Freedom Line Blog

The Cato Institute has a terrific critique on the Democrats’ comprehensive health care “reform” bill.  Throughout the article runs a description of the expansive interpretation given to the U.S. Constitution’s Interstate Commerce Clause by the Supreme Court, and further stretched by Congress.   The best part though is a counter-proposal for increasing competition in the health insurance market while lowering costs.

If Congress were interested in using the commerce clause for its intended purpose, we would be debating the Health Care Choice Act, which would permit the interstate purchase of individual health policies. The Democrats, however, bottled up that bill in committee.

They would rather exploit the cartelization of health insurance in selected states to argue for a government-run insurance company. Never mind that a major reason for those cartels is the prohibition against purchasing insurance across state lines.

The Health Care Choice Act is an elegant piece of legislation designed to allow health insurance carriers to sell – and consumers to purchase – plans across state lines.  Of course, there are federalism concerns about allowing different states to regulate according to their own policy preferences.  Then again, the Health Care Choice Act does give the GOP something to support in the health reform debate.  Additional commentary on the proposal is available here.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D – Nevada) appeared on the verge of tears on the Senate floor yesterday, lamenting criticisms lodged against him.

His complaint?  That those big, bad, meanie Republicans had the audacity to question his personal judgment in scooting off to a Louisiana fundraiser, even while he threatens to keep the Senate in session into the holidays to address healthcare legislation.  Voice cracking, he feigned heartbreak that criticisms against him could become so “personal.”  He professed an inability to fathom how supposed “friends” from across the aisle could “embarrass or denigrate” him in such a cruel, cruel manner.

This is the same Harry Reid who, just three days earlier, compared opponents of his healthcare legislation to those who defended slavery and opposed the Civil Rights Act.  Never mind that the Republican Party originated from opposition to slavery, or that Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act in higher proportions than Democrats.  Factual realities are apparently no more relevant to Harry Reid than is a sense of personal decorum and judgment.

In this way, he is like the proverbial boy who murdered his parents only to later plead for mercy as an orphan.  He started a fight, but didn’t like it when his targets fought back.  In less than one year, Nevada voters will have their opportunity to render judgment on Reid’s plea.  According to the latest polls, they are apparently unamused.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. For those readers who don’t receive it in their e-mail inboxes or if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, below is a summary of its contents:

Ellis:  Jobs for Us or Jobs Being Done On Us?
CFIF Staff:  ClimateGate in Perspective – The Road Ahead
Lee:  Sarbanes-Oxley – An Unconstitutional Monument to Governmental Incompetence
Batkins:  The Evolution of a President – Not Yet Trans-Partisan

Freedom Minute Video:  ObamaCare – Slapping a Tax on America’s Youth
Podcast:  The Real Crisis in the Climate Change Debate – Interview with Lord Christopher Monckton
Jester’s Courtroom:  No Talking Turkey in This Court

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update, sign up here.

In today’s New York Times, economist Paul Krugman seems to think that along with propping up failed financial institutions and distorting the nation’s currency, the Federal Reserve should also play a part in creating jobs. Predictably, the answer is more government spending.

Mr. Bernanke has received a great deal of credit, and rightly so, for his use of unorthodox strategies to contain the damage after Lehman Brothers failed. But both the Fed’s actions, as measured by its expansion of credit, and Mr. Bernanke’s words suggest that the urgency of late 2008 and early 2009 has given way to a curious mix of complacency and fatalism — a sense that the Fed has done enough now that the financial system has stepped back from the brink, even though its own forecasts predict that unemployment will remain punishingly high for at least the next three years.

The most specific, persuasive case I’ve seen for more Fed action comes from Joseph Gagnon, a former Fed staffer now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Basing his analysis on the prior work of none other than Mr. Bernanke himself, in his previous incarnation as an economic researcher, Mr. Gagnon urges the Fed to expand credit by buying a further $2 trillion in assets. Such a program could do a lot to promote faster growth, while having hardly any downside.

But there is a downside, and it’s more than immediately exceeding the proposed raise in the national debt by $1.8 trillion. As astute observers of California politics say, the government doesn’t have a revenue problem – it has a spending problem. As I’ve mentioned before, the main impediment to private sector job creation is not access to credit: it’s uncertainty about what the government will regulate or tax next. Some form of human activity has to be taxed in order to pay for “stimulus” policies like the one Krugman supports. Business owners know this because they must identify income before they pay out for services, goods, and yes, people. Adding an employee to the payroll is a tremendously expensive decision that isn’t made easier just because the Federal Reserve makes it easier to get a company credit card. If Washington is serious about job creation it needs to stop spending and taxing other people’s money.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino explains how passage of ObamaCare will mean higher taxes, fewer jobs and less freedom for America’s youth.

