ATR President Grover Norquist sent the following letter today to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.):
On behalf of Americans for Tax Reform, I am pleased to support your efforts to repeal much of the mandatory spending in the Obamacare law. Many Americans would be shocked to learn that Obamacare is a series of new entitlements which will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars per year, financed by hundreds of billions in new taxes.
Americans for Tax Reform remains committed to a full and permanent repeal of the Obamacare law. This effort by the House Energy and Commerce Committee is in service of that goal.
The major areas your committee is looking at are a clinic in what the government should not be involved in when it comes to healthcare:
• Unlimited grants by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius to states, ostensibly to support the new government-controlled health insurance exchanges
• A new slush for “prevention services,” which would be another pot of money HHS could use to bribe or coerce states
• A new union slush fund for the construction of hospitals and other health care facilities with inflated “prevailing wage” requirements
• A feel-good “Personal Responsibility Education Program” to pay community activists to make victims of socialized medicine feel better about the lousy care they are receiving from the government, and
• A slush fund for “teaching centers,” another sop to Big Labor and the corporatist network of healthcare leeches who sold out America for thirty pieces of silver when they endorsed Obamacare
I would urge all Members of Congress who support free market healthcare and oppose socialized medicine to vote for your legislation.