Cosponsors of H.R. 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009, stand at 282 representatives, and the push is on to get at least eight more to add their names to the bill. Once that happens, the bill can no longer be held in committee by the Chairman (Rep. Barney Frank) but must pass to the floor for debate and vote. Now, when nearly two-thirds of the House backs Rep. Ron Paul’s “fed transparency” measure, Rep. Frank is left with no choice but jump on the bandwagon, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

Nearly two-thirds of the House has co-sponsored Mr. Paul’s bill. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke opposes the bill as written, saying it would compromise the Fed’s ability to set interest rates free of political interference. “A perceived loss of monetary-policy independence could raise fears about future inflation, leading to higher long-term interest rates and reduced economic and financial stability,” Mr. Bernanke testified last month.

Not that Rep. Frank wants to jump on the bandwagon. Pressured by the magic number “290″ closing in fast, Frank is searching for some sort of deal to soften the potential blow to the reputations of many, many powerful friends in the Federal Reserve.

Mr. Frank has said any audit would release details of Fed transactions with financial institutions only after a lag. “If that was made instantly, you would have a lot people trading off of that and it would have too much impact on the market,” he said earlier this month. “So we will probably have that data released after a time period of several months, enough time so it wouldn’t be market sensitive.”

Rep. Frank’s concerns are superfluous simply because the quantity of records to be investigated is so vast, it will take years to sift through before a complete picture of the last decade can be put together.

I myself can’t help but wonder what Rep. Ron Paul will have to deliver in return for Frank’s favor:

In an interview Friday, Mr. Paul said Mr. Frank agreed to allow a vote on the bill and to work on language that would allow the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to audit the Fed’s monetary-policy operations. While details are unresolved, the discussions increase the likelihood that some version of Paul’s bill will pass the House. “Barney told me, ‘It’s going to come. You’re going to get what you want,’ ” Paul said. “We’re going to have some hearings and we’ll get a vote.”

Opponents of H.R. 1027, especially Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, insist secrecy is the keystone to banking success. However, the Federal Reserve is only one of thousands of banks to turn over private account information to the IRS every year in order to track possible money laundering and tax evasion. So the concept of banking privacy is really a two-way street.

Rep. Paul ensures that specific private data will not become public knowledge, but just the workings of the banking complex. Especially during the height of the mortgage boom, when the Fed played a central role in disbursing vast amounts of credit to already wobbly enterprises.

Naturally, Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s name is still nowhere to be found on the list of co-sponsors. Letters to her office from constituents always come back marked “I will keep your opinion in mind.” As this is critical work to uncover one of the gravest disasters in America’s financial history, the Congresswoman’s absence could be considered obstructive. But why?

As reported in The Politico, Sen. John McCain said Wednesday night that the raucous town hall crowds opposing the Democratic push for a health care  overhaul are proof that the beginnings of a “revolution” are bubbling up. McCain told Fox News’s Sean Hannity during an interview that he has “never” seen anything like the “peaceful revolution taking place” in opposition to President Barack Obama’s push for health care reform.

“There is a grass-roots uprising the likes of which I have never seen,” he said. “There’s anger; there’s concern about the future. There’s concern about the generational theft that we’ve committed by running up unconscionable and unsustainable deficits.”

As an example, McCain pointed to a woman who told him during a recent town hall that the health care debate has left her “worried about my freedom.”

“What she was talking about was her right to choose what kind of health care she wants, what physician she wants to see, when she can see a doctor and when she can’t,” the former GOP presidential nominee said. “She epitomized, in many respects, the deep and abiding concern out here and a revolt against a government-run health system.”

McCain knocked Democrats for being “in denial that Americans are upset and concerned” and for not understanding “the depth of the passion that’s out there.”

“They dismissed the tea parties, they dismissed your freedom rallies, they dismissed the real, vocal opposition to this health care plan,” the Arizona senator said. “But I don’t think they’re going to be able to dismiss it for too much longer.”

Most likely, Rep. Rosa DeLauro and her fellow veteran incumbent Democrats will try to dismiss their constituents as long as possible, perhaps in order to collect more campaign money from the nation’s largest insurers, or perhaps blame opposition on some vast, right-wing conspiracy, as her colleague Rep. Courtney recently did.

The White House Budget Office has admitted the bleakest estimates on the scale of the budget deficit (now standing $2 trillion higher than it forecasted a few months back) are correct. Now the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas W. Elmendorf has released a statement on the issue. Supporters and donors to Rep. Rosa DeLauro should take a long, hard look at what Mr. Elmendorf is saying, especially since the Congresswoman has been the most vocal supporter of uncontrolled spending:

Today CBO issued its annual summer update of the budget and economic outlook. CBO estimates that the federal budget deficit for 2009 will total $1.6 trillion, which, at 11.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), will be the highest since World War II. That deficit figure results from a combination of weak revenues and elevated spending associated with the economic downturn and financial turmoil. The deficit has been boosted by various federal policies implemented in response, including the stimulus legislation and aid for the financial, housing, and automotive sectors.

