More Lipstick on the ObamaCare Pig

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Photo Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.comThe White House PR machine keeps trying to put lipstick on the ObamaCare pig. According to Whitehouse.gov, “there’s some great news from a Department of Health and Human Services report… Thanks to Obamacare, half of young adults between age 18 and 34 who are single and uninsured can get health coverage for $50/month or less.”

There are two problems with the claim. First, the actual percentage, according to HHS figures, of 18-34 year olds who qualify for the $50/month rate is not “half” but 2.9%. The numbers are 1.3 million out of 44.2 million.

Secondly, the $50/month rate is not a market price but one that is subsidized by an expanded government entitlement.

The White House statement is not technically another ObamaCare lie, but it requires reading the fine print for interpretation. The full “caveated” statement in the report from the Office of The Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at HHS reads as follows:

Nearly 5 in 10 (46 percent, or 1.3 million) uninsured young adults in single-person households who may be eligible for the Health Insurance Marketplace may be able to purchase a bronze plan for $50 per month or less after tax credits, based on analysis of data in 34 states.

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Goldberg: The Myth of Obama the Master Strategist

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Photo credit: National Review Often in error but never in doubt, Barack Obama could walk into the Rose Garden and step on a half-dozen rakes like Foghorn Leghorn in an old Looney Tunes cartoon, and the official line would be, “He meant to do that.”

And the amazing thing is that so many people believe it. “Mr. Obama is like a championship chess player, always several moves ahead of friend and foe alike. He’s smart, deft, elegant and subtle,” proclaimed then–New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in 2009. It’s an image of the president that his biggest fans, in and out of the press, have been terribly reluctant to relinquish — because it confirms the faith they invested in him. Nobody ever likes to admit they were suckered.

But the fiction of Obama as a man three steps ahead has taken a terrible beating if you have eyes to see it. The budget cuts under the so-called sequester are the law of the land because Obama thought he was outthinking his opponents when he gave budget-cutters budget cuts. Now he’s stuck railing against his own idea. His allegedly revolutionary decision to turn his presidential campaign into a personal political organization independent from the Democratic party has turned out to be the most expensive way ever to generate smarmy and ineffectual e-mail spam. And, if you want to believe that Obama’s goal in Syria all along was to elevate Vladimir Putin and alienate all of our Middle East allies, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, and to make Bashar Assad our strategic partner while he finds more politically correct ways to slaughter his own people, well, that’s nice.

Or consider Obama’s only clear-cut political victory since his reelection. Republican demands were a bit of a moving target, but basically the GOP wanted either an all-out repeal of Obamacare or, as a fallback, a one-year delay of the individual mandate. By the end, they would have taken even less.

But Obama wouldn’t consider it. Instead, he played hardball with everything from national-park closures to, temporarily at least, denying death benefits to military families. As the debt ceiling loomed, the GOP relented. Conventional wisdom says Obama won, and I basically agree with the conventional wisdom.

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Obamacare’s Authoritarian Problem: Consumer Choice Trumps Coercion Every Time

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photo credit: fibonacci blueYou can’t keep your insurance if you like it under Obamacare, because you’re too ignorant to understand what’s good for you.

That’s the argument we’ve been hearing from a lot of folks on the left — an argument that pivots from “common good” to soft authoritarianism. President Barack Obama is all in, as well, claiming that he was merely guilty of forcing Americans to pick a “Ferrari” health care plan over a “Ford” one. (Is it really “picking” if you’re forced?)

This is necessary because health care is not a product as a toaster is a product. (It took me only a few seconds online to find 613 different types of toasters, ranging in price from more than $300 to $15. They weren’t subsidized, and I even could carry them across state lines. If health care were like toasters, we’d all be in great shape.) And as they do with anything that features negative externalities, technocrats will tinker, nudge and, inevitably, push.

“America doesn’t have a free-market health care system and hasn’t for decades,” Business Insider’s Josh Barro wrote in a piece titled “If You Like Your Health Plan, You Probably Shouldn’t Be Able To Keep It.” “With taxpayer subsidies so embedded in everybody’s plan purchasing decisions, taxpayers have a legitimate interest in ensuring that health plans serve the public interest, not just private interests.”

