Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Reform’
April 26th, 2018 at 5:51 pm
Help Modernize the U.S. Sugar Program: Text “SUGAR” to 52886

We at CFIF have long sounded the alarm regarding the federal sugar policy morass.

There may be no uglier illustration of the crony capitalism, government meddling in our economy and bureaucratic mandates anywhere within our federal government.  And the program demonstrably ends up costing far more jobs and hurting far more American consumers than it benefits, as we noted in January:

It costs almost three times as many jobs as it claims to protect;  results in American consumers and manufacturers paying double the cost for a product that consumers and industries in other countries pay;  eliminates over 100,000 American manufacturing jobs;  and costs Americans approximately $3 billion per year.

But now there’s something you can do to bring about positive change.  Our friends at the Alliance for Fair Sugar Policy have launched a simple and effective grassroots tool to help generate messages to Congress.

There’s nothing that grabs the attention of Senators and Representatives and drives them to action more than hearing from actual constituents. Accordingly, please take just a short moment to view the image below and take action by simply texting “SUGAR” to 52886.

August 17th, 2015 at 2:23 pm
With Crime Up 26% in NYC, Guardian Angels Make a Return
Posted by Print

Although we support criminal justice and prison reform, we have cautioned against abandoning the tougher policing and sentencing reforms that resulted in such a remarkable and unexpected drop in American crime rates over the past two decades:

The U.S. homicide rate has been cut in half since 1992, from 9.3 murders per 100,000 people to 4.7.  That is its lowest level since 1963.  Violent crime rates reached 80 per 1,000 in 1993, but are down to 20 per 1,000 today.  No city represents that improvement more than the one most associated with broken windows policing and get-tough policies, the formerly dystopian New York City.  In 1993, the city’s murder rate  reached 26.5 per 100,000 people, and accounted for almost 8% of all U.S. homicides.  After twenty years of broken window police tactics, the rate has plummeted to 4 per 100,000, tourism has increased, famous public places are safer and the city has enjoyed an economic and lifestyle renaissance.

Disturbingly, however, two decades of plummeting crime rates have paradoxically allowed a popular sense of complacency to return, at least among political leaders seeking street cred with electoral subgroups and media indulgence.”

Unfortunately, we’re already witnessing early consequences of that movement.  In New York, as detailed today by The Telegraph, crime has already risen 26% this year, prompting the return of something to which we became accustomed in the ugly days of the 1970s and ’80s there:

With their bright red jackets and berets, the Guardian Angels were once a common sight in a city riddled with violent crime.  And this week they made a pointed return to New York’s Central Park for the first time in more than two decades, citing a 26 per cent rise in crime there so far this year.”

If nothing else, the sense of security that had returned to New York is already slipping away.  Meanwhile, even CNN reports today that a police officer pistol-whipped unconscious last week in Alabama deliberately hesitated to use appropriate force in the face of attack out of fear of being accused of racism.

While prison and criminal law reform are somewhat severable from tough policing as policy issues, this is simply not something on which we can remain complacent, lest the bad old days return.

February 6th, 2015 at 4:43 pm
Avik Roy Weighs In on the GOP’s Patient CARE Act

Avik Roy, a conservative health policy expert, penned a very helpful primer on the latest GOP ObamaCare alternative.

The plan – the Patient CARE Act – is an updated version of similar reform concepts presented last year by three leading Republican members of Congress.

Along with other intriguing ideas, the Patient CARE Act replaces ObamaCare’s restrictive subsidy system – i.e. the money can only be spent on federally-approved insurance plans – with “a means-tested tax credit that individuals could use to buy a far broader range of insurance products, or deposit the funds in a health savings account.”

As a tremendous service to readers, Roy also summarizes how the Patient CARE Act compares to other conservative health reform alternatives: his Transcending ObamaCare and one championed by the 2017 Project. All three are serious proposals and deserve attention.

More on these and other ObamaCare alternatives as they develop…

December 30th, 2014 at 4:17 pm
Gruber in 2009: ObamaCare Has No Cost Controls

Hat tip to the Daily Caller for unearthing yet another damning admission from ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber.

At roughly the same time in 2009 when President Barack Obama was telling the American people that passing his version of health care reform would lower costs, Gruber was telling an audience in Syracuse, New York it was all a lie.

