No BS. Obamacare, Obamaphone........As my old friend Bill once said, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
Is there a difference between a tax on your phone bill and a fee?
“Obama phone” is the widely used — and misleading — nickname of a 28-year-old federal program known as Lifeline. It provides discounts, averaging $9.25 a month, on phone service for 13.3 million low-income subscribers.
In the 31 / 2 years after false rumors started that the Obama administration was giving free cellphones to poor people — and six months after a racially charged video about it went viral — [see video link in above post] a once-obscure phone service subsidy is getting renewed scrutiny on Capitol Hill.
There are growing calls in Congress to end or drastically cut back Lifeline; later this month, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing that could help determine its fate.
“The program has nearly tripled in size from $800 million in 2009 to $2.2 billion per year in 2012,” the senior Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee wrote in a March 26 letter to the Democratic minority. “American taxpayers — and we as their elected representatives — need to know how much of this growth is because of waste, fraud and abuse.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ ... story.html