it s true in our society that there are a lot of things that the government loses revenue on, which is essentially like spending, that gives benefits to we should acknowledge middle class people but also very rich people and gives no benefit at all to working poor people, and so, yeah, this raises the point that we currently have a health care policy that keeps 40 million people off insurance and that s what we want to change and that s why i really hope that for all these terrible problems that they re having on the computers, on the websites, they need to fix them. but whole idea of obama care is right, you ve got to get insurance to people who don t have it. there s 20 million people that have hit this website in a short period of time. the true story behind all this we ll touch on a little later in this broadcast which tom harkin told me later today on the radio, they never had the proper
it takes time to set these things up. this is a difficult issue. individuals are trying the sign up for something they won t even get until january 1st. so there s no need to panic. as john mack donna and my colleague wrote, we don t evaluate it minute by minute, week by week. we should take a slow look every month and it will be up and rolling by january 1. senator tom harkin explained it this way on my radio today. for the last three years in my appropriations committee, i ve tried to get the money in there that they needed to get these private contractors to set this system up. i ve been denied that money, so they ve had to skrim and try to figure it out. so what happened is that hhs and i believe cms, the center for medicaid services, decided, well, since they didn t have the money they thought they would have to go out and hire oracle and all these big places to do it and set it up and test it, well, they re going to have to
do it in house. well, they didn t quite have all the expertise, but they didn t have the money they should have had to get the private sector to come in and set it up. that s because of the republicans. they would not let us fund it. professor mcdonough, your comment to that? this is an absolute. it takes money to buy whiskey. if you re going to do it on the cheap, there s going to be more problems. fair enough? absolutely. i think senator harkin is very on target. i worked on the senate health committee he chaired. during the process the conservative voices said we have to allow the states to set up their own exchanges. it has to be done that way. that s how the law was written, to give the states the right to step up and do it. we thought all the conservative states would jump up and do it, and then all the conservative states decided to hold back and say, no, we re going to let the federal government do it and we re not going to give the federal government the resources to do th
does not have a spending problem. here is senator harkin from iowa. if we are so rich, why are we so broke? is a spending problem? no. it is almost a false argument to say we have a spending problem. we have a budget deficit problem that we have to address. john: we don t have a spending problem. last year president obama spent 45 percent more than a tax revenues we got in. that is not some minor budgetary issue. it is an entire mismanagement and resources. we have a spending problem. it would be great if we could figure out a way to cap spending the debt limit deal. john: good luck with that. i get angry listen to some of these congressman speak. it sounds as if they think the world revolves around them and government. listen to senator durbin talking to the press before this week s agreement. so arrogant. people have seen this movie several times.
the american damsel is tied to the tax. the engine is bearing down. the question is whether or not congress at the last minute will come to the rescue and say this country. john: government is going to say the country. i like his analogy, but what he did not tell us is that he is driving the train. all the cars attached to the train our medicaid, medicare, food stamps, the military budget , the department of transportation. that is what our problem is right now. we have gone so far afield from what our founding fathers wanted in terms of a limited, central government bound by the chains of the constitution. if you are one of the pressures upon capitol hill which is what durbin and harkin and the rest are, they think it is great because they get to buy votes with our money. i will build on the analogy. where is president obama with this train bearing toward the dams along the tracks.