This morning, I participated in a blogger conference call with Sen. John Thune. the subject of this morning’s bcc was health care. During his opening statement, Sen. Thune talked about the $250,000,000,000 deficit-busting bribe (my word, not Sen. Thune’s) to doctors. This is the Democrats’ attempt to hide the true cost of the bill by separating out a major expense of the Democrats’ health care legislation.

Sen Thune also talked about the tax increases in the Finance Committee and HELP Committee bills, saying that these tax increases will drive the health care cost curve up, not down. Sen. Thune further noted that the JCT reported that almost 90 percent of the taxes included in the Democrats’ legislation will hit people making less than $200,000. He then noted that over 50 percent of the tax increases will hit people making less than $100,000.

Sen. Thune also said that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the public option wasn’t killed during August’s townhall meetings. Sen. Reid is committed to getting it put into the final Senate bill.

Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters asked the first question:

Q: What’s up with the Democrats’ trying to revoke the insurance companies’
antitrust exemption?
A: The White House is trying to rally support by villainizing insurance companies. Sen. Thune doesn’t think this will have much effect.

Here’s the question that John Hawkins of Right Wing News asked:

Q: Can you talk a little bit about what will happen if the Democrats try to use procedural tricks like reconciliation to get the bill through the Senate with 50 votes?
A: I don’t believe the government plan is dead. They are trying to get it back in.

I think they will bring it out under regular order and that requires 60 votes. The first run, at least, they will try it with the public option in it. If that doesn’t work, they will probably try something like the Baucus bill. That will still be a tough bill. It’s a 2 trillion dollar expansion, a 1 trillion dollar tax increase, and a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts.

If that doesn’t work, they go to reconciliation. That would be improper. We would raise points of order. They would need 60 votes to break those.

They could also split the bill. Put the revenue portion through reconciliation, they could do it and make it work.

Follow-up: If they split the votes, they can ram it through. Is that true? What can we do at that point?

A: To stop them on that last tactic, we need at least 11, 12 Democrats to stop them. When they have this kind of majority, there is not a lot we can do. We will do everything we can to block it, but we need the help of American people to help do it.

My question focused on the tax increases and the unfunded mandates from the Finance Commitee. I asked if we shouldn’t highlight the tax increases included in the Democrats’ bills and the tax increases that the Medicaid unfunded mandate would trigger at the state level.

Sen. Thune said that those were two excellent points to highlight before saying that there’s alot of great points they could highlight alot of things because “this bill is so wrong on so many levels.” That’s something I can’t argue with.

I then suggested that they put a video together that’s titled “Wrong On So Many Levels.” Sen. Thune thought that sounded like a good idea.

Follow this link to John Hawkins’ post on the call.

Technorati: Bloggers, Conference Call, Health Care, Tax Increases, Unfunded Mandates, State Taxes, Medicaid, John Thune, John Hawkins, Noel Sheppard

Cross-posted at California Conservative