Archive

Posts Tagged ‘budget’
November 15th, 2021 at 9:23 am
Voters’ Message: Biden “Build Back Better” Blowout Is a Loser
Posted by Print

In the wake of this month’s catastrophic election results for Joe Biden and his party, many leftists stubbornly rationalized that voters were upset that Biden hadn’t seen more of his agenda passed, and that the answer to Biden’s and Democrats’ ills was to step on the gas and pass more of that agenda.  Well, the new ABC News/Washington Post poll offers and instant rebuttal.  The survey is nothing short of catastrophic for Biden and Democrats as 2022 approaches, with Republicans scoring record preferences (see image below).  But note something else:  This poll was conducted November 7 – 10, AFTER Biden’s “infrastructure” spending bill was passed.

 

“Build Back Better” Is a Loser

 

We at CFIF have detailed the catastrophic potential effects of passing Biden’s even larger spending bill currently before Congress, including its potentially devastating consequences for American healthcare and pharmaceutical innovation:

 

Specifically, they’re attempting to cement agreement on provisions that would empower the federal government to begin “negotiating” drug prices with manufacturers and imposing draconian penalties upon providers that don’t play ball.

That constitutes a scheme to bring price controls to American healthcare, with catastrophic effects, according to analyses from both the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as well as the University of Chicago.”

 

This new ABC News/Washington Post poll should offer a cautionary tale for Senators Joe Manchin (D – West Virginia), Kirsten Sinema (D – Arizona) or anyone else even contemplating voting for it.

July 22nd, 2019 at 1:09 pm
Budget Negotiations: CFIF Opposes Use of Drug Price Controls via “Mandatory Inflation Rebates”
Posted by Print

In ongoing negotiations, it’s reported that some are proposing to employ destructive drug price controls as a mechanism to reach a budget agreement.  For multiple reasons that CFIF has highlighted, that poses a potentially catastrophic idea.

Specifically, it appears that debt ceiling negotiations may include a destructive proposal to reduce federal spending levels by targeting $115 billion from Medicare, which would derive largely from alleged “Medicare savings” through instituting a government-imposed mandatory “inflation rebates.”  As we’ve explained, inflation rebate proposals work by penalizing drug innovators with higher taxes whenever their products exceed an arbitrary inflation mark.  Currently, Medicare Part D’s structure works by employing market-based competition to mitigate drug costs via privately-negotiated rebates, meaning that no specific “price” reliably represents that drug’s underlying price.  Accordingly, the proposal would inherently undermine privately-negotiated Part D plan rebates, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has said “appear to make the net prices approach the lowest prices obtained in the private sector.”  Indeed, as the Altarum Institute has highlighted, those Part D plans currently achieve greater brand medicine rebates than private insurers.

Critically, it must also be noted that inflation rebate proposals would violate non-interference clauses that facilitate competition among Part D plans, which provide a critical part of Part D’s success in mitigating costs since its inception.  They would also arbitrarily apply to new pharmaceuticals while bypassing generic brands, which now constitute approximately 90% of Part D prescriptions.  The proposal would also inescapably weaken incentives on the part of Part D plan sponsors to negotiate with drug manufacturers and minimize drug spending under a regime of statutorily-imposed rebates, thereby setting a negative precedent for those sponsors.  It also bears emphasis that private-sector limits on drug cost increases already exist via “price protection rebates” that Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) negotiate with manufacturers.

Accordingly, imposing price controls in Medicare Part D would fundamentally undermine its entire market-based model, which would in turn reduce research and development and slow progress toward new and improved medicines.

Adding insult to injury, such a proposal would constitute a raid on Medicare for the benefit of other government spending pork.  During this era of budgetary waste, the last thing that Congress should consider doing is sacrificing Medicare, particularly when affordability and access to pharmaceutical innovations remains such a top public priority.  Budgetary discipline and access to medicines remains a priority of the highest order, but market-oriented solutions, not destructive gimmicks, offer the optimal solution.  Any proposal to target Medicare Part D for mandatory inflation rebates has not been subjected to full review, committee research, hearings or debate.

American citizens, particularly seniors, should not be subjected to that danger.

 

March 30th, 2016 at 4:21 pm
Coalition Urges Congress to Pass a Regulatory Budget
Posted by Print

In a letter sent today to Congress, the Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) joined a coalition of more than a dozen national organizations in calling on Congress to “implement a regulatory budget to address the cost of federal regulations, which frequently have an effect similar to tax increases. Like federal spending, regulations and their costs should be capped, tracked and disclosed annually.”

