AP in the Wall Street Journal Online version dated June 8, 2010, “Obama Pitches Health Bill to Seniors”:
“President Barack Obama is turning his attention back to his signature health-care bill and trying to win over the most skeptical constituency: seniors.
Mr. Obama was set to pitch the bill at a senior center in Wheaton, Md., Tuesday. The event will be broadcast live and seniors will be able to listen by phone and ask questions at dozens of gatherings around the country.
The timing coincides with the release later this week of the first batch of $250 checks to seniors who fall into Medicare's prescription drug coverage gap, known as the "doughnut hole." The checks will be the first tangible benefits most of them will be seeing from the law Mr. Obama signed in March. Some 4 million elderly and disabled people will get checks this year, and the first batch of 80,000 is supposed to go out Thursday.”
Let me see, 4 million times $250 = $1 Billion. Just a drop in the bucket, hey! To put this into perspective, NASA's budget for 2010 was $18.7 Billion, but some of that may have been cut. So the President and Congress decided to pass 20% of the NASA budget to seniors in a one time "bribe" in an attempt to pass the health care bill. Well, I guess we do have to have our priorities.
Here's a link to the original article:
