WASHINGTON - (Business Wire) The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), the nation’s premier taxpayer watchdog lobbying group, today urges Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) to vote “nay” on H.R. 3962, the 1990-page, $1 trillion Pelosi healthcare reform bill, which is scheduled for a vote on Saturday. “America cannot afford the price tag for this monstrosity,” said CCAGW President Tom Schatz. “It may be the most fiscally irresponsible collection of ill-advised legislative initiatives ever concocted. The House Democratic leadership is willing to foist this deplorable bill and its trillion dollar cost on the American people without one single Republican vote and without regard to what the American people want. Rep. Giffords must think of the fiscal carnage that this bill will visit upon Americans now and in the future, vote against it tomorrow, and go back to the drawing board to enact sensible, incremental, bi-partisan healthcare reform.”
The bill would inflict a whole host of new taxes and costly mandates on individuals and businesses as American families struggle to make ends meet and unemployment rises above 10 percent to its highest level since 1983. It would impose a tax of up to 2.5 percent of income on individuals earning as little as $9,350 who do not purchase “acceptable health care coverage.” A Lewin Group study projected that 83.4 million Americans would lose the private coverage they have today if a “public option” becomes law. H.R. 3962 creates 118 new federal boards, bureaucracies, commissions, and programs; expands Medicaid to all individuals with incomes below 150 percent of the federal poverty level, an estimated additional 10 million Americans; and slashes Medicare by $400 billion while doing virtually nothing to stem the tide of fraud and abuse that plagues that program.
“CCAGW’s one million members and supporters vehemently oppose H.R. 3962 and have deluged congressional offices with more than 100,000 messages urging Congress to defeat this bill. Make no mistake, tomorrow’s vote is critical, and we hope that Rep. Giffords will vote ‘nay’ on behalf of the taxpayers,” concluded Schatz.
CCAGW is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.
CCAGW
Leslie K. Paige, 202-467-5334
