Freedom Line Blog

In an interview with CFIF, Hadley Heath, Policy Analyst for the Independent Women’s Forum, discusses the “Full Story on ObamaCare” and why women will be disappointed when they learn the truth about government involvement in the health care system.

Listen to the interview here.

Well, the worst kept secret in presidential politics is now out in the open — Mitt Romney is running for president again in 2012:

This should provide plenty of fodder for tomorrow’s editions of the major national newspapers. One problem: tomorrow will also mark the fifth anniversary of Romney affixing his signature to healthcare reform in Massachusetts. With one of Romney’s key advisers on that piece of legislation openly declaring it to the be the intellectual model for Obamacare, Tuesday’s stories may not be as glowing as the former Bay State governor imagines. Nor may the returns from the 2012 Republican presidential primaries.

In this week’s “Freedom Minute,” CFIF’s Renee Giachino makes the case for conservative optimism.  Giachino points to the continued public backlash against ObamaCare, the growing movement against government excess, and widespread opposition to Cap-and-Trade and Net Neutrality, among other big government regulations, as evidence that the nation is committed to restoring to America’s founding limited-government principles.

Remember the line that President Obama used so often to soothe the anxieties of Americans worried about healthcare reform? “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it”? Well, things have gotten a litte more complicated since those earlier, more innocent days. Just ask Joel Ario, the HHS bureaucrat charged with overseeing Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges. According to The Hill’s Healthwatch Blog:

“If it plays out the exchanges work pretty well, then the employer can say ‘This is a great thing. I can now dump my people into the exchange and it would be good for them, good for me,’ ” Ario continued.

A kindly reminder from those of us not serving in the Obama healthcare politburo. If, like the majority of Americans, your employer provides your healthcare, you don’t get to choose whether or not you keep your current healthcare. And the government is putting its hand on the scales.

Gallup released a fascinating survey this week, under the heading “U.S. Steady as the Most Popular Destination for Potential Migrants.”

In fact, it’s not even close.  Using aggregated data compiled from 148 nations during the years 2007 through 2010, survey subjects were asked, “Ideally, if you had the opportunity, would you like to move permanently to another country, or would you prefer to continue living in this country?  To which country would you like to move?”  The United States was the runaway leader, with more than three times as many respondents as the next closest countries (Canada and the United Kingdom).  The U.S. led with 24%, Canada and the U.K. were far behind at 7% each, with France at 6% and Spain at 4%.  In fact, America was named as the top potential destination by as many people as the U.K., France, Spain, Germany and Italy combined.  So much for that supposedly superior European model.

President Obama may not believe in American exceptionalism, but apparently the rest of the world that he strangely seeks to follow rather than lead still does.

If at first liberals don’t succeed, they plead their case to a friendly judge.  Last Friday, a Wisconsin judge granted a temporary restraining order to block publication of the state’s recently passed union law.  (State law requires the Secretary of State to publish the contents of the law to the public in order for the law to be valid.)

The law’s opponents claim Wisconsin Republicans violated the state’s open meetings law by negotiating the substance of the bill outside the normal committee hearing process.  The judge says all Republicans have to do is re-pass the bill with adequate notice (i.e. 24 hours instead of 2).

Where were these process-conscience Democrats when their federal counterparts rammed through ObamaCare while violating almost every legislative procedure?  Where was the outrage when the Reid-Pelosi gang used the budget reconciliation process and ‘deem-and-pass’ to thwart deliberation?  At least Wisconsin Republicans gave their absentee opponents a heads-up.

Over at The Corner, the incomparable Yuval Levin has a great explainer on why President Obama’s accomodationist tone on health care in yesterday’s White House speech to the National Governors Association was a headfake. He notes:

Speaking to a group of governors yesterday, the president said he would support legislation that would allow states to opt out of some of Obamacare’s requirements (including the individual mandate, the employer mandate, and the state exchanges) if they show they can achieve exactly the same results in some other way. Obamacare itself actually already contains such a provision, but it would allow states to apply for such waivers starting in 2017—after these mandates and requirements have been in place for three years. Obama now says he would let states apply for waivers in 2014, when the new rules begin.

