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There's little question that the whole of America has suffered in the last four years at the hands of the President's one-track energy policies.  While Mitt Romney has laid out a plan for American energy independence by the year 2020, the Obama energy policy seems to be shackled by tunnel vision, focused solely on the massive outpouring of taxpayer resources to unproven alternative energy companies. The sting of such failed initiatives has been particularly painful for Virginians who have battled numerous cost-rising hurdles during this time. Let's examine four major hurdles facing energy consumers in the Commonwealth... 1)  Rising Gas Prices Virginia, much like the rest of the country has seen a steep rise in gasoline prices which cut deeply into family budgets.  Historically, consumers can look forward to a precipitous drop in gasoline prices leading up to an election, but not this cycle.  In fact, one AAA spokesman claimed that they've "never seen gas prices this radioactive in any national election year" dating back to the 1980s. The cost of gasoline has gone up every day for the last five weeks, and is not expected to drop despite the pending election.  In Virginia, the average cost of a gallon of gasoline sits currently at $3.61, below the national average of $3.78, but still a significant increase since Obama took office. U.S. Senate candidate George Allen explains that families, small business owners, and farmers "are trying to figure out how to pay these astronomical gasoline and diesel prices."   "They understand how energy prices touch every aspect of our economy,” he added. 2)  Off-Shore Drilling Could the solution to Virginia's energy problems lie beneath the sea?   This past summer, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a bill that would implement the President's energy-restricting and job-limiting offshore drilling plan, and instead replaced it with a plan that would open up lease sales to areas rich in oil and natural gas.  Implementation of such a plan is necessary to combat the administration's long-standing policy of declining offshore drilling expansion, a form of energy that would create jobs and drive energy costs down nationwide. The plan will speed up the approval process for lease sale number 220, a 2.9 million acre tract that holds an estimated 130 million barrels of oil and 1.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.  All told, federal estimates of the potential resources lurking off Virginia's coast could include 750 million barrels of oil, and 6.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas ... or more. With numbers like that, it is little wonder why opposition to the President's offshore drilling plan, and support of a more beneficial plan has received bipartisan support. 3)  War on Coal In 2008, Barack Obama famously made this declaration of war against the coal industry:"If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can, it's just that it will bankrupt them."  True to his word, Obama's policies resulted in the announcement of an unprecedented number of coal-fired generators being scheduled for shutdown - 175 overall, with a record 57 slated for 2012 alone.  Very recently, an announcement by coal giant Alpha Natural Resources that they would be shutting down three mines in Southwest Virginia can be seen as a direct attack on people that have made their livelihoods and raised their families on the power of coal.  Republican campaign strategist Christopher LaCivita explains how the crippling assault against the coal industry has a big picture effect on the rest of the nation: “It will resonate some among people who are concerned that their country does not have a comprehensive and multidimensional energy policy,” he said. “Anyone who cares about energy prices and keeping them affordable should care that a major portion of America’s energy assets is being taken away by this administration.” George Allen added: “These closure

President Obama said that “Social Security is structurally sound” in the presidential debate last night. (At 38 minutes, 39 seconds.) He’s joking, right? For the second straight year, Social Security paid out more in benefits than it took in through payroll taxes in 2011, according to a Congressional Budget Office report. According to the report: As more members of the baby-boom generation enter retirement, outlays will increase relative to the size of the economy, whereas tax revenues will remain at an almost constant share of the economy. As a result, the gap will grow larger in the 2020s and will exceed 20 percent of revenues by 2030. The number of retirees is growing far faster than the number of new workers. The ratio of workers to retirees has grown from 42 to 1 in 1940 to just 3.3 to 1 today. Social Security is facing more than $20 trillion in unfunded future liabilities. How is that structurally sound?! Check out this graph from the National Center for Policy Analysis showing the declining number of workers per retiree: It is absurd to say that Social Security is structurally sound. A USA Today Gallup poll shows that 60 percent of non-retirees believe that Social Security will not be able to pay them a benefit when they retire. Young people are the most pessimistic about the future of Social Security. And rightfully so. Three-fourths of young adults between the ages of 18 to 34 don’t expect to see a Social Security check when they retire. The numbers don’t lie: young people shouldn’t expect to see a Social Security check in their lifetimes unless there are major changes to the program. That’s unlikely to happen anytime soon since most politicians are still afraid to touch Social Security in its current form. This is why young people should be allowed to opt out of Social Security, if they wish. It’s cruel to force young people to pay into a terribly mismanaged government program that they don’t expect to get any benefits from when they retire. No wonder that Obama is losing youth support. Americans should be allowed to invest in their retirement as they see fit—not be forced into a mandatory Ponzi scheme against their will.

