Santorum: What President Obama — let me finish, please — what President Obama has done is he put in, in the Obamacare bill, the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Ladies and gentlemen, seniors, Medicare is going to be cut, starting in 2014, by the federal government, and it's going to be rationing of care from the top down.
The Independent Payment Advisory Board, as we have written about three times before, is prohibited from rationing care. In fact, the law on page 490specifically bars the advisory board from making “any recommendation to ration health care.”
The board was created to identify and recommend ways to slow the growth of Medicare spending — which both parties agree needs to be done. The law gives the president the power to appoint — with the usual advice and consent of the Senate — 15 board members. They must be medical providers and other professionals in the private sector with experience in such areas as health care finance, management and actuarial science.
Obama 'Against Any Kind' of Offshore Drilling?
Santorum was wrong when he said the Obama administration is "against any kind of exploration offshore or in Alaska." In fact, the administration has approved 296 new permits for new offshore oil wells since taking office, and it is considering granting the first permits in Alaska since 2004.
Santorum: The reason we're seeing this second dip is because of energy prices, and this president has put a stop sign again — against oil drilling, against any kind of exploration offshore or in Alaska, and that is depressing. We need to drill.
It's true that no new permits have been issued for oil drilling in Alaska under Obama. It's also true that the president opposes opening the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, which Bush and many Republicans support. There have been no permits approved since 2004, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. However, the agency is currently reviewing two exploration plans, including Shell's plan for the Beaufort Sea.
Regardless of whether those plans are eventually approved or not, Santorum is simply wrong to say the administration is "against any kind of exploration offshore." A database tool on the BOEMRE website shows the agency approved 295 new permits for exploratory and development oil wells and one relief well since Jan. 20, 2009, when Obama took office. That's far fewer than the number of wells approved during the same time in Bush's second term. We found the Bush administration had approved 867 wells from Jan. 20, 2005, to June 14, 2007.
Now, Republicans have complained of slow permit approvals ever since the administration imposed a moratorium on new deepwater drilling permits after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. The moratorium was lifted in October and new safety regulations were put in place, but there were no new deepwater permits issued until February. The agency says it has now issued eight deepwater drilling permits under the new safety regulations.
The moratorium did not extend to new permits in shallow waters (500 feet or less). The administration issued new safety regulations for shallow waters on June 8, 2010, and since then it has approved 56 permits for new wells.
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