150 Straight Days: Treasury Says Debt Stood Still at $16,699,396,000,000

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Photo Credit: AP/Susan WalshEvery business day since May 17, the U.S. Treasury has published a daily statement claiming that the federal debt subject to the limit set by Congress closed the day at $16,699,396,000,000—about $25 million below the legal limit.

Monday, the Columbus Day holiday, according to the Daily Treasury Statement released today, marked the 150th straight day that the Treasury has said the debt subject to limit was stuck at $16,699,396,000,000.

On May 17, the first day the debt closed the day at $16,699,396,000,000, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner stating that since the Treasury was about to hit the debt limit he would begin to use “extraordinary measures” to prevent it from doing so. These included, among other things, suspending investment of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund in U.S. Treasury securities, and redeeming securities already held by this fund.

“In total, the extraordinary measures currently available free up approximately $260 billion in headroom under the limit,” Lew wrote then.

But in that letter, Lew described the unpredictability of the Treasury’s flow of funds to explain why he could not predict exactly when the extraordinary measures would be exhausted.

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Complaint: UAW, VW Coerced Workers Into Accepting Unionization

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Photo Credit: APTennessee autoworkers have filed a second set of complaints alleging that Volkswagen’s corporate headquarters pressured employees to join the United Auto Workers Union.

Four autoworkers filed a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board alleging that members of the German-based company’s board of directors threatened to end plant expansion in the right-to-work state if employees did not join a European-style works council.

The support that corporate leaders are lending to the UAW amounts to coercion, according to the complaint filed by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW).

“Bernd Osterloh, vice-chairman of VW and head of VW’s global works council, who makes production decisions for VW, said publicly that employees in Chattanooga must form a works council and bring in the UAW as their agent if their plant is going to be given the opportunity to produce additional products for VW,” the complaint states.

“Volkswagen AG through their officers, directors, and/or agents are thus interfering with Chattanooga facility employees’ rights to choose whether or not to engage in self-organization to form, join, or assist labor organizations.”

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Feds $82,800 Study On How to Use Twitter For ‘Depression Surveillance’

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Photo Credit: APThe federal government is studying how to use Twitter for surveillance on depressed people.

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) began a study financed by the National Institutes of Health last month that will provide “population level depression monitoring” through the social media site.

The project, “Utilizing Social Media as a Resource for Mental Health Surveillance,” is costing taxpayers $82,800.

While Twitter has been used by government agencies, such as the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security, for national security related monitoring, the project suggests the social network can be used for public health surveillance as well.

“Major depressive disorder is one of the most common debilitating illnesses in the United States, with a lifetime prevalence of 16.2 [percent],” the project grant states. “Currently, nationwide mental health surveillance takes the form of large-scale telephone- based surveys.”

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De Blasio Tells Muslims He’ll End Broad NYPD Spying If Elected

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Photo Credit: Jim Smith/WCBS 880Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio told a group of Muslim supporters Wednesday that they won’t have to live in fear of being under constant surveillance if he’s elected mayor.

As WCBS 880′s Jim Smith reported, de Blasio, the front-runner in the Nov. 5 general election, said that, on his watch, NYPD surveillance tactics would only be authorized to follow up on specific leads and that the police force would be under the supervision of a new inspector general.

“The efforts of surveillance have to be based on specifically specific information, and obviously you need to go through a careful vetting process,” de Blasio said during a rally at Columbus Park in Downtown Brooklyn.

Based on internal NYPD reports and interviews with officials involved in the programs, the NYPD has conducted wholesale surveillance of entire Muslim neighborhoods, chronicling daily life including where people eat, pray and get their hair cut, according to a series of reports by The Associated Press. Police also reportedly infiltrated dozens of mosques and Muslim student groups.

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Obamacare Exchanges Required to Offer “Motor Voter” Registration

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Photo Credit: Pete SouzaBy Sophie Novack.

As members of Congress continue to argue over the Affordable Care Act, one impact of the law on partisan politics has largely been left out of the conversation: voter registration.

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, also known as the “Motor Voter” law, requires government agencies to offer individuals the opportunity to vote—and that includes the newly opened Obamacare exchanges.

That gives some Republicans one more reason to oppose the law. If low-income applicants lean Democratic, the argument goes, the exchanges could boost the party’s voter rolls.