“Legitimate” is a malleable adjective. Just think of all the other areas of American society that are subsidized by taxpayers. Agriculture, higher education, the auto industry, the banking industry, professional sports, marriage — the possibilities are endless. Why is Washington allowing 20-year-old college students to work on business degrees when we need them to be engineers and factory workers? We subsidize, so why don’t we decide?

Read more from this story HERE.

Kudlow: Liberal Entitlement State Crumbling

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesMay I ask this question? Why is it that Americans don’t have the freedom to choose their own health insurance? I just don’t get it. Why must the liberal nanny state make decisions for us? We can make them ourselves, thank you very much. It’s like choosing a car, buying a home or investing in a stock. We can handle it.

So why must the government tell me and everyone else what we can and cannot buy?

Charles Krauthammer and the Wall Street Journal’s Dan Henninger noted in excellent recent columns that this whole Obamacare business represents the greatest-ever expansion of the liberal entitlement-state dream. But I don’t want that dream. And you shouldn’t either.

Here’s what else I don’t want: As a 60-something, relatively healthy person, I don’t want lactation and maternity services, abortion services, speech therapy, mammograms, fertility treatments or Viagra. I don’t want it. So why should I have to tear up my existing health-care plan, and then buy a plan with far more expensive premiums and deductibles, and with services I don’t need or want?

Why? Because Team Obama says I have to. And that’s not much of a reason. It’s not freedom.

Read more from this story HERE.

Maybe Republicans Should Heed Harry Reid

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Photo Credit: APHarry Reid said we all want to pay more taxes, so the GOP should help make it happen, beginning with Reid’s own “rich people.”

In a recent interview with Nevada Public Radio, Reid said, “The only people who feel there shouldn’t be more coming in to the federal government from the rich people are the Republicans in the Congress. Everybody else, including the rich people, are willing to pay more. They want to pay more.” 

This is, by the way, the same Harry Reid who once claimed that paying income taxes in America is “voluntary.” In any regard, because he’s one of the “rich people,” and he receives contributions from many “rich people,” Reid should know what they want. Why not give it to them?

A recent article at the American Thinker proposed that “Republicans should forget the tax policies of Grover Norquist and embrace Bill Maher’s California model for fiscal success.”  Three revenue enhancement suggestions were offered.

1.  Remove state income taxes as a deductible item from the federal tax code for those making over $500,000.

2. Remove city income taxes as a deductible expense from the federal tax code for those making over $200,000.

3. Remove real estate taxes as a deductible item for all those paying over $15,000 in property taxes.
Reid has challenged Republicans to stop opposing “more coming in to” the federal coffers. It’s time the GOP accept his challenge. To that end, here are seven more federal revenue enhancement suggestions — making the total 10 — that, if proposed by Republicans, would show they’re serious about enabling “rich people” pay a fairer share into the U.S. Treasury.

4. Impose new limits on charitable tax deductions for wealthy people making more than $500,000. President Obama first proposed this — at an income level of $250,000 — back in 2009.  His intent was to “rebalance the tax code so that the wealthiest pay more.” This aligns with Reid’s notion that everyone, including the wealthy, want to pay more taxes.

Obama proposed that it not take effect until 2011 when the economy would be well on the way to recovery. It’s now 2013, and the regime is heralding an economy on the uptick. So, it’s time to enact the President’s 2009 proposal, but at a higher income level — to start with, anyway. 

5.  Remove the municipal bond tax-exemption provision. Munies compete with an advantage against treasury bonds. Recent 10-year AAA munies yielded 2.70% (AA – 3.30; A – 3.80). Meanwhile, US treasuries were at 2.50%.

Also, their sale of tax-exempt muni bonds encourages cities to undertake more debt. Many don’t need more debt, given their unfunded pension liabilities.