Watch the video below:

Jonah Goldberg – Global Warming as a Political Tool
Red State – Congress and College Football?
Atlanta Journal-Constitution – Stimulus III is More of the Same
Washington Examiner – Life Insurers Lobby to Save Death Tax

Washington Times – Tip of the ClimateGate Iceberg
WSJ Editorial – Compromise is Worse Than the Public Option
Reason – Health Care Debate Reveals Nasty Liberal Tendency
Washington Post – Medicare Compromise Could Lead to Single-Payer

Federal Debt: $12.104 trillion

No, the munchkins didn’t proclaim this, but the liberal Huffington Post did.

The supposedly good news (for Republicans, libertarians, Whigs, patients, taxpayers and moderate Democrats who like their current office space) was reported today by Ryan Grim.  He noted sarcastically, “The public health insurance option died on Thursday, December 10, 2009, after a months-long struggle with Senate parliamentary procedure.  The time of death was recorded as 11:12 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.”

Apparently Nancy Pelosi read the political tea leaves and noticed that voters simply won’t tolerate a government-run public option.  When questioned, it took Pelosi about two-hundred words to essentially say that the House would accept the Senate “compromise” to drop the public option in exchange for lowering the eligibility age for Medicare enrollment.

But make no mistake.  This is no cause for celebration.

Some Democrats are actually excited, hoping that expanding an already financially strapped Medicare system will pave the way for a true single-payer socialized system.  Indeed, as Brian Faughnan of RedState.com noted earlier today, the idea is actually the brain child of Howard Dean, who proposed a similar plan during his 2004 presidential bid.   And why is Dean, who is a strong proponent of a single-payer system and has been critical of his fellow Democrats for not going far enough in their efforts to put the government in charge of your health care, supportive of this so-called compromise?  As Faughnan writes:

The reason Dean likes this compromise – the reason he proposed this compromise – is that he would rather have the government bureaucracy in charge of people’s health care plans than private insurance companies. That’s one point of view. Some may agree with it; others not. But it seems the real value of this proposal to Dean is that it ‘moves the ball’ toward a single-payer health care system.”

Was Chicago-style political thuggery the type of “hope and change” for which Americans voted in 2008?

Either way, that’s the White House’s emerging modus operandi.

Intially, the Obama Administration at least paid lip service to bipartisanship, even if the reality behind closed doors was quite different.  But with the EPA’s recent determination that everyday carbon dioxide constitutes a “dangerous pollutant,” Obama has abandoned even that pretense.  According to an anonymous White House source quoted by Fox News, the EPA’s absurd ruling is a bald political tactic to bludgeon the Senate and the business community into accepting carbon cap-and-tax legislation:

If you don’t pass this legislation, then … the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area.  And it’s not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it’s going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty.”

The House of Representatives passed a cap-and-tax bill by razor-thin margins, but its prospects in the Senate appeared slim.  Meanwhile, many business coalitions have refused to play ball in the White House’s game of global warming hysteria.  Enter the team of Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, with their ugly form of Chicago politics.

As Obama’s popularity falls to record lows for a President at this stage, and with his extremist agenda in increasing jeopardy, we should prepare for more.

Moderate Senator Olympia Snowe Discussing Health Care Reform:

Every line and every word in this 2,000-page document matters. . . When it comes to the subject at hand, the most consequential health-care legislation in the history of our country and reordering $33 trillion in health-care spending over the coming decade, surely, we can and must do better.

Washington Examiner – Failed States: Daylight in Michigan
Michael Barone – Expanding Government Power
Karl Rove – Can the GOP Retake the Senate in 2010?
George Will – Playing Politics with the Fed

Politico – Public Option Dream Fading
WSJ – Obama Accepts Nobel Prize
Red State – The Necessary GOP Civil War
The Hill – Net Neutrality Would Hinder Free Speech

Federal Debt: $12.099 trillion

Bjorn Lomborg is probably the coolest head when it comes to global warming and climate change.  Rather than dispute the science – a task ably engaged in by Lord Christopher Monckton, among others – Lomborg takes aim at the Environmental Left’s specious claim that regulating energy consumption enables human flourishing.  If the goal is to help people, then why not get the biggest bang for a nation’s tax dollars?  As Lomborg points out:

The choice is stark: for a few hundred million dollars, we could help almost half of humanity now. Compare this to the investments to tackle climate change – $40 trillion annually by the end of the century – which would save a hundred times fewer starving people. For every person saved from malnutrition through climate policies, the same money could have saved half a million people from micronutrient malnutrition through direct policies.

