Women to Allyson Schwartz: You Don’t Speak For Me
On Thursday, April 5, US Representative Allyson Schwartz held a surprise event with fellow progressive attack dog, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, claiming that those who don’t support Obamacare and the government mandate to provide “free” abortion drugs and birth control are at war with women. The event held in Love Park, Philadelphia, continues the recent Democrat theme that the Republican Party is attacking women’s healthcare. Apparently to Schwartz, these abortion drugs and birth control must be provided at no cost; paid completely by others, men and women alike, even if it directly violates their religious faith.
Many Pennsylvania women don't agree that Schwartz is representing them. "As a Republican woman, I find the statement from Allyson Schwartz, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Democrats insulting,” responded Anastasia Przybylski, Co-chair of the Kitchen Table Patriots in Bucks County. “The truth is the birth control mandate is unconstitutional. As a forward-thinking woman, I do not expect anyone to pay for my birth control. Our government is not our mothers-keeper and the Democrats don't seem to get that."
Smart Girl Politics Action (SGPA), a nationwide grassroots conservative movement for women, has launched an effort to counter the left’s so-called “war on women”, stating that it is a tactic to distract women from the real issues of this election year. “Women are smart enough to know that we have bigger issues in this country than paying for our birth control. Women, especially moms, are feeling the effects of this economy and rising gas and food prices every day,” says Stacy Mott, Founder and President of SGPA.
Joe Rooney, the Republican challenger to Schwartz in Pennsylvania’s Congressional District 13, commented on the Schwartz event, “As I am walking the district and talking to my neighbors, I am learning that Democrats have real vulnerabilities on the state of the economy, unemployment, and fuel prices. This nonsense today in Love Park is a little more than boilerplate focus group tested distractions – they are trying to deflect our attention from the four-dollar gas that we are pumping in our vans.”
Schwartz Slams President over High Gas Prices
Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz slammed the President for the high prices at the gas pump, stating it was just one part of the enormous failure of the presidency. She pointed out that a gallon of regular unleaded was $1.43 when the President took the oath of office compared to $3.60 a gallon.
It is true that the price for a gallon of gasoline has almost doubled since President Obama took office in January 2009 and it is taking a significant toll on average Americans. It is also true that Obama has actively prevented more oil supply for America with his moratorium on oil drilling and rejecting the Keystone pipeline. It is true that Obama demonizes American energy companies and instead offered a $2 Billion loan for a Brazilian oil company to drill for oil. But even with all these facts, this seems like very harsh criticism from a Congresswoman who has been a rubber stamp for the Obama agenda.
Well, the harsh criticism was made in an article published in The Intelligencer newspaper on April 30, 2008, when George W. Bush was the President. At the time, Schwartz and her cohorts in the Democratic majority in Congress were blocking President Bush’s energy proposals to improve the situation. Today, while her constituents are getting hit hard by the highest prices in four years for gas, Schwartz has been silent. But surely she must have the same or even harsher criticisms for President Obama who not only has overseen the dramatic increases in fuel prices but also has been hostile toward increasing the energy supply. Why isn’t she voicing these criticisms?
Sestak Fundraising for ‘Occupy’ Challenger to Schwartz
Reprinted from PoliticsPA:
Sestak Fundraising for ‘Occupy’ Challenger to Schwartz
Written by Keegan Gibson
Former Congressman and 2010 Senate candidate Joe Sestak is raising money for Nate Kleinman, the Occupy movement candidate challenging Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Montgomery) said today.
“I could not be more excited to announce the following event. This is a game-changer,” Kleimman said in an email to supporters. “Please feel free to forward widely!”
Kleinman worked and volunteered for Sestak’s congressional and Senate campaigns.
The event flier is below.
Sestak has the reputation of a maverick, earned when he challenged Democratic party leadership in his successful bid against Sen. Arlen Specter (Schwartz endorsed Specter in the 2010 primary).
Schwartz and Sestak served together in Congress from 2007 to 2011. Schwartz directs recruiting for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a role she has had for several years in the Philadelphia area.
Update: Schwartz’s campaign diplomatically criticized Sestak’s decision to appear at the fundraiser.