What Americans saw Wednesday night in Denver was not just a debate between two presidential candidates, but the contrast they’ve been wanting to see since 2008. It happened not because of a good night for one or a bad night for the other, but as a direct result of who the candidates are as people. Ever since John McCain could not effectively answer whether health care was a right or a privilege -- leaving to stand on its own candidate Barack Obama’s proclamation that it was a right --  Obama has been held in high esteem as a debater. But it has always been clear that only through lack of an effective mainstream challenge have Obama’s radical ideas been able to stand. Wednesday night Mitt Romney provided a cogent, clear, centrist evisceration of the President’s ideas, policies, and record. Democrats tried to spin the debate as Romney being somehow overly aggressive, battling with the moderator. Yet Barack Obama got 4 more minutes to speak -- often rambling to fill time rather than presenting a clear point --  than did Romney. The debate moderator appeared to be trying to shield Obama from tough questions and policy terrain that the President was not prepared to negotiate. In comic fashion, the DNC released a video trying to portray Romney as some kind of bully, though it was clear to those who watched the debate that he was outnumbered two to one on stage: In the run-up to the debate, as in the preceding three years, Barack Obama has been a lazy, passive figure in place of the leader that the country needed. When he did lead, it was always in the direction of expanding government and dividing the electorate. That has only become more evident during the campaign. Rather than meet the challenges facing the country, he golfed. Rather than meet with foreign leaders, he met with The View. It has become common knowledge that Obama prefers his own counsel to that of his counselors. He failed to meet with his “Jobs Council” for months at a time, and even failed to attend national security briefings. In the immediate run-up to the debates, when he should have been preparing, he went to see Hoover Dam. Perhaps he saw there the monument to true shovel-ready jobs, as he relaxed in avoidance of his duties, and wondered what he had to show for $5 trillion in new debt. Not that the economy would be any different if he had spent the money differently. By contrast, Romney let it be known in the weeks ahead of the first debate that he was taking time to prepare. At the debate, he was ready for every spurious talking point and straw man the President could muster. Romney almost made a serious mistake at one point, declaring that neither he nor the President want to cut Medicare for current seniors. He then caught himself, saying: Oh, I just thought about one, and that is in fact I was wrong when I said the president isn't proposing any changes for current retirees. In fact, he is on Medicare. On Social Security, he's not. But on Medicare, for current retirees he's cutting $716 billion from the program. Now, he says by not overpaying hospitals and providers, actually just going to them and saying we're going to reduce the rates you get paid across the board, everybody's going to get a lower rate. That's not just going after places where there's abuse, that's saying we're cutting the rates. Some 15 percent of hospitals and nursing homes say they won't take anymore Medicare patients under that scenario. We also have 50 percent of doctors who say they won't take more Medicare patients. This — we have 4 million people on Medicare Advantage that will lose Medicare Advantage because of those $716 billion in cuts. I can't understand how you can cut Medicare $716 billion for current recipients of Medicare. Obama also repeated two of his cherished falsehoods, that oil companies get some huge “$4 billion”  subsidy, and that companies get tax breaks for “sending jobs overseas.” Romney did a credible job exposing the order of magnitude differe

In this episode, Senator Lee talks about creating a strong balanced budget amendment to force Congress to live within its means. He explains in detail the provisions that he feels are necessary in order to make a balanced budget amendment that keeps the government from working around it. Many of his points are explained in greater detail in his book "The Freedom Agenda". Tea Time Interviewee:  Mike Lee

It was great when we started referring to Barack Obama as the “food stamp president” — and such a fitting title for the current head of the White House. Unfortunately liberals eat up government dependency, and they started wearing the new phrase as a badge of honor. Take Peter Edelman, Associate Dean of Georgetown Law, who gave a talk in June explaining why he believes Obama is an absolute genius. Here’s a transcription from The Blaze’s video:Food Stamps was at 26 million people in 2007 — 26.3 million. In the last five years, that’s gone up to 46 million people. In other words, Food Stamps works. … He is the “food stamp president.” That’s great! … We have 16 million people on Medicaid going forward — 16 million more people added — and we’ve trying to have that happen since 1965. Increased reliance on safety net programs is neither a founding pillar of our country nor a fiscal accomplishment. The stated purpose of safety nets is to catch people from falling to the ground in worst-case scenarios. Safety nets are not supposed to permanently house people who will lay in them like hammocks. So, just how bad has the food stamp problem become? The Weekly Standard reported an interesting discovery about two weeks ago. Jeff Sessions, a ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, urged his staff to look into food stamp data. The team’s graph is a perfect representation of why Obama’s policies don’t work. From January 2009 — when Obama took office — to June 2012, the net change in jobs was -1.3 million (i.e., 1.3 million Americans have lost their jobs overall). And, in that same period of time, 15.1 million people signed up for food stamps, totaling 46.7 million recipients nationally. Now we find out that Obama isn’t driving food stamp registration exclusively in the United States. He’s doing it across the border, too. (Maybe he’s trying to make up for Fast and Furious.) Caroline May has published some fantastic work at the Daily Caller about the Obama administration’s extensive partnership with the Mexican government through which it promotes these “supplemental nutrition assistance programs,” known to most people as “food stamps.” May writes,Statistics in Vilsack’s letter indicate that the number of legal non-citizens participating in SNAP increased approximately 190 percent from 2001 to 2010 . . . USDA did not offer data for 2011 and 2012, but a Republican Budget Committee staffer told TheDC that based on the growth rate, the number of legal non-citizens participating in the food stamp program today is about 1.63 million. That’s more than double the number of legal non-citizens who participated in 2008. The partnership also includes a campaign to counteract feelings of pride and self-reliance, traits that used to be respected in early America. Author David Beito details this classical stigma toward receiving government aid in his book, “From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State.” The private fraternal societies of the late 18th and early 19th centuries fostered a strong sense of community that easily and efficiently allocated resources to those who needed them most. Comparatively, government programs hurt the poor in the long-term, destroying communities and families alike. James Gwartney and Thomas S. McCaleb analyzed the effects of these huge welfare programs established in the 1960s. One finding is a “skill-depreciation effect.” They write,As the marginal poor spend more time dependent upon transfers and less time in the work force, their skills depreciate and their work record deteriorates. They become less and less able to support themselves. Over time, more and more of the marginal poor will be transformed into hardcore poor. … Between 1966 and 1980, the proportion of poor households headed by a person who did not work at all during the year rose from 39.7 percent to 49.6 percent. For female headed households in poverty, 61.5 percent of the household heads did not work at all in 1980, up from 52.7 percent in 1966. Thus, while the

