Rino Gingrich is Done Before He Started

Gingrich Backs Obamacare's Individual Mandate Requiring Health Insurance

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Sunday that he strongly supports a federal mandate requiring citizens to buy health insurance – a position that has been rejected by many Republicans, including several who likely will be running against him for the Republican presidential nomination.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Gingrich told host David Gregory that he continues to advocate for a plan he first called for in the early 1990s as a Congressman, which requires every uninsured citizen to purchase or acquire health insurance.

Gregory played a clip of Gingrich speaking during an appearance on Meet the Press in October 1993:

“I am for people, individuals -- exactly like automobile insurance -- individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance. And I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance.”

Gregory asked Gingrich if he would criticize GOP presidential rival Mitt Romney, whose "Romneycare" health program enacted during his time as Governor in Massachusetts mandated that all uninsured purchase health insurance.

Gingrich replied he would not make it an issue in the campaign and said he agreed with key aspects of Romneycare.

"I agree that all of us have a responsibility to pay--help pay for health care," Gingrich said, adding, "I've said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond ..."

Gingrich also admitted that his proposal is a "variation" of the individual mandate, a key component of the Obamacare legislation President Obama signed into law in 2010.

The position staked out by Gingrich appears to be at odds with leading conservative critics of Obamacare, who argue that the law requiring citizens to purchase a private insurance policy is not constitutional.

The Obama administration is currently facing three lawsuits arguing that the federal mandate is unconstitutional, including one filed by a coalition of 26 states.

The issue is on track for a Supreme Court decision in the summer of 2012, which would make it a likely hot-button topic heading into the elections.

Conservative GOP critics like Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli say the mandate is unconstitutional because although Congress can regulate commerce, it can’t require people to engage in a particular “economic activity” just because they live in the U.S.

Conservative judicial experts have also taken exception to the claim made by Gingrich and supporters of the Obamacare law that mandating health insurance is the same as the government requirement to purchase car insurance, noting that driving a car is a privilege provided by states and not a constitutional right.

Cucinelli says that "buying auto insurance is voluntary, since you are only required to purchase it if you choose to drive on public roads. But buying health insurance under the new federal law is not voluntary, as you are required to buy it just by virtue of the fact that you are breathing. The federal government has never before in history exercised its regulatory power to require someone to buy a product or service as a condition of residence in the United States."
Gingrich, though, seemed to disagree with that notion on Sunday, though he was quick to point out the differences between his plan and the federal health law.

“In, in the first place, Obama basically is trying to replace the entire insurance system, creating state exchanges, building a Washington-based model, creating a federal system,” Gingrich told NBC’s David Gregory. “I believe all of us--and this is going to be a big debate--I believe all of us have a responsibility to help pay for healthcare …"
Romney has not come under fire for not disowning his health care plan, which has caused private health care insurance rates to skyrocket as patient services have declined in Massachusetts.

Gingrich's position quickly came under fire from several conservative blogs on Sunday.

“He tried to distinguish his mandate from the Obama mandate, but with little success,” the American Federalist Journal wrote on Sunday.
“Sandbagging your fellow Republicans in Congress and offering tacit support for a key (unconstitutional) component of Obamacare is a very strange way to begin a run in a Republican primary. Not a strong start.”

The Wall Street Journal called Gingrich’s description of an ideal healthcare plan with mandates a “pretty good description of what the Democratic Congress passed into law last year."

The Journal continued: "Beginning in 2014, most Americans who don't have insurance will be required to pay a fee, with many, depending on income, getting subsidies to help buy coverage through state-based exchanges.”

The conservative website Red State said Gingrich “won’t exactly endear him to the Tea Party crowd or the reform minded movement sweeping the GOP.”

Source: Newsmax

Add to this the devastating reminder of a commercial Newt Gingrich did with Nancy Pelosi supporting climate change (global warming) legislation and in less than a week after announcing, Gingrich might as well take his chips and go home!

Video:  Nancy Pelosi And Newt Gingrich Commercial On Climate Change

This ad is part of the "We Can Solve It" global warming ad campaign sponsored by former Vice President Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection.

Don't forget Newt is soft on the borders as well, and then when you add on those who remember Newt’s infidelity issues and he’s got problems!

Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

Senator Inhofe Calls for Inquiry Into 'Suppressed' Climate Change Report

Administration Buried Report Questioning Global Warming

Republicans are raising questions about why the EPA apparently dismissed an analyst's report questioning the science behind global warming.

