Kerry: Remember Bush’s military focus

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) says to let George W. Bush be remembered for an overly militarized focusing on fighting terrorism and to let the next president defeat terrorism by emphasizing America’s moral authority. (0:30)

Kerry tired of same old rhetoric

Visible frustration concerning increased oil prices was displayed by Senators at a meeting of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. To prepare for the winter, the committee met to discuss the effect of increasing oil prices on the cost of home heating oil.

Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) presented statistics showing the rising cost of home heating oil in Maine. According to Snowe, the price of home heating oil has increased 135 percent in her state while income has only increased 17 percent. Snowe projects that Mainers will have to spend $5,000 to heat their homes with a per capita income of $33,000. Snowe said that many "could freeze to death," adding that many throughout the United States will be unable to afford to heat their homes during the winter months.

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) said one can attribute the rising price of home heating oil to the rising cost of crude oil. In reference to the White House, Kerry stated that a stronger administration would be doing more to assist Americans. He also said he finds it shocking that Americans continue to waste energy by using electricity when it is not needed after 30 years of gas shocks and efforts to counteract global warming.

Deputy Assistant Energy Secretary for Petroleum Reserves David Johnson said in his testimony that the price of home heating oil can be lowered by increasing domestic production of oil by drilling on continental shelves and in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR.) Kerry told Johnson that oil from the ANWR would only lower American gas prices two cents per gallon at full production and that the United States only has three percent of global oil reserves. Kerry continued, saying the United States’ oil supply is not large enough to lower international prices and that the rhetoric employed by Johnson and others has “worn short.”

McCain is providing the American people with “gimmicks”

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) said in a conference call with the Barack Obama campaign, that John McCain (R-Ariz.) has spent the week exhausting himself with a double talk dance and presenting new and opposite views on many of his policies.

Kerry outlined several positions that McCain has changed on over the past few weeks such as torture, offshore drilling, drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). McCain said that he would “be more than happy to examine that again” even though he previously said it wasn’t worth the time. Kerry said that the U.S. has only three percent of the world’s oil and John McCain used to know his stuff and argue is points well, but now “running for president has evidently provided an opportunity for double talk” or more of the Washington game at the expense of the interest of the American people.

Kerry said that before McCain can start debating with Obama, he needs to finish debating with himself. The fundamental distinction between Barack Obama and John McCain is that Obama understand that you can’t drill your way out of this crisis but that you need alternatives, Kerry said. McCain is offering the same Bush mentality that oil can solve every problem. The United States cannot have leadership that pretends there is a solution for getting more oil and gas through U.S. sources that will help the current crisis, the leadership need to be focusing on alternative energy solutions, he said.

St. Paul Minnesota Mayor, Chris Coleman agreed with Kerry’s remarks and said that McCain’s gas tax holiday is “the biggest gimmick McCain has put out there.” Whereas Obama has proposed significant and real steps towards a more secure future, McCain has only proposed more Washington gimmicks and flip flopping policies.

U.S. health care system is not up to snuff

Today in a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, business owners from across the country met with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) about trends in employer-sponsored health coverage. Small and large business owners discussed their concerns with health care costs and urged Congress to make some changes in 2009.

Fixing health care is a top priority and an urgent priority, said Andrew Stern, from the Service Employees International Union. Stern advised Congress to create affordable alternatives to job-based health care that will provide more predictable costs to small business owners, workers and students. Under the new legislation, insurers should not be allowed to discriminate on the basis of health status, age or other factors.

About 60 percent of employees are insured through their employers, but this hearing showed that employers are concerned about the high costs they will have to pay in the future in private health care costs. Carl Redman, from Innovation Construction and Bear Electric, said that Congress and small business owners need to band together and negotiate plans with insurance agencies to get smaller premiums and more affordable health care coverage.

Health insurance a societal obligation

Forty-five million uninsured Americans prompted the Senate Finance Committee to discuss ways to reform health care, listening to recommendations that could help to provide insurance coverage to the uninsured. According to panelists, the uninsured are shut out of the system due to increasingly high health care costs, high insurance rates, and partial coverage.

Ron Williams, the CEO of Aetna, told the committee that lowering insurance rates will require lowering the cost of health care since the price of insurance reflects on the cost of treatment. Williams also said universal participation in health insurance is necessary to lower prices and help those in need, comparing societal assistance in health care to food taxes that help feed the hungry. He noted that patients seeking coverage after being diagnosed with a serious illness is not insurance but in fact a way of financing treatment, suggesting that measures be taken to combat reactionary purchases of health insurance. Williams also said that grouping people by methods other than risk factors would allow for an even distribution of healthy and unhealthy and prevent costs from skyrocketing due to an influx of customers needing high remittances.

Mark Hall, a professor at Wake Forest University, agreed with Williams’s idea of grouping customers into pools without determining risk factors. Hall said that one percent of the American population uses almost 25 percent of federal expenditures on health care while half the population uses four percent. Hall said that pooling would allow natural statistics to have an effect on health prices by preventing concentration of the sick. Raymond Arth, a small business owner from Ohio, urged the committee to be conscious of small business owners. Arth said that small business owners desire to provide health insurance to employees but that increasing renewal figures make it difficult financially.