Obama Prayers

Sometimes words can remind us of their power.


"You lie!"


Two little words shouted as an emotional outburst from a Republican congressman would never have gained attention if they hadn't been shouted loud enough to hear during a Presidential address to Congress.


Congressman Joe Williams contacted the White House shortly after and expressed his regret for the statement. President Obama told reporters the next morning he accepted the apology and indicated, "We all make mistakes."


It's here anyone still having issues with Congressman Joe should get over it. If you feel it was disrespectful, the man apologized to whom the statement was directed and the apology was accepted. Done. Finished.


If you feel he needs to be made an example, remember, the President said you make mistakes, too. Joe's not racist just because he's white and the President is black. Stop playing the race card.


Does he need to apologize to the House? Absolutely not. If the House wants an apology from him, then I expect every single person in the video below who verbally disagreed during this State of the Union speech and sat on their laurels to apologize. Why? Because guess what...you disrespected that President.




Unable or unwilling to let it go, the House formally rebuked Joe Wilson nearly a week later. The final tally: was 240-179...233 Democrats and seven Republicans voting to chastise Wilson, 167 Republicans and 12 Democrats opposing the measure and five Democrats merely voting "present."


So, was Obama lying? Let's have some fact-checking:


------




OBAMA: "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits either now or in the future. Period."


THE FACTS: Though there's no final plan yet, the White House and congressional Democrats already have shown they're ready to skirt the no-new-deficits pledge.


House Democrats offered a bill that the Congressional Budget Office said would add $220 billion to the deficit over 10 years. But Democrats and Obama administration officials claimed the bill actually was deficit-neutral. They said they simply didn't have to count $245 billion of it -- the cost of adjusting Medicare reimbursement rates so physicians don't face big annual pay cuts.


Their reasoning was that they already had decided to exempt this "doc fix" from congressional rules that require new programs to be paid for. In other words, it doesn't have to be paid for because they decided it doesn't have to be paid for.


The administration also said that since Obama already had included the doctor payment in his 10-year budget proposal, it didn't have to be counted again.


That aside, the long-term prognosis for costs of the health care legislation has not been good.


Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf had this to say in July: "We do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount."


CBO finds H.R. 3200 would increase the budget deficit by $239 billion over ten years—and "would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits" thereafter. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation released a study which found that in its second decade, H.R. 3200 would increase federal deficits by more than $1 trillion.


------


OBAMA: "Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have."


THE FACTS: That's correct, as far as it goes. But neither can the plan guarantee that people can keep their current coverage. Employers sponsor coverage for most families, and they'd be free to change their health plans in ways that workers may not like, or drop insurance altogether. The Congressional Budget Office analyzed the health care bill written by House Democrats and said that by 2016 some 3 million people who now have employer-based care would lose it because their employers would decide to stop offering it.


In the past Obama repeatedly said, "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period." Now he's stopping short of that unconditional guarantee by saying nothing in the plan "requires" any change.


------



OBAMA: "Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have."


THE FACTS: You won’t have to change your policy, but what you have will change or go away.




------


OBAMA: "The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally." One congressman, South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson, shouted "You lie!" from his seat in the House chamber when Obama made this assertion. Wilson later apologized.


THE FACTS: The facts back up Obama. The House version of the health care bill explicitly prohibits spending any federal money to help illegal immigrants get health care coverage. Illegal immigrants could buy private health insurance, as many do now, but wouldn't get tax subsidies to help them. Still, Republicans say there are not sufficient citizenship verification requirements to ensure illegal immigrants are excluded from benefits they are not due.


A CNS News report says: It is true that both the House and Senate health care bills as they are now drafted would make illegal aliens ineligible for federally funded health care. But President Obama has stated as recently as last month at a press conference in Mexico that he will seek “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation that will put illegal aliens on a “pathway to citizenship.”


Viewed in combination, the president’s health care and immigration reform plans would in fact let people who are illegal immigrants in the United States today receive federally funded health care benefits when the plan comes on line. In his speech last night, the president said that the health insurance exchanges where people would buy federally subsidized insurance would not begin operating until four years from now. If Obama follows through on his agenda as planned, immigration reform will be enacted in the intervening time.


Section 246 of the health care reform bill that has been approved by three House committees is titled, “No Federal Payment for Undocumented Aliens.” It says, “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”


The bill passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, defines an “eligible individual” under the bill as “a citizen or national of the United States or an alien lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent residence or an alien lawfully present in the United States.”


At an August 10 press conference in Guadalajara, Mexico, President Obama was asked this question: “I wonder if you can tell us what you think the prospects are for immigration reform, for comprehensive immigration reform, which you've said is your goal; and whether you think that the blows you're taking now on health care and that the Democrats are likely to take around the midterm elections will make it hard, if not impossible, to achieve comprehensive immigration reform in this term.”


Obama responded that he was “confident” he would get immigration reform that created a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal aliens.


“Now, am I going to be able to snap my fingers and get this done? No,” said Obama. “This is going to be difficult; it's going to require bipartisan cooperation. There are going to be demagogues out there who try to suggest that any form of pathway for legalization for those who are already in the United States is unacceptable. And those are fights that I'd have to have if my poll numbers are at 70 or if my poll numbers are at 40. That's just the nature of the U.S. immigration debate.