“Why are we closer than we’ve ever been before? Because there are no cost controls in these proposals. Because this bill’s about coverage. Which is good! Why should we hold 48 million uninsured people hostage to the fact that we don’t yet know how to control costs in a politically acceptable way? Let’s get the people covered and then let’s do cost control,” Gruber told his listeners.

Thanks for the honesty, Professor Gruber, but it only counts if you say it before the damage is done.

December 12th, 2014 at 3:10 pm
New Congress Provides Perfect Opportunity for Broad Corporate Tax Reform
Posted by Print

In a recent speech before the Business Roundtable, an association of top business leaders from the nation’s largest corporations, President Obama addressed a variety of issues, including the critical matter of tax policy.  To his credit, he acknowledged there is a “deal to be done” when it comes to corporate tax reform.

But as we’ve often noted, it is important that any deal with the new Congress involve comprehensive reform, rather than just a series of short-term fixes.

At a rate exceeding 39%, American companies are subject to the highest corporate income tax in the developed world, far higher than the developed nation average rate of 25%.  On top of that, our firms face the burden of being taxed twice on profits earned overseas.  Whereas every company in the world pays tax in the nation where it earns profits, American companies are then subject to an additional domestic tax on those profits when repatriated.  That punitive process, known as our “worldwide tax regime,” is practiced by virtually no other country on Earth.

And unfortunately, what we’ve done in the past to address the problem is akin to treating a bullet wound exclusively with painkillers.  In other words, we’ve addressed the symptoms, but not the problem.

For example, recall the Treasury Department’s counterproductive decision earlier this fall on the issue of corporate tax inversions, imposing punitive new rules.  Corporate tax inversions constitute a perfectly logical response to the flawed system under which our economy’s biggest drivers are forced to work – one that is outdated and anti-competitive.  The Treasury Department’s new inversion rules will only serve to hamper American firms already disadvantaged by our sky-high domestic tax rates, they will drive even more companies and employers abroad and they will retroactively punish them for making sound, logical, completely legal business decisions.  Additionally, they threaten job growth in some of our most important sectors, as American firms become less competitive globally.

As another example, Obama in his post-election comments expressed support for a corporate tax holiday.  Such a corporate tax holiday – or repatriation – would allow companies with profits overseas to bring them back to the United States at a reduced tax rate.  His underlying motive wasn’t common-sense reform so much as the belief that the revenues could then be used for federal infrastructure spending.  But as a Congressional committee report found, tax holidays did not achieve that end, as confirmed by the experience of a previous tax holiday in 2004.

As these illustrations make painfully obvious, the bottom line is that our policymakers fail to understand the broader problem that hinders America’s economic growth and global tax competitiveness.

Fortunately, with the new Congress we now possess an excellent opportunity to make real progress, an opportunity to enact broader tax reform.  With a more simplified and competitive corporate tax code, we would add roughly 540,000 jobs and increase our national gross domestic product by $92 billion through 2032, according to a Heritage Foundation Report.  In addition, not only would we remove the obstacles that currently drive American companies (and the jobs they create) abroad along with their profits, but we would make the United States an even more attractive place for companies all over the globe to relocate and invest.

Finally, it should be noted that this is not an issue constrained by traditional political divisions, a typical divide between the left and the right.  Rather, it’s an issue that offers the opportunity for bipartisan and commonsense reform.  Accordingly, there’s no excuse not to finally get it done, thereby improving our economy, boosting jobs and making our code competitive with the rest of the world at long last.

November 25th, 2014 at 12:51 pm
Obama Won’t Extend Unilaterial Amnesty to Tax Reform

Sounds like no one prepped President Barack Obama for the obvious question posed by ABC’s George Stephanopolous: “How do you respond to the argument, a future president comes in and wants to lower taxes. Doesn’t happen. Congress won’t do it; so he says ‘I’m not going to prosecute those who don’t pay capital gains tax.’”

After dithering a bit, Obama replied with, “The vast majority of folks understand that they need to pay taxes, and when we conduct an audit, for example, we are selecting those folks who are most likely to be cheating. We’re not going after millions and millions of people who everybody knows are here and were taking advantage of low wages as they’re mowing lawns or cleaning out bedpans, and looking the other way.”

