President Obama this morning cited The Heritage Foundation’s research in an attempt to sell his health care package as a “middle of the road, centrist approach.” We take great exception to this misuse of our work and abuse of our name. This is but the latest act in a campaign to sell this big-government program as a moderate law that incorporates conservative ideas. Americans should not be fooled.

Let’s be very clear: We oppose this new law because it is a radical new intrusion into the daily lives of all Americans and a massive takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy. We view the President’s health care law as inimical to our national interests and offensive to the historic American dedication to the principle of self-government.

Our research has shown that President Obama’s health approach is financially unsustainable and will ultimately lead to health care rationing, a lower quality of care and a greater degree of dependence on government. We deplore those outcomes and are committed to making the intellectual case for this law’s repeal.

What part of that does President Obama not understand?

Specifically, President Obama told NBC’s Today Show host Matt Lauer that a centerpiece of his health care package, “in terms of the exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market—that originated from The Heritage Foundation.”

But the President knows full well—or he ought to learn before he speaks—that the exchanges we and most others support are very different from those in his package. True exchanges are simply a market mechanism to enable families to choose their health insurance. President Obama’s exchanges, by contrast, are a vehicle to introduce sweeping regulation and federal standardization on health insurance.

Moreover, we completely disagree that President Obama’s law improves the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market. On the contrary, it will create a staggeringly complex and costly insurance system that will drive up premiums for Americans.

The President’s health care law is only eight days old, and already it has cost our economy billions of dollars. Late last week, AT&T alone took a $1 billion charge because of the impact of the bill, and the consulting firm Towers Watson told the Wall Street Journal that the total hit this year will reach nearly $14 billion. It is sad, given the present state of our economy, that the President’s party in Congress has reacted not by trying to find ways to spare the jobs that will be lost because of this law. Instead, they are trying to intimidate companies that take such charges with threats that they will be hauled in before the Energy and Commerce Committee.

It is also revealing that President Obama is still struggling to sell the American people on a bill that he and his party rammed through passage by a narrow margin in the face of bipartisan opposition. It is a sign of desperation that he, his handlers and the media echo chamber are reverting to the campaign practice of selling the President and his policies as centrist, middle of the road and aisle-crossing. As the country has found out the hard way in the past 15 months, they are none of those things.

The President has made a habit of using conservative talking points when trying to sell a liberal ideology because he knows that this is a center-right country that rejects his agenda when articulated honestly. His supporters have even tried to pin the blame of the potentially unconstitutional individual mandate on us. This approach brushes over the details of our research and ignores our ability to evolve past further developed research.

Over 16,000 new IRS agents will be hired by the government to enforce the President’s mandate on the American people. The President’s health care plan also raises premiums, taxes, and costs while lowering quality, and expanding Medicaid. These are not conservative ideas.

And let’s be clear, these are not ideas Heritage has ever, or would ever, support.

We made every effort over the past year to share our ideas for better health care reform with the President and members of both parties in Congress, but were not invited behind the closed doors. Now, after the bill is signed, it seems the President wishes we were along for the ride. We were not. We remain fervently opposed to the President’s partisan plan, and urge its immediate repeal. This is not common politics, it’s common sense.

Had President Obama limited his bill to centrist elements, he would have won wide bipartisan support for effective reform both within Congress and among the American people. He would have won it, too, at a fraction of the cost of this intolerable, huge and intrusive legislation. He would not now be facing popular rejection by the American people. And he would not need to misrepresent Heritage policies and positions in an attempt to give his radical health plan the patina of respectability.

In addition to being the single most expensive bill ever proposed, this measure calls for a massive expansion of the federal government’s reach into the day-to-day life of virtually every citizen, business and civic organization in the nation. That, in itself, should be the subject of an extensive public conversation and thoughtful debate. Instead, we have seen Congressional leaders schedule snap votes on a 1,434-page bill that no one — repeat, no one — has had a chance to read in its entirety, much less digest and deliberate.

This bill has been advertised as an economic stimulus bill — despite the fact that the Congressional Budget Office estimates it will actually weaken our nation’s long-term economic growth. While the stimulative utility of the bill is, at best, questionable, it would unquestionably rewrite the social contract between the American people and their government. For example:

• The bill reverses the bipartisan and highly successful welfare reforms of 1996 and drastically expands the welfare state. For instance, it will start rewarding states for adding people to their welfare rolls, rather than for helping them find gainful employment. And contrary to long-established practice, it will entitle able-bodied adults without children to receive cash assistance.
• It does extreme violence to the concept of federalism—bailing out states that have spent irresponsibly at the expense of taxpayers in states that have been fiscally prudent.
• It greatly shifts the responsibility and power over health care delivery and decision making from individuals to government. Among other things, it would create a new federal health board to decide which medical services are “effective” in America, paving the way for government effectively to overrule the clinical decisions of private physicians.
• It deliberately censors religious speech and worship on school campuses by prohibiting use of any “stimulus” funds for facilities that are used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school of divinity.

The list goes on. These and similar provisions will mean fundamental changes in our society. In many instances, the bill would establish policies that directly challenge widely held American values.

We are appalled that Congress is even contemplating such profound changes with so little openness and due diligence. In the past, major policy changes in our welfare system, or health care, or trade policies, etc., were always, quite properly, preceded by extensive public conversation and full debate. That is how a democracy should make important decisions.

The failure of Congress and the Administration to allow that debate is damaging to our democracy. Both chambers of Congress suspended their budget rules to push it along. And both the President and the leaders of the House and Senate have violated their solemn promises that the bill would be available for several days of public review prior to voting, so that the American people might have a chance to learn what is in the bill and to make their views known to their elected officials.

This reckless approach to governance can only undermine public faith in our elected officials and our government as a whole. We call on Congress and the Administration to live up to their promises and stated ideals, and give the democratic process a chance to work.

Ed Feulner is president of the Heritage Foundation.

The Obama administration would act quickly to implement the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed controls on carbon dioxide, which amount to a massive new energy tax. Why do they want to move so quickly? They say their rules are in response to the dangers posed by global warming.

But the truth is that these rules would hurt Americans by driving up gas prices, food prices, transportation costs, and the price of manufactured goods. This greatly outweighs the negligible benefits the regulations might provide the environment.

This intrusive regulation will cost the American economy nearly $7 trillion dollars in lost GDP in just 20 years, and result in massive job losses. Heritage’s respected Center for Data Analysis estimates non-farm employment losses will exceed 800,000 in some years, and manufacturing jobs will plummet. Some industries would lose over half of their jobs. (Some liberals claim that environmental legislation such as this could add “green” jobs, but these new jobs would be offset by larger losses elsewhere.)

Government permits would be needed to expand small businesses and build homes, hospitals and schools. To add insult to injury, foreign competitors will not have to abide by these regulations, leaving American businesses at a disadvantage.

In times of economic uncertainty, the last thing American workers, consumers, and families need is more tedious regulation and costly obstacles engineered to limit and tax American economic growth.

That’s why I’m asking for your help. Visit StopEPA.com today to tell the bureaucrats at the EPA what you think about these disastrous regulations.

The EPA’s deadline for comments is just eight days away on Nov. 28. Your voice for economic freedom will make a real difference in this fight.