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Ribble for Congress
PO Box 7200
Appleton, WI 54912

 

 

Green Bay, WI— Congressman Reid Ribble was pleased to learn that he has been chosen to be a member of the NRCC’s Patriot Program for the 2012 election cycle.  The program is a rigorous, goal-oriented initiative that enables Members to stay on offense as they build winning re-election campaigns.

“I’m pleased to be a member of the Patriot Program and look forward to continuing to build a strong, sophisticated campaign,” said Reid Ribble.  “I’ve been working hard to address our nation’s economic challenges, get people back to work, and end the runaway deficit spending that’s plagued Washington for so many years.  Wisconsin residents recognize that the politics of the past cannot build a better future for our children and grandchildren and I’m looking forward to sharing that message in the weeks and months ahead.”

Established in 2009, the Patriot Program empowers incumbent Members to build strong campaigns through measured benchmarks and accountability, including for fundraising, communications and grassroots organization. Patriot Program members can define strengths, address challenges early and build iron-clad campaigns for re-election.

Reid Ribble represents the 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Published by Politico
By: Jake Sherman
April 18, 2012

America, here is what your Congress did for you this week. …

…Others are peeved. Folks like Rep. Reid Ribble — a Wisconsin Republican who is a big golfer but voted against the Nicklaus resolution any way.

“I don’t think it’s necessary for the Congress of the United States, when we’re $15 trillion in debt, to be using that to fill time,” Ribble said.

He was one of four no votes. Fifty-three lawmakers didn’t even vote.

Ribble said he doesn’t blame voters for their disapproval.

“They look at it and say, ‘what’s wrong with us?’” Ribble said. “They’re cynical. I’m still cynical. I tell folks back home: I come here and vote on what’s there.”

Published by: Appleton Post-Crescent
By: Larry Bivins
March 26, 2012

WASHINGTON — Sitting in his still sparsely decorated Capitol Hill office, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson acknowledged he most likely would not be there if Democrats had not pushed through their health care reform bill two years ago.

When President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law on March 23, 2010, Johnson said that was his call to action. He launched a campaign based on his intense opposition to what he and other Republicans call “Obamacare” and his concern over the federal deficit.

Since taking his seat in the U.S. Senate, Johnson, a former plastics manufacturer from Oshkosh, has been among the more strident critics of the health reform law. His concern over its cost was highlighted recently in a testy exchange he had with Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

As the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments today in a case brought by 27 states, including Wisconsin, seeking to overturn a cornerstone of the law — the mandate that everyone purchase health insurance — Johnson is among a cast of conservative lawmakers hoping the high court will do what they lack the numbers to do in Congress: repeal the law.

“To totally repeal it, would take 60 votes” in the Senate, Johnson said in a recent interview. “So I got my fingers crossed on the Supreme Court. That’s why I’m going to go there on Monday … got myself a ticket for the first session.”

Few issues have created such an intensely partisan divide as health care reform. Repealing the law was a central theme for many Republican candidates, including Johnson, in 2010 and is likely to be a top topic in 2012. It was the signature issue for Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann of Minnesota who ended her campaign in January.

“I don’t think I can remember any recent issue that more than a year after the legislation has passed it has remained as controversial and have divided the parties” as the health care law, said Charles Franklin, a visiting professor at Marquette University Law School and director of the Marquette Law School Poll.

Support, opposition

As Friday’s two-year anniversary of the law approached, Republican and Democratic political committees, as well as conservative and liberal special interest groups, engaged in dueling press releases about the failures or benefits of the law.

So far, Franklin said, Republicans have been more aggressive in criticizing the law than Democrats have been in defending it.

“It’s easier to say it’s a bad bill, I oppose it, we’ll repeal it, than it is to defend it in all of its parts,” Franklin said. “Within the Republican Party, there’s near universal consensus that opposing and repealing Obama’s health care reform is the universal position for Republican candidates.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee began a telephone campaign Friday targeting Democrats Pat Kreitlow and Jamie Wall, who are challenging freshmen incumbents Sean Duffy, R-Weston, and Reid Ribble, R-Sherwood. The calls urge Wisconsin voters to protest the Democrats’ support for the Affordable Care Act.

Duffy and Ribble have been targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in its effort to retake control of the House of Representatives.

Kreitlow said in an interview that had he been in office he would have voted for the legislation that both Duffy and Ribble want to repeal.

“Without a doubt,” Kreitlow said. “There was a need to do something to rein in health care costs.”

In the two years since the law’s enactment, Kreitlow said Americans have become increasingly aware of its benefits. He criticized Duffy for breaking a campaign promise by voting to repeal the law without there being an alternative proposal to replace it.

Duffy has said he voted for repeal only after being promised by Republican leaders they would present an alternative. In December, Duffy introduced his own health care reform bill in the absence of any leadership proposal.

