Texan
Well-known member
Rove Offers Thoughts On Health
Care Costs And Budget Deficits
By Colleen Schreiber
DENVER — Fox News contributor Karl Rove, a keynote speaker at the recent National Cattlemen’s Beef Association annual convention here, offered some thoughts on the state of the U.S. economy, and in particular, he provided eye-opening information about the new health care bill which for now is the law of the land.
Rove, who served as President George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff for three years, did not mince words when he talked about the challenges facing the country today. He first offered some thoughts on the $862 billion stimulus bill, which, Rove stated, is the Obama administration’s solution for creating prosperity.
“The President said if Congress passed it, unemployment would top out at eight percent by the end of the summer of 2009 and decline rapidly thereafter,” Rove reminded. “Today, a year and a half later, unemployment is at 9.5 percent and three million fewer Americans are working today than were working the day the stimulus bill passed.”
To discover why it didn’t work, Rove carefully read a document that President-elect Obama put out in January 2009 before taking the oath of office. It detailed the philosophical underpinnings of the stimulus program he planned to propose, why it was needed, and how it would work.
“I’m Karl; I’m a recovering government bureaucrat. I worked at the White House for seven years, and when you work there you start reading this stuff and paying attention to it. I always read the footnotes; I pay attention to the charts and read all the appendices. If you read the appendix, you’ll find out what they really wanted to say to you,” he told listeners.
Appendix number one revealed a lot. That appendix essentially said that for every dollar spent by the government under the stimulus program, $1.55 in economic growth would be created.
“I want you to noodle on that for just a minute. The government submits a dollar of our money, and we magically get $1.55 in economic growth. If that’s the case, why did we stop at $862 billion? We should have done the $10 trillion stimulus bill, and we would have $15 trillion in economic growth and we could have thrown a hell of a party out of the $5 trillion that we magically created out of nowhere,” Rove quipped.
On average, he said, the real multiplier is 84 cents. In other words, for every dollar the government spends, U.S. taxpayers get back 84 cents in economic growth.
“These people think you can magically create growth by spending money. There has never been a country in the history of the world that has spent its way to prosperity,” Rove reiterated. “You work, you save, you invest, you struggle, and you fight in order to get prosperity. You don’t create it simply by having government spend our taxpayer dollars.
“The stimulus bill was about the worst-designed stimulus bill,” he continued. “Did you know there was $5 billion in the stimulus bill for obesity counseling and smoking cessation? Now, look I can afford to lose a few pounds, and I don’t smoke and I don’t condone it, but what the hell does that have to do with stimulating the economy?”
Rove also reminded listeners that the stimulus bill ends up costing much more. In fact, with interest figured in, the $862 billion spread out over the next decade ends up costing Americans $1 trillion, and the administration, he said, doesn’t stop there. Between January 20th of 2009 and the beginning of fiscal year October 1, 2009, the Obama administration increased the discretionary domestic budget by more than $1 trillion over the next decade.
“They increased the baseline spending by almost $100 billion the first year, which, if you look at it over the decade, means we’ve committed the government to spend a trillion more than it otherwise spent as of January 19th, the day before the new administration took over.”
In more simplified terms, Rove said that means that 25 percent of GDP is now going to the government.
“Under Reagan it was 22 percent; under Bush 41 it was 22 percent, under Clinton 19.8 percent, Bush 43 it was 19.6 percent, and now we’re at 25 percent.”
And if that wasn’t scary enough, Rove next delved into a discussion about the true costs of health care reform. According to the Census Bureau, there are 46 million uninsured Americans. Again, as Rove discovered, the true story is in the details. Of the 46 million who are uninsured, 9.7 million are legal or illegal aliens.
“Now look, I’m pro-immigration, but I don’t think it ought to be the responsibility of the U.S. taxpayer to pick up the health care cost for people who are not U.S. citizens.”
Another category within the uninsured includes several million who actually make more than $250,000 a year.
“Now look, I wish they had insurance. If they get sick or get in an accident, I bet they wish they had insurance too, but guess what? They can afford it, even if it’s just a bare bones catastrophic policy,” remarked Rove.
“The last time I looked, we are still a nation of individual responsibility where people are responsible for their own actions. We shouldn’t be picking up the tab for people who can afford it themselves. That doesn’t do our country any good.”