This change of heart, like the one regarding the CLASS Act, is a concession to the fact that the law’s requirements are understood by many state officials (of both parties) as immensely burdensome and problematic. But like the one regarding the CLASS Act, it is also not an actual concession in practice. The states would be required to show that their alternative policies would provide the same or greater insurance benefits to the same or greater number of people, presumably as assessed by HHS. So it allows no flexibility regarding ends, and therefore very little flexibility regarding means. In fact, while it would allow conservative-leaning governors essentially no freedom to move in the direction of greater competition and more consumer-driven health care (which conservatives tend to see as the actual path to reducing costs and therefore insuring more people while improving quality) it would give liberal-leaning governors significant freedom to move in the direction of more government control. Indeed, as the New York Times notes today, while the approach Obama supports would not allow for many consumer-driven reforms it “might allow interested states to establish a single-payer system in which the government is the sole insurer.”

Though the 2012 presidential season hasn’t started quite yet, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney earned an endorsement earlier today that he’s probably not too happy about. While addressing the National Governors Association at the White House, President Obama complimented his would-be challenger in a fashion that will come back to haunt Romney come primary season. As USA Today reports:

In telling critical GOP governors they could develop their own health care plans, Obama said, “I know that many of you have asked for flexibility” under the new federal law.

“In fact, I agree with Mitt Romney, who recently said he’s proud of what he accomplished on health care in Massachusetts and supports giving states the power to determine their own health care solutions,” Obama said.

In a limited sense, Romney should take the remarks as a compliment. Though Obama’s invocation of the Massachusetts health care plan is partially intended to make Obamacare seem centrist, the president also knows that it will cause grief for the former governor with the GOP rank and file. As such, it’s a sign that Romney is a potential opponent Obama wouldn’t mind seeing knocked out of contention.

In a bigger sense, however, Romney is stuck with an albatross. Ask most conservatives what they consider the greatest sin of the Obama Administration and they will point to the government takeover of health care without hesitation. For any potential Republican presidential candidate, having an executive record that includes creating the program that Obama cites as his intellectual template is devastating.

Translation: it may be bad for Romney that Obama took a shot at him. But it’s much worse that Romney gave him the ammunition.

Like emaciated jackals hungry for fresh meat MSNBC’s political staff announced today that the GOP 2012 campaign is now underway.  The reason?  Mike Huckabee (R-AR) made the rather unsurprising link between Massachusetts’ individual mandate law passed under then-Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) and the almost identical requirement in ObamaCare.  Mitt’s “RomneyCare” problem has been so well documented it’s not worth a verifying hyperlink.

That said, the fact that Huckabee’s identifying of the main obstacle in Romney’s path to the GOP nomination is being treated like a campaign salvo is too much; especially since neither man has formally announced a candidacy.  At the earliest, it looks like Newt Gingrich might be the first to take the plunge sometime next month.  For now, MSNBC’s announcement is just the latest attempt to goad the pack of likely candidates into justifying a political reporter’s salary.

Yesterday, CFIF Senior Fellow Troy Senik described the different approaches Senators Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) are taking toward their state’s Tea Party movements.  Hatch is accommodating while Lugar is dismissive.

Count Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) in the Hatch camp.  The Maine moderate is raising the eyebrow of one home-state commentator by giving a lengthy response to questions about opposing Sharia law, repealing ObamaCare, increasing the debt ceiling, and Social Security spending, among other issues.

Snowe should get credit for answering those questions publicly and in-depth.  Time will tell if it helps her win another term in 2012.

Last month, we noted with alarm that the Congressional Budget Office forecast a record $1.5 trillion federal budget deficit for fiscal 2011.

It’s apparently even worse than that.  Today, the Obama Administration unveils its proposed budget, projecting that this year’s deficit will actually reach $1.6 trillion.  So after telling Americans during his 2008 campaign that he was going to go through the budget “line-by-line” and reduce the deficit, Obama has given us deficits of $1.4 trillion, $1.3 trillion and now a record $1.6 trillion.  And what to show for it?  Unemployment remains at or above 9% for a post-World War II record 21st consecutive month, despite Obama’s promises that it would top out at 8% in October 2009 and decline to between 6% and 7% today.

