What Talking Points Memo Doesn’t Tell You

The liberal Talking Points Memo blog’s Brian Beutler is touting some memos the House Committee on Energy and Commerce‘s staff created — with tax dollars — to pressure their fellow members of Congress (TPM wrongly reports they were created only for Committee members) into going along with the the Democrat health care bill.

The memos purport to show the benefits that will head toward constituents of the individual Members if only they would sell their souls to obtain the benefits.

Talking Points Memo helpfully displayed the one created for the district of Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR). Like others I reviewed, this document is just one page — a curiously short summary for an over 1,000 page bill with literally life-and-death implications.

Such things as the following also were missing from the summaries:

  • revealing that people who pursue healthy lifestyles and are rewarded by lower premiums will lose this benefit (“hardly a formula for lower costs,” says CNN Money) if the House bill becomes law;
  • the Lewin Group estimate that 88.1 million Americans could lose their present health care coverage, even if they don’t want to;
  • the fact that an estimated 1.2 million small businesses would be hit by a 5.4 percent surtax, and many Americans would face a higher income tax rate than do taxpayers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan;
    and a good bit more.

It appears that Talking Points Memo and the Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee want the public to be educated on what is in the House bill — but not too educated.


E-mail any comments to the National Center for Public Policy Research at [email protected].
Subscribe to this blog’s feed. Follow on Twitter.

Labels: , , , ,



The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems. We believe that the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility provide the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century.