“It’s a kind gesture that Joe Sestak wants to support a former staffer, but for Democrats in Pennsylvania who care about taking back Congress and ensuring that women have a seat at the political table, we think they will be pretty taken aback to learn that Joe Sestak is supporting a candidate running a write in campaign against the only female member of the Pennsylvania Congressional Delegation and one of the Democrats pivotal to ensuring that House Democrats take back the Majority,” said Schwartz Political Director Neil Deegan.
According to multiple Democratic sources, Sestak also has a practice of helping any Democratic candidate who asks, contested primary or not. PoliticsPA is seeking to confirm the event with Sestak, but in the past – a 2011 race for Cumberland County Commissioner – a similar appearance did not constitute an official endorsement.
Kleinman’s name was knocked off the ballot last week after a petition challenge, and he launched a write-in campaign against Schwartz immediately after.
He faces a steep uphill climb; in addition to being on the ballot, Schwartz boasts $2.3 million cash on hand.
Here’s the flier:
Schwartz forces Primary Challenger off Ballot
Reprinted from Newsworks.org:
Occupy Philly congressional candidate opts for write in when faced with ballot challenge
March 2, 2012
The member of Occupy Philadelphia who is challenging Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz won't be on the ballot in the Democratic primary. Instead he has decided to take the write-in route.
Nate Kleinman says he decided to withdraw his nominating petitions for the 13th district, which includes parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery counties, for strategic reasons. Attorneys challenging the signatures on Kleinman's petitions wanted him to pay their bills if a judge tossed his name from the ballot.
"It made no sense for me to continue fighting in court to stay on the ballot and give the voters a chance to decide who is going to represent them in congress so I will be running as a write in candidate on April 24th," said Kleinman. "The rest of the campaign will be dedicated to educating voters how to spell my name and they will have to write me in if they want me to win."
Kleinman plans to run a truly grass-roots campaign.
"I'm to going to be knocking on doors throughout the district going to community events, I am going to continue to work with the Occupy Philadelphia movement to feed the homeless, to convert vacant lots into productive community gardens," he said.
Kleinman says he will continue working with Occupy Philadelphia as he runs for office but says he will run on his own platform.
Allyson Schwartz contests ‘Occupy’ candidate’s bid
By DYLAN BYERS | 2/21/12 4:32 PM EST
Nate Kleinman, the Occupy Philadelphia protester who is running for Congress against Representative Allyson Schwartz, will have to head to court to defend his right to stay on the ballot.
Last Tuesday, Kleinman's campaign submitted more than 1,500 signatures to the election board, meeting the 1,000-signature requirement for entry in the race. But Schwartz's office is contesting those signatures, and with them Kleinman's right to run for Congress.
"We're going to court," Kleinman's deputy campaign manager Patrick Morgioni told me minutes after Schwartz's office filed its papers this afternoon.
"But I'm very optimistic," he added. "Case law -- and therefore the law -- is on our side."
I reached out to Schwartz's communications director Tali Israeli three times today to confirm, but was told on each occasion that she was unavailable. When I asked to speak with someone else in the office, I was told that Israeli was the only person who would be able to handle my questions.
Morgioni said that in addition to challenging 504 of Kleinman's signatures, Schwartz's campaign will argue that Morgioini, who collected roughly 500 signatures, was not a registered Democrat in the 13th district when he started petitioning.
But Morgioni says that challenge ignores case law from 2002 and 2004. "The case law states that someone becomes a registered elector when the voter registration form is mailed, not when it is processed," he said. Morgioni claims says he started petitioning on February 2; his voter registration went through on February 6.
"[Schwartz] is interfering with the democratic process," Morgioni said.
A court date has not been set.
UPDATE: Kleinman calls in to add the following:
“This is what conventional politicians do. [Schwartz] doesn't think that she can beat me on the issues, so she's trying to beat me with a frivilous challenge in court. I have every reason to believe that I am in the right on this. My name will be on the ballot on April 24, and if it's not I will win in a write in. The people deserve to have their voices heard.”
Re-Posted from Politico: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/02/allyson-schwartz-contests-occupy-candidates-bid-115109.html
Schwartz votes to raise Debt Ceiling to $16.7 Trillion
On August 1, 2011, Representative Allyson Schwartz voted to increase the debt ceiling by $2.4 Trillion which would take the federal debt from $14.3 Trillion to $16.7 Trillion. President Obama signed the bill into law on August 2, 2011. It is projected that this will only support federal spending until early 2013 since the government currently borrows 40% of everything it spends. After this deal, the debt is projected to increase to $22 Trillion by 2021, which the next-generation will have to address.