The letter, which was organized by our friends at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, can be read by clicking here.

October 30th, 2015 at 9:29 am
Ramirez Cartoon: Trick
Posted by Print

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

March 19th, 2015 at 6:11 pm
AEI Scholar: House GOP Budget Needs Work

James Pethokoukis of AEI argues that the new House GOP budget puts too much emphasis on cutting the deficit and not enough on increasing economic growth.

“Indeed, the entire thrust of the budget seems to be that the federal debt is America’s biggest problem,” he writes. “But where’s the evidence? Low interest rates are hardly signaling investor alarm. And not only is the federal debt issued in U.S. dollars, our currency is the world’s reserve. The U.S. is not Greece. The big economic danger here isn’t a debt-driven financial crisis. It’s chronic slow growth from having to sharply raise taxes if we don’t restructure entitlements in a way that promotes saving and work.”

Of course, House budget writers do intend to reform entitlement spending drivers like Medicare and Medicaid – and eventually, one hopes, Social Security. So from at least this standpoint Pethokoukis and the House Budget Committee seem to be in agreement that structural fixes are needed to get entitlement spending on a sustainable trajectory.

What seems to divide them, however, is the motivation for doing so. For the budget drafters it may be containing and reducing an exploding deficit. For Pethokoukis and others, it’s kick-starting the economy to generate more wealth up-and-down the income ladder.

One of these two motivations will ultimately decide what conservative entitlement reform looks like. It will be interesting to see which prevails in the run-up to 2016.

March 17th, 2015 at 1:40 pm
New House Budget Solidifies Ryan’s Legacy

New House Budget Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) is picking up right where his predecessor Paul Ryan (R-WI) left off.

Today, Price introduced his first federal budget proposal which borrows heavily from Ryan’s plans, “including a plan that would transform Medicare into a voucher-like ‘premium support’ program for seniors joining Medicare in 2024 or later,” reports Fox News. “They would receive a subsidy to purchase health insurance on the private market.”

Price would also keep Ryan’s idea to convert Medicaid and food stamps into federal block grants that states can spend with more freedom than they do now.

Though this budget stands little chance of passing because Republicans in Congress don’t have the votes to overcome a certain veto by President Barack Obama, retaining the core of Ryan’s reform package sends an important signal that these budget proposals are now the fundamental elements of any conservative spending reduction agenda. Every GOP presidential aspirant will have to weigh in on whether they support this approach and what, if any, changes they would make.

This is deliberative democracy at its best.

March 4th, 2015 at 12:49 pm
GOP Congress Caves on Obama Amnesty

After weeks of failing to pass a bill blocking implementation of President Barack Obama’s unilateral amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, Republican leaders in Congress called it quits.

A so-called “clean” bill – one without the amnesty prohibition – passed the House of Representatives 257 – 167 yesterday, with all of the no votes coming from Republicans. The bill is expected to pass the Republican-controlled Senate quickly.

Though much of the blame is being focused on House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), it seems the media is conveniently forgetting that new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) let a presidential attack on constitutional separation-of-powers supersede a Senate debating procedure known as the filibuster. If the roles were reversed it is inconceivable that Harry Reid would let a procedural rule he controls thwart his sense of constitutional propriety.

By elevating a Senate tradition above Congress’ constitutional duty to make the laws, McConnell has effectively neutered his 54 member majority since it lacks the 60 votes it needs to actually govern.

Welcome to the Republican Senate. Its work product looks an awful lot like its Democratic predecessor.

February 26th, 2015 at 1:44 pm
Boehner Stands Firm on Tying DHS Funding to Amnesty Ban

Kudos to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) for declining the Senate GOP’s offer to cave to Democrats’ demand for a so-called “clean” funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

As I discuss in my column this week, some Senate Republican leaders are getting gun shy about following through with the party’s promise to condition funding for DHS on new legislative language that specifically prohibits immigration agencies from implementing President Barack Obama’s unilateral amnesty program. They warn that Republicans will be blamed for the shutdown that would start on Sunday when the DHS budget ends, if no new bill is passed. Better, they argue, to appropriate the money now and hope the federal judiciary holds Obama accountable in the future.

At a press conference today, Boehner reminded everyone that – at least publicly – “All Republicans agree that we need to fund the Department of Homeland Security and we want to stop the president’s actions in response to immigration.”

