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Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That's how much it cost for a delegation of 59 people - led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi along with members of Congress, staff and in some cases spouses and kids - to go to Copenhagen, site of the Climate Summit, just before Christmas.
House Speaker Pelosi attends a press conference at the Copenhagen Climate Summit.
House Speaker Pelosi attends a press conference at the Copenhagen Climate Summit.
CBS News reports that for 21 Congressmen, food and rooms for two nights cost $4,400; and the Total hotel bill - including meeting rooms - was more than $400,000.
Pelosi used two military jets for herself and her party at a cost of more than $100,000 dollars in flight time.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money. This has nothing to do with the Obama administration officials who went to Denmark to actually attend the summit.
Pelosi filed the required expense report - but so far has failed to explain why it was necessary for her and her colleagues to make the trip to Copenhagen in the first place. Her arrogance is absolutely breathtaking. As for the high hotel charges, Pelosi's office says those who stayed two nights were charged a six-night minimum at the five-star Marriott. Information that was probably available before Pelosi and the freeloaders made their vacation plans.
Note to the House Speaker: We have skyrocketing deficits and national debt in this country. The President is talking about reigning in discretionary spending. I wonder if that would have included this junket by Pelosi and her colleagues. I would be curious to know where Nancy Pelosi gets her sense of entitlement to simply blow hundreds of thousands of dollars of our money at Christmas time so she and her colleagues can take a little trip to Copenhagen.
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Matt writes:
Of course she should be required to explain the trip. Would you not require your employee to explain an expense that was unnecessary in another business? Doesn't she realize that she is our employee?
Craig in Florida writes:
She should, but she won't. Nancy Pelosi is clearly of the opinion that she is "above the masses!" She thinks she is better than the rest of the American people. She is arrogant, dishonest and frankly, not all that smart. Most Americans cringe whenever they see her face on the television screen because she will almost certainly embarrass them.
Vicki from Paso Robles, California writes:
Yes, she should be called on the carpet for her absolute disregard for what is happening to the people in this country… As a Californian, I can only hope that the people in her district are paying attention and watching this arrogant, nasty woman in action. Unfortunately, I do not live in her district so I cannot vote against her!
Chris writes:
What a foolish woman and a disgraceful act. Ms. Pelosi preaches fiscal responsibility, but it will be her actions that will long linger in the minds of independents (I'm included).
Maria writes:
While Miss Pelosi and friends were having fun at our expense, most of us were deciding whether or not to exchange Christmas gifts. Miss Pelosi should be ashamed of herself for squandering tax money. She is a servant for the people that elected her. She is not royalty.
Tom from Mequon, Wisconsin writes:
Jack, She absolutely should have to explain. I just spent a few days in Las Vegas. Want to bet that I had to explain to my wife where OUR money went?Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That's how much it cost for a delegation of... more
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When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed to negotiate a final health care bill without a formal conference committee, they did so to cut short the number of procedural obstacles Republicans could place in the path to a final health care package. The downside of that decision means that the contours of the less progressive Senate bill—with no public health insurance plan and a tax on employers who offer excellent health insurance for their employees—are likely to shape the final outcome. And that could mean even less reform than we thought we were about to settle for.
After the ditching of the public option and the trashing of a Medicare buy-in, the Senate health care bill, we were told, was still worth passing because it would end discrimination by insurers based on a subscriber's health status. No more discrimination based on preexisting conditions, right? Well, not exactly.
A little-discussed provision of the Senate bill allows insurers to expand so-called wellness programs that allow insurers to penalize subscribers by hundreds—and even thousands—of dollars for not meeting certain "wellness targets," such as a particular cholesterol number, blood sugar measurement or body-weight target.
Remember all those Democrats pleading plaintively, in the face of Republican accusations that the GOP had been cut out of the health care debate, that actually they included many Republican ideas in their health care bills? Well, this is one of them. One of the pro-business innovations of the Bush administration was to introduce into health insurance regulations a provision allowing employers to offer loosely defined "wellness" programs that carry incentives for employees meeting certain standards of premium reductions of as much as 20 percent. Sounds like a pretty good deal, right? Sure, until you realize that there's no baseline for the original premium, meaning that, in reality, people who don't meet the standards are really carrying the burden of others' discounts and then some—paying as much as 20 percent more for a policy in which a family member's failure to meet a wellness target forces up the entire premium for that family's policy.
More at the link:When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed to... more
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