Still another group within the uninsured is some 14 million who are already eligible for some sort of government-provided health care assistance, even a federal employee benefit program.
“The government has done such a lousy job that we have 14 million people who are eligible for coverage that we haven’t gotten signed up. Instead of fixing that, they’ve decided to create a new program that discombobulates the relationship of all 300 million other Americans.”
So in the end, of the 46 million uninsured Americans, by Rove’s calculations only about five or six million fall through the cracks, who are working but who make too much to get Medicaid and whose employer doesn’t provide them with insurance and they really can’t afford it on their own. This is the group of Americans, Rove said, that the government should be focusing on helping. A 2000-page bill that no one fully understands, he said, is not the answer.
Rove went on to say that virtually every single promise made about the bill is turning out not to be true. For example, candidate Obama said his proposed comprehensive health care reform bill would lower premiums for every family in the country by $2500 per family. Yet the Congressional Budget Office has already said the premiums in the individual market will be $2100 higher than they would have been otherwise if nothing had been done.
Another study, conducted by Price Waterhouse Cooper, found that over the next decade, health insurance premiums would rise an estimated 80 percent had nothing been done. Now that the bill has passed, the study found that because of all the mandates and new requirements, premiums will rise on average 111 percent.
Still another group, the Department of Health and Human Services, has determined that as a nation we would spend $311 billion more on health care over the next decade than if we had done nothing.
Another promise made by Obama when he was selling the plan was that if consumers like their current coverage and plans, they could keep them, that their policies would in no way be affected.
“Well, guess what, if you’re one of the 13 million Americans on Medicare Advantage already, the government admits seven million of you are going to lose your coverage,” Rove told listeners. “Some 700,000 lost it last year in advance of the Medicare cuts. This year there will be $2 trillion worth of Medicare cuts; next year there will be $6 million worth of Medicare cuts, and the number of people whose policies are not going to be renewed is going to escalate,” he insisted.
“We have two companies, the Principle Financial of Iowa and Guardian, which are big providers who have already left the market. They’re providing no health insurance at all, and they’re being followed by dozens of much smaller companies. Try getting a child-only policy in America today; it’s no longer possible. You could buy one last year, but you can’t get one this year, and it’s going to get worse and worse and worse.”
Rove shared a few stories from business people he’s visited with who will be severely impacted by the new health care law. One was a restaurant business owner who has 100,000 employees. This person was already paying $25 million a year in premiums for his employees, and when the new bill is fully phased in by 2016, he expects to be paying $90 million annually for his employees’ health care.
“He said he didn’t have $65 million a year in free cash flow. I asked what he was going to do and he said he was going to do two things. First, he was going to double his coverage for every single employee including his coverage, and then he was going to pay the $2000 fine instead of paying out what he’s currently paying out,” Rove told listeners.
Because the law defines a fulltime employee as anyone who works 31 hours or a more a week, the second thing this businessman was going to do was make sure that his part-time workers are never allowed to work more than 31 hours a week. As he explained to Rove, this impacts the college kid who works 10 hours during the week, but who works as many hours as he can during the summer to help pay for college. Or that single mom who needs to work 34 or 35 hours to make ends meet. She will now only be allowed to work 31 hours, and then she’ll have to go elsewhere for the other couple of hours she needs to work.
It’s not just the big guys, Rove said, who are getting hurt by the new law. He talked about a Johnson County, Kansas construction company with 70 employees. Currently this employer is paying out $555,000 a year for his employees’ health care benefits. Under the new law his payout is expected to rise to $800,000 or $900,000 annually. Like the restaurant operator, this small business owner also plans to dump health care coverage and pay the fine.
“He said, ‘What I’m going to do is flush my coverage because I get a pass on my first 40 employees, and I get a $2000 fine on the next 30 employees, so I’m going to exchange a $500,000 current obligation for a $60,000 fine or an $800,000 or $900,000 obligation for a $60,000 fine.’”
The assumption was that only 19 million people would lose their coverage and be tossed into the exchanges because their employees cut their health care benefits. However, according to Rove, that number is estimated to actually be 85 to 117 million people will lose their company health care benefits because the employer can no longer afford coverage under the new plan.
