September 10, 2009 09:49 PM UTC

Tom Tancredo, Mr. Consistency

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• by: BobMoore

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson’s shout-out to President Obama Wednesday night has been denounced as inappropriate by Republicans and Democrats alike. Even Wilson apologized.

Cue Tom Tancredo, via press release from his Rocky Mountain Foundation:

Former U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo issued the following statement in response to Rep. Joe Wilson’s objection to President Obama’s questionable claims about his the Democrat health care plan last night.

“Joe is right,” Tancredo said, “Obama is a liar.”  

“Republicans attempted to attach language to the Democrat health care bill in committee that would have required the government to verify the legal status of anyone receiving benefits under the plan and imposed enforcement mechanisms for violations of that requirement.  Unfortunately, the Democrats voted that amendment down.” Tancredo said.  “If the Democrats and the President truly wanted to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining publicly funded health care benefits, they would have approved that amendment.”

Tancredo and Wilson are not alone in questioning the President’s claims.  In a June 15 letter to Congress, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf wrote ‘once the [Democrat health care] proposal was fully implemented, the number of people who are uninsured would decline to about 36 million or 37 million…Roughly a third of those [receiving coverage] would be unauthorized immigrants…”

Tancredo also questioned the factual basis for many other claims made by the President.

“The President expects us to believe that he can provide health insurance free of charge to those who can’t afford it, the care will not be rationed, premiums cannot go up, risk factors cannot be considered, no one will be excluded, taxes will not increase, and that none of this will cost the taxpayers a dime.  In fact, he expects us to believe this huge federal program will actually save the taxpayer money,” said Tancredo, “How dumb does the President think the American people are?”

“First the President tells America that we are facing imminent national bankruptcy because of Medicare’s spiraling costs – then in the next breath he tells us that his solution to this problem is to basically expand Medicare to cover every person in America, and that this will result in a reduction in the deficit. In essence – he is arguing that the best way to reduce spending is to spend more. This makes no sense,” Tancredo continued.

“It’s as if Democrats in Washington have become so drunk with power that they now believe they can repeal the basic laws of economics with a simple majority vote of Congress,” Tancredo concluded.