Thread: ALIPAC Newsmax: Wilson Apologizes, But Still Thinks Obama Wa

Wilson Apologizes, But Still Thinks Obama Wasn't Honest

Thursday, September 10, 2009 1:48 PM

By: David A. Patten Article Font Size


Rep. Joe Wilson is apologizing for blurting out "You lie!" during President Obama's nationally televised address Wednesday night — but he's not backing down one bit about Obama being wrong in saying healthcare reform won't subsidize insurance for illegals.

"This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the President's remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the healthcare bill," the South Carolina Republican said in a statement issued shortly after the president's speech to a joint session of Congress ended. "While I disagree with the President's statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility."

Reaction to Wilson's outburst came fast and furious. Republicans distanced themselves from the breach of protocol — Sen. John McCain of Arizona decried it as "totally disrespectful" adding, "there is no place for it in that setting — and House Democrats actually called for Wilson to be censored.

Efforts by Democrats to pillory Wilson for doing the same thing Town Hall protesters did around the nation during the August recess — speaking the truth as they see it to those in power — may backfire. Already, the nation's attention is turning to the actual issue Wilson raised — an accusation that billions of taxpayers' dollars will go to pay for health insurance coverage for undocumented workers, if the current reform proposals go through.

Supporters of so-called "Obamacare" point out that the measures being drafted all specifically forbid illegal aliens from gaining coverage. But conservatives say those stipulations are useless without the normal enforcement procedures which Democrats omitted.

"Obama is correct," Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, tells Newsmax. "The legislation states illegals won't get the affordability credits [to pay for their healthcare]. But Wilson's comment is correct in that the normal enforcement mechanism was excluded from the bill. I think that's the fundamental question."

Camarota's organization has estimated that due to the lack of enforcement provisions — which were specifically excluded from the legislation when it was being drafted — healthcare reform would benefit 6.6 million illegals at a cost of some $31 billion.

"In that sense it is disingenuous," Camarota tells Newsmax, "to argue that the bill is excluding illegal immigrants. I'm not going to say lie. It's disingenuous. It's not entirely correct. And that's a big deal."

Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., had offered an amendment that would have prevented illegal aliens from receiving government-subsidized healthcare under the proposed plan.

The House Ways and Means Committee nixed the Heller amendment by a 26-to-15 vote along straight party lines.

Many states give illegals drivers licenses, which will be sufficient to get free healthcare under the plan.

Critics also contend that millions of illegals already have counterfeit Social Security cards or other fraudulent documents. There also is no enforcement mechanism in the legislation to prevent illegals who use fake IDs from also obtaining taxpayer-subsidized health insurance.

GOP representatives introduced the amendment to provide a way to weed out non-citizens from the program.

A description of the amendment on Heller's Web site states, "The underlying bill is insufficient for the purpose of preventing illegal aliens from accessing the bill’s proposed benefits, as it does not provide mechanisms allowing those administering the program to ensure illegal aliens cannot access taxpayer-funded subsidies and benefits."

The Heller amendment would have required that individuals applying for the public healthcare option would be subject to two systems used to verify immigration status already in use by the government: The Income and Eligibility Verification System (IEVS) and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program.

The two systems cross-reference Social Security numbers and employment information to establish whether an individual is a U.S. citizen.

That coverage for illegals has become an explosive issue is not surprising, considering that a recent Rasmussen Reports poll found an overwhelming 80 percent of Americans oppose covering illegals in any public healthcare bill.

Moreover, anti-immigration activists say the availability of low-cost benefits, including health insurance and in-state tuition, will only lure more immigrants to come to the United States.

Political analyst Dick Morris, in his recently released best-selling book “Catastropheâ€

Added to Homepage:
http://www.alipac.us/article-4502--0-0.html

CONTACT JOE WILSON (Note, his website may be down due to high traffic)
Wilson, Joe (R) SC 2nd
Telephone 202-225-2452 Fax 202-225-2455
Website: http://joewilson.house.gov/
Contact: http://www.house.gov/formwilson/IMA/issue.htm

Sorry - the following was first posted separately by Populist at:
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-170357.html

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Fact-Checking Politifact on Immigration [Ramesh Ponnuru]

PolitiFact claims that Joe Wilson was wrong, and Obama is telling the truth about illegal immigrants. But PolitiFact ignores the central argument made by Wilson's camp: that the House bill does not require that the legal status of people who receive "affordability credits" be verified. (Democrats in committee voted down an amendment to require verification.) Here's the entirety of PolitiFact's discussion of this issue, in a fairly long piece about Wilson vs. Obama: "The bill specifically says that people in the United States illegally are not eligible for tax credits, on page 132, section 242." So what? The law "says" that people aren't supposed to be here illegally in the first place, after all.

PolitiFact also reports, "Right now, most states have laws on the books that require hospitals to treat severely ill people who arrive at the hospital, regardless of immigration status, and we didn't see anything that would change those laws, either." I'm not sure what they're talking about, but federal law has included that provision for more than two decades.

