SDWC, the SDGOP Establishment blog started by Pat Powers (currently a director in the Secreatary of State office), goes to deception in order to defend the RINO leadership of the South Dakota House:
This past legislative session has been an interesting one to say the least. There is a striking rift between certain members of the legislature and different “conservative” factions across the state. The troubling thing is, it seems we are dividing our party while splitting hairs.
Speaker Val Rausch and Majority Leader David Lust have been lambasted by some members of the legislature. Now I know the rap on David Lust is that he is a “moderate,” but it’s strange that a moderate would cut the state budget across the board by 10% while also standing up to many of the leaders in the South Dakota public school system in order to deliver a substantial budget cut.
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I would suggest you couldn’t find many budgets as fiscally responsible as those passed during Rausch and Lust’s tenure in the state house.
What we are not being told is that all but $2 million of those 2012 cuts were added to other areas, primarily the Department of Social Services Medicaid. We now know that the 2012 Medicaid budget is about $150 million too fat, of which $50 million is from the General Fund.
What we are not being told it that the Lust/Rausch legislature passed a 2012 budget that had a $45 million surplus that was based on revenue projections that were understated by $40 million. That is how you get $78 million in "Special Appropriations" (one-time money) to now hand out 5% bonuses to state government employees. Anybody think Lust or Rausch will say no to those spending increases?
Also lost in the discussion is the 100s of millions of Obama stimulus that was added to the state budget. That brings the total federal funding to nearly $2 billion, meaning nearly $800 million is part of the federal debt. And that is fiscally responsible?
And how conservative is the SDGOP leadership who is continuously all to happy to implement Obama's healthcare and education agenda? Check out the research that was sent to me (person asked not to be identified in order to avoid retaliation):
Governor Daugaard's campaign promise was to sign any bill repealing ObamaCare that crossed his desk....and he made good on his promise by making sure no such bill crossed his desk this session. He had several chances to influence those bills by giving "talking points" to legislators to thwart the bills' passage in committee hearings. Sen. Deb Peters was heard in the halls saying, "I have talking points from (Lt. Governor) Matt Michels to oppose this bill."
"This bill" just happened to be a Health Care Compact bill giving South Dakota the option to join in a compact with other states to opt out of ObamaCare. Once a majority of states pass such laws, Congressional approval would be sought and granted because no Congressman would vote against the state they represent.
Here are the bills that Governor Daugaard could have encouraged, but instead called on weak-minded legislators to help kill:
- HB 1191, a bill to join with other states in forming a HealthCare Compact, mentioned above.
- HB 1165 and HB1167 to repeal the latest components of ObamaCare that were signed into law last year. They were obediently killed in the House State Affairs committee (known as 'the killing fields' for all but the members' own bills).
- An Amendment to HB1220. HB 1220 is an ineffective suicide clause that was brought as a ruse. It falsely claims that South Dakota's ObamaCare laws would be repealed in the event that the Federal Law was repealed. The amendment was brought (and ceremoniously killed) that would have insured that would happen. HB1220 was passed but its "suicide" clause is only effective if the ENTIRE Federal ObamaCare law (PPACA) is repealed...and we are not even suing for a complete repeal. The Obama administration has said that if the lawsuit in which our state is a plaintiff prevails, they will just change the wording from "individual mandate" to "individual health tax"....and Daugaard/RomneyCare remains codified in South Dakota law.
- They even killed HB1190, a bill that put the legislature in control of making the ObamaCare Exchange operational in South Dakota. All other states have this authority. An Exchange can either become operational through a legislative vote, by a Governors' Executive order, or by a Department proclamation. The people deserve to know when it’s coming on board. But this bill was killed by the same taking points parroted by all the Senators who opposed it in committee. Funny, they all had the exact same comments which they read with beat red faces, stuttering words, sweat on their brows, and complete ignorance of what they were saying. Hmmm…five Senators spontaneously spewing the same convoluted talking points that smelled like Matt Michels (a ' big hospital' kind of guy, since he worked for them)! Ironic that they ALL concluded simultaneously that having legislative control would be redundant because legislators already control initiation of an Exchange (the landing place for ObamaCare).....when we vote on the huge budget bill. The Budget bill has thousands of items all rolled into a sausage-style bill that is voted on at the end of session. The appropriators can just stop the whole appropriation process if they happen to see a buzz word in the text that alerts them that an Exchange is being funded. What are the chances that they know the buzz words...like connector, meaningful user (that is their word for your doctor), units (that is their word for patients), and many others? And we have a double protection! Any legislator can peruse the few hundred pages of numbers and note if they spot something that resembles ObamaCare verbiage. Amazing...they all thought of this on their own!
At least 5 of the Senators stayed in Committee and voted....2 walked out because they knew this would be post card material. Only one didn't drink the Kool-Aid and voted for the people to have representation.
And can SDWC defend Val Rausch's 2010 $23,000 campaign contributions in which $5,700 came from the healthcare's corporate special interests?
The research emailed to me provides more insight into the Medical Corporate Establishment's desire for ObamaCare:
And what about those RomneyCare consultants, Ms. Gillespie and Ms. Handrich? These two ladies who set up Socialized Health Care in Massachusetts were hired to attend our South Dakota task force for the same purpose. Yes, they were at all the meetings and helped write ObamaCare for South Dakota. At least Mitt Romney was open and honest when he set up RomneyCare for Liberal Massachusetts....but in conservative South Dakota our leaders pretended to be against ObamaCare while setting it deep into Codified law over the last few years. Sanford CEO told about 400 people at their Research Conference in June that, "Whatever you think about PPACA, sometimes referred to as ObamaCare, we must not repeal it or we will have to go back to the drawing board..." Well GOOD....repeal it like 80% of South Dakotans want!
After Daschle failed to get HillaryCare passed in the 1990's, he wrote in his book that it failed because they didn't get the hospitals and insurance stakeholders on board. Voilà! 10 years and $54 Billion in hospital perks later...the hospitals are now on board! And how convenient that hospitals and insurance companies are now rolled into one tax-exempt entity called "managed care". If they get their way, as a government-subsidized monopoly, they will be "too big to fail" and receive bail outs that smaller private insurers cannot compete with.
If that does not disturb you, then what about this:
We've all been told the Executive branch against Socialized Health Care. Did you know that in 2007 Gov. Rounds' administration formed a bill to force all South Dakotans to buy health insurance or face a fine? With Lieutenant Governor Daugaard as the co-chair of the task force, they even talked about putting you in jail if you didn't buy the amount of healthcare they deemed necessary from you. Granted, they would need to know ALL your financial assets and information so they could determine how much you would "owe" as your debt to healthcare. Yes, this is the same individual mandate our Attorney General is fighting on the National stage. Can you say 'schizophrenic'?
How telling that former Governor Rounds is now a co-chair with Socialized-Medicine-Man himself…Tom Daschle, at the Bipartisan Policy Center in DC…where they advise Obama on healthcare!
Perhaps the legislators of the SDGOP leadership will start scoring higher on the SDGOP Republican Platform Scorecard if they would add to their platform this summer...corporate socialism, fascism, and cronyism. Instead they will be more likely asking conservatives for contributions in order to defeat Obama in November.
Way to go Sibby!
So for those interested like me who would you vote for? Rounds or Noem in a primary?
Posted by: mike | February 24, 2012 at 11:16 PM
Certainly not Rounds.
Posted by: Steve Sibson | February 25, 2012 at 04:13 PM