Ever the politician, Boehner “would not say whether he would back a Senate funding bill without provisions that would defund President Obama’s executive actions on immigration,” reports National Journal.

Still, it’s encouraging to hear the Speaker of the House sound resolute in defense of the rule of law when so much of the political class is aching to cut a deal.

February 12th, 2015 at 7:35 pm
Obama Demagogues Staples Over Part-Time Worker Policy

Apparently, the president who has time to share his Final Four picks on national television can also squeeze in space on his schedule to erroneously charge Staples with oppressing its own workforce.

Earlier this week, Barack Obama was interviewed by BuzzFeed, an online news site. BuzzFeed claimed to have evidence that Staples, the office supply giant, threatens to fire part-time employees who work more than 25 hours a week. The reason – anything more could qualify the worker for employer-sponsored health insurance under ObamaCare. (30 hours per week is the threshold.)

Asked to respond, Obama unleashed his inner community organizer.

“I haven’t looked at Staples stock lately or what the compensation of the CEO is, but I suspect that they could well afford to treat their workers favorably and give them some basic financial security,” Obama replied. “…when I hear large corporations that make billions of dollars in profits trying to blame our interest in providing health insurance as an excuse for cutting back workers’ wages, shame on them.”

On the contrary, shame on the President of the United States.

“Unfortunately, the president appears not to have all the facts,” a Staples spokesman told CNN Money. The cap on part-time work hours has been in place for a decade, and the company has many opportunities for hourly employees to move into full-time positions.

It’s striking that a man who doesn’t blink at proposing a federal budget more than $472 billion in the red next year thinks himself capable of lecturing a private business on how it should spend its profits.

Maybe he should stick with basketball brackets, and let the professionals manage the books.

October 9th, 2014 at 3:15 pm
Arkansas’ Medicaid Expansion Violated Obama HHS’ Own Budget Neutrality Rules

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that the State of Arkansas and the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) violated federal guidelines when they agreed to expand Medicaid under a “private option” plan.

Arkansas was one of the first states to get permission from the Obama administration to expand Medicaid, but on different terms than laid out in ObamaCare.

Medicaid is the state-federal program that pays for health care services for the nation’s poor and disabled.

Under normal circumstances, Arkansas would only be allowed to get a waiver from ObamaCare’s expansion structure if it could prove that its plan would be budget neutral.

Guess what happened instead.

“According to federal regulations, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has certain procedures they must follow when reviewing state requests for Medicaid waivers,” write experts at the Foundation for Government Accountability.

“One key component of any waiver is budget neutrality: states seeking waivers must demonstrate that they will not spend any more federal dollars under the waiver than they would have without the waiver. But as it turns out, the Obama Administration cut corners and ‘did not ensure budget neutrality’ requirements were actually met before approving Arkansas’ ObamaCare expansion.”

The result is an additional $778 million more in spending on Arkansas’ version of Medicaid expansion than would have occurred had HHS insisted on following its own budget neutrality rules.

The entire analysis of the GAO’s report is worth reading since it explains other serious problems with the Arkansas plan. Perhaps the most egregious is the depth at which the Democratic governor’s office and loyal state agencies went to mislead Republican state legislators on the true cost of the expansion. Evidence of bad faith negotiations like this make it impossible to have a substantive policy conversation. Even now there are reports that the governor is peddling incorrect information, and trying to silence opposition.

What’s emerging from the Arkansas fiasco is the extent to which supporters of bigger government will go to entrench their policies – truth, fairness and accountability be damned.

October 3rd, 2014 at 11:24 am
ObamaCare Nearing a Fannie and Freddie-Style Bailout of Insurance Companies?

Could ObamaCare’s “risk corridor” program become the health insurance industry’s equivalent of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – the federally funded entities that spent $180 billion bailing out banks who issued subprime mortgages?

Stephen Moore, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, thinks so.

“But insurance experts warn that [the risk corridor] program creates the same moral hazard problem for health insurance that we saw in the mortgage market with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Moore writes at Investor’s Business Daily. “The guarantee on bad mortgages encouraged bad mortgages. The guarantee against losses on ObamaCare enrollees encourages insurers to toss sound underwriting standards out the window. This didn’t turn out so well with Fannie and Freddie, which received a taxpayer-funded bailout of more than $180 billion after issuing subprime mortgages that should never have been written.”

Moore goes on to say that surveys of health insurance companies selling plans on ObamaCare exchanges say that the vast majority expect to receive a payment from the federal government to cover their losses. Estimates for the first year near $1 billion. And, since there is no cap to how much the feds will reimburse, there is no limit to how much money a company can lose and still expect a check from Uncle Sam.

