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THE WEIRS TIMES & THE COCHECO TIMES, Thursday, March 29, 2012


Guest Editorial VOTER ID LAW Last week,


by NH State Sen. Jeanie Forrester NH District 2


l ike many others in New Hamp- shire, I had the oppor- tuni ty to exercise a very pre-


cious right—the right to cast my vote in my community. This participation in civic life lets us have a say on who the leaders in our community, in our state, and in our country will be.


Recently the Senate passed SB289, an act relative to pre- senting photo identification when voting. This bill would set a clear standard to protect the integrity of our elections and as such is supported by the Secretary of State (our state’s chief elections officer), and the NH City and Town Clerk’s Association. The bill


now goes to the House Elec- tion Law Committee for con- sideration. As background, the first


voter ID laws were enacted in 2003 following passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and since then 30 states have adopted some form of identi- fication requirement. Recent polling showed over 80% of voters support these measures designed to protect our elec- tions. In response to the over- whelming public support, over the last year voter ID legisla- tion has been considered in 17 of 20 states that currently don’t have a requirement. Though critics argue suc-


cessful prosecutions of voter fraud are rare, and thus there is no problem to remedy, there are thousands of allegations of suspicious or fraudulent voting every two years. Unfor- See FORRESTER on 16


by Michelle Malkin Syndicated Columnist


THE OBAMACARE HYDRA The Hydra


was a mythical swamp beast whose multi- ple heads grew back after be- ing severed. Obamacare is a real Wash- ington monster whose count- less hidden bureaucracies


keep sprouting forth even after they’re rooted out. As soon as combatants lop off one of the law’s unconstitutional agencies, another takes its place. On Thursday, as the behemoth


federal health care law marked its second anniversary, House Republicans repealed the infa- mous Independent Payment Ad- visory Board. The mother of all death panels, IPAB would have unprecedented authority over health care spending through a rogue board of 15 Medicare spending czars. The House repeal has a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving the Senate. But IPAB’s legality is being challenged in fed- eral court by the conservative Ar- izona-based Goldwater Institute. And the more the public knows about these freedom-usurping, taxpayer-soaking institutions buried in the health care law the less they like it. Seven House Democrats crossed


the aisle to vote for the GOP ma- jority rollback. Analysts on both sides of the political aisle have decried IPAB’s complete lack of accountability and insulation from judicial review. Critical de- cisions about public and private health insurance payment rates would be freed from the normal administrative rules process - public notice, public comment, public review -- that governs every other federal commission in existence. Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., summed up bipartisan


opposition: “IPAB embodies the very thing Americans fear most about ObamaCare -- unaccount- able Washington bureaucrats meeting behind closed doors to make unilateral decisions that should be made by patients and their doctors.” The problem with piecemeal repeal is that for every old IPAB, there’s a new, multibillion-dol- lar bureaucracy waiting in the Obamacare wings. Senate Re- publicans and fellow medical doctors Tom Coburn and John Barrasso point to a $10 billion entity called the “Innovation Center” that “would test innova- tive payment and service delivery models to reduce program expen- ditures under Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).” According to a new Congres- sional Research Service analysis of this little known office to be operated by the Centers for Medi- care and Medicaid Services, there would be “no administrative or judicial review” of the director’s payment experiments. Coburn and Barrasso explain that “(t)his means that the administrator of CMS is the sole individual in the entire federal government with the power to decide whether or not models tested negatively im- pact seniors’ quality of care and meet the financial requirements spelled out in law.” This “innovation” super-czar


would be allowed to tinker behind closed doors -- and then impose whatever experiments the “inno- vation center” chooses without any checks or balances on the methods or results. Moreover, at least two other sub-offices within CMS (subject to normal open meetings and open records rules) have already been tasked with researching payment and deliv- ery models. Health care blogger Tevi Troy at NationalReview.com See MALKIN on 35


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