Still another promise made by candidate Obama was that his proposed health care plan would not interfere with the doctor-patient relationship.
“Having 159 federal panels, agencies, bureaus, or commissions putting out rules and regulations is going to do nothing to get in the middle of having a good relationship between the doc and the patient. If you believe that, go talk to your doc,” Rove said.
In November the Physicians Foundation released results from a recent study which said that 60 percent of the doctors said this bill will cause them to severely curtail their services; 87 percent said it would cause them to severely curtail services to Medicare patients; and 93 percent said it would severely cut services to the Medicaid patients,” Rove said. “Not only that, 40 percent of the doctors said they were looking to get out of the business.”
Perhaps the worst promise that candidate Obama made to the American taxpayers was that his healthcare reform would not add a dime to the deficit.
“He’s right. It won’t; it will not add one dime; it will add an ungodly number of dimes. We sent Bernie Madoff to jail for 155 years for financial shenanigans that aren’t as bad as what we’ve got in this bill,” insisted Rove.
When the bill first passed, the estimated cost was $940 billion; two months later the CBO admitted they forgot to calculate the discretionary cost of implementing the bill, which they said would be an additional $115 billion.
“Now when it was $940 billion, they said this thing was going to reduce the deficit by $143 billion. We’ll spend a bunch of money and it reduces the deficit. Sort of hard to figure out how that works, but they’ve made the claim. But then when they came back and said they forgot to include that $115 billion, suddenly the savings go from $143 billion to $128 billion.”
The way the administration came up with these figures, Rove said, is they’ve “double-counted.” He explained that over the course of the decade, as a result of the health care reform, people will pay $53 billion more in social security payroll taxes.
“That money is supposed to go over to the social security lock box and be there to pay for benefits for the people who paid the money in, but instead of waiting to pay the people’s benefits, the government is spending that money on the current expenses of the health care program. This thing is not in the black for the first 10 years; it is $701 billion in the red,” remarked Rove.
“Now remember, we have 10 years worth of tax increases on insurance companies, drug companies and medical device companies and 10 years worth of Medicare cuts on senior health care in order to pay for a program that doesn’t begin spending money really until 2014 and isn’t ramped up until 2016 and spends over 80 percent of the $1.55 trillion between 2016 and 2019. We’ve got 10 years worth of revenue to fund four years of a program that is $710 billion in the red in year 10. How sustainable do you think that is over the long haul? If we do it, it is not only going to add an additional $1 trillion more to the budget but it is going to absolutely bankrupt the country.”
Essentially what the Obama administration has done, he continued, is added $3 trillion to the budget over the next decade, and virtually every single bit of it is red ink. Rove also pointed out that under Reagan the debt ran an average of about 35 percent of GDP; under Bush Sr. it was 44 percent. During the Clinton administration it was 45 percent, and under George W. Bush it was 36 percent of GDP.
“Today it is 62 percent of GDP, and it’s on its way to 87 percent of GDP. That puts us in the same league as Greece.”
In spring 2009 when the healthcare discussion first began, public opinion polls indicated that the general concept was supported 2.5 to one. By August the number of people who supported the proposed bill was 44 percent and the bill is even less popular now after it’s been passed, Rove said.
“Doctors and nurses and small businesses and people who are concerned have educated themselves about the bill and changed public opinion,” he told listeners. “That’s what you can do on the issues you’re concerned about if you get involved and stay involved.
“Are we going to be a country that just sublimely accepts what Washington sends our way, or are we going to try and turn it around? I know what the answer ought to be and I think I know what the answer is about American character.”
Rove wrapped up by sharing an experience, an emotionally moving example of American character. He told the audience of an experience he had with a Navy Seal he met when he gave a speech to the Naval Special Warfare Foundation, which financially supports Navy Seals and their families when a Seal is wounded or killed in combat or training.
Before giving his speech he had the opportunity to mingle with the Seals and their families, and the conversation and the impression that one young Navy Seal and his wife made on Rove has stuck with him since.
This particular Seal had been shot eight times while serving in Baghdad. A bullet had shot off part off his nose and cheekbone, he had a big blue piece of plastic on the side of his face covering a gaping wound, and as Rove had been warned, he was hard to look at. He’d already had 22 procedures and was about to go back in to have his cheek and face rebuilt.