Despite all this, the Obama administration is chugging ahead with plans to make payments under the risk corridor program without explicit congressional appropriations. Republicans are contesting President Barack Obama’s authority to do this – with an assist from a recent GAO legal opinion – but they should really train their fire on eliminating the risk corridor program as is. As with IRS tax credits, ObamaCare can’t survive without a convoluted shell game that hides the true cost of health care.

We’ll never get health care policy right until we can talk honestly about how it’s funded. Now would be a good time for the GOP to being that process.

September 9th, 2014 at 7:51 pm
ObamaCare’s Popularity Dropping Ahead of Midterms

“Just 35 percent of voters now support the Affordable Care Act, down 3 percentage points from May, according to a monthly poll by the Kaiser Health Foundation,” reports The Hill.

Moreover, the poll found that 47 percent of respondents feel negatively about the law, otherwise known as ObamaCare.

The RealClearPolitics average of six national polls is even worse: 53.8 percent say they oppose the law, with only 40.3 percent in favor.

Little wonder that the controversial health law is so unpopular. States are continuing to resist Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare’s terms for fear of a Trojan horse spending spree, and consumers are getting shut out of some of the country’s best hospitals.

All this and it is still almost two months until the midterm elections.

President Barack Obama may not be on the ballot this year, but his eponymous health law surely is.

April 1st, 2014 at 6:48 pm
ObamaCare Promotion Driving Up Medicaid Applications

“According to a recent study by Avalere, the average application rate [for Medicaid] has increased 27 percent among non-expansion states and 41 percent for those expanding,” writes Angela Boothe of the American Action Forum.

For example, Tennessee – a state that chose not to expand its Medicaid program under ObamaCare – is still experiencing severe pressure on its budget due to high numbers of people trying to enroll. Though only the beginning of April, the Volunteer State has already enrolled the maximum number of people it projected to cover for the year. Adding to the pressure on state budget writers is the reality that by refusing to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare – which covers 100 percent of the increased costs until 2017 – part of the expense for covering the new enrollees falls on the state. If you work in a non-Medicaid state agency in Tennessee, beware bean counters wielding knives.

The Avalere report highlights the fact that ObamaCare creates a unique burden for non-expansion states like Tennessee. Because of the controversial health law’s media saturation, millions of people are aware that they are probably eligible for some sort of government assistance to purchase health coverage. Of these, many are discovering that they already qualify for Medicaid, even before ObamaCare was enacted. The awkward situation for states like Tennessee is that ObamaCare is still expanding Medicaid, just without any extra financial help.

If non-expansion states like Tennessee continue to see record Medicaid enrollment increases this year, don’t be surprised if anti-ObamaCare governors and legislatures start to rethink their opposition to expansion. Of course, as I’ve explained elsewhere, it would be a serious mistake to swap a three-year federal bailout for decades of increased costs by expanding Medicaid on ObamaCare’s terms. But for desperate lawmakers looking for a quick fix, ObamaCare’s “free money” may be too tempting to pass up.

March 10th, 2014 at 9:16 am
Ramirez Cartoon: The Obama Budget
Posted by Print

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

December 17th, 2013 at 6:53 pm
GOP to Strike Back on Debt Limit?

If you’re disappointed by Paul Ryan’s budget deal to avoid another government shutdown, the House Budget Chairman has a message for you.

Wait till February.

That’s when the debt limit will be reached and, according to Ryan, when Republicans in Congress will try to extract some meaningful concessions from Democrats.

Of course, Ryan didn’t divulge any specifics about what kind of concessions would qualify, likely because he’s waiting for the results from a GOP confab in the New Year to settle on a strategy.

I’m skeptical. Ryan’s budget deal takes most of the obvious targets off the table until 2015 – that is, after the midterm elections – making it hard to see what leverage he and other Republicans in Congress can exert on Democrats and President Barack Obama to curb their spending habits.

If recent history is any guide, the most likely scenario is that Republicans continue to fracture over fiscal issues while the Democrats get an assist from the mainstream media in raising the debt limit.

The bitter pill for conservatives to swallow is that House Republicans have almost no ability to make substantive changes in law or policy unless and until the party regains control of the Senate. If the upper chamber flips next year then the silver lining to Ryan’s budget deal and the likely debt ceiling capitulation it’s that they might be the last time the GOP negotiates from a position of weakness.

