism to keep illegals from receiving benefits. On a party-line vote, Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee rejected a proposed requirement that would require immigrants to prove their identity. Imagine Congress passing age restrictions on alcohol and not requiring merchants to check IDs. Such a law could be described in a word: toothless."

"In President Obama's Washington, medical specialists are slightly more popular than the H1N1 virus. ... From Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus's health-care bill to changes the Administration is pushing in Medicare, Democrats are systematically attacking specific medical fields like cardiology and oncology. With almost no scrutiny, they're trying to engineer a 'cheaper' system so that government can afford to buy health care for all—even if the price is fewer and less innovative ways of extending and improving lives."

"Manufacturers are making decisions about their future capital investments today. Whether or not Waxman-Markey is embraced by the U.S. Senate leadership is a critical decision, because America will lose opportunities to compete and create jobs in the future as long as the threat of an economy-crushing tax scheme like 'cap & trade' exists in the public debate."

"Barack Obama's foreign policy seems to be predicated on a boundless faith in his own persuasive powers and the naïve notion that our international antagonists are merely misunderstood. Not since Jimmy Carter has American foreign policy been so obsequious or short-sighted."

"President Obama's promise that a government health care takeover is the key to almost every ill echoes 19th century charlatans selling elixirs that would cure everything from constipation to baldness. From controlling the growth of government to reining in private business expenditures, Mr. Obama's health reform potion is promised as a cure-all. It's hardly that...

"With everything from emergency-room care to chemotherapy riding on proposed health care legislation, mistakes may cost lives. The record of government-dominated health care offers a clear warning why America should not head in that direction."