It’s been a bad week for Office of Management and Budget Director Jeff Zients, the man tasked with defending President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget proposal.
In testimony before the House Budget Committee Zients told Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) that the penalty for not complying with ObamaCare’s mandate to buy health insurance is not a tax increase. (Subscription wall.) In response, Rep. Garrett said, “Okay. I just want to be clear on that because that’s not the argument the Administration is making before the Supreme Court.”
Before the Senate Budget Committee Zients was even more out-of-touch. Under questioning from Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Zients claimed that Obama’s 2013 budget contained spending cuts – a distortion Sessions would not tolerate:
Mr. Zients, there are no spending cuts in this budget. This budget increases spending. Surely you know that. It increases taxes. So to say you cut $2.50 in spending for every dollar in tax increase is beyond the pale.
So too is the entire shell game about ‘deficit reduction’ when what liberals like Obama really mean is tax increases to pay for spending increases. If the President won’t admit it at least his budget director will be made to.
As a companion must-read article to Tim’s column on the ObamaCare birth control mandate, John Cochrane of Cato explains why President Barack Obama’s proposed compromise to exempt church-related institutions misses the point:
Our nation is divided on social issues. The natural compromise is simple: Birth control, abortion and other contentious practices are permitted. But those who object don’t have to pay for them. The federal takeover of medicine prevents us from reaching these natural compromises and needlessly divides our society.
The critics fell for a trap. By focusing on an exemption for church-related institutions, critics effectively admit that it is right for the rest of us to be subjected to this sort of mandate. They accept the horribly misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and they resign themselves to chipping away at its edges. No, we should throw it out, and fix the terrible distortions in the health-insurance and health-care markets.
Sure, churches should be exempt. We should all be exempt.
Ashton’s column today on direct-pay medicine is superb. Combine it with an expansion of the health savings accounts that Rick Santorum fought for during a 12-year span and helped authorize in 2003, and with allowing sales of health insurance across state lines, and with competition throughout Medicare rather than just in Part D, and with block grants to states for Medicaid so the states themselves will have freedom and incentive to promote market competition and efficiencies…. and, pretty soon, we would be well on our way to a thriving, multi-layered, market-based health-care financing system in which people would have all sorts of viable options. (Other ideas for free-market approaches for health care as a whole also abound.) It’s a shame President GW Bush never made such things a priority while he had House and Senate majorities. If somehow the American people (or the Supreme Court, in effect) can force the repeal of Obamacare, we’ll finally have the chance to put such ideas into play. As Ashton wrote, “there is a need for reform that opens up the healthcare industry to a lower-cost, transparent pricing system.”
At the American Spectator, I recommend reading Andrew McCarthy’s explanation about why Romneycare makes Mitt Romney a weak candidate against Barack Obama. Here, let me add a few more thoughts on the subject. I think this is McCarthy’s best paragraph in a piece full of good paragraphs:
[S]ome things are wrong everywhere. One such thing is a massive government infiltration into the private economy, one that coerces the purchase of a commodity (health insurance) as a condition of living in the state. For one thing, such an exercise in steroid statism establishes a rationale in law for government intrusion into every aspect of private life: If health care is deemed a corporate asset, then “bad” behavioral choices must be regulated, lest someone get more than his share. Romney portrayed Romneycare as a model, at least for other states, if not for the nation. But no free-market, limited-government conservative thinks this officious onslaught is a model to be emulated anyplace.
Here at CFIF I made a similar argument back in June, although not as well as McCarthy has now made it:
It doesn’t matter one bit if Mitt Romney’s “individual mandate” was imposed by a state instead of by the feds; either way, a government forcing people to buy a product the person doesn’t want, just by virtue of living and breathing within the government’s jurisdiction, is a government without any real limits whatsoever.Tyranny is tyranny at any level. By Romney’s logic, it would be better still if your local township, rather than the state, could send police to oversee you filling out your insurance application and writing the check. Next stop: SWAT teams to escort you to the hardware store to buy widgets. Federalism is, of course, an important principle. Using states as “laboratories of democracy” is a good and practical idea. But federalism should never be an excuse for despotism. What’s wrong is wrong. It’s not a matter of practicality but of morality writ large.
McCarthy goes on to note this:
There is no serious person who doubts that Romneycare was the building block for Obamacare: The experts who helped design the former were consulted in the creation of the latter. Yet Romney continues to insist that Romneycare is a smashing success, one he suggests he’d do again without hesitation.
It still baffles me that Romney’s opponents haven’t yet made this case successfully in the debates.
In an interview with CFIF, Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director at the Judicial Crisis Network, discusses why Justice Elena Kagan should recuse herself from any consideration of ObamaCare’s constitutionality before the Supreme Court. Ms. Severino authored the white paper titled, “Elena Kagan: The Justice Who Knew Too Much.”
