Zack Space’s Failed Leadership Deserves Criticism

Zack Space still doesn’t get it.

It’s bad enough that he helped liberal Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and President Obama take over the medical decisions of private Ohioans.

But then, when I pointed this out in a recent opinion column, Space responded by claiming that the criticisms of his outrageous and controversial vote are the real problem. Sound familiar?

Big government liberals like Barak Obama and his close ally Zack Space love to make decisions about our private lives but hate to be criticized when they do it.

Regardless of his attempt to “pass the buck,” responsibility for bad positions stops squarely with Zack Space. And his positions deserve criticism. Remember that while Space and other members of Congress mettle in our private lives, they’ve conveniently exempted themselves.

While Space told one group of voters that he was willing to “subject himself” to the healthcare plan adopted by Congress, it’s likely he’ll continue to have access to the nation’s best doctors at little cost through the Congressional Office of the Attending Physician.

ABC News and CBS News recently reported on the on-site Navy medical clinic that stands at the ready to provide “a wealth of primary care medical services” to Congress. With four Navy doctors, a host of medical staff and national specialists on call with no appointment or wait, Space need not concern himself with the day-to-day realities you and I face to get, and pay for, healthcare. In fact, we’re footing the bill for our own healthcare and much of Zack Space’s expensive and exclusive Congressional perk.

The problem isn’t criticism, as Space would suggest. The real problem is that he isn’t listening to Ohioans. While the majority of Americans and Ohioans are opposed to the healthcare proposals pending in Congress, Zack Space continues to ignore our concerns.

Worse yet, Space’s taxing healthcare proposal has shifted focus from the most important issues facing American families today–jobs and the economy.

Zack Space probably won’t like criticism on these issues either, but consider what’s happened over the last 11 months. Nationally, we now have an unemployment rate of 10.2% with 16 million Americans out of work. Space’s healthcare plan will cost over $1 trillion and will result in over $700 billion in new taxes on small businesses and citizens. Space’s bill, in fact, threatens another 5.5 million American jobs.

Space’s “solution” to economic problems was to support the stimulus bill. It was the stimulus bill that resulted in an average of $294,885.07 being spent to create or retain a job in Ohio’s 28 congressional districts. Problem is, there are only 18 districts in Ohio, not 28! And, 83% of the money went to districts with Democrat members of Congress. Apparently, politicizing jobs and spending is just fine with Space and his liberal pals.

Instead of complaining about being criticized, Zack Space should get out and see the tremendous potential for growth in eastern and southeastern Ohio. The solution isn’t rocket science – cut the red tape, let small business owners create jobs and let employees keep more of their hard earned dollars.

We live at the literal crossroads of America interstate highways 70 and 77. Our business owners have the ability to produce and distribute goods to the Gulf Coast, Atlantic Ocean, Great Lakes and the Mississippi River within one business day.

So what did Zack Space do to capitalize on this resource? He resigned from the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and Highway Subcommittee. He changed committee assignments so he could serve on the Energy and Commerce Committee where he voted to cost us coal, manufacturing, farm and transportation jobs with Nancy Pelosi’s Cap and Tax program.

Passing the buck isn’t the kind of leadership we need. Working against our needs and interests isn’t the kind of leadership we need. And creating huge new bureaucracies and hundreds of billions in new spending that our grandchildren will be responsible for definitely isn’t the kind of leadership we need.

XXX

Jeanette Moll is a former magistrate who’s currently running for Congress in Ohio’s 18th District that encompasses 16 counties of eastern and southeastern Ohio.

Paid for by Moll for Congress

Recent Limitations on Mammograms Provide Glimpse into the Next Step for Zack Space’s Government Health Care Program

The Titanic is steaming ahead and the iceberg is in sight. Will we ignore the warning signs and pretend the collision won’t do much damage?

The Titanic in this case is the $1.3 trillion government health care program passed this month with the support of our liberal Democrat congressman, Zack Space. Space’s program will increase the role of the federal government in your day-to-day life. The iceberg is the massive power transferred to bureaucrats who will eventually determine what medical services we can get. Like the tip of an iceberg, Space’s program doesn’t look scary at first glance, but the danger runs far.

This week, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, which included no cancer specialists, issued a report recommending that long-time guidelines for breast cancer screening be reversed. They said most women under 50 shouldn’t have a mammogram, thus eliminating the use of the best tool we have to detect breast cancer in its beginning stages. The panel then told women age 50 to 74 to only get mammograms every other year, instead of every year. The panel also determined that there’s no cost benefit for elderly women to have mammograms at all.