EPA analyst Alan Carlin raised questions about the impact of global warming on areas like Greenland. Shown here is an iceberg off Ammassalik Island, Greenland. (AP Photo)

A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming.

The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.

"He came out with the truth. They don't want the truth at the EPA," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a global warming skeptic, told FOX News, saying he's ordered an investigation. "We're going to expose it."

The controversy comes after the House of Representatives passed a landmark bill to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, one that Inhofe said will be "dead on arrival" in the Senate despite President Obama's energy adviser voicing confidence in the measure.

According to internal e-mails that have been made public by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Carlin's boss told him in March that his material would not be incorporated into a broader EPA finding and ordered Carlin to stop working on the climate change issue. The draft EPA finding released in April lists six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, that the EPA says threaten public health and welfare.

An EPA official told FOXNews.com on Monday that Carlin, who is an economist -- not a scientist -- included "no original research" in his report. The official said that Carlin "has not been muzzled in the agency at all," but stressed that his report was entirely "unsolicited."

"It was something that he did on his own," the official said. "Though he was not qualified, his manager indulged him and allowed him on agency time to draft up ... a set of comments."

Despite the EPA official's remarks, Carlin told FOXNews.com on Monday that his boss, National Center for Environmental Economics Director Al McGartland, appeared to be pressured into reassigning him.

Carlin said he doesn't know whether the White House intervened to suppress his report but claimed it's clear "they would not be happy about it if they knew about it," and that McGartland seemed to be feeling pressure from somewhere up the chain of command.

Carlin said McGartland told him he had to pull him off the climate change issue.

"It was reassigning you or losing my job, and I didn't want to lose my job," Carlin said, paraphrasing what he claimed were McGartland's comments to him. "My inference (was) that he was receiving some sort of higher-level pressure."

Carlin said he personally does not think there is a need to regulate carbon dioxide, since "global temperatures are going down." He said his report expressed a "good bit of doubt" on the connection between the two.

Specifically, the report noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend over the past 11 years, that scientists do not necessarily believe that storms will become more frequent or more intense due to global warming, and that the theory that temperatures will cause Greenland ice to rapidly melt has been "greatly diminished."

Carlin, in a March 16 e-mail, argued that his comments are "valid, significant" and would be critical to the EPA finding.

McGartland, though, wrote back the next day saying he had decided not to forward his comments.

"The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision," he wrote, according to the e-mails released by CEI. "I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office."

He later wrote an e-mail urging Carlin to "move on to other issues and subjects."

"I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research, etc., at least until we see what EPA is going to do with climate," McGartland wrote.

The EPA said in a written statement that Carlin's opinions were in fact considered, and that he was not even part of the working group dealing with climate change in the first place.

"Claims that this individual's opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false. This administration and this EPA administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency and science-based decision making," the statement said. "The individual in question is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue. Nevertheless the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists, and information from that report was submitted by his manager to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding. In fact, some ideas from that document are included and addressed in the endangerment finding."

The e-mail exchanges and suggestions of political interference sparked a backlash from Republicans in Congress.

Reps. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., also wrote a letter last week to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson urging the agency to reopen its comment period on the finding. The EPA has since denied the request.

Citing the internal e-mails, the Republican congressmen wrote that the EPA was exhibiting an "agency culture set in a predetermined course."

"It documents at least one instance in which the public was denied access to significant scientific literature and raises substantial questions about what additional evidence may have been suppressed," they wrote.

In a written statement, Issa said the administration is "actively seeking to withhold new data in order to justify a political conclusion."

"I'm sure it was very inconvenient for the EPA to consider a study that contradicted the findings it wanted to reach," Sensenbrenner said in a statement, adding that the "repression" of Carlin's report casts doubt on the entire finding.

Carlin said he's concerned that he's seeing "science being decided at the presidential level."

"Now Mr. Obama is in effect directly or indirectly saying that CO2 causes global temperatures to rise and that we have to do something about it. ... That's normally a scientific judgment and he's in effect judging what the science says," he said. "We need to look at it harder."

The controversy is similar to one under the Bush administration -- only the administration was taking the opposite stance. In that case, scientist James Hansen claimed the administration was trying to keep him from speaking out and calling for reductions in greenhousegases.

By Judson Berger - FOXNews.com

Click here to read Carlin's report.

FOX News' Major Garrett contributed to this report

Posted: Daily Thought Pad

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