In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear the lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare and raises questions about Justice Elena Kagan’s apparent bias in favor of the health care reform law.
Remember the alleged “crisis” that demanded ObamaCare? To hear Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their minions, that crisis demanded that we do something, anything, even if it meant passing a bill before finding out what was in it.
The overwhelming majority of Americans apparently never got the memo. According to Gallup, fully 82% of Americans rate their healthcare “excellent” or “good,” while 11% of the remaining 18% rate their care “fair,” and only 5% say “poor” (2% said “no opinion” or “not applicable”). As Gallup notes, “That combined excellent/good percentage has remained fairly steady at around 80% since 2001,” when polling on this question began.
Though we’re still a few years away from full implementation of Obamacare, we all know the program’s general drift: greater government control of everything from what kinds of care health insurance policies must cover to which medical procedures or pharmaceuticals doctors can provide. Yet at the same time, we’re seeing how the remarkable power of freedom and voluntary collaboration — the exact opposite of the Washington model — can revolutionize our health. From a remarkable piece at Reason:
For more than 10 years, health researchers have been stumped by an enzyme that helps retroviral infections like AIDS reproduce. Biologists studying the enzyme were unable to model its shape, a crucial first step in figuring out how to beat it.
Recently scientists turned the problem over to an unusual team of collaborators: video gamers. Using Foldit, a free online protein folding game developed at the University of Washington in 2008, those gamers competed to see who could produce the most accurate virtual model of the real-life enzyme.
In just three weeks, gamers accomplished what scientists had been unable to do for more than a decade—no special scientific under- standing required.
An ingenious marriage of technology and creativity. Does anyone expect to see more of this when Washington is in the driver’s seat?
As we anticipated in last week’s Liberty Update, the U.S. Supreme Court announced today that it will hear legal challenges to ObamaCare this term. As we also noted in that commentary, the issue broadly boils down to whether an explicit provision of the Constitution will be rendered meaningless and effectively read out of the document itself.
That is not hyperbole. Our Founding Fathers didn’t randomly insert provisions into the Constitution for no reason whatsoever. Rather, they crafted that document to design a federal government of limited, enumerated powers and to safeguard individual freedom to the greatest extent possible. Accordingly, they intentionally included the Commerce Clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution to empower Congress “To regulate Commerce with Foreign Nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” ObamaCare, however, does not merely “regulate commerce among the several states.” Rather, it compels commercial activity from every citizen, and punishes inactivity on the part of any individual.
Anyone asserting ObamaCare’s validity must therefore answer this question: If the Commerce Clause somehow permits forced commercial activity and prosecution of inactivity, what possible hypothetical federal mandate would it not permit? Such a result would void a specific clause within the text of the Constitution because no limiting principle would remain. That, in turn, would mean that no other provision remains safe in such a brave new world.
Hopefully, at least five Justices respect the Constitution enough to not remove yet another thread from its fabric. Should the Court fail, however, the fight will not be finished. The job will simply fall upon us as individual citizens to effectuate the individual freedoms that too few elected and appointed officials seem to respect.
First, Paul Ryan said he isn’t running for president in 2012. Then, he said he wouldn’t close the door on being someone’s vice presidential running mate next year. Now, he tells the Weekly Standard that Mitt Romney can be trusted to repeal Obamacare even though it bears a striking resemblance to Romneycare in Massachusetts.
Could it be that Ryan – perhaps like Chris Christie – is angling for a spot in the Romney veepstakes?
Quin’s point is well taken. Obama-era regulations and rhetoric are scaring away the kind of investment growth the country needs to get Americans back to work. On the regulatory side, increased capital holding requirements stack dollar bills in bank vaults while small business loans dry up. Cost-of-employment drivers like Obamacare and the EPA’s threatened regulation of carbon make any rational employer look for ways to enhance productivity and efficiency instead of staffing up. Simply put, under President Obama it’s cheaper to do more with less to keep what you have rather than risk the money and regulatory gauntlet trying to increase market share.
On the rhetoric side, my recent column on the five most recent dumb statements by the president contains just a sample of his daily assaults on the ambition and energy of America’s job creators. What the president fails to see is that a sustainable government depends on a vastly more prosperous private economy. Until he learns the importance of that relationship, we’re likely doomed to being (and producing) much less than we otherwise would.
Btw, Quin: I’m sure you’ve got business contacts in the Mobile-D.C. corridor. Are any of them looking at the current and future regulatory scene and thinking, “Gee, what a great time to expand”?