Stephanopolous pressed harder. “So you don’t think it’d be legitimate for a future president to make that argument?”

Without a hint of irony, Obama says, “With respect to taxes? Absolutely not.”

And yet the president has no reason in principle for limiting his successors in office from willfully disregarding whatever laws they don’t like. The former constitutional law professor seems to be completely unaware of the precedent he is setting by unilaterally suspending immigration enforcement. If left unrebuked, this action will teach future Oval Office occupants that the rule of law can – and at times should – be replaced with the whim of one.

The only saving grace in this interview is that the President of the United States seems genuinely clueless as to the logic of his own order. Such is the state of the chief executive.

H/T: Media Research Center

August 20th, 2014 at 12:26 pm
Paul Ryan: Regulations Hurt the Poor

Conservatives typically – and correctly – fault the regulatory state for increasing the cost of doing business and impeding job creation. But what about the argument that businesses don’t pay taxes (or regulatory fees), people do?

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is making a powerful case that the two go together in a way that could reduce the government’s footprint and decrease poverty.

“The regulatory part of Ryan’s anti-poverty plan goes after ‘regressive’ federal rules – those that have an outsize economic impact on low-income households,” reports The Hill. “Supporters of his plan say regulations are ultimately borne by ordinary consumers and households who pay extra when new restrictions are piled on to the products and services they use. The poor end up spending a greater share of their income to cover the added expense.”

The argument that regulations are regressive – that they take a bigger bite out of a poor family’s budget than anyone else’s – is an especially attractive one to liberals such as Cass Sunstein, the former chief of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama White House.

In a recent column, Sunstein said Ryan’s regulatory reforms “point in helpful directions, and they suggest the possibility of bipartisan cooperation on some important questions.” Among these is taking into consideration the human cost of regulations on a segment of society that can least afford it.

To be sure, neither Ryan nor Sunstein advocate eliminating all regulations, and how they would implement such reforms would likely differ substantially. Still, the fact that a well-known, serious conservative and his liberal counterpart see common ground on pulling back government and lifting up the poor is a development worth watching.

July 2nd, 2014 at 6:22 pm
An Energy Policy that Creates Jobs and Prestige

“By boosting our energy production, the U.S. could restore its diminishing influence in the world without expending blood and treasure – in fact, we would reap major economic benefits,” writes Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA).

Nunes is an up-and-coming member of the House Ways and Means Committee and is known for thinking big on how to use tax reform as a means to reestablish American leadership in the global economy.

Rationalizing our energy policy would go a long way too.

Thanks to improvements in technology large, untapped domestic oil and natural gas reservoirs are now reachable. States like North Dakota, Texas and Oklahoma are moving to capitalize, while huge potential awaits enterprising politicians and businesses in California and Colorado.

The benefits are many. More energy production means more jobs in extracting, refining and shipping. For example, an entry-level rig worker in North Dakota averages about $66,000 a year, while the average oil industry job in the state was $112,462 as of 2012. That also means more jobs for people serving workers flush with disposal income.

There’s also a national security angle. With Iraq’s oil fields under siege by Islamic militants, Venezuela constantly swayed by demagogic collectivists and Russia threatening to cut off natural gas shipments, it’s time for the United States to take the steps necessary to ensure greater energy independence.

Unsurprisingly, Nunes wants President Barack Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, as well as implement other measures to put the nation in a game-changing position. Of course, that isn’t happening unless Obama adopts Bill Clinton’s triangulation strategy.

Don’t hold your breath.

Still, Nunes makes a compelling case for using national energy policy as a way to improve both our domestic economy and global prestige.

It’s an angle that economically recessed, war-weary Americans might soon embrace.

April 7th, 2014 at 7:12 pm
Tech Industry May Cut a Deal on Immigration, Killing Gang of Eight Bill

With the Senate’s Gang of Eight bill dead-on-arrival in the House of Representatives, the tech industry may be ready to break ranks and cut a deal.

So far, Silicon Valley – one of the wealthiest segments backing comprehensive immigration reform – has held out hope that their goal of expanding H-1B visas for foreign-born workers will come to fruition when House Republicans finally get around to passing the Senate’s bill.