The cruel irony of this heartless decision being announced this week was made clear by the passing of Stefanie Spielman. Stefanie raged a courageous battle against breast cancer for more than a decade, while raising awareness and millions of dollars for research to find a cure. Sadly, Stefanie left her husband, Ohio State football standout Chris Spielman, to raise their four children alone.

Like most Ohioans, my own life has been touch by the struggles and losses caused by breast cancer. I’m thankful that my aunt is a survivor but have also experienced the devastating loss of one of my best friends and another aunt.

What’s most troubling about the federal panel’s recommendations is that they are based mainly on cost saving. This is a harbinger of things to come, given Zack Space’s support of the controversial legislation that will invite federal bureaucrats to use similar cost-saving measures to affect your family’s health care.

Zack Space and his liberal Democrat cohorts in Washington say they want to provide more health coverage to millions of Americans, a worthy goal if only there were money available to pay for it. Because the federal government doesn’t have that money, panels like the one reducing mammograms will undoubtedly try to cut costs by limiting other medical procedures.

Congresswoman Candice Miller of Michigan noted that when cost is considered, the question becomes “why have all these mammograms because it is very costly, they could test 2,000 women and only one is positive. I guess it doesn’t matter. If you’re the one, it matters.” Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee went further, pointing out “This is how rationing begins…and this is where we start getting a bureaucrat between you and your physician.”

James Thrall, a Harvard medical professor and chairman of the American College of Radiology said, “I fear we are entering an era of deliberate decisions where we choose to trade people’s lives for money.”

And if you don’t think the Zack Space government health program will lead to a complete government takeover of healthcare, you need only to recall the promise made by Zack Space’s friend and ally, Barack Obama. Speaking to the labor union AFL-CIO in 2003, Mr. Obama said “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program … a single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”

Now that Zack Space and Barack Obama have their Democrat majorities in place, they can finally achieve Mr. Obama’s government run health care. The only thing standing in their way is us — you and me. We cannot afford for medical decisions to be treated as merely a matter of dollars. We must turn the ship around.

House Passed Healthcare: A Legacy of Big Government

Thousands of concerned Americans traveled to our Nation’s Capitol to pay an emergency house call on Congress prior to the House of Representatives’ vote on Pelosicare this weekend. Those who could not make the trip, like me, rallied at district offices. Zack Space met with some of the Ohio delegation in D.C. telling them point blank that despite their concerns, he was going to vote to pass the bill as written. He did just that on Saturday, voting for the massive expansion of government that seeks to takeover one-sixth of our economy.

The battle is not over. The U.S. Senate has yet to pass legislation and the expectation is that the Senate version will be vastly different than the House bill. Thus, a conference committee of the two houses of Congress would then be called upon to try to hammer out a compromise version that each would then need to pass. As the process wages on, be sure to check out Congressman Mike Pence’s call to action at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT7xfoSiH5Q.

As I have stated in numerous venues, we can all agree that our current system would be improved by reforms that make quality healthcare coverage affordable and accessible for every American citizen; that allows Americans to keep coverage they like; that ensures that patients and their doctors, not bureaucrats, make medical decision; and that improves American lives though effective prevention, wellness and disease management while developing new treatments and cures.

Americans want lower costs but Pelosicare will serve only to grow government at a cost of more than a trillion dollars. The bill includes new spending that grows faster than the revenues being generated to pay for it creating a massive, long-term unfounded federal mandate that imperils the fiscal future of our nation. It includes billions in new taxes that will be paid for by working class families like yours and mine, small businesses, and manufacturers. This is despite the fact that we are in the midst of a recession with Ohio’s unemployment rate in the double digits.

By increasing payroll taxes, the bill imposes a job-killing tax that the Congressional Budget Office previously stated, “is likely to reduce employment” with low-wage workers being effected most. And the bill reduces Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars thereby reducing benefits to seniors and reducing their healthcare choices.

The bill is designed to add bureaucracy to centralize healthcare decision making in Washington, D.C. rather than ensuring that patients and doctors make medical decisions. With tens of thousands of new federal employees, the bill “creates dozens of boards, bureaus and commissions in charge of coming up with new regulations and red tape that will inevitably make healthcare in this country more expensive,” stated Congressman John Boehner of Ohio.

What we continue to need are real solutions. First, we need to lower costs by eliminating over-spending through tort reform by eliminating junk medical malpractice lawsuits. Healthcare costs can be further reduced by extending tax savings to those who do not have employer-provided insurance. Additionally, by allowing small businesses to band together, they can offer healthcare insurance at lower costs.