Once upon a time, candidate Obama promised to participate in the federal campaign finance program in a sop to free speech restrictionists. Of course, he reneged as soon as he could, claiming that since the system is “broken” it was his right to collect as much money as he could from willing donors.
[The President] can also raise large contributions for the Democratic National Committee — topping out at $30,800 per donor rather than the $5,000 limit on contributions to candidates — that are helping finance the party’s broader efforts to help Democrats up and down the ballot. During the last three months, the committee has already transferred funds totaling more than $1.3 million to Democratic organizations in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the party’s filings.
I don’t begrudge any candidate for choosing a free(r) market approach to campaign finance. What’s galling in Obama’s case, though, is that once again we have an example of how brazenly opportunistic he is when it comes to basic principles. Whether it’s promising people they can keep their health insurance after Obamacare or campaigning as a post-partisan then saying Republicans want folks to drink dirty water, the man seems incapable of keeping his word.
The joke on some politicians is a truth applied to the president: you know he’s lying when his lips are moving.
I’ve posted before on the difficulty that Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s presidential candidacy presents: while Paul is utterly at sea on foreign policy issues and too philosophically pure to countenance the type of compromise that real political progress requires, his libertarian beliefs also make him one of the best candidates in the Republican race on economic issues. Thankfully, Paul has no hope of being the nominee, but let’s hope that his “Restore America” economic plan, unveiled earlier today, has an influence on the GOP field. This is solid stuff, as the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire blog reports:
Mr. Paul does get specific when he calls for a 10% reduction in the federal work force, while pledging to limit his presidential salary to $39,336, which his campaign says is “approximately equal to the median personal income of the American worker.” The current pay rate for commander in chief is $400,000 a year.
The Paul plan would also lower the corporate tax rate to 15% from 35%, though it is silent on personal income tax rates, which Mr. Paul would like to abolish. The congressman would end taxes on personal savings and extend “all Bush tax cuts…”
While promising to cut $1 trillion in spending during his first year, Mr. Paul would eliminate the Departments of Education, Commerce, Energy, Interior and Housing and Urban Development…
Mr. Paul would also push for the repeal of the new health-care law, last year’s Wall Street regulations law and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the 2002 corporate governance law passed in response to a number of corporate scandals, including Enron.
What’s most remarkable is that Paul — long considered an ideological outlier — is now in line with the majority of the Republican establishment (the movement was on their end, not his). With the exception of his call to abolish the federal income tax and a few of his cabinet department eliminations, these are all priorities that a Republican congress could support coming from a GOP president. That man won’t be Ron Paul … but let’s hope he’s read his plan.
Aside from being unconstitutional, Obamacare is also financially unsustainable. Of course, everyone except the White House and their drones at HHS acknowledged this when the law passed. Now, fiscal reality has forced the Obama Administration to scrap a program that was supposed to provide half of the fallacious budget savings from passing Obamacare. Per Phillip Klein of the DC Examiner:
As Obamacare’s critics noted at the time, Democrats’ deficit reduction claims were based on a series of accounting gimmicks. One of the most obvious was the inclusion of the Community Living Assistance and Support Services Act, a program that was slated to collect five years of premiums before paying out any benefits. Though it was unsustainable over time, on paper it produced surpluses during the Congressional Budget Office’s 10-year budget window.
At the time of final passage, the CBO found that the health care law would reduce deficits by $143 billion, and $70 billion of that was attributable to the CLASS program.
Earlier, I noted a new HHS report recomending against implementing the program. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has now sent a letter to Congress conceding that there’s no path forward.
Republicans are still rightly moving to formally repeal the CLASS Act from federal law. Let’s hope they keep pressing for a complete elimination.
With the unwashed masses “occupying” Wall Street and other financial centers throughout the country, Community-Organizer-in-Chief Barack Obama is trying to convince the protesters of crony capitalism that their grievance is really his. From today’s Wall Street Journal:
Asked about the demonstrations that have spread to cities across the U.S., Mr. Obama empathized with protesters’ frustrations without embracing the movement: “The American people understand that not everybody has been following the rules; that Wall Street is an example of that.”
Haven’t been following the rules? How’s this for a list of people not following the rules:
Energy Secretary Steven Chu rubber stamps another taxpayer subsidy to Solyndra after the company defaulted on a $535 million loan (the company couldn’t get sufficient venture capital funding but did grease the skids to get taxpayer money thanks to an Obama fundraiser – who was also an investor – pulling strings)
Attorney General Eric Holder lies to Congress about allowing a criminally stupid ‘gun-walking’ program at ATF to continue that sends 2,000 guns to Mexican drug cartels, killing a Border Patrol Agent
Education Secretary Arne Duncan violates the No Child Left Behind law by unilaterally issuing waivers that require recipients to accept White House dictated regulations that cannot get through Congress – an unheard of abuse of the waiver process
I could go on, but I think the point is made. The American people are viscerally aware of a politically connected elite waging war on the rule of law. But it’s the Tea Party, not those squatting outside America’s nodes of commerce, that has identified the biggest threat to prosperity. It’s time to occupy the White House and the Cabinet with people who not only respect the law, but also know how to grow the economy in a real, free market fashion.