At the Basic American Rights Seminar in Eugene, Oregon on September 29, the keynote speaker was Ann McElhinny, director of the documentaries Not Evil, Just Wrong and FrackNation.  Always an energetic speaker, one subject of her talk really stuck out. She displayed this map, showing the large deposits of shale gas around the nation that could be mined by fracking:   Her point was clear: one of the largest deposits that's currently paying off is the Marcellus Shale, in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. As perhaps the most prominent battleground state in the presidential election, Ohio's economic conditions will have an effect on the entire nation. And make no mistake - the economy is improving in Ohio, NOT because of Obama. It's due to fracking. This is already having an impact on Ohio's economy because surveyors are showing up at people's doors and saying, "If you sell me your property today, I'll write you check on the spot for a million dollars--and give you 20% every month from now on for whatever we get." Forget the auto bailout. It's fracking. She made it clear that it is urgent that we educate as many voters as possible. We must disabuse swing voters of the myth that Obama's policies have had any success. I was able to discuss this with her in further detail in a quick interview. Take a listen here.  As we near election day, it is imperative that people understand how Ohio's unemployment situation has been improved by fracking and how inversely it could be harmed if Obama wins a second term. The stakes are high and our time is short to get this information to voters, especially in Ohio.  

This past Saturday, September 22, marked the fourth annual End the Fed day. At Federal Reserve branches across the country, liberty activists showed up to call attention to the corruption and immorality of the Federal Reserve System. Salt Lake City Rally Richmond Rally (h/t Nathan Cox) Charlotte Rally (h/t Craig Dixon) This comes several days after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke announced another round of quantitative easing known as QE3. In plain English, that just means the Fed is going to fire up the printing press to pump more dollars into the economy—$40 billion a month, to be precise. What could possibly go wrong? QE3 will likely have the same dismal results as the first two rounds of quantitative easing. Printing more money is never the solution because it will only reduce the value of the dollars we have in our pocket, essentially stealing our wealth from us. The dollar has lost over 95 percent of its value since the Fed was created in 1913. Prices at the grocery store and at the gas pump have gone up because the dollar can’t buy what it used to anymore.Keep up the good work patriots!Click here to see FreedomWorks' Top 10 Reasons to End the Fed.

In this second of four episodes, Senator Mike Lee talks about his book "The Freedom Agenda", which reminds people about the limited role of the government under the Constitution. He also talks about "textualism" and "originalism", schools of thought which look at the meaning of the words of the Constitution both within the text and in terms of what they meant at the time that they were written. He concludes by talking about how those principles apply to how he conducts himself as a legislator, and how they should apply to Congress as a whole. Tea Time Interviewee:  Mike Lee

The Obama Administration is trying to raise taxes without Congressional approval, and they really don't care what you think about it.  Every legislator, whether state or federal, must oppose the usurpation of legislative prerogative. Citizens should oppose the move, which will raise their taxes without even a vote in Congress. At National Review Online,  Michael Cannon and Jonathan Adler write: A president who says “I haven’t raised taxes” has authorized his Internal Revenue Service issue a “final rule” that will illegally tax some 12 million individuals, plus large employers, in as many as 40 states beginning in 2014. Oklahoma’s attorney general has asked a federal court to block this rule. Members of Congress have introduced legislation in both the House and the Senate to quash it. As part of the PPACA, states are supposed to set up "exchanges". An exchange is a mechanism for selling insurance, typically with a web-based front end and swarms of bureaucrats and computers on the back end. There is considerable expense and effort required to set one up that complies with various laws and associated regulations. States can set up their own, or the federal government will set one of for them. But the PPACA says that federal subsidies will only be available in states that set up their own exchanges. The legislative history is clear: Congress intended that provision as an inducement for a state to set up its own exchange.  Incapable for Constitutional reasons of simply telling states they must create exchanges, Congress created what it thought were incentives, tax credits for citizens of states that create exchanges.  Repeal advocates set upon a strategy of not implementing state-based exchanges. A number of good things should happen when states refuse to implement the exchange on their own. In the worst case, repeal opponents should have to reopen the law, giving repeal advocates the opportunity to make substantial changes to it. But as David Catron wrote in July, There is, however, one weakness inherent in this strategy. It assumes that the Obama administration will obey the law. The plan will be difficult to implement if the President and his accomplices simply ignore the text of PPACA and illegally funnel tax credits and subsidies through federally-created exchanges. The past three years have certainly provided plenty of evidence that these people would not reject this course of action merely because it violates the law. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that it is precisely what they have decided to do. The IRS recently finalized a regulation that makes clear the administration's intention to provide premium assistance through federal as well as state-based exchanges. Cannon and Adler again: It is here that the IRS has gone rogue. The agency has announced that, despite the clear statutory language restricting tax credits to exchanges established by states, it will issue tax credits through federal exchanges. One can see why Oklahoma and the rest might be upset: By offering tax credits in states that opt not to create exchanges, the IRS is imposing taxes where Congress did not authorize them. This IRS rule will tax those 12 million low- and middle-income Americans, including 250,000 Oklahomans, contrary to the express language of the PPACA. The IRS power grab is a beyond cynical. It's a declaration by the Obama Administration that they do not care what the law is, they will do what they want. Every legislator at every level should be asked whether they support full repeal or not, and whether they support a job-killing state-based exchange.

