Word: reformers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...proposal to slap a 5% tax on wrinkle fillers, Botox shots, breast implants and other elective cosmetic medical procedures as part of President Obama's health care reform package is raising disapproving eyebrows among some groups. A coalition of plastic surgeons, a women's group, medical associations and pharmaceutical makers were distraught when Senate majority leader Harry Reid slipped the so-called Botax levy into the health care bill late last month in hopes of raising $5.8 billion over the next 10 years. The tax would apply to elective but not reconstructive plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures...
Still, Congress faces a heavy burden in searching every nook and cranny for ways to fund the health care reform bill's $849 billion price tag. Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senator Reid, dismisses suggestions that women are being targeted and notes that Senators are looking everywhere for ways to fund the bill. "There was a point a few weeks ago when Senator Reid needed some additional revenue for this bill - the goal was to keep all the financing within the health care arena, and in the end, he decided to include this provision in the bill," says Manley...
...arrant candor is a quality to be appreciated, not mocked. Teddy Awards are also hereby bestowed on Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates, who courageously joined this Administration despite being, respectively, a fierce political opponent of the President's and a Republican. Upon arrival, Clinton showed passionate intent to reform long-neglected foreign aid programs, a non-headline-grabbing crusade that is essential to the military's counterinsurgency strategy; Gates took on wasteful weapons systems with impish glee and thereby placed emphasis where it always should be - on the troops...
...coined the phrase "axis of evil" - honored his intellectual principles by standing up against the radical excesses of his party's demagogues. Let's hope that other honorable conservatives rise to join Frum and Graham in rebuilding an intellectually supple and civil, and essential, Republican Party. (No health care reform Teddys will be issued until the final vote, although Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon certainly deserves one for his bipartisan efforts over the years, the most creative work on health reform that I've seen.) (See TIME's "Making of America" cover story on Teddy Roosevelt...
...addition, the eco-friendly homes tax credit, affectionately labeled “cash for caulkers,” serves the dual goals of economic stimulus and environmental reform. The program, a brainchild of John Doerr, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and Bill Clinton, would give households anywhere from $2,000 to 4,000 to pay for weatherization projects. This stimulus is beautifully effective—homeowners are incentivized to carry out renovation projects that generate job growth and create more environmentally friendly homes. By combining green initiatives with fiscal stimulus, Obama’s proposal kills two important birds with...