In an interview with CFIF, Sally Pipes, President, CEO, and Taube Fellow in Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute, discusses why the American Medical Association’s support of ObamaCare undermines its mission to “help doctors help patients” and what it may mean to the 2012 presidential race if the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of ObamaCare prior to the election.
One of the very first people to argue that Obamacare was unconstitutional was the Heritage Foundation’s excellent Director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, Todd Gaziano. In light of this weeks decisions by all sides of the 11th Circuit anti-Obamacare decision to appeal all or parts of the decision to the Supreme Court — a dramatic development that makes it likely the high court will rule on the law before next year’s election — I have offered, and Todd has graciously accepted, an invitation to be my guest tonight on my weekly radio show on the Gulf Coast. You can listen in here, with excellent online reception, from 9-10 Eastern time. Please check it out; every Thursday night, Welcome to Hillyer Time.
So how many times must Barack Obama be wrong – flatly, indisputably, wholly, precisely wrong – before he withdraws from American political life out of pure shame?
Today provided another example. In selling ObamaCare, his cornerstone “achievement,” to the American people, Obama promised on March 8, 2010 that his bill “reduces most people’s premiums.” So what is actually happened in just the first year since he made that assurance? The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust report that health insurance premiums rose 9% this year. Employers’ average yearly premium for families climbed from $13,770 last year to $15,073 this year, and from $5,049 to $5,429 for individuals.
Perhaps this explains why Obama’s Justice Department curiously didn’t seek to delay United States Supreme Court review of ObamaCare this week – maybe even Obama suddenly wants it overturned as quickly as possible.
Methinks what Pawlenty is really saying is: “Please, please, please Mr. Romney, if you get the nomination, choose me for vice president! I promise I’m your man. Oh pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease! I really didn’t mean that bit about Obamneycare. It wasn’t even an intentional slight, and I wasn’t trying to be funny. I just had a slip of the tongue. That’s why I didn’t repeat it in that debate: I really didn’t mean it in the first place. PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE!!!! I promise I’ll be good.”
Tim had a great post explaining why the 4th Circuit’s dismissal of the two Obamacare lawsuits is not all that big a deal. He’s absolutely right, in terms of ultimate effects. At the American Spectator (in the first of my three unrelated, half-formed thoughts), I explain why on legal grounds the rulings are an absolute outrage anyway, even though, as Tim said, they don’t really harm the overall argument against the individual mandate as the issue moves inexorably toward the Supreme Court.
As I explained:
The grounds on which the judges made the decision are so ludicrous as to be intellectually bankrupt.
Against all reasonable evidence and against the rulings of every other court, both liberal- and conservative-dominated, that has considered the issue, this Fourth Circuit panel concluded that the mandate actually operates as a “tax.” Congress has broader powers to tax than it does merely to regulate; thus, legal challenges to a tax face a higher bar. Because these obstreperous judges say it is a tax that hasn’t actually been imposed yet (it has been passed by Congress but not yet implemented), they say the university has suffered no harm yet and thus can’t sue. The absurdity is that the mandate is in no way a tax. By both definition and implementation, it imposed no tax but instead a penalty for non-compliance. President Obama himself repeatedly argued in public that it wasn’t a tax. Congress didn’t call it a tax. And every other court — at least four district courts and two appeals courts — that has analyzed this claim has made mincemeat of the administration’s contention that it is a tax. Most of those courts haven’t just rejected the claim; they have eviscerated it.
As I said on my radio show last night (in the introductory 15 minutes, before I interviewed Rick Santorum), this is why the fights over judges are so important. Bad judges are an affront to constitutional republicanism. And this ruling by three bad, liberal judges is an abomination.
In an interview with CFIF, Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director at the Judicial Crisis Network, discusses why Justice Elena Kagan should recuse herself from any consideration of ObamaCare’s constitutionality before the Supreme Court. Ms. Severino authored the white paper titled, “
In an interview with CFIF, Sally Pipes, President, CEO, and Taube Fellow in Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute, discusses why the American Medical Association’s support of ObamaCare undermines its mission to “help doctors help patients” and what it may mean to the 2012 presidential race if the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of ObamaCare prior to the election.
CFIF Freedom Line Blog RSS Feed
CFIF on X
CFIF on YouTube