“I’ve been pretty vocal in my stance that we should repeal Obamacare, stop its implementation and replace it with an alternative that actually decreases health care costs for families,” Duffy said in a statement on the two-year anniversary. “My hope is that two years from now, everyone is celebrating the real changes we’ve made to health care reform rather than bemoaning the massively expensive one-size-fits-all approach of Obamacare.”

Unlike Kreitlow, Wall was less certain of how he would have voted in 2010 had he been a member of Congress. He said he finds “a lot of good things” in the bill, “and there are some bad things as well.”

“But if the debate right now is over repeal,” Wall said, “I think that’s like turning back the clock.”

Priority for Ribble

Ribble said for him repeal is as much a priority now as it was when he voted for the Republican measure to overturn the law shortly after he took office. Ribble, like other critics, feels buoyed by the latest Congressional Budget Office figures showing the cost of the Affordable Care Act could reach $1.7 trillion over 10 years instead of the $900 billion projected earlier.

“If ever there was an example of something that needs to be reformed it’s that bill,” Ribble said.

Ribble said he wants to see a reform proposal that puts more control in the hands of consumers. “Anything that moves the patient closer to the provider will help drive costs down,” he said.

Johnson agrees. He said true health care reform would come only if the free market were allowed to function without government intrusion.

“Free market is a phenomenon,” Johnson said. “When you separate the consumer of the product from the payment of the product, you take away those free-market principles that provide the discipline between cost and price. As consumers when you pay for something you can demand higher quality. When you get it for free, you don’t make wise decisions.”

Published by The Hill Newspaper
By: Julian Pecquet
03/15/12

As many as 20 million Americans could lose their employer-provided coverage because of President Obama’s healthcare reform law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a new report Thursday.

The figure represents the worst-case scenario, CBO says, and the law could just as well increase the number of people with employer-based coverage by 3 million in 2019.

The best estimate, subject to a “tremendous amount of uncertainty,” is that about 3 million to 5 million fewer people will obtain coverage through their employer each year from 2019 through 2022.

The new report adds more detail to this week’s update of the law’s coverage provisions, which CBO released Tuesday. Compared to a year ago, the law is now anticipated to cover 2 million fewer people but cost $50 billion less over 10 years, after factoring penalties paid by individuals and businesses that don’t get or provide healthcare coverage.

Republicans immediately pounced after the new numbers came out because they appear to violate Obama’s pledge that people who like their health plans will be able to keep them. Last year, CBO’s best estimate was that only 1 million people would lose employer-sponsored coverage.

“President Obama’s string of empty promises is quickly becoming a disappointing trail of broken promises,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a statement. “He promised Americans that his overhaul of the health care sector would not jeopardize the health coverage of those who liked what they had. As nonpartisan analysts made clear today, millions of Americans will soon learn the hard way that Washington’s overreach into their health care decisions will result in sharp disruptions to their coverage and their care.”

The White House for its part argues that the latest projections are in line with what the CBO estimated when it scored the bill at the time of passage two years ago.

“Today’s report also does not project major changes in the number of workers who will get coverage through their job,” Jeanne Lambrew, the deputy assistant to the president for health policy, wrote on the White House blog. “At the time of passage CBO projected a change of 3 million people; last year CBO projected 1 million; this year 4 million – out of the roughly 150 million people get insurance through their job today. Other respected independent analysts have concluded that the number of Americans who get their health insurance at work will not change in a significant way.”

Under CBO’s best estimate, 11 million mostly low-wage workers would lose their employer coverage. About 3 million would choose to drop their coverage to go into the new subsidized health exchanges or on Medicaid, while another 9 million would gain employer-sponsored coverage, for a net total of 5 million people losing employer coverage in 2019.

CBO defended its methodology Thursday after Republicans highlighted business surveys that found a bigger number of employers threatening to drop coverage because of the law.

“Some observers have expressed surprise that CBO and [the Joint Committee on Taxation] have not expected a much larger reduction in the number of people receiving employment-based health insurance in light of the expanded availability of subsidized health insurance coverage that will result from the” health law, the report says.

“CBO and JCT’s estimates take account of that expansion, but they also recognize that the legislation leaves in place some financial incentives and also creates new financial incentives for firms to offer and for many people to obtain health insurance coverage through their employers,” the report adds.

Employer surveys, CBO said, “have uncertain value and offer conflicting findings.”

“One piece of evidence that may be relevant is the experience in Massachusetts, where employment-based health insurance coverage appears to have increased since that state’s reforms, which are similar but not identical to those in the [federal health law], were implemented,” the agency said.

Congressman Ribble recently hosted a town hall with local business owners to find out what the government can do to help them create jobs

Reid Ribble to deliver more than 3,700 signatures to the Secretary of the Navy supporting naming an LCS ship after the city of Marinette.