"Obama health plan does not call for government-run health care"
When Sen. Tom Coburn said that under President Obama, "all the health care in this country is eventually going to be run by the government," it was like a golden oldie PolitiFact has heard many times before.
During the campaign, we heard the same tune from vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin , who said Obama was calling for a "government-run plan"; Mitt Romney , who said Obama "wants the government to take over health care"; and Rudy Giuliani , who called Hillary Clinton's similar plan "socialized medicine." (We rated their statements Barely True , Barely True and False .)
Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, made his remarks while criticizing Obama on a different matter. Obama is moving to rescind Bush administration rules that protected medical workers from performing procedures such as abortion that conflicted with their religious or moral beliefs.
Coburn, who is against abortion, said rescinding the order would be only a first step for the Obama administration.
"Remember, under the Obama plan . . . all the health care in this country is eventually going to be run by the government," Coburn said in an interview on Fox News on March 4, 2009.
"So it's part of an incremental creep towards eliminating any objection, both as us as taxpayers and then individual physicians in terms of not complying with a government-run bureaucracy," he added.
Coburn and Obama can fairly disagree about conscience protections for health care workers who oppose abortions. But he's wrong that Obama's plan offers government-run health care.
In fact, Obama's plan leaves in place the private health care system, but seeks to expand it to the uninsured. It increases eligibility for the poor and children to enroll in initiatives like Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and creates pools for individuals to buy their own cheaper insurance. It also outlines strategies to rein in costs for everyone, such as electronic medical records and preventive care.
"I think most of us would agree that if we want to cover all Americans, we can't make the mistake of trying to fix what isn't broken," Obama said at a health care conference he hosted on March 5. "So if somebody has insurance they like, they should be able to keep that insurance. If they have a doctor that they like, they should be able to keep their doctor. They should just pay less for the care that they receive."
Would Obama's plan result in closer regulation of the health care system? Very likely so. It includes provisions that require health insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and disclose more information about how they treat patients. Obama's plan also calls for evidence-based health care standards, so that government can stop paying (through programs like Medicare) for treatments that don't get good results. But the plan is very different from some European-style health systems where the government owns health clinics and employs doctors.
We asked Coburn's office about his remarks. "What matters is not just President Obama’s intent, or what his plan states, but the likely effect and consequences of his plan," said spokesman John Hart. "Under Obama’s approach, the only plans left standing will be those controlled by the government."
That may be Sen. Coburn's opinion on what could happen, but it's definitely not part of Obama's plan. And Coburn was very specific in saying that "under the Obama plan, all the health care in this country is eventually going to be run by the government." That gives the incorrect impression that Obama is promoting a government-run health care system. He's not. We rate Coburn's statement False.
"Obama health plan does not call for government-run health care"
"Earmarks down, but not 75 percent"
With Democrats now running the show, it's their turn to take the heat for earmarks in a $410 billion omnibus spending bill to keep the government running for the rest of the fiscal year.
Congressional Democrats and the White House have been quick to note this spending bill is actually a holdover from the previous administration, that things will be different next year, and that earmarks hit a peak during Republican control in the middle part of this decade.
On CNN's "State of the Union" on March 8, Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said, "Look, the earmarks have come down significantly, 75 percent."
The same day on NBC's Meet the Press , Sen. Charles Schumer threw out a nearly identical assessment: "The bottom line is, there's been serious reform. We are now, this year, two years later, there's one-fifth the earmarks there were before — not 80 percent, 20 percent from before. They are transparent. No Bridge to Nowhere could occur."
When it comes to earmarks, lots of numbers get thrown around. Different groups have different definitions of earmarks. Some people look at the number of earmarks, some at the dollar amount, some both.
Most everyone agrees that earmarks have gone down with Democrats at the helm, but we haven't found any source to reasonably back up claims that earmarks have declined anywhere near 75 or 80 percent.
According to the math provided by the Senate Appropriations Committee (Democratic-controlled, we note), earmarks were reduced by 43 percent last year, and the omnibus appropriations bill reduces earmarks by another 5 percent.
There's a big caveat to their numbers: They do not include "project-based" federal programs. For example, the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees federal water projects, has such a high percentage of earmarks in its overall budget that Democrats exclude the projects from the totals. Their reasoning is that if they promise to cut earmarks by a certain percentage, as they have in the past few years, these programs will be disproportionately cut. By their count, there are $3.8 billion worth of earmarks in the omnibus bill.