Healthcare coverage needs to expand availability and accessibility to make it easier for Americans to keep coverage regardless of changes in or loss of a job. Healthcare coverage should not be tied solely to employment. Further, by allowing parent’s heath policies to cover their children until the age of 25, the number of uninsured Americans could be reduced by up to 7 million. This gives high school and college graduates time to locate employment and their own coverage without gaps.

A key to lowering costs is providing a market-based approach as found in other industries such as purchasing insurance across state lines. The federal government currently lets their employees evaluate various plans each year and pick the one that works for them. We should have the same opportunity. Further, by giving patients access to health care information so that they can identify and select providers who deliver high quality at a lower cost will cause competition that lowers costs.

Continue to contact Congressman Zack Space and tell him your thoughts on his support for a bill that will cause higher health care costs, bureaucrats in charge of medical decisions, soaring deficits, and fewer jobs. Our district deserves a new voice for less government, less taxes, and more jobs.

Paid for by Moll for Congress

Second Amendment: Past, Present, and Future

Please Join me on Thursday, October 29 at 7:00 p.m. at Kaufman Auction House, 3149 SR 39 at the Holmes County Expo Center where I will be speaking on Second Amendment issues. You can also join me at upcoming townhalls on October 28 at 7:00 p.m. at Timber Run Grange, 4000 West Pike, Zanesville or November 10 at 6:00 p.m. at Cassell Station Fire Department, 4500 Peters Creek Road, Cambridge.

Sometimes in life you get to do incredible things like be a small part of history in the making. I got to do just that as an author of an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case of District of Columbia v. Dick A. Heller. This case was the first time in U.S. history that the Court interpreted the scope and meaning of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. I wrote my brief on behalf of similarly situated Ohio Concealed Permit Holders and the U.S. Bill of Rights Foundation of which Dick Heller, the named Plaintiff, was a member.

We, in America, often take our rights and freedoms for granted. The Heller case protected our constitutional rights by a one-vote margin. Thereby highlighting the fact that judicial appointments have important and long-lasting impacts on the laws of our Nation. The nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life. Their decisions and philosophy regarding the role of the judiciary have far-reaching, long-term impacts.

The Heller Court stated “”[I]t is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.” The Court determined that “people,” as contained within the Bill of Rights means the class of persons who are part of a national community. “Keep” means to possess and “bear” means to carry. Thus, the Bill of Rights guarantees the individual right to possess and carry weapons in the case of confrontation.

This right, as contained in the Second Amendment, protected a pre-existing right. Thus, we, as individuals, had this right prior to the Bill of Rights, however, the Second Amendment ensured it would not be “infringed.”

The Court found that the D.C. law which acted as a prohibition “in the place where the importance of lawful defense of self, family, and property is most acute” (our homes) violates the Second Amendment.

My brief noted that it was due to overreaching governmental intrusion that the laws of our nation were formed. “The right to keep and bear arms was fundamental among these. Our founders deemed it so important that this right was placed at number two in the Bill of Rights. How can an individual be free if he is unable to secure his own home? Never did the founding fathers intend our citizenry to be reliant on an overreaching, all inclusive government to protect our individual rights. Rather, the powers of the government were to be limited so that the government served the people, not that the people served the government.”

Further, the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion had been protected by the Supreme Court in prior decisions. This is consistent with our English history that noted that a man’s home is his castle. Ohio’s Castle Doctrine, as passed in an amendment to our Concealed Carry law, went into effect on June 10, 2008 thereby protecting the right of Ohioans to protect their family, self, and home.

Now, a year after the Heller decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear the landmark case of McDonald v. Chicago. This case will decide the application of the Second Amendment to the states. The McDonald case has major implications relating to the legality of restrictive gun laws in Chicago and other cities across America. The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case, to be argued early next year, gives Second Amendment supporters the hope that this fundamental freedom will not be infringed by unreasonable state and local laws.

Paid for by Moll for Congress

Upcoming Townhalls – Please come and invite friends!

After the sucess of our townhall meeting on health care, I’ve decided to expand the concept. Please join me for an upcoming townhall where you’ll have the opportunity to express your concerns regarding the path on which our current leaders are taking us.

October 22 – Newcomerstown – 6:00 p.m. at April’s Country Kitch’n, 640 Heller Drive.

October 28 – Zanesville- 7:00 p.m. at Timber Run Grange, 4000 West Pike.

November 10 – Cambridge – 6:00 p.m. at Cassell Station Fire Department, 4500 Peters Creek Road.

E-mail Info@MollForCongress.org for more details.