December 13th, 2013 at 1:55 pm
Ryan’s Rope and Boehner’s Blunder

At NRO this week, I made it clear that I really don’t like Paul Ryan’s budget deal. I now rush in to urge everybody, on all sides on the right, not to over-react. This admonition applies to Speaker John Boehner, too.

Background: While I haven’t always thought Boehner has strategized brilliantly or played his tactical cards wisely, I also think conservatives have frequently gone way overboard in portraying him as some sort of outrageous sellout, “squish,” or (in some cases) flat-out enemy. The man has very solid ratings from the American Conservative Union, and he is a far more effective, and far more conservative, Speaker than Dennis Hastert was; and in many ways he is steadier than Newt Gingrich was.

I’ve also been, over the course of many years, one of Paul Ryan’s foremost advocates, and while I have been far less happy with him this year, my prior post on him (before this deal) was far more in support than opposed.

The point is that I think both Ryan and Boehner are, or at least usually have been, trying their hardest, legitimately, to achieve conservative goals. I mostly do not question their intentions (although both are showing worrisome signs even on that front, but that’s for another day’s discussion), but I do question some of their decisions.

I also think Boehner has very good reason to feel very, very angry at the conservative groups that have portrayed him as being just this side of the devil incarnate, utterly failing to modulate their criticism to match the severity (or lack thereof) of his alleged crimes against ideological purity. It is an axiom of politics that if you treat somebody as an enemy, as the groups have treated Boehner, then eventually he actually starts seeing himself as your enemy — and treats you accordingly. (Conservatives did this to John McCain in the late 1990s, when his only apostasy was on campaign finance, taking positions that most conservatives had taken as recently as six years earlier, before George Will made opposition to McCain-like efforts a cause celebre. McCain was wrong, but he was otherwise solidly conservative and saw himself as one, until conservatives started treating him as an outright pariah — which of course, with his awful temperament, caused him to become increasingly opposed to us on all sorts of issues.)

None of which, though, excuses Boehner’s public conniption fits this week. Boehner’s job as a national leader on the right is to pull people together, not drive them apart. His job is to make it easier to unify to win elections, not to drive wedges that exacerbate cannibalism on the right. He should be trying to bring activists in, not drive them away.

And in this case, he also was wrong on substance in way overstating the case that Ryan’s deal is a win for conservatives and a move towards smaller government. Even if one accepts all of Ryan’s numbers — which, as I explained in the column linked above, are bogus numbers — the deficit reduction over ten years ($23 billion, or a paltry $2.3 billion per year) would amount to extremely small potatoes. The fact — and it is a fact — that the claimed reduction involves lots of smoke and mirrors makes the vehemence of Boehner’s claims even more out of line.

As for Ryan, I actually do think he sincerely thinks he has gotten the best deal he can. (He knows darn well, however, that he is using a lot of gimmicks to make the deal look better to conservatives than it actually is. So he’s not being fully honest — again — and he is also helping feed the impression that conservative hard-liners are unreasonable, which is a counterproductive impression for the long-term cause of good government.) But I think he was not just wrong, but asinine, in shutting out his Senate counterpart (and longtime ally) Jeff Sessions from negotiations that should have included Sessions. What happens when one shuts out Senate conservatives is that there is nobody to raise a red flag when Senate-specific issues come up that really, really make a difference for conservative governance. In this case, Ryan allowed the deal to include an absolutely horrible waiver of Senate budget rules, to the effect that, despite his staff’s pitiful claims to the contrary, really will make it easier for taxes to be raised in the future.

All in all, despite my NRO column, I do not think this deal was an absolutely horrible one; it was merely bad, not horrific, and it was a comparatively minor deal, not a major one. But, as Fred Barnes correctly wrote, we gave up a great deal when we breached the budgetary sequester — and we got precious little in return for it.

In sum (after lots of one-hand/other-hand discussion — sorry!), while conservatives are rightly angry at yet another policy defeat, and while Boehner’s intemperate remarks — in effect, a declaration of war against some of the conservative activist groups — were extraordinarily unwise, it still behooves all of us to take deep breaths and try to gain some perspective. We now do so in the knowledge that Paul Ryan is playing macro-political games that put his personal ambitions above those of the conservative movement, and that Boehner has been pushed to the verge of a McCain-like, all-out-war against the movement. These are not good developments.