6.  Eliminate the tax deduction for interest paid on home equity loans. It encourages homeowners to undertake more debt. And, according to the Washington Post, “A majority of Americans with 401(k)-type savings accounts are accumulating debt faster than they are setting aside money for retirement.”  So the WaPo should seemingly endorse any suggestion for federal revenue enhancement that discourages additional personal debt.

7.  Tax private universities on interest earned from their endowments. The top five university endowments held by private institutions total about $72,000,000,000. Their tuitions are high; their professors and executives are well paid. Tax their endowments. That’s fair. After all, they are by-and-large institutions of, by and for “rich people,” with a relatively few noteworthy exceptions, of course.

The 2012-2013 annual average salary for full professors at the universities of Columbia, Stanford, Chicago, Harvard and Princeton ranged from $212,000 to $200,000.

Columbia University’s President was paid nearly $2 million in 2012. And, Yale’s and the University of Chicago’s Presidents each received $1.6 million. Why should the profits on university endowments escape taxation?

Plus, why should private university land endowments escape paying property taxes?

For example, Stanford University sits on 8,180 acres “of foothills and plains…in the center of the San Francisco Peninsula.” That’s prime real estate. Subject it to property taxes.

Stanford’s 700 buildings are linked by “46 miles of roads, a 49-megawatt power plant, two separate water systems, three dams, three open water reservoirs, 88 miles of water mains, a central heating and cooling plant, a high-voltage distribution system and a post office. Stanford provides or contracts for its own fire, police and other services.”

Rich universities are big businesses. They receive big government welfare checks in the form of federal grants. For example, Johns Hopkins University received $1,900,000,000 in federal grants in 2011. In total, the federal government gave almost $40,000,000,000 in R&D grants to colleges and universities in 2011.
 
The pedagogical staffs of most universities generally promote big government. So, tax them appropriately to help pay for the big government they advocate. That’s only fair.

8.  Reduce the level of tax-exemption on contributions made to foundations with assets over $100 million, and…

9.  …tax the interest gained by those foundations from their assets.
Here’s a list of foundations with assets well over $100 million.

• Rockefeller Foundation (Standard Oil)
• Ford Foundation (Ford Motor Co.)
• Duke Endowment (Duke family fortune)
• John A. Hartford Foundation (Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea)
• W.K. Kellog Foundation (Kellogg Cereals)
• Carnegie Corporation (Carnegie Steel)
• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (General Motors)
• Moody Foundation (W. L. Moody’s oil, realty, newspapers, and bank holdings)
• Lilly Endowment (Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals)
• Pew Memorial Trust (Sun Oil Co. or Sunoco)
• Danforth Foundation (Purina Cereals)

It’s time rich foundations pay a fairer share of the tax burden. After all, as Senator Elizabeth Warren might argue, they didn’t build their foundations — tax-exempt donations did.

The total endowment fund of just the top 25 U.S. foundations is approximately $150,000,000,000. That represents a substantial taxable opportunity for the federal government.

10. Cease crony-political tax breaks and industry welfare payments. It’s a bipartisan disease that infects the federal budget. For example:

(R) The American Taxpayer Relief Act, signed by President Obama on January 2, 2013, delighted the National Thoroughbred Racing Association. It allowed a “bonus depreciation” on the purchase of race horses. According to Forbes, “Estimating the value of all aspects of the Thoroughbred racing industry to be worth about $4 billion dollars to his home state of Kentucky, [Joel] Turner [a Louisville attorney specializing in equine legal services] approved of the renewal of the provisions. ‘Buying horses and writing them off was included in the law because of the ripple effect to the economy,’ he said. ‘This encourages investment in assets.'”

This tax break for thoroughbred constituents must have pleased Senator Mitch McConnell.

On the flip side of the bipartisan coin there’s this:

(D) The Travel Promotion Act, signed by President Obama on March 4, 2010, was heralded by Senator Harry Reid as a great boon to the travel business in Nevada (AKA: “the gaming industry”).  Reid’s website reads:  “Senator Reid fought so hard to pass this bull because he knew it would mean thousands of jobs for Nevada as foreign tourists flood to Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe.”