Schwartz votes to continue Fiscal Irresponsibility
On July 19, Representative Allyson Schwartz (PA-13) voted against Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011 (House Bill 2560). The bill still passed by a vote of 234 - 190 with bi-partisan support and is being sent to the U.S. Senate for consideration. The bill raises the national debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion to give time for the Federal Government to get its fiscal house in order. The bill defines specific spending limits for the 2012 budget, establishes a cap to federal spending as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product from 2013 to 2021, and requires Congress and the President to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment and send it to the States for ratification. This bill enables the country to re-gain control of spending while still meeting all of its obligations in the short-term.
With this latest vote, Schwartz continues her long record of fiscal recklessness. She is directly responsible for the huge national debt of this country and robbing prosperity from future generations who will have to repay it. Schwartz was named to the Budget Committee in 2005 and then to Vice-Chair of the committee in 2008. Since then, the federal government recorded the largest annual deficits in history and approximately $6 Trillion has been added to the total national debt. Also while she was in this critical role, Congress did not pass a budget for fiscal 2011, a basic duty of Congress and the only duty of the Budget Committee.
Schwartz Joins GOP to Repeal Provision of Obamacare
In a well-researched and unbiased piece of journalism, PoliticsPA reports that Allyson Schwartz is joining 77 Republican co-sponsors to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) in Obamacare. It is very interesting that she is repealing part of the massive bill that she claims to have written. The article highlights a possible conflict of interest because she has received $603,179 from health care professionals and PACs.
The article is reprinted from PoliticsPA:
Schwartz Joins GOP to Repeal Provision of Heath Care Law
By Keegan Gibson, Managing Editor
Rep. Allyson Schwartz, a strong supporter of the Affordable Care Act, has joined Congressional Republicans seeking to repeal a key element of the law.
At issue is the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), a panel charged with keeping down the costs of federal health programs.
Republicans have IPAB in their sights. Of the 81 cosponsors to the bill to repeal the IPAB, just four are Democrats including Schwartz. Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN), this bill’s sponsor, boasts a 97 percent party loyalty scoreaccording to the Washington Post.
Conversely, President Obama has been vocal in his support, even supporting expansions to the panel.
During the debate over health care, Republicans argued that Congress would never have the political will to cut Medicare spending. The IPAB was an important part of Democrats’ counterargument that the health care law would reduce the deficit.
Schwartz (D-Montgomery/Phila) voted for the health care law, but says the IPAB is an illegitimate cession of Congress’s oversight role to unelected bureaucrats.
“Congress is a representative body and must assume responsibility for legislating sound health care policy for Medicare beneficiaries, including those policies related to payment systems,” the Congresswoman wrote in her announcement of cosponsorship. “Abdicating this responsibility, whether to insurance companies or an unelected commission, would undermine our ability to represent the needs of the seniors and disabled in our communities.”
The IPAB is a fifteen member, bi-partisan panel charged with recommending changes to the payment structure of federal health programs. If costs grow faster than certain benchmarks, and Congress fails to implement its own payment plan, the board’s recommendations would take effect without direct Congressional approval.
Supporters, including the Washington Post Editorial Board, say that its an essential cost-cutting measure that takes politics out of the equation.
“Ordinarily, we cheer the increasingly rare occasions when Republicans and Democrats join forces to push legislation. Not this time. The concept behind the IPAB is to bring some intelligent cost-cutting discipline to Medicare reimbursement and insulate payment decisions from politics.”
In either case, cosponsoring H.R. 452 seems like an odd marriage for Schwartz. She was a vocal supporter of the health care reform law, and she has accused the GOP of seeking to end Medicare as we know it. Her position seemed so unlikely to one liberal writer that he suggested the Congresswoman could have a conflict of interestdue to her campaign contributions from the health care industry.
“Why does Schwartz want to get rid of IPAB?” wrote Johnathan Cohn of the New Republic. “In a letter announcing her intentions, Schwartz said it was undemocratic to hand over that authority to a commission. And that’s a legitimate (if, in my view, unpersuasive) argument. But a quick look at Schwartz’s campaign finance history, from OpenSecrets.Org, shows that she receives a great deal of support from the health care industry.”