Conservatives now can do two things. In the short term, we can encourage senators to join Sessions and Mitch McConnell in opposition to Ryan’s deal. It might still be defeatable. For the long run, I repeat the call I made here two months ago for a summit on the right, to try to pull people together and strategize better. We have an extraordinary opportunity in 2014 for electoral gains, in response to the debacle of ObamaCare. It would be inexcusable for continued warfare on the right to destroy that opportunity. Constructive criticism is fine. Cannibalism isn’t.

September 12th, 2013 at 7:46 pm
Delay ObamaCare, Spend Savings on Sequester?

House Republican conservatives are considering an alternative to using the upcoming budget fight as an attempt to defund ObamaCare. In its place, the GOP would vote to delay all of ObamaCare for a year and use the money saved to restore budget cuts caused by the sequester, reports the Washington Examiner.

To entice Democrats, the proposal would also raise the government’s debt ceiling, which is estimated to be reached sometime in late October.

On the plus side, the one-year delay puts President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats on the defensive. After delaying the employer mandate and income eligibility requirements, it would be difficult to justify opposing the whole scale delay of a law that is turning into a “train wreck” to implement.

Shifting the money saved on ObamaCare implementation also lets Republicans take credit for restoring budget cuts, but here the plan starts to look less favorable. Conservatives want to restore funding to the military, but liberals are likely to demand restoration across the board – including budget items that Republicans would otherwise like to see shrink or eliminated.

Besides, if at the end of the year the sequester gets “paid for,” what was the point of going through all the downsizing? Angling for praise for restoring spending in a budget that doesn’t balance seems like an odd goal for fiscal conservatives.

Finally, there’s the debt ceiling issue. Between the White House, Senate Democrats and House Republican leadership there appears to be agreement that the debt ceiling should be raised. While that’s certainly the politically correct thing to do, it too seems contrary to the fiscal instincts of conservatives.

And yet, this trial balloon proposal might be attractive to House conservatives, also known as the best hope for imposing any kind of spending discipline in Washington. If this is the best they think they can do, then it means momentum inside Congress for defunding ObamaCare is dead.

If that’s true, let’s hope they can get a full and complete delay. Otherwise, capitulating on those terms will lead to more spending, more debt and more regulations. Not exactly a win for conservativsm.

July 23rd, 2013 at 6:40 pm
Scott Walker: The Anti-Obama

In his column last week, Troy identified Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as perhaps the best potential Republican presidential candidate to correct for Barack Obama’s deficiencies.

In an editorial by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, we have even more proof.

One of Walker’s first acts as governor was to sign into a law a series of big changes on how public employee unions operate. The three biggest were limits on collective bargaining, requiring unions to recertify each year and prohibiting automatic collection of union dues.

According to analysis by the paper, in the two years since the law passed the Milwaukee affiliate of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees “has gone from more than 9,000 members and income exceeding $7 million in 2010 to about 3,500 members and a deep deficit by the end of last year.”

So far Walker’s law has translated into savings of $110 for Milwaukee taxpayers, says a new report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Let’s see, budget-busting president or belt-tightening governor? Maybe, just maybe, America will get to make a sensible choice in 2016.

May 2nd, 2013 at 1:16 pm
Hidden Costs of Gang’s Immigration Bill

Andrew Stiles explains the reality behind the Gang of Eight claim that illegal immigrants won’t be eligible for public benefits until 13 years after being legalized:

“A notable loophole in the Gang’s legislation explicitly prohibits DHS from considering the likelihood that an applicant for provisional legal status will become a “public charge” — defined as any individual who is “primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, as demonstrated by either the receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance, or institutionalization for long-term care at government expense.” Critics fear that if a significant number of immigrants meeting that definition are given legal status, state and local government could face an immediate financial burden, and one that could worsen over time.”

Moreover, as I explain in my column this week, the Gang’s prohibition against using federal law’s “public charge” criteria to decide whether illegal immigrants should be legalized undermines claims from Gang members and their allies that mass legalization won’t lead to big government spending increases.

The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector is still studying the impact of the Gang’s legalization effort on government spending, and my hunch is that he, unlike the Gang, will include the probable increases incurred by state and local governments if the public charge prohibition becomes law.

If so, the American people will get a clearer picture of the actual costs of legalization. Only then can we have an honest debate about what to do.

April 25th, 2013 at 4:37 pm
Video: Obama’s Make-Believe Budget
Posted by Print

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses the president’s budget proposal and how its calls for even higher taxes, higher spending, bigger government and more empty promises will do nothing to get us out of the Obama recession.