As the young man approached, Rove said he was thinking to himself, “Now, this has to be one wounded spirit. I’m going to have to throw my arms around him and buck him up.
“I couldn’t have been more wrong,” Rove told the crowd. “This kid was funny and charismatic and outgoing and energetic and fun to be around. He told me that he had a couple of more procedures to get done, but then he said, ‘I’m back in the game. My team is going to Afghanistan, and they need me.’ You knew in that moment that they needed a guy like this. They really did.
“I asked his wife how she felt about that, and she said, ‘This is what God made him for. I’m for it.’”
The following day, after Rove returned to Washington, he received an e-mail from his friend, a retired Navy Seal who had originally enlisted him to give the speech. One attachment was of the young Navy Seal he’d met the night before in his Baghdad hospital room and the second attachment was of the note the soldier had posted outside his door. It is a note that Rove said he now carries with him in his briefcase every single day.
The note reads: “Attention to all who would enter here. If you’re coming into this room with sorrow or to feel sorrow for my wounds, go elsewhere. The wounds I received I got in a job I love doing it for people I love, supporting the freedom of a country I deeply love. I am incredibly tough and will make a full and complete recovery. What is full? That is the absolute utmost physically my body has the ability to recovery. Then I will push myself by 20 percent further through sheer mental tenacity.
“The room you’re about to enter is a room of fun, optimism and intense, rapid regrowth. If you’re not ready for that, go elsewhere.”
It was signed “the management.”
“I keep this sign with me every single day as a reminder to me of what it is to be an American, of the responsibility we have to love our country,” remarked Rove. “It is a reminder that we have an obligation to love our country and serve our country and do what we can to put the country in the right direction; recognizing that we may not always be right and not to be dogmatic and insistent about it, but to work in a cooperative spirit where we can but to stand for fundamental values of freedom and responsibility and liberty that has made this country what it is. You represent those values in your life, in your lifestyle and your livelihood, and it’s time for all of us to stand up for those values,” he concluded.
http://www.livestockweekly.com/papers/11/03/10/index.html
Care Costs And Budget Deficits
By Colleen Schreiber
DENVER — Fox News contributor Karl Rove, a keynote speaker at the recent National Cattlemen’s Beef Association annual convention here, offered some thoughts on the state of the U.S. economy, and in particular, he provided eye-opening information about the new health care bill which for now is the law of the land.
Rove, who served as President George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff for three years, did not mince words when he talked about the challenges facing the country today. He first offered some thoughts on the $862 billion stimulus bill, which, Rove stated, is the Obama administration’s solution for creating prosperity.
“The President said if Congress passed it, unemployment would top out at eight percent by the end of the summer of 2009 and decline rapidly thereafter,” Rove reminded. “Today, a year and a half later, unemployment is at 9.5 percent and three million fewer Americans are working today than were working the day the stimulus bill passed.”
To discover why it didn’t work, Rove carefully read a document that President-elect Obama put out in January 2009 before taking the oath of office. It detailed the philosophical underpinnings of the stimulus program he planned to propose, why it was needed, and how it would work.
“I’m Karl; I’m a recovering government bureaucrat. I worked at the White House for seven years, and when you work there you start reading this stuff and paying attention to it. I always read the footnotes; I pay attention to the charts and read all the appendices. If you read the appendix, you’ll find out what they really wanted to say to you,” he told listeners.
Appendix number one revealed a lot. That appendix essentially said that for every dollar spent by the government under the stimulus program, $1.55 in economic growth would be created.
“I want you to noodle on that for just a minute. The government submits a dollar of our money, and we magically get $1.55 in economic growth. If that’s the case, why did we stop at $862 billion? We should have done the $10 trillion stimulus bill, and we would have $15 trillion in economic growth and we could have thrown a hell of a party out of the $5 trillion that we magically created out of nowhere,” Rove quipped.
On average, he said, the real multiplier is 84 cents. In other words, for every dollar the government spends, U.S. taxpayers get back 84 cents in economic growth.