But with the Gang’s bill looking less and less likely to get even a vote in the House, immigration’s tech supporters are exploring other options. The announcement came in the form of an op-ed published by the leader of Compete America, the industry’s immigration-focused political action committee. In it he called on both houses of Congress to pass the SKILLS Act, which would give Compete everything it wants, but would also leave its members with no real reason to stay in Washington pushing for the rest of the Senate’s bill.

That possibility drew a swift rebuke from Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), who wrote in a letter to Compete America, “I am troubled by recent statements suggesting that some in the technology industry may shift their focus to passage of stand-alone legislation that would only resolve the industry’s concerns.”

The daylight emerging between the tech industry and its comprehensive immigration reform allies presents an opportunity to House Republicans, says Byron York. “If the House were to pass H-1B expansion, the GOP would win support from at least some in the tech world. And Democrats would be standing in the way of admitting more high-skilled workers into this country.”

Liberals like Durbin know that the only way to legalize a controversial pathway to citizenship is to hold hostage popular reforms like expanding the H-1B visa pool. This turn of events may be just what House Republicans need to make that ploy crystal clear.

February 24th, 2014 at 2:23 pm
After ObamaCare: More Insurance, Less Health?

Pay now or pay later.

That’s the choice facing millions of Americans required by Obamacare’s individual mandate to select a health insurance plan through a state or federal exchange.

Insurance companies like Aetna, Humana and Blue Cross and Blue Shield who are participating on various exchanges report that the most popular choices among consumers are middle-of-the-road “silver” plans that typically offer moderate premiums but high deductibles and coinsurance.

Deductibles require policyholders to pay all of the cost for medical care up to  a certain threshold before the insurance company assumes responsibility, while coinsurance commits the policyholder to paying a certain percentage for the cost of medication. (Co-pays, on the other hand, are capped at a flat amount.)

The increased costs are likely to reduce the number of doctor and hospital visits as consumers become choosier. “When deductibles and co-payments are high, patients tend to think twice about their health care purchases, making them more likely to shop around for the best deal,” says health policy expert Bruce Japsen.

Indeed, basic economic theory teaches that knowing the price of something impacts a person’s behavior significantly. But while this may help people who would otherwise overuse health care to scale back, it can – and most likely will – have the effect of convincing people to underuse necessary treatment options for fear of the cost. Thus, we could end up with more people covered by health insurance but a more unhealthful population.

One of the key policy battles on the horizon is how to harness this new transparency in health care prices. Liberals will likely want to subsidize health care until they can socialize the entire industry. Conservatives will be predisposed to favor a market-based solution. But simply repealing Obamacare and its disastrous tax on medical devices, among others, and saying “let the market figure it out” won’t be enough – especially in a campaign context.

Some conservatives may favor working within the system to incent both consumers and health care companies to better align need and cost. Others may prefer to explore deregulating parts of the industry, such as allowing physician assistants and qualified nurses to do more of the work of a doctor while still under supervision (perhaps remotely via technology). These and other ideas need to be deliberated on intensely now so that conservatives aren’t caught off-guard when the electorate is ready for an Obamacare alternative. If not, we’ll all pay dearly for lacking a consensus at the moment we need it most.

January 29th, 2014 at 3:09 pm
Economists’ Fear: ObamaCare Consolidates Health Care, Raises Price

“Health economists worry that mergers could end up increasing what you pay. Hospital systems can often negotiate higher rates with insurers for the same care,” says a report at CNN Money.

The mergers in question are the result of an incentive structure within Obamacare that gives financial rewards to doctors and hospitals that create “Accountable Care Organizations” (ACOs) that, according to the report, “coordinate treatments with the goal of delivering quality care for less.”

In order to increase their eligibility for ACO benefits, hospitals across the country are scooping up individual and small group medical practices. The reason this may be bad for patients is that mergers allow hospitals to increase their market share, giving them greater leverage to negotiate higher rates with insurance companies. Cigna, a health insurance company, has seen bills for routine procedures spike 300 percent to 500 percent after a hospital acquires a practice.

Of course, those increased costs are passed on to patients, many of whom may not realize it until they get hit with a new “facility fee” that tacks on $75 to $150 for a routine visit.

One would think that a program designed to deliver “quality care for less” would pass on the savings to the patient. Instead, it looks like patients will pay more while the federal government rewards hospitals for cornering the market.

