EDWARDS

[au9596 0]

Hold onto your wallets everybody. Edwards is already talking about raising taxes and abolishing current tax cuts (yeah it says to those who make over $200,000, that is a lie to get people to go along with them) before the primaries. Also saying he was wrong to vote to go to war in Iraq. Now or then? is my question. It serves him politically to say that now, hmmmmmm?

Edwards' Plan for Universal Health Care Requires Tax Hikes

Sunday , February 04, 2007

WASHINGTON —

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said Sunday his plan for universal health care would require higher taxes and cost up to $120 billion a year.

"We're asking everybody to share in the responsibility of making health care work in this country," the 2004 vice presidential nominee said.

"Yes, we'll have to raise taxes. The only way you can pay for a health care plan that costs anywhere from $90 (billion) to $120 billion is there has to be a revenue source," the former North Carolina senator said.

Edwards said his plan would aim to provide health care coverage for the 47 million people who currently lack it and reduce the cost of health care coverage for middle-class families, partly by making health care programs more efficient.

Edwards cited health care insurance premiums that have risen 90 percent over the past decade.

"Here's the bottom line: We want to make sure everybody's covered. We want to help middle-class families with the cost. We want to try to create competition that doesn't exist today," Edwards said.

To accomplish all this, Edwards said he would expand Medicaid and a program that now provides coverage to 6 million people, mostly children, and provide federal health care subsidies. He said he wants employers to play a bigger role, either by offering coverage or buying into "health markets" that would include a government plan.

Edwards said he would free up money for health care coverage by abolishing President Bush's tax cuts for people who make more than $200,000 a year and by having the government collect more back taxes.

On war in Iraq, Edwards sought to distinguish himself from one of the Democratic front-runners, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Edwards, who served on the Senate's intelligence committee, repeated earlier statements that his vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq was a mistake.

"My vote was wrong and I take responsibility for it," said Edwards, emphasizing that voters should reward a politician who openly admits past mistakes.

Clinton, who also voted to authorize force, has said "there are no do-overs in life." She says Congress received bad information from the Bush administration going into the vote and she would have voted differently given what she knows now.

[AURaptor 1,126]

Because his diddy worked in a " meel " , and now Johnny boy can afford a 35,000 sq ft estate that sits on a piece of land which was clear cut.........who cares ?

[otterinbham 0]

Well, let's see. The budget deficit is now a smaller proportion of the GDP than at any time in living memory, with the exception of the last two years of the Clinton administration. And, had the buffoons in the Bush administration not suddenly become acolytes of hideously expensive programs such as the Prescription Act, the budget deficit would be non-existent today.

Yet this clown wants to raise the taxes. It's a great way to derail the economy over the long haul. Doesn't this guy look at Western Europe and realize the drag that statism has on economic growth? At the current rate of growth, per capita American income will be TWICE that of France, Germany, and Italy by 2020, with lower taxes, less than half the unemployment, and higher productivity. Why on earth do these guys consider Western Europe to be the model for anything? The only performing economies in Western Europe are Britain and Ireland, and that's because they've abandoned the model espoused by people such as Chirac.