09/10 02:11 PM

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/? ... E2MjcxMDI=

Wilson vs. Obama

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

"You lie!" (in response to President Obama saying health reform would not insure illegal immigrants.)

Joe Wilson on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 in the audience at a joint session of Congress

Joe Wilson of South Carolina said Obama lied, but he didn't

We suspect it's rare that the president gets heckled during a speech to a joint session of Congress, but Rep. Joe Wilson didn't hold back.

"You lie!" shouted the South Carolina Republican. This was in response to President Barack Obama's statements on illegal immigrants.

"There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants," Obama said. "This, too, is false — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally."

So who's right here? Wilson or Obama?

Incidentally, Wilson apologized for the outburst after the speech, but said he still disagreed with Obama's statement.

We've been monitoring claims about health care reform and illegal immigrants for some time now. Most notably, a chain e-mail claimed that page 50 of the House bill gave free health care to illegal immigrants. That page didn't say that. Rather, it included a generic nondiscrimination clause that said insurers may not discriminate with regard to "personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services." So we rated the chain e-mail's claim Pants on Fire .

We read all 1,000-plus pages of the health care bill and were struck by the fact that it is largely silent on health care for illegal immigrants. Keep in mind that experts estimated there were 6.8 million uninsured illegal immigrants in the United States in 2007, out of a total of 11.9 million illegal immigrants. Right now, there are laws on the books that require hospitals to treat severely ill people who arrive at the hospital, regardless of immigration status, and we didn't see anything that would change those laws, either.

Most illegal immigrants are also now excluded from Medicaid, the government-run health care for the poor. We didn't see anything that would change that.

One place where the bill does mention immigration status is for "affordability credits." These are tax credits for people of modest means need to buy health insurance. The credits would help them buy insurance on a national health insurance exchange. The bill specifically says that people in the United States illegally are not eligible for tax credits, on page 132, section 242.

Still, given all that, we have heard from people who said that other aspects of reform could benefit illegal immigrants.

One of the most detailed responses was from the anti-immigration group Federation for American Immigration Reform, called FAIR. You can read their statement on the matter on their Web site.

Primarily, they argue that illegal immigrants would be permitted to purchase insurance on the national health insurance exchange because the bill does not include a mechanism for verifying citizenship. So illegal immigrants would have the chance to purchase insurance in the public option, a government-run health care plan that would offer basic coverage at a low price.

FAIR also argues for more robust verification measures for the affordability credit and making sure that illegal immigrant parents won't be able to receive coverage if their citizen children are eligible.

FAIR has a point that illegal immigrants would likely be able to buy insurance on the national health insurance exchange. We don't see anything in the bills that would hinder that. A Congressional Research Service report issued Aug. 25, 2009, confirmed our observation. The House bill "does not contain any restrictions on noncitzens participating in the Exchange — whether the noncitizens are legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently," the report said.

But it's worth pointing out that illegal immigrants participating in the exchange would be paying for their insurance like everyone else. That's similar to the current system — we're not aware of any particular restrictions that stop illegal immigrants from buying private insurance now. Under health care reform, illegal immigrants would be able to buy private insurance or the public option.

When we look at all of this evidence, it seems that health reform leaves in place the status quo on illegal immigration, and certainly does not provide any new benefits particularly for illegal immigrants. We hope to look at this issue more in the days ahead, because some hospitals are concerned about recouping their costs for treating illegal immigrants, and we're curious to know more about that problem and how it might or might not be solved by reform.

The best argument that we find that health reform would help illegal immigrants is that some might be able to purchase the public option — if it passes, and it might not — on the new health insurance exchange. They would purchase that at full cost. Obama said, "The reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally," which Wilson said was a "lie." Actually, Obama can make a pretty thorough case that reform doesn't apply to those here illegally. We don't find the public option argument enough to make the case that Obama "lied." We rate Wilson's statement False.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... he-didn't/

Judge Andrew Napolitano said in a FOX News interview that any public option providing health care would have to include illegal aliens regardless of the wording in any bill because to exclude them would be held unconstitutional.

The best argument that we find that health reform would help illegal immigrants is that some might be able to purchase the public option — if it passes, and it might not

It better NOT PASS with us screaming at the top of our lungs NO!!!!

Saw this in a comment on another site, (author unknown). I so wish Sen Wilson - or someone in Congress - would publicly say something like this. The time for civility is over. Things are way too bad now to worry about proper protocol.

Congress is demanding Joe Wilson apologize to them on the floor.

What an opportunity for Joe to say what needs to be said.

1. I apologize for not speaking out sooner.

2. I apologize that the American people have been victimized by this anti-American Congress

3. I apologize that hard working Americans are now afraid for their lives and livelihood because of this President.

4. I apologize to good Americans who trusted their representatives to ... REPRESENT THEM!

5. I apologize to future generations for the debt and bondage with which this Congress has shackled them.

6. I apologize to the Constitution of the United States for the offenses Congress has perpetrated against it.

7. I apologize to the Military who fight and die defending a nation of whiners, socialists and beggars.