“These people think you can magically create growth by spending money. There has never been a country in the history of the world that has spent its way to prosperity,” Rove reiterated. “You work, you save, you invest, you struggle, and you fight in order to get prosperity. You don’t create it simply by having government spend our taxpayer dollars.
“The stimulus bill was about the worst-designed stimulus bill,” he continued. “Did you know there was $5 billion in the stimulus bill for obesity counseling and smoking cessation? Now, look I can afford to lose a few pounds, and I don’t smoke and I don’t condone it, but what the hell does that have to do with stimulating the economy?”
Rove also reminded listeners that the stimulus bill ends up costing much more. In fact, with interest figured in, the $862 billion spread out over the next decade ends up costing Americans $1 trillion, and the administration, he said, doesn’t stop there. Between January 20th of 2009 and the beginning of fiscal year October 1, 2009, the Obama administration increased the discretionary domestic budget by more than $1 trillion over the next decade.
“They increased the baseline spending by almost $100 billion the first year, which, if you look at it over the decade, means we’ve committed the government to spend a trillion more than it otherwise spent as of January 19th, the day before the new administration took over.”
In more simplified terms, Rove said that means that 25 percent of GDP is now going to the government.
“Under Reagan it was 22 percent; under Bush 41 it was 22 percent, under Clinton 19.8 percent, Bush 43 it was 19.6 percent, and now we’re at 25 percent.”
And if that wasn’t scary enough, Rove next delved into a discussion about the true costs of health care reform. According to the Census Bureau, there are 46 million uninsured Americans. Again, as Rove discovered, the true story is in the details. Of the 46 million who are uninsured, 9.7 million are legal or illegal aliens.
“Now look, I’m pro-immigration, but I don’t think it ought to be the responsibility of the U.S. taxpayer to pick up the health care cost for people who are not U.S. citizens.”
Another category within the uninsured includes several million who actually make more than $250,000 a year.
“Now look, I wish they had insurance. If they get sick or get in an accident, I bet they wish they had insurance too, but guess what? They can afford it, even if it’s just a bare bones catastrophic policy,” remarked Rove.
“The last time I looked, we are still a nation of individual responsibility where people are responsible for their own actions. We shouldn’t be picking up the tab for people who can afford it themselves. That doesn’t do our country any good.”
Still another group within the uninsured is some 14 million who are already eligible for some sort of government-provided health care assistance, even a federal employee benefit program.
“The government has done such a lousy job that we have 14 million people who are eligible for coverage that we haven’t gotten signed up. Instead of fixing that, they’ve decided to create a new program that discombobulates the relationship of all 300 million other Americans.”
So in the end, of the 46 million uninsured Americans, by Rove’s calculations only about five or six million fall through the cracks, who are working but who make too much to get Medicaid and whose employer doesn’t provide them with insurance and they really can’t afford it on their own. This is the group of Americans, Rove said, that the government should be focusing on helping. A 2000-page bill that no one fully understands, he said, is not the answer.
Rove went on to say that virtually every single promise made about the bill is turning out not to be true. For example, candidate Obama said his proposed comprehensive health care reform bill would lower premiums for every family in the country by $2500 per family. Yet the Congressional Budget Office has already said the premiums in the individual market will be $2100 higher than they would have been otherwise if nothing had been done.
Another study, conducted by Price Waterhouse Cooper, found that over the next decade, health insurance premiums would rise an estimated 80 percent had nothing been done. Now that the bill has passed, the study found that because of all the mandates and new requirements, premiums will rise on average 111 percent.
Still another group, the Department of Health and Human Services, has determined that as a nation we would spend $311 billion more on health care over the next decade than if we had done nothing.
Another promise made by Obama when he was selling the plan was that if consumers like their current coverage and plans, they could keep them, that their policies would in no way be affected.
“Well, guess what, if you’re one of the 13 million Americans on Medicare Advantage already, the government admits seven million of you are going to lose your coverage,” Rove told listeners. “Some 700,000 lost it last year in advance of the Medicare cuts. This year there will be $2 trillion worth of Medicare cuts; next year there will be $6 million worth of Medicare cuts, and the number of people whose policies are not going to be renewed is going to escalate,” he insisted.