The Boaz ItsHaky for Congress campaign has consistently predicted this would happen, owing to the anticipated reduction in tax revenues. And we’re unhappy to be proven correct. But why has our Congresswoman failed to admit her spend, spend, spend policies are simply wrong?

Earlier, the GOP House Leader Boehner released a statement on the New Federal Deficit Projections:

“Today’s reports confirm what the White House has been trying to hide: the Democrats’ out-of-control spending binge is burying our children and grandchildren under a mountain of unsustainable debt. Instead of putting the brakes on Washington’s spending habits as they promised they’d do, Democrats have stepped on the accelerator and spent taxpayer dollars with reckless abandon all year, refusing to make tough choices and putting all the sacrifice on future generations. That’s not leadership; it’s negligence.

“The costly government-run health care plan put forth by President Obama and Speaker Pelosi is just the latest in a long line of expensive Democratic experiments that will add to the deficit, raise taxes on families and small businesses, and cost more American jobs. It’s time for the Administration and congressional Democrats to face the consequences of this dangerous fiscal agenda and change course.

“Republicans have proposed better solutions to curb out-of-control spending and control the debt on behalf of middle-class families, including a fiscally-responsible federal budget that includes strict annual caps on federal spending and forces Congress to live within its means on a yearly basis, something the Democratic-controlled Congress has refused to do. Republicans are ready to work in a bipartisan way to get control of our budget. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, let’s hope this Administration and the Democrats in charge of this Congress are as well.”

And the former CBO director doubts new deficit numbers to be released on Tuesday even before they’re released:

Former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin says the Obama administration’s claim that the Obama’s updated figures on the deficit that will be released Tuesday are “spin and nothing more.”

“Bottom line, the budget outlook is worse, and dangerous,” Holtz-Eakin writes to Boehner.

Times are getting tougher for the world’s most secretive and unaccountable banking cartel. According to Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve must make records about emergency lending to financial institutions public within five days because it failed to convince a judge the documents should be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska rejected the central bank’s argument that the records aren’t covered by the law because their disclosure would harm borrowers’ competitive positions. The collateral lists “are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression,” according to the lawsuit that led to the ruling.

Openness would be a positive development, but it is unlikely to be as clear as we hope because it would harm the Federal Reserve’s advantageous position with some of the biggest bailout recipients, most of whose former employees now work for the Fed.

Calls for Healthcare Reform have been intensified by the Democrat leadership, and have rightly been rankling the conservatives of America. There are many examples of socialized medicine in the world. And, if their templates are laid over the United States, none of them will serve our people.

There’s a simple reason for this: Demographics.

In poor communist countries of the east, low-quality service is preferable to no service. And, the elites have access to private clinics in most cases. In the more affluent socialist countries of the west, service is excellent and an in some cases, operates more cheaply than here.

In both cases, the spread of wealth among the people is homogeneous. That is, in places like Denmark and Sweden, most people are middle class, with small number of rich and poor. In Kyrgyzstan, virtually all are in poverty, including the physicians.

In the United States, however, there is no homogeneity. America is blessed with the world’s largest upper class by percentage, but also contains a very large lower class. In between is an embattled middle class.

The challenge of healthcare policy is to offer service that middle and upper class is used to receiving while also offering high quality service to a needy lower class. The goal is to make it all affordable.

In order to reduce waste, redundancy, and abuse (which alone accounts for more than one-third of Medicare’s costs), the healthcare system of the United States must be redesigned from the top down. Continuing with Congress’ messy method of layering entitlement programs on one another is only making the system more bloated, more expensive.

Frightful as radical reform may seem to conservatives, its the best way to bring down costs. The simple truth about America’s healthcare is that there is no free market involved. Medicare, Medicaid, the V.A., and Federal employee insurance programs are socialized medicine. They account for more than one-quarter of all healthcare in the United States.

When taking into account state programs, mandated benefits, HIPAA, COBRA, and all of the other rules and regulations, limitations and liabilities, the other 75 percent of America’s healthcare is firmly under the government’s thumb. That’s why costs are skyrocketing without an increase in quality.

That is why Boaz ItsHaky continues to support the Republican healthcare initiative called the Patient’s Choice Act (PCA).  The PCA rejects a single federal solution and empowers the states to form policy and promote state-based health exchanges, where consumers can access a real health care market, with protections for lower-income Americans. The system is state-based rather than a federal program because the needs of each state differ so greatly. In addition:

• PCA emphasizes prevention and wellness, with increased accountability for federal programs, incentives that reward results, and educational outreach driven by sound science.
• PCA modernizes Medicaid, putting it on a sound financial path, removing the stigma from Medicaid, giving Medicaid patients real choice for the first time, and roughly doubling the number of providers which needy families on Medicaid can access.
• PCA gives states options for health courts and expert review panels to reduce medical liability junk lawsuits and reduce the need for “defensive medicine”
• PCA creates a new public/private enterprise which will give all patients, consumers, and researchers substantially increased transparency on price and quality.
• Americans who like their employer-sponsored health benefits will be able to keep what they have. But individuals should make that decision, instead of being victims of arbitrary tax rules or staying in a job only because they can’t afford to lose their insurance.