As for those who continue their mindless “Blame Bush” rationalization crusade, they must explain how three years into the Age of Obama, the deficit is increasing, not decreasing, from $1.3 trillion to $1.6 trillion (an almost 25% increase).

Bill Pascoe, Executive Vice President of Citizens for the Republic and a longtime political and communications advisor, discusses President Reagan’s political legacy and why he gives “Three Cheers” for Judge Vinson’s ruling declaring unconstitutional the individual mandate that is the heart of ObamaCare.

Listen to the interview here.

Earlier this week, InsideHealthPolicy.com reported:

Republican aides on Capitol Hill are circulating sections of an independent audit that found significant shortcomings in HHS’ financial management — including noncompliance with federal laws and a $3 billion difference between the department’s own balance sheet and records maintained by the Treasury Department. HHS acknowledged “material weaknesses” in its financial management systems and said some of those issues will be worked out as the department implements a new reporting system this year.

Below are some of the specifics, care of Senator Tom Coburn:

HHS Is Not In Compliance With Federal Financial Management Law. According to the HHS Inspector General’s review of Ernst & Young’s financial audit of HHS, “HHS’s financial management systems are not compliant with the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996.”

Nearly $2 Billion Taxpayer Dollars Are Stuck in Limbo. “As of September 30, 2010, the audit identified approximately 102,500 transactions totaling an approximate $1.8 billion that were more than 2 year s old without activity.”

Nearly $800 Million Dollars “Could Not Be Explained” Differing Between HHS’ Records and Treasury Department Records. “Based on our review and discussions with management, we noted differences of $794 million that could not be explained.”

Some Processes and Procedural Manuals Have Not Been Updated Since the 1980s. “HHS’s formalized policies and procedures are out of date and may be inconsistent with actual processes taking place….For example, we noted that certain policies and procedures, including certain accrual processes, had not been updated since the mid-1980s.”

Current HHS Personnel Need Training To “Complete Their Day-to-Day Responsibilities.” “Further, we noted additional training on the financial systems was needed to enable HHS personnel in their ability to access needed information from the system to complete their day-to-day responsibilities – including the preparation of reconciliations, research of differences noted, and the ability to identify and clear older “stale” transactions dating back several years.”

America, meet the federal department charged with implementing and managing the most significant provisions of the monstrosity known as ObamaCare.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her show “Your Turn.”  Today’s star guest lineup includes:

4:00 p.m. CST/5:00 p.m. EST:  Pete Sepp, Executive Vice President, National Taxpayers Union;

4:30 p.m. CST/5:30 p.m. EST:  Mike Carey, President of American Council for Affordable Energy, Impact of Egypt Crisis on America;

5:00 p.m. CST/6:00 p.m. EST:  Bill Bascoe, Executive Vice President, Citizens for the Republic, ObamaCare Ruling;

5:30 p.m. CST/6:30 p.m. EST:  Timothy Lee, Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs, Center for Individual Freedom, Reshaping the Judiciary and Reagan at 100.

Please share your comments, thoughts and questions at (850) 623-1330, or listen via the Internet by clicking here.  You won’t want to miss it today!

How great a law could ObamaCare be if companies like McDonald’s need a compliance waiver?  The surge in waivers granted by Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is fast-approaching 800, or a little more than two a day since the law went into effect.  At some point, exceptional cases swallow the rule.  This seems to be the thinking behind today’s Rasmussen Reports poll:

Sixty-one percent (61%), in fact, think that if selected companies receive an exemption from certain aspects of the health care law, all companies should be treated the same way. Twenty percent (20%) now disagree and say all companies should not be given that exemption, but 19% more are undecided. These findings are comparable to the previous survey.

Where’s the fairness in granting waivers only to a few?  Aren’t we all in this socialized health care pool together?  Or are some companies too big to comply?  If liberals had the courage of their convictions, they’d implement their health care takeover immediately so people would know exactly what it does.  Since the law and its proponents would go down in flames in that scenario, instead we’ll continue to see HHS boil the economy slowly, hoping “only” 61% of the people notice.