Several hotels on the Las Vegas Strip displayed their appreciation for Reid’s effort by posting accolades to the Senator on their arcades.

No tax money is used in this scheme, but fees collected by government aid the tourism industry. So, money is extracted from the U.S. Treasury to support, in part, the Vegas Strip. That income has to be made up from somewhere.

Horse racing and gambling – are they the backbone of America’s economic prowess?

The Heritage Foundation opposes this scheme as representing “waste and abuse”: “Rather than continue government-led travel promotion measures, Congress should leave the promotion of tourism to the private sector. Instead, Congress and the Administration should focus on making it easier, safer, and more efficient for travelers to come to the U.S by improving U.S. visa services and expanding the Visa Waiver Program, the very program that is helping to fund Brand USA’s misguided efforts.”

In a bipartisan spirit of modeling behavior for their colleagues, and to alleviate crony arrangements in federal taxing and spending policies, the two Senate leaders – Reid and McConnell – should delete favored treatment to the horse racing and tourism industries. Take some of the tax burden off the middle class, guys. Come on, that’s only fair.

Meanwhile, we wonder: How long are the boys and girls in D.C. going to make us watch repeat replays of the debt ceiling puppet show where the only thing that changes, invariably upward, is the debt level?

Enough already. It’s time the GOP change tactics. What it’s doing isn’t working, and We the People can see that it’s not.

Originally published at AmericanThinker.com

One Month Into ObamaCare Number Uninsured Americans Up

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Photo Credit: Fox News Obamacare was sold to credulous “Progressives” on the grounds that it was the way to achieve universal health insurance coverage for all Americans. But the Congressional Budget Office scored the legislation as leaving 30 million uninsured 10 years after full implementation! That is more than half the nation’s uninsured pre-Obamacare.

But just one month after Obamacare went into effect, the number of uninsured Americans has gone up rather than down. Just last week, Florida Blue announced it was issuing termination notices for 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California cancelled 160,000 policies, about half of its individual policies in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh dropped 20 percent of its individual policies. In Philadelphia, Independence Blue Cross nixed 45% of its individual policies. CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield cancelled 76,000 individual plans in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, DC, over 40 percent of its individual policies in those states.

But didn’t President Obama tell us that if you liked your health plan, you could keep it? Current policies were supposed to be “grandfathered” in under Obamacare. But the HHS regulations implementing that provision are so restrictive that few current policies qualify under it. The Weekly Standard estimates that as a result 16 million current individual policies, in a nationwide market of 19 million, would be cancelled because they do not meet the new regulatory requirements of Obamacare. That is 85 percent of the individual health insurance market, which involves health coverage individuals buy outside of employer provided insurance.

This is just the beginning, however, of the Obamacare collapse in health insurance coverage. CBO estimates that as many as 20 million will lose their employer provided health insurance under Obamacare. Former CBO Director Douglas-Holtz-Eakin estimated in a study for the American Action Forum that the number will be 40 million.

The individual and employer mandates were supposed to force most Americans to buy the health insurance that the Obama Administration specifies they must buy. But in most cases, the penalty for failing to comply is only a small fraction of the cost of the required health insurance. Moreover, employers can give their workers a raise now by dropping costly Obamacare coverage, and most workers can get Obamacare subsidies on the Exchanges as well, which will further induce employers to drop their coverage. Workers on their own can evade the individual mandate, and rely on Obamacare’s guaranteed issue and community rating regulatory requirements to buy coverage at standard prices if they get sick with costly illnesses.

Read more from this story HERE.

In Health Care Mess, Obama Reaps What He Sowed

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Photo Credit: Washington ExaminerGiven the Affordable Care Act’s multiple crises in its first month of implementation, there’s no way President Obama and his fellow Democrats could be having a good time right now. But imagine if, instead of passing national health care legislation with only Democratic votes in 2009 and 2010, the president had won even a little Republican support for his health scheme. What if Obamacare had passed with ten GOP votes in the Senate and 30 or 40 in the House? If that had happened, the program would still be a mess, but Obama’s political problems would be far less serious.