The most trusted source in earmark accounting, Taxpayers for Common Sense, doesn't go for excluding that "non-project-based" stuff.
"An earmark is an earmark," said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "You can't start sequestering things off. I mean, I can meet my weight loss goals if I don't count my butt."
They count more than 8,500 disclosed earmarks in the omnibus bill, coming to $7.7 billion. Together with $6.6 billion in disclosed earmarks in the three 2009 spending bills that passed in the fall, earmarks for the year come to $14.3 billion, which is $500 million less than earmarks last year, they note. Less, but not a whole lot less in the big picture.
The total amount of last year's earmarks represented a 23 percent reduction from the high water mark in 2005, according to TCS. The slight reduction this year would add a couple percentage points to that. But in no way does it come anywhere near the reduction of 75 or 80 percent that Orszag and Schumer cited.
So, we asked, where did Schumer and Orszag get their figures?
Schumer's office didn't respond.
And a spokesman from Orszag's Office of Management and Budget sent this vague reply: "A number of groups which tally earmarks have estimates on the level of reductions that are in the omnibus. Peter pulled from those."
Um, okay.
In summary, based on the figures from the most respected source on earmarks, Taxpayers for Common Sense — which uses Congress' own definition of earmarks — the figures cited by Orszag and Schumer are way off.
The Appropriation Committee numbers are a little closer to those cited by Schumer and Orszag. But we don't buy this number because it excludes "project-based" federal programs.
We note that Obama, in an announcement about earmark reform on March 11, said earmarks "hit their peak in the middle of this decade, when the number of earmarks had ballooned to more than 16,000." This number appears to include "project-based" federal programs. As we think it should.
At any rate, the Appropriations Committee numbers suggest less than a 50 percent reduction — not 75 or 80 percent. We don't know where Orszag and Schumer got their numbers. And they aren't saying. At least not to us. But the authorities on this matter say their calculations are bunk. We agree. And we rule the statements False.
"Yes, Rep. John Boehner has never asked for earmarks"
When House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, urged President Obama to veto the $410 billion omnibus spending bill because of all the earmarks in it, he spoke from particularly high ground on the issue.
"I don't do earmarks," Boehner said in a news conference on March 12, 2009. "I've never done one. I'm not going to do one."
Indeed, that's he promised back in 1990 when he was first running for Congress. He often says he told voters, "If you are electing me to raid the federal treasury on your behalf, you're electing the wrong guy."
For eighteen years, Boehner says he hasn't wavered.
A strict earmark-free record would put him in rare company, so we decided to check it out.
"He hasn't taken any," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, an advocacy group that doggedly tracks earmarks. "He has bragged about that long before this ever became a big deal, and he's right."
We reviewed press coverage of Boehner since he was elected and couldn't find any either.
We did find several instances where local officials pushing for various highway projects ran up against Boehner's hard line. In an article in the Dayton Daily News in 2002, one official lamented that his area would have difficulty getting federal money for a highway project because of the congressman's policy.
"If you're looking for a congressman to go after a bunch of earmarks, he's not your guy,'" said Bryan Bucklew, vice president of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce.
It's a principled stance that hasn't always sat well with fellow Republican legislators who believe in earmarks, either.
But Boehner has stuck to his pledge. In May 2008, he told the Wall Street Journal, "It might have been the best decision I ever made."
Yet despite his personal ban, Boehner has never argued for earmarks to be eliminated completely.
"I don't think I want to hold all my colleagues to that same standard," Boehner said in a Fox News Sunday interview on Feb. 5, 2006. "There's an appropriate place for some of these earmarks, but we need less numbers of earmarks and more transparency and more accountability. Members' names ought to be associated with them. They ought to be visible. And members ought to have a chance to see these before they become law."
This year, Boehner was joined in eschewing earmarks by other House Republican leaders: Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia and Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana. But in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky., sponsored or cosponsored 53 earmarks worth $75.5 million, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.
All told, TCS counted more than 8,500 disclosed earmarks in the omnibus bill, coming to $7.7 billion. Together with $6.6 billion in disclosed earmarks in the three 2009 spending bills that passed in the fall, earmarks for the year come to $14.3 billion, which is $500 million less than earmarks last year. As is the custom, Republicans, as the minority party, got about 40 percent of them.
Of the 178 Republican House members, only 39 did not have earmarks in the omnibus, according to TCS. Three Democrats did not accept earmarks.
As for Boehner, he can rightfully claim he hasn't ever asked for or taken an earmark. We rule his statement True.
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