Accountability for the American Dream

Comments

4 responses to “Accountability for the American Dream”

1. 

   Ronald D. Hunt

   2010-01-15

   “Fire the Czars and adhere to the procedures under the Constitution requiring Senate confirmation for such leadership positions.”

   Their is nothing wrong with these so called “Czars”, If someone has an issue with what one of these Czars do then they need to take away the Presidents ability to exercise that power. The Czars can’t do anything that is not delegated to the white house in the first place. If All they want is to confirm a Czar I would suggest that congress formalize that position via legislation so that they can confirm them.

   “Require that 100% of all campaign donations be filed with the Federal Election Commission for public review.”

   Nothing short of publicly funded elections will solve the problems we have with the money flood in Washington.

   “Attack the rampant waste, fraud, and abuses in Medicare and Medicaid.”

   The coming health care bill(if it passes) handles a lot of this. Even if you don’t like the overall bill it does handle much of the fraud and abuse in Medicare.

   Reply
   1. 

      David

      2010-01-16

      If Congress were to formalize the position of Czar what is there to stop the president (this one or a future one) from creating a new position (perhaps Tsar) that does not require congressional confirmation. I think the fact that the president requires more than a Cabinet is an indication of a presidency that has expanded beyond anything the founders would have recognized – proof that we have left our Constitutional moorings behind us.

      I’m not sure that publicly funded elections would be the panacea that you view it as.

      You know that I don’t like this poor excuse for reform, but you don’t seem to understand that no matter how often you say it I am not convinced that this bill does anything significant to handle the existing fraud and abuse in Medicare.

      Reply
2. 

   Ronald D. Hunt

   2010-01-16

   “If Congress were to formalize the position of Czar what is there to stop the president (this one or a future one) from creating a new position (perhaps Tsar) that does not require congressional confirmation.”

   I don’t mean to actually create a “Czar” position, I mean create a position that would cover that would cover what they said one particular “Czar” did before. And again the Czars can’t do anything that isn’t delegated to the white house in the first place, Congress can more then easily enough undelegate things to the white house(given this potentially takes a veto override).

   And for many of these czars do we really need confirmation? Tho I loath the source Glenn Beck has a nice Czar list. I am not worried in the slightest about rather or not congress confirms the AID’s Czar, or the California Water Czar. Some of the Czars look like positions that should be formalized such as the Border Czar, or the Terrorism Czar.

   The Czars have no power to create, enforce, or remove any rules regulations or otherwise, they simply report to the president their findings and the president can then act on them within what ever power the congress/constitution has delegated to him. I don’t see these as “Leadership” positions, I see them as the president obtaining himself a network of advisers to help him make decisions and their is nothing unreasonable about that.

   “You know that I don’t like this poor excuse for reform, but you don’t seem to understand that no matter how often you say it I am not convinced that this bill does anything significant to handle the existing fraud and abuse in Medicare.”

   I am not trying to convince you of the health care bill, I am stating that the bill increases funding for Medicare fraud investigations, strengthens the Medicare anti-fraud rules committee, removes/rewrites several badly written Medicare Advantage regulations, adjusts the Medicare advantage payment rates to be in line with normal Medicare, etc. These will have an effect, I suppose the amount of the effect can(will be) argued but none the less they will do something.

   Until Congressman Chaffetz actually says what it is he would do further prevent Medicare/Medicaid fraud I am going to have to consider his statements hot air.

   Reply
   1. 

      David

      2010-01-18

      Until Congressman Chaffetz actually says what it is he would do further prevent Medicare/Medicaid fraud I am going to have to consider his statements hot air.
      

      Fair enough.

      Reply