If Obama had 10 Republican senators and 30 or 40 GOP representatives on his side, those lawmakers would be invested in the program’s success. And the GOP would be effectively divided on Obamacare, instead of solidly united. Some Republican lawmakers would likely favor approving additional money for implementing the troubled program, or perhaps favor holding off on vigorous oversight for a while, or at least not attacking 24-hours-a-day. Instead, Obama is facing a solid wall of Republican opposition.

There’s a story about First Lady Hillary Clinton’s attempt to pass a national health care plan back in 1993 and 1994. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the old Democratic senator, told her that such far-reaching legislation had to pass with a really big majority to make sweeping changes in American life. “They pass 70-to-30, or they fail,” Moynihan told Clinton, according to a recent account by Todd Purdum in Politico.

Back in 1993, the Senate had 57 Democrats, meaning a major bill would have needed 13 Republican votes to pass Moynihan’s test. As it turned out, Clinton ignored Moynihan’s advice and her health care scheme went down in flames.

Read more from this story HERE.

There are Lies, Damned Lies and Democrats

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Steny Hoyer certainly is a creative man. Asked about Barack Obama’s promise that everyone would be able to keep his health coverage if he liked it and the recent revelation that the Democrats knew all along that millions of Americans would lose their health plans under ObamaCare, he had an answer.

“I think the message [the promise] was accurate. It was not precise enough…[it] should have been caveated with – ‘assuming you have a policy that in fact does do what the bill is designed to do,'” reports National Review.

My, that’s rich. Almost Frank Rich.

Since Hoyer’s lie about a lie speaks for itself, let’s just have a little fun here. Try this on for size:

Subject: “But you said that if we supported your law, no one would lose his freedom of speech!”

Leader: “My message was accurate. It just wasn’t precise enough. It should have been caveated with, ‘assuming you agree with me.'”

Read more from this story HERE.

Schlafly: Amnesty Is Republican Party Suicide

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Photo Credit: Townhall Most Americans believe that the United States of America is an exceptional country. The “borders test” proves that people are coming to America, not fleeing from America to exit to other countries.

Republicans and conservatives recognize that the principal reason for our unique abundance is our constitutional restraints on the power of government, separation of powers, balanced budgets, and a minimum of government supervision and interference in our daily lives. America offers a remarkable opportunity for foreigners; no matter what socioeconomic rank they were assigned in their native country.

Most of the millions of immigrants we have welcomed came from countries where the only government they knew was one that made all decisions about economic and social policy. The current level of legal immigration to America adds thousands of people every day whose views and experience are contrary to the conservative value of limited government.

The influx of these new voters will reduce or eliminate Republicans’ ability to offer an alternative to big government, increased government spending, and favorite liberal policies such as Obamacare and gun control. New voters will lean on our hard-pressed health care system and overcrowded public schools to demand more government services.

Amnesty advocates point to the assimilation of large numbers of immigrants in the early years of the 20th century. But that was followed by a national pause and slowdown of immigration from the 1920s to the 1960s, which allowed newcomers to assimilate, learn our language, and adapt to our system of government.

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Sowell: Our ‘Public Servants’ Have Turned Into Public Masters

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Photo Credit: M.Scott MahaskeyThrow the Rascals Out?

Polls indicate that the public is so disgusted with Washington politicians of both parties that a surprisingly large proportion of the people would like to get rid of the whole lot of them.

It is certainly understandable that the voters would like to “throw the rascals out.” But there is no point in throwing the rascals out if we are just going to get a new set of rascals to replace them.

In other words, we need to think about what there is about current political practices that repeatedly bring to power such a counterproductive set of people. Those we call “public servants” have in fact become public masters. And they act like it.

They squander ever more vast amounts of our tax money and still leave trillions of dollars of national debt to be paid by our children and grandchildren.

They intrude into our private lives with ever more restrictions, red tape and electronic surveillance.

Read more from this story HERE.