Some argue that the choice between spending money on carbon cuts and on direct policies is unfair. But it is a basic fact that no dollar can be spent twice. Rich countries and donors have limited budgets and attention spans. If we spend vast amounts of money on carbon cuts in the belief that we are stopping malaria and reducing malnutrition, we are less likely to put aside money for the direct policies that would help today. Indeed, for every dollar spent on strong climate policies, we will likely do about $0.02 of good for the future. If we spent the same dollar on simple policies to help malnutrition or malaria now, we could do $20 or more good – 1,000 times better, when all impacts are taken into account.

If you haven’t encountered Lomborg before, here’s a link to his website.  If you want to read a sensible viewpoint on using scarce resources to improve life for the most people possible, there’s no better place to start.  Now, if Bjorn could just get Al Gore to debate him…

As this piece from Reason explains, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is pretty much the final word on whether a bill is perceived as saving money, costing money, or having no fiscal effect. By most accounts, the CBO is staffed by competent people making the most objective calculations possible. The problem is, what’s possible?

The question goes to the heart of the dispute between central planners and free market types. While the former thinks that the intricacies of human behavior can be predicted (and influenced) with the right data and formulas, the latter can’t help but see the endeavor as nothing more than chasing after an economic Bigfoot. For all its sophistication, the CBO is still bedeviled by the criticism that it simply doesn’t know enough information to render any kind of economic certainty.

These days, CBO analysts are scoring bills using intricate computer simulations based in large part on survey data. The raw information is interpreted through academic research on how human beings respond to various economic assumptions. In an interview with The Washington Post, the CBO’s chief health care analyst, Phil Ellis, compared the process to playing Sim City, a computer game that simulates urban development. But even the best model is still only as good as its input data. And for policies that have no real-world antecedent, it’s extremely difficult to come up with accurate input data.

In fact, it may be impossible. But that doesn’t really matter to the Democrats pushing health care “reform.” As long as they can get the non-partisan CBO to score their proposals as saving money – no matter how unreliable the data – their primary purpose of expanding coverage is served. Make no mistake; liberals are pushing universal – not cost effective – health care. Like their Soviet-era predecessors, today’s central planners can’t predict the future, no matter how much survey data they throw at the forecasters working at the CBO. That certainly won’t stop them from trying though.

What do Obamanomics and global warming hysteria have in common?

A numbers hoax.

As anyone outside the deepest redoubts of the Daily Kos and MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann knows, the foundation underlying the global warming agenda is crumbling.  This is the result of revelations of politically-correct climate scientists explicitly attempting to distort data, blacklist opposing viewpoints and redefine what constitutes scholarly publication on the subject.  Even the shameless Al Gore has been embarrassed enough to avoid the climate change summit taking place in Copenhagen this month.

In a similar manner, the data trumpeted by the Obama White House to justify its “stimulus” efforts has been exposed.  Last week, the chief of the board tracking stimulus spending announced that inspectors will review the data underlying Obama’s claim that he “saved or created” approximately 650,000 jobs.  This number was announced in October of this year, only to be quickly refuted.  Among other things, the estimate included non-existent Congressional districts, and dozens of jobs purportedly created by grants of less than $1,000.

Although these two news items have received well-deserved attention, few people have connected them.  The simple fact is that two of the greatest icons of liberal thought – global warming and government spending – have been exposed as reliant upon fraudulent data.  When the White House wonders why its poll numbers continue to plummet to unprecedented lows and voters begin to smell the coffee, perhaps they merely need to read the news.

Though Democrats might be using phrases like “deficit neutral” or “budget neutral,” there is no doubt that the current Senate health care bill will greatly expand the size and scope of government.

In fact, the 2,074 pages of text create more than 70 new government programs.

Among the highlights/low-lights:

• Medicaid Global Payment System Demonstration Project.

• Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program.

• Interagency Working Group on Health Care Quality.

• Community-Based Care Transitions Program.

• Patient Navigator Program (Are patients going to need a program to “navigate” health care reform?).

• Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (rationing).

Full list here.

Proving that Congress can “walk and chew gum at the same time,” the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted to ban NCAA Division I football from holding a “national championship” unless it’s the product of a playoff system. What!?

Sadly, during the voice vote there was only one enthusiastic “No” vote from John Barrow (D-GA).

Congress loves power, and this vote is a perfect example of how everything, no matter how trivial (sports), is supposedly under their domain.  ‘Mandating that everyone get health insurance?  We can do that.  Controlling all political speech?  We run this show!  Mandating how college football players spend their postseason?  Sure, we watch college football and we personally prefer a playoff system.’