“But ultimately, I think the American people want fairness,” Obama continued. “And we can create a system in which you have strong border security, we have an orderly process for people to come in, but we're also giving an opportunity for those who are already in the United States to be able to achieve a pathway to citizenship so that they don't have to live in the shadows, and their children and their grandchildren can have a full participation in the United States. So I'm confident we can get it done.”


So, the bottom line is this: Obama intends to enact health-care reform legislation that expressly prohibits giving federal health insurance benefits to illegal aliens. He then intends to enact “comprehensive immigration reform” that will make illegal aliens into legal residents of the United States thus making them eligible for the new federal health insurance benefits created by his health-care reform bill.


Illegal immigrants won’t get federal health insurance benefits under Obama’s plan because they won’t be illegal immigrants anymore, they will be legal immigrants.




------


OBAMA: "Don't pay attention to those scary stories about how your benefits will be cut. ... That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare."


THE FACTS: Obama and congressional Democrats want to pay for their health care plans in part by reducing Medicare payments to providers by more than $500 billion over 10 years. The cuts would largely hit hospitals and Medicare Advantage, the part of the Medicare program operated through private insurance companies.


Although wasteful spending in Medicare is widely acknowledged, many experts believe some seniors almost certainly would see reduced benefits from the cuts. That's particularly true for the 25 percent of Medicare users covered through Medicare Advantage.


Supporters contend that providers could absorb the cuts by improving how they operate and wouldn't have to reduce benefits or pass along costs. But there's certainly no guarantee they wouldn't.


------


OBAMA: Requiring insurance companies to cover preventive care like mammograms and colonoscopies "makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives."


THE FACTS: Studies have shown that much preventive care -- particularly tests like the ones Obama mentions -- actually costs money instead of saving it. That's because detecting acute diseases like breast cancer in their early stages involves testing many people who would never end up developing the disease. The costs of a large number of tests, even if they're relatively cheap, will outweigh the costs of caring for the minority of people who would have ended up getting sick without the testing.


The Congressional Budget Office wrote in August: "The evidence suggests that for most preventive services, expanded utilization leads to higher, not lower, medical spending overall."


That doesn't mean preventive care doesn't make sense or save lives. It just doesn't save money.


------


OBAMA: "If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage."


THE FACTS: It's not just a matter of being able to get coverage. Most people would have to get coverage under the law, if his plan is adopted.


In his speech, Obama endorsed mandatory coverage for individuals, an approach he did not embrace as a candidate.


He proposed during the campaign -- as he does now -- that larger businesses be required to offer insurance to workers or else pay into a fund. But he rejected the idea of requiring individuals to obtain insurance. He said people would get insurance without being forced to do so by the law, if coverage were made affordable. And he repeatedly criticized his Democratic primary rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, for proposing to mandate coverage.


"To force people to get health insurance, you've got to have a very harsh penalty," he said in a February 2008 debate.


Now, he says, "individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance -- just as most states require you to carry auto insurance."


He proposes a hardship waiver, exempting from the requirement those who cannot afford coverage despite increased federal aid.


------


OBAMA: "There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage."
THE FACTS: Obama time and again has referred to the number of uninsured as 46 million, a figure based on year-old Census data. The new number is based on an analysis by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, which concluded that about two-thirds of Americans without insurance are poor or near poor. "These individuals are less likely to be offered employer-sponsored coverage or to be able to afford to purchase their own coverage," the report said. By using the new figure, Obama avoids criticism that he is including individuals, particularly healthy young people, who choose not to obtain health insurance.


OBAMA: People without insurance do not get health care.


THE FACTS: We mandate, by law, that people can walk up to a public hospital and receive care if they need it, insured or not. If they can’t walk, an ambulance will come pick them up for a ride. Charitable hospitals routinely write off the cost of caring for people who cannot afford it, and in fact, doing so is their core mission. Cost recovery is already built in to the system.


--------


Even if you wish to debate whether or not President Obama lied or not, what is clearly not in dispute is a need to move on. As a society, we've forgotten to apologize once and expect someone to go on a "Forgiveness Tour" expressing their sorrows over and over.


You only need to apologize once and to the person that matters. In this case, that was President Obama and that apology was accepted. If the President had not accepted his apology, then that would've been the President's problem, not Congressman Joe's problem.


GotQuestions.org examines lying:


The Bible nowhere presents an instance where lying is considered to be the right thing to do. The ninth commandment prohibits bearing false witness (Exodus 20:16). Proverbs 6:16-19 lists “a lying tongue” and “a false witness who pours out lies” as two of the seven abominations to the Lord. Love “rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). For other Scriptures that speak negatively of lying, see Psalm 119:29, 163; 120:2; Proverbs 12:22; 13:5; Ephesians 4:25; Colossians 3:9; and Revelation 21:8. There are many examples of liars in Scripture, from Jacob’s deceit in Genesis 27 to the pretense of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. Time after time, we see that falsehood leads to misery, loss, and judgment. Read more


GotQuestions.org also examines forgiveness:


Many people make the mistake of believing that God forgives “little” sins such as lying, anger, and impure thoughts, but does not forgive “big” sins such as murder and adultery. This is not true. There is no sin too big that God cannot forgive it. When Jesus died on the cross, He died to pay the penalty for all of the sins of the entire world (1 John 2:2). When a person places his faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, all of his sins are forgiven. That includes past, present, and future, big or small. Jesus died to pay the penalty for all of our sins, and once they are forgiven, they are all forgiven (Colossians 1:14; Acts 10:43). Read more