Newsmax reports:
In the next two weeks, President Bush will be pushing legislation to provide health insurance to all Americans without a net tax increase, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), tells NewsMax.
By changing incentives in the tax code, the plan aims to create a pool of funds to make sure everyone is covered. So low-income individuals will be covered, the legislation would provide tax vouchers to pay for insurance premiums.
“Republicans are regrouping, and we’re starting to get consensus around some key ideas, such as you’ll see in a week or two—trying to work with the Bush administration on equalizing our tax code so that we can provide an amount of money for everyone to buy health insurance,” says DeMint, who is chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, a caucus that includes the majority of the Republican Conference, the organization of all Republican senators.
“It was a huge mistake for the Bush administration to take on this immigration issue in a comprehensive way instead of trying to make some incremental progress,” DeMint says. “But President Bush could be remembered as a great president if he could move people towards private insurance rather than socialized medicine. I don’t know what chance we have with the Democrats really pushing towards socialized medicine, but this is probably our last hope for some domestic policy achievement that would actually be good policy.”
Elected to the Senate in 2004, DeMint says he’s been working closely with the White House on the issue.
“It’s a good idea, it’s something that’s doable without raising taxes or spending any money,” he says. “We just equalize the tax code, and it puts a lot of money in everyone’s hand, rather than just concentrating it on the employer exemption side. If we take that same money, we could get everyone insured. Hopefully, we can start working it out through the media where the American people see what an opportunity this is.”
Bush presented the broad outlines of the idea in his last State of the Union message. Since then, the idea of re-directing existing federal payments to hospitals to pay for insurance has been discarded. In part, the legislation that will be proposed is based on a plan developed by Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts. DeMint has endorsed Romney and says he has a good shot at the presidency by presenting himself as a competent CEO.
Read the whole Newsmax exclusive.
I have often challenged the fiscal conservative (of which I am one) critics of President Bush to come up with detailed plans on how we would transition from today’s New Deal/Great Society addiction to a constitutional free market federalism America and have suggested that we would need transitional phases.
I have also argued that Romney’s tax credit plan is the best plan I have seen to move us off the dime toward a more market based health care system.
So I plan to support the President unless the details are prohibitive.
I do wonder if this is also a sign that the Bushes support Romney and are giving his plan a trial balloon?
What say Townhall?
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
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