I’ve yet to read a better sentence synthesizing the spirit of the Founding Fathers, the current Tea Party movement, and the threat to the American ideal embodied in ObamaCare than this passage from yesterday’s decision declaring the entire law unconstitutional:

“It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place,” wrote the judge, a Reagan appointee who sits in Pensacola, Fla.

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, intentionally or not, makes a great argument for keeping the federal government within its historic bounds.  That Obama Administration officials are quietly pouting over the supposed dig makes it even better.

H/T: Evan Perez of the Wall Street Journal

Perhaps the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should get credit for making the road to serfdom a little easier to travel.  Beset by criticisms that ObamaCare grants HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius “dictatorship” status with powers including on whom to bestow compliance waivers, HHS confirmed it handed out 500 new get-out-jail-free cards.

The purpose of the year-long waivers is to provide a compliance-free bridge for employers who would otherwise opt to pay the penalty for canceling out-of-compliance insurance plans.  That bridge only extends to 2014.

Alex Cortes at The Daily Caller notes that the waivers (averaging about two a day so far for 729 total) will only be granted until 2014 when ObamaCare’s state-run insurance exchanges come online.  Then, companies that stop offering insurance will pay the fine, but their employees will be able (i.e. forced) to use the exchanges or be fined themselves for ignoring the individual mandate.

Until then, private sector employers and employees must go hat-in-hand begging for a waiver from Comrade Sebelius.  Don’t worry, says a HHS spokesman, the number of waiver requests denied is “more than a handful, but not a big number.”  How benevolent.

Is there any promise that Barack Obama has kept as President?  He certainly made plenty of them, only to break them.

Now, it appears that we have two more.  Two very big ones.  Testifying before the House Budget Committee this week, Medicare Chief Actuary Richard Foster was asked a series of “true” or “false” questions by Rep. Tom McClintock (R – California).  Replying to McClintock’s question whether Obama’s famous pledge that “If you like your present health insurance, you can keep it” was true or false, Foster replied, “not true in all cases.”  And when asked whether ObamaCare would reduce costs as he explicitly guaranteed, Foster replied, “I would say false, more so than true.”

If the political left clings to their “Bush Lied!” belief, where are they now and what do they have to say about Barack Obama?  Just curious.

Yesterday, 60 members of the House Republican majority endorsed a bill that would “deregulate” health insurance purchases by allowing consumers to buy plans across state lines.  The idea is to let companies compete on a national scale, spreading the risk and lowering premiums.  The bill is gaining support as a free market counterargument against ObamaCare’s one-size-fits-all regulation of health insurance.

There is a caveat.  In order to liberalize the insurance market, the GOP-sponsored bill must take away the states’ power to regulate insurance.  The reason insurance plans cost different amounts in different states is because individual states have different regulatory schemes.  Those schemes are the product of public policy decisions hammered out at the state level.  Importantly for 10^th Amendment limited government types, the plan to “deregulate” the health insurance market comes at the expense of state sovereignty.

Ironically, the only way the House Republicans’ answer to ObamaCare gets passed is through an expansive reading of Congress’ ability to regulate interstate commerce “among the states.”  Members of Congress will (or at least should) have to struggle with which conservative principle they value more in this instance: the free market or federalism.  In a certain sense, federalism grants to states a public policy monopoly over all issues not expressly contained in the text of the U.S. Constitution.  That monopoly drives up prices for consumers in states with costly regulations.  Theoretically, if people want to pay less for health insurance, they could move to a state with less costly regulations.

Ideas like federalism have consequences.  As the Tea Party-flavored House GOP boards the ship of state, it will be interesting to see which crate of principles the revolutionaries toss over.

H/T: Los Angeles Times

The U.S. House of Representatives just passed H.R. 2, legislation to fully repeal ObamaCare, by a vote of 245-189.  Three Democrats — Representatives Mike Ross (AR), Mike McIntyre (NC) and Dan Boren (OK) — joined with all Republicans in support of the repeal measure.