January 28th, 2014 at 4:36 pm
GOP Senators Unveil ObamaCare Alternative

Yesterday, three senior Republican Senators introduced a set of ideas that could eventually turn into the upper chamber’s Obamacare alternative.

The proposal – coauthored by Senators Tom Coburn (Oklahoma), Richard Burr (North Carolina) and Orrin Hatch (Utah) – is a welcome companion to the repeal and reform plan put forward by the House Republican Study Committee (RSC).

The plans share some important elements. Both would repeal Obamacare (though the Senate plan would reinstate certain Medicare changes). Both limit medical malpractice awards in an attempt to cut down on junk lawsuits. And both would increase access to various tax-shielded vehicles like Health Savings Accounts.

An interesting divergence is over whether to allow consumers to purchase health insurance across state lines. The RSC bill does, while the Coburn-Burr-Hatch proposal does not. If allowed, consumers would have more choices, including access to cheaper out-of-state plans for those living in high regulation states.

On the other hand, there is the possibility that insurance companies might cluster in a low-regulation state, leading to a domino effect where all states cut back on coverage requirements or risk losing companies to more business-friendly states. Stripped down health insurance is fine for young and healthy people, but hardly adequate for older and sicker persons. If enough people are priced out of the market, expect the liberal solution to be expanding government programs to cover them.

We know, because that’s one of the arguments liberal defenders of Obamacare used to justify its passage. As Republicans deliberate on how best to reform Obamacare after it’s repealed, figuring out a way to avoid that trap should be high on the priority list.

January 6th, 2014 at 3:53 pm
GOP’s ACA Alternative is Here

I’ll add an Amen to what our friend Quin Hillyer preaches at National Review Online today.

Quin writes convincingly about the opportunity Republicans have to take control of Congress by uniting behind the Obamacare alternative proposed by the House Republican Study Committee (RSC).

The short, snappy piece is worth reading in its entirety, but here I want to draw attention to two points I’m glad Quin made. First, there must be an agreement among the DC GOP leadership to adopt the RSC’s framework for reform. Doing so would commit the party to a conservative version of reform that, as Quin demonstrates, will be an easy sell during the campaign season.

Second, that this strategic decision must be joined to an equally unified agreement to abandon any version of comprehensive immigration reform this year. Just as Obamacare is an internally divisive issue among Democrats, so too is immigration reform among Republicans. In a year where Obamacare is already the dominant issue, there is no reason for Republicans to voluntarily drive a wedge between their members on immigration by reviving an issue that’s currently dead. Instead, GOP leaders should try to divide and conquer the Democrats with votes on Obamacare alternatives they can’t afford to oppose.

Conservatives at the RSC have put forward a viable plan. It’s up to GOP leaders to decide whether they want to spend 2014 defeating Democrats, or fighting their own members.

November 9th, 2013 at 4:02 pm
Latest Obamacare ‘Fix’ Could Cost Billions

Another day, another leaked attempt to make an end-run around Congress.

In the wake of the widespread insurance policy cancellations forcing individuals onto Obamacare exchanges, Obama administration officials are letting it be known that they are working on an “administrative fix” that would somehow provide financial relief for those affected that don’t qualify for federal subsidies to offset the health law’s higher premiums.

This trial balloon seems to be the necessary corollary to President Barack Obama’s promise Thursday night “to work hard to make sure that [people losing their individual policies] know we hear them and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this.”

Even if that means rewriting the law without Congress, and exploding the cost of Obamacare.

As written, Obamacare subsidies are capped at 400 percent of the federal poverty line, which translates into an annual income of no more than $46,000 per year for an individual.

But, “In June 2009, the CBO evaluated a draft proposal from the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee that offered subsidies as high as 500 percent of the federal poverty level,” writes Philip Klein.

“In the period from 2014 through 2019 alone, CBO estimated that the exchange subsidies would cost $1.2 trillion.” Dropping the cut-off level to 400 percent of FPL reduced the cost estimate to $458 billion over the same six year period.

If the Obama administration elects to go this route, Klein says expect to see another famous presidential pledge come under fire: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. I will sign if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.”