Republicans and Democrats deserve equal criticism.  The legislation is actually sponsored by Republican Joe Barton (TX).  Of course, if Texas had gone to the national championship game last year, then some representative from Oklahoma would have cried foul and tried to change the system.

Today’s vote is just one example of the blind arrogance exhibited by our representatives on a daily basis.  Power is king on the Hill.

It seems that Congress is little different from high school social politics.  Everyone travels in cliques (known as caucuses); everyone wants to be popular (leader, chairman or even President) and there are plenty of scandals involving drugs and cheating.

I guess in this metaphor that makes voters the parents of Congress.  It’s a shame that throwing Congress out of office every two years is the only punishment voters can inflict upon their “honorable” representatives.  (At what point are we allowed to stop calling them honorable?)

You can read the bill, H.R. 390 “The College Football Playoff Act,” here.  Here is the markup information from today’s hearing.

“Nothing to see here, folks…  Move along.”

That was the convenient and laughable conclusion of a self-serving ACORN-supported investigation.

You remember ACORN…  It recently became famous for being caught red-handed on hidden video on multiple occasions and at multiple sites sharing advice on how to use government largess to engage in child prostitution.  Well, ACORN’s executives hired former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to investigate.  The conclusion?  “We did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff involved.  In fact, no action, illegal or otherwise, was ever taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers.”

Other than dispensing advice for all the world to see with their own eyes, that is.

Tellingly, ACORN and Mr. Harshbarger refused to admit how much his law firm was paid for his “investigation.”  ACORN’s CEO Bertha Lewis conveniently demurred, saying that its board would have to determine at some later date whether to disclose that amount.

Perhaps that’s a subject for the next undercover investigation…

Washington Times – Why a Jobs Summit?
National Review Online – The New New Deal
Rep. Bob Barr – The GOP Purity Test
Politico – Coakley Takes Kennedy’s Seat in MA

The Hill – Dems Claim Agreement on Public Option
Jonah Goldberg – Big Business Democrats
Bloomberg – Some Jobs May Never Return
Reason – CBO: The Budget Gatekeeper

Federal Debt: $12.096 trillion

Today’s version of the Washington Post’s “The Fix” blog notes that Sarah Palin gave a radio interview over the weekend where she seemed to leave the door open to a third party presidential run in 2012.  This could potentially be politically disastrous for the GOP come Election Day.

Under present circumstances, Palin probably doesn’t have a strong enough coalition to take the GOP nomination. What she does have, however, is an intensity of support that would likely lead many of her supporters to follow her out of the Republican Party’s presidential fold.  Given the schismatic tendencies that the Tea Party movement has begun to show, Palin could also potentially have a much more organized, coherent base than most independent candidates.

This prospect is just one more impetus for a Republican coalescence before the next presidential race.  From Theodore Roosevelt to Ross Perot, the legacy of strong third-party candidates has tended to be creating murder-suicide pacts with the candidate that they’re ideologically closer to.  If Sarah Palin bolts the GOP in 2012, she may end up spending two election cycles in a row being blamed for Barack Obama’s presidency.

‘Tis the season for consumer spending, and no collection of humanity does it better than the U.S. Congress. According to the Associated Press, here are a few of the itemized gifts being wrapped at taxpayers’ expense:

• Huge increase in foreign aid coupled with an 18 percent cut to a program that helps states with cost of incarcerating criminal illegal immigrants

• Reinstituting a needle exchange program in the District of Columbia

• Eliminating the D.C. voucher program that allows less fortunate students to attend prestigious schools

• Another $2.5 billion for high-speed rail programs added to the $8 billion provided in the stimulus package

Oh yeah; the omnibus spending bill is going to fund nine cabinet agencies whose fiscal year budgets began back on October 1st. As usual, timing is everything…

So said Vince Lombardi. The same question could be hurled at the Obama White House for its latest transgression against common sense. First there were the inane gifts of American classic DVDs to the British Prime Minister that weren’t compatible for viewing in England. Then the Queen received an I-Pod with pictures of places she’d been. There were bows to Arabian autocrats and a diminished Japanese emperor. Next came the quixotic firing of Greg Craig. A couple of news cycles ago the social secretary neglected to post a guest list at a security checkpoint. Now it comes to light that the Obamas originally wanted a non-religious Christmas this year. And as if looking to pick yet another unnecessary fight, there will be no formal receiving line for media members looking for an official photograph with the President of the United States.

Really? These aren’t calculated jabs to please certain political allies. They’re just stupid. What’s more, they indicate either a pettiness of character or disregard for the image of the American presidency. Those in the White House should care that they are projecting sophomoric caricature of people in power. As the new administration’s first year draws to a close, its public relations blunders reflect a White House that looks much more like Spamalot than Camelot.