On Saturday, Sept 15 in Cincinnati, FreedomWorks held another FreePAC event featuring Glenn Beck as keynote speaker. These events are intended to train, activate and engage tea party activists in a targeted region. This time, the event centered around campaign and get out the vote training focused on US Senate Candidate Josh Mandel. While these events are taking on an ever more regional focus, they nonetheless continue to attract attendees from all across the country. The 2012 election is vital not only to take back the White House, but also the Senate. The most urgent policy need as identified by FreeedomWorks is the repeal of Obamacare, and it will require a Republican majority in the Senate AND winning the White House, to go along with the conservative majority currently enjoyed in the House. Thus, it is no surprise that the first two FreePAC events were held in areas where activists can have a direct impact in turning the Senate conservative. Just as Ted Cruz has electrified crowds all across Texas, Josh Mandel has emerged as a very strong candidate with a real chance to defeat incumbent Sherrod Brown, who just happens to be the most liberal senator in the nation. And of course, Glenn Beck had something groundbreaking to announce as well - the release of The Blaze's Action Center, powered by Freedomconnector. One of the highlights for me was when FreedomWorks Director of New Media, Kristina Ribali, asked for a show of hands from the crowd from those attendees who had never been to this type of rally before. I was shocked to see a few hundred hands go up. That's right - the Tea Party movement is STILL GROWING. I was able to talk to several activists and ask them what they thought of the event. If these quick interviews are any indication, and I think they are, then the Tea Party is alive and well and fully engaged in 2012. First up is Nadine from Wisconsin:   Next, a political veteran from Ohio who's been working on campaigns since Goldwater: Video 3 from Jeff Reynolds on Vimeo.   And to top it all off, a mother and son team from Oregon who were so upset about missing FreePAC in Dallas that they swore they would not miss this opportunity: Ben FreePAC Ohio from Jeff Reynolds on Vimeo. Denise FreePAC Ohio from Jeff Reynolds on Vimeo. Stay tuned for more information on FreePAC events in Arizona, Illinois and Florida. 