November 1st, 2013 at 4:33 pm
New Research Confirms Need for Corporate Tax Reduction and Reform
Posted by Print

The United States keeps shooting itself in the proverbial foot with our foolishly high and complex corporate tax rate.  Fully 31 of the world’s 34 leading economies have lowered their corporate tax rates since 1997 alone, but the U.S. is not among them.  Consequently, as all other competitor countries lower their rates, corporations flee for better shores, never to return.  And with those corporations go critical American jobs.

Maintaining a federal corporate tax rate of 35% in addition to various state corporate taxes – the highest in the developed world – doesn’t just impede American businesses.  The code is also riddled with Byzantine loopholes that warp decisionmaking and dictate winners and losers.  And contrary to popular myth, most of those loopholes aren’t accessible to most companies.  To the contrary, new research by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) reveals that the effective tax rate for corporations was 36.2% from 2004 – 2010.  Stripping out many of the false assumptions of the GAO report that claimed an effective U.S. rate of approximately 13%, the PwC report is a devastating indictment of our tax code that highlights its unfair and punitive nature.

Our economy continues to struggle, and with so much regulatory uncertainty and chaos in Washington it would be nice to focus on something on which everyone sees eye-to-eye.  Reforming the corporate tax rate is precisely that sort of bipartisan solution, something widely acknowledged by both sides as the correct move.  Even President Obama, whose policies have done so much to impede economic and job growth, has gone out of his way to emphasize that reality.  We simply must reduce corporate tax rates and reform our tax code so that our economy isn’t permanently crippled by it.  Although pronouncements of the downfall of the United States are greatly exaggerated, it would be wise for us to avoid heading down that path due to outdated corporate tax policies that nobody supports.

The time for reduction and reform is now, before it really is too late.

September 26th, 2013 at 4:52 pm
Senate Dem Backs Individual Mandate Delay

Referring to a yearlong delay in imposing ObamaCare’s individual mandate, Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, told Bloomberg, “There’s no way I could not vote for it. It’s very reasonable and sensible.”

Indeed, it is. Conservative health policy experts James Capretta and Yuval Levin make a persuasive case on the merits for doing so. The core of their argument: It’s just plain fair.

Ever since the Obama administration decided to delay the employer mandate for a year Republicans have argued that the same relief should be extended to individuals and families.

Putting a one-year delay of the individual mandate into each of the next “must-pass” bills would give Republicans in Congress the leverage they need to put Democrats on the record.

Is shutting down the government more important than treating families at least as good as businesses? Is raising the debt ceiling?

If liberals want to bring government to a standstill to defend discrimination, let them.

Chances are, if Republicans pursue this strategy more red state Democrats like Manchin will also come to see the GOP’s delay proposal as “very reasonable and sensible.”

As Manchin points out, “If you know you couldn’t bring the corporate sector, you gave them a year, don’t you think it’d be fair?”

Sounds good to me, Senator. Time to convince a few more members of your caucus.

September 24th, 2013 at 6:35 pm
ObamaCare’s Employer Mandate Delay is Purely Political

Sarah Kliff, a liberal health policy blogger at Wonkblog, explains why the Obama administration won’t delay the individual mandate like it has other elements of ObamaCare.

“…all the delays so have one thing in common: They erased political headaches for the law while barely denting the number of people that the health overhaul will cover in 2014,” writes Kilff. “The delays Republicans are asking for now would cause major political and substantive headaches for the law while sharply reducing the number of people it covers.”

The political headaches Kliff alluded to include vociferous opposition by businesses to the employer mandate. That’s because, once implemented, the employer mandate – the requirement to provide government-approved health insurance on any firm employing 50 or more full-time workers or pay a fine – will very likely result in shedding jobs to avoid compliance costs.

“This predictable employer response is a very good reason to want to postpone the mandate until after the midterm,” wrote Walter Russell Mead said when the employer mandate delay was announced this summer. “Nobody wants to run as an ally of the job-killing President whose policies led your voters’ employers to dump their health insurance.”

It’s both refreshing and appalling to see an ObamaCare cheerleader like Kliff admit that the only kind of acceptable delays are the ones that politically advantage the Obama administration.

No wonder opponents see the only real solution to ObamaCare’s metastasizing problems as repealing and starting over.