“The practice raises longstanding suspicions on the right that the ACA exchanges are designed for political as well as regulatory purposes,” said Tim Miller, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been characteristically blunt on the subject. “The purpose of Obamacare got nothing to do with your health, and nothing to do with your insurance,” he said. “It’s about building a permanent, undefeatable, always-funded Democrat majority.”

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Photo Credit: AP11,588,500 Words: Obamacare Regs 30x as Long as Law

By Penny Starr.

Bureaucracies in the Obama Administration have thus far published approximately 11,588,500 words of final Obamacare regulations, while there are only 381,517 words in the Obamacare law itself.

That means unelected federal officials have now written 30 words of regulations for each word in the law.

What is commonly known as the Obamacare law includes both the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA). Since these bills were signed into law by President Barack Obama in March 2010, various agencies in the administration have published 109 final regulations spelling out how they are to be implemented.

These 109 final regulations account for a combined 10,535 pages in the Federal Register, where the government officially published them.

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House Pulls Back on Boehner Plan

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Photo Credit: APBy Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Seung Min Kim.

Everyone is asking the same question: What’s next?

For the second time this fall, Speaker John Boehner has had to pull legislation to lift the debt ceiling because of concerns from conservative lawmakers that their leadership was heading down the wrong path.

But this time, the economy could be on the brink of disaster. The United States runs out of borrowing authority on Thursday, and it does not appear at the moment that House Republicans are willing — or able — to lift the nation’s debt ceiling.

“We need to be prepared tomorrow to make some decisions,” said House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions of Texas.

In practical terms, Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy’s inability to persuade 217 lawmakers to vote for their proposal means that the House could be sidelined in a fiscal fight they picked. Action could be rapidly kicked over to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Read more from this story HERE.

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Senate leaders race to draft debt-limit bill after House effort collapses

By Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane.

A campaign to persuade House Republicans to lift the federal debt limit collapsed in humiliating failure Tuesday, leaving Washington careering toward a critical deadline just two days away, with no clear plan for avoiding a government default.

Senate leaders quickly moved to pick up the pieces, saying they were “optimistic” that they could reach agreement to advance an alternative proposal that would raise the debt limit through Feb. 7 and end a government shutdown, now in its third week.

But it was unclear whether a deal struck by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) could pass the Senate before the Treasury Department exhausts its borrowing power Thursday.

Meeting that deadline would be impossible if Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) or other conservative hard-liners chose to throw up roadblocks, Democrats said. Republican leaders were leaning on Cruz and his allies to avoid unnecessary delays.

“The clock is ticking,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 3 Republican in the Senate. “Given the consequence of what we’re talking about here, . . . I would hope that we would have genuine interest among all parties in terms of trying to get this done as quickly as possible.”

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Ex-ACORN Operatives Helping Roll Out ObamaCare

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Photo Credit: Fox News A group formed from the ruins of ACORN is hard at work signing people up for ObamaCare, and may be collecting taxpayer cash for their work despite Congress’ efforts to cut the organization and its affiliates off from government funding, a watchdog group charged.

The United Labor Unions Council Local 100, a New Orleans-based nonprofit, announced last month it would take part in a multi-state “navigator” drive to help people enroll in President Obama’s health care plan. The labor council was established by ACORN founder Wade Rathke after his larger group was broken up amid scandal in 2009 and banned from receiving taxpayer funds.

“At a time when our government has ceased functioning due to an appropriations gap, it is ironic that America’s tax dollars are being doled out to an entity whose poor stewardship of our funds was well-established by Congress,” said Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action, a nonpartisan watchdog group based in Washington.

“… it is ironic that America’s tax dollars are being doled out to an entity whose poor stewardship of our funds was well-established by Congress.”

– Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action

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Obamacare’s Website Is Crashing Because It Doesn’t Want You To Know How Costly Its Plans Are (+video)

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Photo Credit: Forbes By Avik Roy.

A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.

HHS didn’t want users to see Obamacare’s true costs

“Healthcare.gov was initially going to include an option to browse before registering,” report Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky in the Wall Street Journal. “But that tool was delayed, people familiar with the situation said.” Why was it delayed? “An HHS spokeswoman said the agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started seeing the prices of policies.” (Emphasis added.)