“It’s the health care industry (hospitals, drug makers, insurers) that would feel the brunt of IPAB cost-cutting efforts, since the law prohibits the commission from altering benefits directly or imposing higher financial costs on beneficiaries. Of course, I have no way of knowing how, if at all, donations from such groups influence Schwartz on this matter.”
Since 2004, Schwartz has received $603,179 from health care professionals and PACs. The medical issue group is third in donations to Schwartz, behind the $1.8 million contributed by lawyers and law firms, and the $1.45 million from women’s issues donors. Also relevant to Medicare, Schwartz has received $524,900 from retirees.
Rep. Schwartz flatly rejects the suggestion that her position on the issue is a conflict of interest.
“I have strong relationships with the teaching hospital, the community hospital, researchers, that whole community,” she said.
“I’ve always been absolutely clear that I support legislation based on the issues and the substance. That being said, there are people who support me who agree with me, and there are people who support me who don’t agree with me.”
Schwartz also disagrees that IPAB is an essential element of health care reform. Rather, she says, it is a poorly constructed fail safe that comes last in line among reforms.
“The innovations [of the health care law] themselves will improve quality and outcomes, and reduce costs significantly in Medicare. It is far preferable to reduce costs by improve quality of care and reducing errors rather than reducing reimbursements for providers and hospitals. We’ve been trying that for ten years and it hasn’t worked.”
Schwartz throws a Brick at the 2012 Budget from Her Glass Tower
On April 6, Allyson Schwartz issued an email letter to her constituents: “How the Republican Budget Will Impact Our Seniors”. In her opposition to the bold Republican budget proposal for 2012 authored by the meticulous Representative Paul Ryan, Schwartz stakes her case on this claim: Medicare beneficiaries would no longer have access to a guaranteed set of health benefits.
For most people, it would be unconscionable to put such lies on paper but not for Allyson Schwartz. This is what it actually states from Paul Ryan’s budget proposal:
“there would be no disruptions in the current Medicare fee-for-service program for those currently enrolled or becoming eligible in the next ten years”
As a matter of fact, the proposal provides seniors a choice in 2022 to stay in the existing program or opt into the new Medicare program which will give seniors the freedom to select a health care plan that works best for them.
Maybe Allyson Schwartz is attacking the proposal because Paul Ryan is doing something that she could not do when she was Vice-Chairman of the Budget Committee: actually propose a budget. Schwartz completely abdicated her responsibility last year and did not pass a budget for 2011, and we are dealing with consequences now with a possible government shutdown.
Or maybe Allyson Schwartz is attacking the proposal because Paul Ryan is doing something that she could not do when she was a member of the Ways and Means Committee which oversees Medicare: propose real and significant fixes to a program that is going bankrupt to ensure seniors won't lose their health care. Instead, Schwartz put her head in the sand and did absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact, she significantly hurt Medicare as an architect of Obamacare which removed $528 Billion from the the Medicare system and will obviously accelerate the health care crisis for seniors.
Schwartz passed over for Top Spot on Budget Committee
As further evidence that the Democratic party has lost confidence in Representative Allyson Schwartz, she was passed over for the top spot for the Democrats on the House Budget Committee. Instead, the party chose Representative Chris Van Hollen (MD) as the Ranking Member - the highest position for the minority party.
In the previous Budget Committee, which was controlled by the Democrats, the Chairman was John Spratt (D-SC) and the Vice-Chairman was Allyson Schwartz. But John Spratt was one of the many Democratic casualties in the 2010 elections thus Schwartz became the next in-line for the top Democratic spot. On the surface, it is surprising that Schwartz was not given the job, especially when Van Hollen was not even a member of the Budget Committee.
When examining Schwartz's record as second-in-command, it is not as dramatic that she was not chosen for the top Democratic job on the committee that oversees Federal Government spending. While she was Vice-Chairman, the federal government recorded the largest annual deficits in history and the total debt is now over $14 Trillion and climbing. Also Congress did not pass a budget for fiscal 2011, a basic duty of Congress and the only duty of the Budget Committee. She was directly responsible for this incredible fiscal irresponsibility and one of the reasons that Democrats lost big in the elections. Maybe the Democratic party recognized this so they selected someone that could actually be effective in the budgeting process.