Robert Murphy is an Austrian economist. He wrote The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism (Regnery Publishing, 2007) and the Human Action Study Guide (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008), and he works as an economist at the Institute for Energy Research. Today all Murphy wants is the chance to debate Paul Krugman. Almost two years ago Murphy created a campaign at ThePoint.com, the website that gave birth to Groupon. He began using the website as a platform to which people could contribute monetary pledges. If a woman pledges, say, $10, she isn’t actually charged anything until the debate takes place. That way no money is wasted. And here’s the best part: 95 percent of the money collected at ThePoint.com goes directly to charity. In Murphy’s case the money will go to the Fresh Food Program of FoodBankNYC.org, which the New York Times itself has profiled as a nonprofit that “delivers food to nearly all of the city’s food pantries and soup kitchens.” As of today, generous individuals have pledged about $77,000. This means the NYC-based food bank is set to receive more than $73,000 in donations upon Krugman’s acceptance of Murphy’s debate challenge. If he continues to reject the offer, though, the food bank is left with absolutely nothing. The situation is a win-win for the Austrian School. There are only two possible outcomes: (1) Krugman approves and Murphy gets the chance to engage in an open and honest debate about economic policy while delivering a huge bag of money to a food bank’s doorstep, or (2) Krugman disapproves and we reveal a redistributionist as hypocritical. To quote one of Murphy’s animated videos,Krugman would have to explain to his loyal readers why it wasn’t worth his time to debate for an hour on business cycle theory even though it would mean [thousands of dollars] of right-wing money would then be used to feed hungry New Yorkers. One such man called into a radio show on which Krugman was a guest in June. The man asked why he’d be ducking Murphy’s request. Krugman responded,This is not something to be settled by public circuses. … I would say, by the way, that the Austrians have been spectacularly wrong through this crisis. … Why should I dignify that totally-wrong doctrine — that doctrine that’s gotten everything wrong — by giving them a platform? Yet Krugman didn’t seem to mind giving our ideals a platform when he debated Ron Paul on Bloomberg TV in April. The exchange was seen by nearly 150,000 people on YouTube alone. So, why did Krugman make an exception here? “Because I’m trying to publicize my book,” he wrote. I’m left wondering why a $73,000 donation to charity isn’t a good enough reason to sit down for a conversation. After all, Krugman once described Murphy’s analysis on capital theory as “the best exposition I’ve seen yet of the Austrian view that’s sweeping the GOP.” This open acknowledgment that Murphy is a well-trained economist should comfort Krugman’s worries about the debate turning into a ‘public circus.’ At one point Judge Andrew Napolitano said he’d moderate the debate. However, Napolitano is an outspoken and unapologetic libertarian. It would have been difficult to convince Krugman to debate in front of a moderator who believes that “all taxation is theft.” Murphy then extended an olive branch by choosing a moderator who supported Obamacare and thought the stimulus package was too small: Ezra Klein, a columnist at the Washington Post. With Klein in the center seat, no one will feel backed into a corner. Krugman wrote of the Tea Party in 2009,They’re AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires. And the parties are, of course, being promoted heavily by Fox News. Well… here we are, Krugman. Standing naked before you — without our right-wing billionaires and without Fox Ne

Last night during an interview for 60 Minutes, President Obama made the false declaration that "I haven't raised taxes."  But recent news coming out of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) begs to differ, and a majority of proof that the President's statement is patently false comes from his signature legislation - Obamacare. During his interview, Obama blamed rhetoric and lies for the notion that he has raised taxes. "Well, it's a lot of rhetoric, but there aren't a lot of facts supporting it. Taxes are lower on families than they've been probably in the last 50 years. So I haven't raised taxes.  I've cut taxes for middle class families by an average of $3,600 per typical family.” Here's what the facts do support, however. A recent analysis from the CBO states that Obamacare will raise taxes on 6 million Americans.  Those individuals will be subject to a tax penalty for failing to purchase health care once the new law is in effect.  An excerpt from the report reads: "... CBO and JCT now estimate that about 6 million people will pay a penalty because they are uninsured in 2016 (a figure that includes uninsured dependents who have the penalty paid on their behalf ) and that total collections will be about $7 billion in 2016 and average about $8 billion per year over the 2017–2022 period." An Associated Press report explains that a majority of those 6 million people - 80% - reside in the middle class. "... in his first campaign for the White House, Obama pledged not to raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 a year and couples making less than $250,000. And the budget office analysis found that nearly 80 percent of those who'll face the penalty would be making up to or less than five times the federal poverty level.” Worse, in 2016, 4.7 million Americans living in families that earn less than $123,000 annually will be subjected to the individual mandate tax within Obamacare. It isn't just the middle class that will suffer under the weight of Obama's new taxes.  Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform says that low-income families will also be adversely affected. Eight tax increases in the health care law "directly hit low-income people," Norquist said ... "The president didn't keep his word when he said he wouldn't raise taxes on people earning less than $200,000 a year." Other examples of tax increases lying within Obamacare (though not specific to middle income families) include a 10% tax on the use of indoor tanning services, and an additional Medicare tax of 0.9% on higher income earners. Further, the President signed a bill in 2009 that raised the federal excise tax on all tobacco products - an attempt to raise revenue for his anticipated expansion of health insurance. Only a man of questionable character can state without reservation that he has not raised taxes, while simultaneously knowing he is the source of legislation that has resulted in numerous tax increases, passing a bill that Forbes Magazine has labeled "the largest tax increase in U.S. history."

Senator Lee talks about the Supreme Court's decision to largely uphold Obamacare (which took place the week this series was filmed), and explains why he thinks Chief Justice Roberts made a serious error in his decision.  Max and Senator Lee also talk about a lighter topic - their mutual admiration of classic rock and the band U2. Tea Time Interviewee:  Mike Lee

Let’s take a closer look at how interstate insurance sales would impact another important element of consumer-driven health care reform: true insurance. If you’ve forgotten, true insurance is individual insurance. Most people receive their health insurance as the result of a group insurance plan provided by their employer. Some of the benefits of true, individual insurance include portability, better coverage of pre-existing conditions, and greater choice and freedom for consumers.  However, excessive state regulatory mandates can make true insurance outright unaffordable. Consider this excerpt from a 2008 report by the Council for Affordable Health Insurance: “Access to affordable coverage can vary significantly from state to state, depending on state regulation. For example, community rating and guaranteed issue have made policies in the individual market unaffordable except for the wealthiest residents of Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. If residents living in states with unaffordable health insurance could purchase policies currently being sold in other states, they too would have access to affordable coverage.” (Emphasis added) There are significant disparities between the states in the number and extent of their regulatory mandates. While Virginia and Rhode Island residents are required to purchase insurance plans burdened with a stunning 70 state mandates, Idaho insurers are only restricted by 13. As health care policy expert Avik Roy explains, “Insurance mandates can raise the costs of premiums by 30-50 percent. If I could buy insurance from another state, where regulations are less onerous, I might not be forced to buy a policy that covers drug-abuse counseling.” (Emphasis added) Also, let me be clear on one thing: We want to lift the barriers to the interstate sale of health insurance, but we do not want the federal government to begin laying down regulatory mandates (such as guaranteed issue or community rating) on insurance. We believe that the regulation of insurance remains the duty of state legislatures and regulators, not the federal government. Whereas the federal government has the power to remove barriers to commerce among the states, we do not believe that it has the power to regulate insurance sales in each individual state.  Increasing market competition by allowing Americans to purchase health insurance across state lines will lead to lower costs, greater choice, and better quality of care. Representative Paul Broun’s (R-GA) Patient OPTION Act is just one of several conservative bills that will allow Americans to purchase health insurance across state lines. It’s an essential piece of the conservative plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare with affordable, consumer-driven, patient-centered health care.  In order to learn more about ending ObamaCare, check out our “Five-Point Plan” for full repeal! TAKE ACTION: If you agree we should repeal ObamaCare, SIGN OUR PETITION NOW.

"We never overcame the chart." -- Hillary Clinton Congressman Dick Armey, in 2001, looking back on the defeat of HillaryCare in 1994: I still regard that victory as one of my party's finest hours. And I take a certain satisfaction in the role a certain chart played in that victory—the chart I created with my staff, depicting the plan's dozens of new bureaucracies. We captioned it: 'Simplicity Defined.' One of Mrs. Clinton’s comments after the defeat of ClintonCare was, 'We never overcame the chart.'+ + + (For a larger image, click on one of the "file attachment" links below. Special thanks to Anang Bhai, Chloe Rockow, and Josh Whitchurch for their help in digitizing this historic document.) RELATED ObamaCare Chart: Your New Health Care System File Attachments Armey_Health_Care_Chart_1994.pdf590.98 KB Armey_Health_Care_Chart_1994.png360.82 KB