“We have two companies, the Principle Financial of Iowa and Guardian, which are big providers who have already left the market. They’re providing no health insurance at all, and they’re being followed by dozens of much smaller companies. Try getting a child-only policy in America today; it’s no longer possible. You could buy one last year, but you can’t get one this year, and it’s going to get worse and worse and worse.”
Rove shared a few stories from business people he’s visited with who will be severely impacted by the new health care law. One was a restaurant business owner who has 100,000 employees. This person was already paying $25 million a year in premiums for his employees, and when the new bill is fully phased in by 2016, he expects to be paying $90 million annually for his employees’ health care.
“He said he didn’t have $65 million a year in free cash flow. I asked what he was going to do and he said he was going to do two things. First, he was going to double his coverage for every single employee including his coverage, and then he was going to pay the $2000 fine instead of paying out what he’s currently paying out,” Rove told listeners.
Because the law defines a fulltime employee as anyone who works 31 hours or a more a week, the second thing this businessman was going to do was make sure that his part-time workers are never allowed to work more than 31 hours a week. As he explained to Rove, this impacts the college kid who works 10 hours during the week, but who works as many hours as he can during the summer to help pay for college. Or that single mom who needs to work 34 or 35 hours to make ends meet. She will now only be allowed to work 31 hours, and then she’ll have to go elsewhere for the other couple of hours she needs to work.
It’s not just the big guys, Rove said, who are getting hurt by the new law. He talked about a Johnson County, Kansas construction company with 70 employees. Currently this employer is paying out $555,000 a year for his employees’ health care benefits. Under the new law his payout is expected to rise to $800,000 or $900,000 annually. Like the restaurant operator, this small business owner also plans to dump health care coverage and pay the fine.
“He said, ‘What I’m going to do is flush my coverage because I get a pass on my first 40 employees, and I get a $2000 fine on the next 30 employees, so I’m going to exchange a $500,000 current obligation for a $60,000 fine or an $800,000 or $900,000 obligation for a $60,000 fine.’”
The assumption was that only 19 million people would lose their coverage and be tossed into the exchanges because their employees cut their health care benefits. However, according to Rove, that number is estimated to actually be 85 to 117 million people will lose their company health care benefits because the employer can no longer afford coverage under the new plan.
Still another promise made by candidate Obama was that his proposed health care plan would not interfere with the doctor-patient relationship.
“Having 159 federal panels, agencies, bureaus, or commissions putting out rules and regulations is going to do nothing to get in the middle of having a good relationship between the doc and the patient. If you believe that, go talk to your doc,” Rove said.
In November the Physicians Foundation released results from a recent study which said that 60 percent of the doctors said this bill will cause them to severely curtail their services; 87 percent said it would cause them to severely curtail services to Medicare patients; and 93 percent said it would severely cut services to the Medicaid patients,” Rove said. “Not only that, 40 percent of the doctors said they were looking to get out of the business.”
Perhaps the worst promise that candidate Obama made to the American taxpayers was that his healthcare reform would not add a dime to the deficit.
“He’s right. It won’t; it will not add one dime; it will add an ungodly number of dimes. We sent Bernie Madoff to jail for 155 years for financial shenanigans that aren’t as bad as what we’ve got in this bill,” insisted Rove.
When the bill first passed, the estimated cost was $940 billion; two months later the CBO admitted they forgot to calculate the discretionary cost of implementing the bill, which they said would be an additional $115 billion.
“Now when it was $940 billion, they said this thing was going to reduce the deficit by $143 billion. We’ll spend a bunch of money and it reduces the deficit. Sort of hard to figure out how that works, but they’ve made the claim. But then when they came back and said they forgot to include that $115 billion, suddenly the savings go from $143 billion to $128 billion.”
The way the administration came up with these figures, Rove said, is they’ve “double-counted.” He explained that over the course of the decade, as a result of the health care reform, people will pay $53 billion more in social security payroll taxes.
“That money is supposed to go over to the social security lock box and be there to pay for benefits for the people who paid the money in, but instead of waiting to pay the people’s benefits, the government is spending that money on the current expenses of the health care program. This thing is not in the black for the first 10 years; it is $701 billion in the red,” remarked Rove.
