Freedom Line Blog

In an inteview with CFIF, New York Times best-selling author Joel Rosenberg discusses President Obama’s recent trip to Israel and Jordan, Iran’s nuclear threat, the danger of Syria’s impending implosion and his latest novel, “Damascus Countdown.”

Listen to the interview here.

States looking for flexibility under ObamaCare in how to structure and pay for expanding Medicaid can take a hike, according to an analysis by the Heritage Foundation.

States like Arkansas and Indiana have requested waivers from the health reform law’s expansion formula that creates millions of new enrollees at an eventual cost of billions of dollars to states.

The hope was to use existing state-based models like Indiana’s successful health savings account for low-income Hoosiers to increase Medicaid enrollment while retaining cost certainty for state budget writers.

But those hopes were dashed after the federal Department of Health and Human Services released a frequently asked questions (FAQ) sheet that flatly denied any request to deviate from ObamaCare’s one-size-fits-all, open-ended spending commitment for Medicaid.

With this announcement, the Obama administration has definitively articulated its idea of bipartisan reform.  Republican governors who capitulate and get in line are welcomed with open arms.  Those like Indiana’s Mike Pence can take their policy entrepreneurship somewhere else.

Question: What happens when a majority of countries at the United Nations support a treaty, but delegations representing half the world’s population do not?

Answer: An agreement that won’t be enforced fairly across the globe.

It gets worse.  The dissenting half is made up of the governments most likely to violate the treaty.

The document in question is the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), the vehicle of international gun control advocates to monitor and limit weapons transfers between countries.  But while the United States, considered the country with the best such system in place, is now a signatory, serial violators such as Syria, North Korea, and Iran, as well as major arms dealing countries such as Russia and China, are not.

So, what we have here is a treaty that will bind only the governments that already take arms transfer seriously, while having no effect on the governments most likely to violate its terms.

As an added bonus, there’s enough loose language in the treaty to leave room for an enterprising UN bureaucrat or two to create a global firearms registry applicable to every signatory, potentially putting American gun owners’ Second Amendment rights at the mercy of foreign gun control interests.

Not a banner week for the U.S. diplomatic mission to the U.N.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino makes the case for why any serious immigration reform must put our national interests first, including and starting with securing the border.

Quin Hillyer, CFIF Senior Fellow and Senior Editor of The American Spectator, discusses why President Obama’s nomination of Thomas Perez to be Secretary of Labor must be blocked.

Listen to the interview here.

Fox News is reporting that the implementation of one of the two state-based, federally-regulated health insurance exchanges is being delayed for an entire year (2015 instead of 2014).

The decision applies to the exchange that will be created to let small businesses shop for affordable insurance policies, not the similar and more well-known exchange for individuals and families looking for insurance.

While it would be easy to blame poor planning and bad execution on the part of the federal government, another explanation seems just as likely.

As originally written, ObamaCare contained a so-called “public option” that would have been offered by the federal government on the exchange as competition with private alternatives.  Conservatives opposed the public option because it threatened to undercut private competitors with an artificially low price since the government, unlike a private business, doesn’t have to make a profit.

After a few years of running private businesses out of the market with artificially low prices, conservatives reasoned, the public option would become the only option as more and more consumers opted for a deal that would be too-good-to-be-true.  When that happened, government could claim the market failed, paving the way for a government-run, single-payer health system.

Of course, the public option was stripped out of the final version of ObamaCare.  But the intent to move America toward government-run health care did not.  Since there’s no requirement under the law for small businesses to provide health insurance, many may now stop bothering if the small business exchange is delayed.  That puts their employees on the individual and family exchange, which as estimates are showing, will cost people much more than originally advertised, even including the government subsidy.

With private insurance unable to deliver a product that covers the heightened floor created in ObamaCare that is also affordable for the people required to buy it thanks to the individual mandate, don’t be surprised if activists and policymakers start clamoring for government to declare a market failure and nationalize the system.

Such a scenario may sound far-fetched, but can anyone seriously say that with the Obama Administration in charge that it’s not at least possible?

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.

If corporate welfare is subsidies paid by government to businesses, then is government welfare subsidies (voluntarily) paid by businesses to government?

According to the Washington Post, a $25,000 corporate donation from the parent company of the popular Airborne cold tablets played a big role in funding the annual Easter Egg Roll, a 135-year-old tradition the White House threatened to cancel over budget sequestration.  Other funds came from the sale of commemorative eggs sold at the event.

Maybe this could be the beginning of a trend.  With the sequester lopping off between $42 to $85 billion from the federal budget this year, perhaps it’s worth exploring which government programs could generate enough private support to ease the strain on current and future taxpayers.

Who knows; maybe we’ll get to see signs at the entrance of national parks saying, “Supported by Wal-Mart,” or “Brought to You by Whole Food Markets.”

In an interview with CFIF, Luca Gattoni-Celli, reporter at The American Spectator, discusses how the White House’s gun control agenda misses the mark.

Listen to the interview here.

The Indianapolis Star reports that Indiana Republican Governor Mike Pence, a possible 2016 presidential candidate, cleared an important hurdle today when the state’s House Public Health Committee approved a bill to expand Medicaid eligibility without relying on ObamaCare’s open-ended spending incentives.

Pence’s plan would increase Indiana’s Medicaid enrollment by an estimated 400,000, but within the state’s Healthy Indiana initiative begun in 2007.  As a health savings account, Healthy Indiana allots a certain amount of money to qualifying Hoosiers who then shop for doctors and treatment options within their budget.  In effect, it transfers the decision making process for health care away from government bureaucrats to private citizens.  By capping the amount, Healthy Indiana also gives state budget writers more certainty about the cost of Medicaid expansion in future years.

Contrast this with the unlimited spending commitment envisioned by the Medicaid expansion system under ObamaCare, and conservatives will see why Pence’s proposal should be watched closely.  Under ObamaCare, states would pay no cost for expanding their eligibility pool up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line.  But starting in 2017, those that expanded enrollment would pay for 10 percent of the increase.  Though seemingly a small percentage, the costs will run into the billions, with even more likely if the federal government decides to reduce its 90 percent subsidy, as President Barack Obama has already hinted at doing.

The future of health insurance reform looks like it will include some mix of government-regulated exchanges, subsidies, and cost controls.  The question dividing conservatives like Mike Pence and Paul Ryan on one hand from liberals like Obama on the other, is who gets to make the lion’s share of the decisions on how health insurance dollars are spent.  Conservatives value individual choice, while liberals favor centrally planned mandates.

Ironically, if the President wants ObamaCare to be fiscally sustainable, he’ll have to accept that the only way to do it is allowing conservatives like Pence and Ryan to inject into it as much personal freedom as possible.