September 23rd, 2013 at 5:31 pm
Senate Immigration Bill to Help Illegals Convicted of Other Crimes

Here’s the immigration reform version of “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.”

Speaking to attendees at the Congressional Black Caucus’s annual conference, Esther Olavarria, the White House’s director of immigration reform, highlighted some provisions of the Senate’s bill that she would like the public to ignore.

Making it easier for illegal immigrants convicted of crimes to stay in the country got special attention.

In Olavarria’s telling, the Senate bill reverses a 1996 law that says any criminal conviction can serve as the basis for deportation. The new language would exempt convictions followed by a suspended sentence, meaning that deportation would not be an option if the offender gets probation instead of jail time.

Bear in mind, the conviction referred to is for a crime separate from illegally entering the country.

Thus, if passed, the Senate bill would not only excuse the foundational illegality of unlawfully entering the country, it would further protect from prosecution those who have been convicted, but not yet served jail time.

But if you haven’t heard about this controversial change in law, Olavarria explains why.

“We haven’t played [them] up because we want to be able to maintain them as we go through the legislative process,” she told the conference attendees. “The bill has a number of other important provisions that have stayed under the radar, and we’d actually like to keep them under the radar.”

That’s because the White House knows it can’t win an open and honest debate about granting illegal immigrants not one, but (at least) two free passes when it comes to breaking the law.

This subterfuge is yet another reason to scrap the Senate’s bill and start over.

H/T: The Daily Caller

August 28th, 2013 at 4:54 pm
The ObamaCare Delay that Could be Fatal

No, I don’t mean news of yet another delay in the controversial health law’s implementation – this time a Reuters report that the Health and Human Services department is pushing back by two weeks its timetable for finalizing deals with health insurance companies.

I mean today’s announcement that former President Bill Clinton is being tasked with explaining what’s so great about ObamaCare to the country. Clinton’s speech next week is being billed as the first of several high-profile speeches designed to sell the law to the 54 percent of Americans who don’t like it.

To be sure, if anybody in politics can make this train wreck look good, it’s Bill Clinton. But why would President Obama wait till now, after three-and-a-half years of public relations futility, to bring in his party’s best spokesman?

Simple: With just over a month to go before ObamaCare’s enrollment begins the president and his administration are in full-blown panic mode. Nothing is on schedule. Their multi-million dollar ad campaign may not attract enough people to enroll. And, oh yeah, we’re about to intervene in Syria’s civil war.

If Clinton gets any traction with his speeches it will be of limited value because so much of the public’s mind has been made up in the years since the law was passed. Prior to that, who knows? As a matter of Politics 101, failing to use such a successful political spokesman strikes me as a huge wasted opportunity. Of all the delays with ObamaCare, putting off Clinton’s rhetorical talents may be the most fatal to the law because – perhaps – they could have done so much to keep it alive.

August 26th, 2013 at 5:06 pm
HHS Hires 86 Cops, 2 Consumer Safety Officers under ObamaCare

How’s this for a snapshot of ObamaCare’s priorities?

Since the controversial health law passed in March 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has hired 1,684 new employees.

Of those, 86 are criminal investigators while only two are consumer safety officers.

The numbers come from HHS data extracted by a Freedom of Information Request by The Daily Mail, a British newspaper.

Bear in mind, HHS’s health cops are in addition to the estimated 16,500 new agents the Internal Revenue Service is seeking to fulfill its ObamaCare policing mandate.

There are, of course, better, much less intrusive ways to do health reform.

“People would voluntarily purchase the health insurance of their choice with basic subsidies. Additional special assistance could be targeted to help those with low incomes and/or high risk-based premium costs in purchasing health insurance,” according to Thomas Miller of the American Enterprise Institute.

Instead of the demanding detailed financial and health information from millions of Americans, Miller proposes treating ObamaCare health insurance subsidies like other income tax issues, so that only “a tiny fraction of taxpayers would be subject to mostly random audits to ensure that their tax subsidies for insurance are being spent appropriately.”

Miller’s solution would nix the need for all the new ObamaCare investigators. Eliminating the 86 new HHS hires would save taxpayers approximately $138.8 million annually.

But that would mean less oversight and control for the federal government, which, as we are seeing with the rise in police-related hiring at HHS and IRS, is not a priority under ObamaCare.