“Now remember, we have 10 years worth of tax increases on insurance companies, drug companies and medical device companies and 10 years worth of Medicare cuts on senior health care in order to pay for a program that doesn’t begin spending money really until 2014 and isn’t ramped up until 2016 and spends over 80 percent of the $1.55 trillion between 2016 and 2019. We’ve got 10 years worth of revenue to fund four years of a program that is $710 billion in the red in year 10. How sustainable do you think that is over the long haul? If we do it, it is not only going to add an additional $1 trillion more to the budget but it is going to absolutely bankrupt the country.”
Essentially what the Obama administration has done, he continued, is added $3 trillion to the budget over the next decade, and virtually every single bit of it is red ink. Rove also pointed out that under Reagan the debt ran an average of about 35 percent of GDP; under Bush Sr. it was 44 percent. During the Clinton administration it was 45 percent, and under George W. Bush it was 36 percent of GDP.
“Today it is 62 percent of GDP, and it’s on its way to 87 percent of GDP. That puts us in the same league as Greece.”
In spring 2009 when the healthcare discussion first began, public opinion polls indicated that the general concept was supported 2.5 to one. By August the number of people who supported the proposed bill was 44 percent and the bill is even less popular now after it’s been passed, Rove said.
“Doctors and nurses and small businesses and people who are concerned have educated themselves about the bill and changed public opinion,” he told listeners. “That’s what you can do on the issues you’re concerned about if you get involved and stay involved.
“Are we going to be a country that just sublimely accepts what Washington sends our way, or are we going to try and turn it around? I know what the answer ought to be and I think I know what the answer is about American character.”
Rove wrapped up by sharing an experience, an emotionally moving example of American character. He told the audience of an experience he had with a Navy Seal he met when he gave a speech to the Naval Special Warfare Foundation, which financially supports Navy Seals and their families when a Seal is wounded or killed in combat or training.
Before giving his speech he had the opportunity to mingle with the Seals and their families, and the conversation and the impression that one young Navy Seal and his wife made on Rove has stuck with him since.
This particular Seal had been shot eight times while serving in Baghdad. A bullet had shot off part off his nose and cheekbone, he had a big blue piece of plastic on the side of his face covering a gaping wound, and as Rove had been warned, he was hard to look at. He’d already had 22 procedures and was about to go back in to have his cheek and face rebuilt.
As the young man approached, Rove said he was thinking to himself, “Now, this has to be one wounded spirit. I’m going to have to throw my arms around him and buck him up.
“I couldn’t have been more wrong,” Rove told the crowd. “This kid was funny and charismatic and outgoing and energetic and fun to be around. He told me that he had a couple of more procedures to get done, but then he said, ‘I’m back in the game. My team is going to Afghanistan, and they need me.’ You knew in that moment that they needed a guy like this. They really did.
“I asked his wife how she felt about that, and she said, ‘This is what God made him for. I’m for it.’”
The following day, after Rove returned to Washington, he received an e-mail from his friend, a retired Navy Seal who had originally enlisted him to give the speech. One attachment was of the young Navy Seal he’d met the night before in his Baghdad hospital room and the second attachment was of the note the soldier had posted outside his door. It is a note that Rove said he now carries with him in his briefcase every single day.
The note reads: “Attention to all who would enter here. If you’re coming into this room with sorrow or to feel sorrow for my wounds, go elsewhere. The wounds I received I got in a job I love doing it for people I love, supporting the freedom of a country I deeply love. I am incredibly tough and will make a full and complete recovery. What is full? That is the absolute utmost physically my body has the ability to recovery. Then I will push myself by 20 percent further through sheer mental tenacity.
“The room you’re about to enter is a room of fun, optimism and intense, rapid regrowth. If you’re not ready for that, go elsewhere.”
It was signed “the management.”
“I keep this sign with me every single day as a reminder to me of what it is to be an American, of the responsibility we have to love our country,” remarked Rove. “It is a reminder that we have an obligation to love our country and serve our country and do what we can to put the country in the right direction; recognizing that we may not always be right and not to be dogmatic and insistent about it, but to work in a cooperative spirit where we can but to stand for fundamental values of freedom and responsibility and liberty that has made this country what it is. You represent those values in your life, in your lifestyle and your livelihood, and it’s time for all of us to stand up for those values,” he concluded.
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