As you know if you’ve been following this space, Obamacare’s bevy of mandates, regulations, taxes, and fees drives up the cost of the insurance plans that are offered under the law’s public exchanges. A Manhattan Institute analysis I helped conduct found that, on average, the cheapest plan offered in a given state, under Obamacare, will be 99 percent more expensive for men, and 62 percent more expensive for women, than the cheapest plan offered under the old system. And those disparities are even wider for healthy people.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AFPBeyond ‘Glitches’: Obamacare Nightmare Just Beginning

By Ben Sasse.

“Train wreck.” “Fundamentally flawed.” “Not ready for primetime.” This is the rollout of Obamacare.

Constant “glitches” keep people from logging into the exchanges. Humiliating live video of reporters normally favorable to Obamacare simply giving up in frustration because they cannot sign up. Consumers who are lucky enough to get through the system are stunned to learn that their premiums have skyrocketed by thousands of dollars. One Pennsylvania mother says that she can either pay her increased premiums or pay for her kids to eat, but she can’t do both.

Extremely personal information has already leaked from the system in Minnesota. Software security experts from McAfee predict millions of identity theft victims. And one of the healthcare exchanges was forced to acknowledge that information collected from patients will be shared with law enforcement.

Tom Bevan at RealClearPolitics wondered why Kathleen Sebelius still has a job. Jon Stewart invited her onto The Daily Show and mocked that he could “download every movie ever made” before she could log onto her own website. Her home state senator called for her to resign for “gross incompetence,” as exactly “zero” residents of Kansas were able to successfully enroll in the program.

The rollout has been such a nightmare that it is abundantly clear now that members of Congress really did not, as then-Speaker Pelosi admitted, even read the Obamacare bill before they passed it. In fact, the program’s launch has been such an unimaginable disaster that it raises an alarming new question that would have been unthinkable amid the exaggerated claims of health utopia from three years ago: Did President Obama even read this legislation before he signed it into law?

Read more from this story HERE.

Afghan War Vet Awarded Medal of Honor, Seeks to Return to Active Duty

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Photo Credit: Fox News After nearly being overlooked, and according to some accounts intentionally forgotten, Army Capt. William Swenson received the Medal of Honor at an emotional White House ceremony Tuesday for his heroic actions during the 2009 Battle of Ganjgal in eastern Afghanistan.

Ganjgal was one of the bloodiest battles of the 12-year war. Ambushed by the Taliban, coalition forces were pinned down for nine hours. The fight ended with five U.S. deaths, 10 Afghan army deaths and over two-dozen coalition wounded.

Late Tuesday, Fox News confirmed reports that Swenson, who since leaving the Army in 2011 has spent much of his time in the wilderness of Washington state, has asked the Army to return him to active duty — a rare request for a Medal of Honor recipient. An Army spokesman said, “We are reviewing his request and processing it within established policy.”

The ceremony Tuesday marked only the second time in half a century that the nation’s highest award for valor has been given to two survivors of the same battle. In 2011, Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer, who fought alongside Swenson, received the same medal for his actions at Ganjgal.

But Swenson’s battle didn’t end in Ganjgal. After the battle, he bitterly complained about incompetence in the ranks, suggesting to Army investigators and reporters that his commanders decided the political risk of civilian casualties outweighed the need to protect the lives of Americans.

Read more from this story HERE.

Issa: Any Deal Must Address ‘The Excesses That Need to Be Reined In’

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Photo Credit: AP“I look forward to the government reopening and getting back to really dealing with entitlements and with waste in government,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Monday evening.

Asked if House Republicans would approve a deal that excludes Obamacare, Issa said they need to vote for something that deals with entitlements and “the excesses that need to be reined in.

“That’s what sequestration was about, even though it was a bad solution,” Issa said. So I think as long as we’re dealing with entitlements, Obamacare being an entitlement, but there’s a lot of other entitlements and a lot of waste in government that we keep showing, but not dealing with.”

The deal shaping up in the Senate reportedly would fund the government through January 15, raise the nation’s debt limit through Feb. 15, and have House and Senate Budget Committee conferees try to work out their spending differences by the end of the year.

“If that’s the deal, are you ready to go along with it?” Blitzer asked Issa.

Read more from this story HERE.