Frankly, the only way I can explain it is to remember that Obama is a Socialist/Marxist or worse. Why so many seemingly reasonable people support him I can't understand. Frankly, this situation remind me of the old story of the Pied Piper: when his extravagant dreams of spectacular success do not materialize, this talented in speech but inexperienced and incompetent in action politician decided to lure the country to disaster...
Story Of Obama
- Thread starter Yannis
- Start date
The States Resist Obamacare
by Michael D. Tanner
One of the few bright spots in the Supreme Courtâs ruling on Obamacare was its 7â2 decision striking down the Obama administrationâs attempt to blackmail states into going along with a massive and costly expansion of Medicaid. Barely a day later, Florida governor Rick Scott announced that his state would not expand Medicaid eligibility to 133 percent of the poverty level, which comes out to roughly $30,000 per year for a family of four, or allow single, childless men to participate in the program. Earlier, Scott had rejected another key component of Obamacare, refusing to establish a state insurance exchange. He had even returned grants and other funding that the previous governor had received to help implement the legislation.
Scott was quickly joined by at least six other GOP governors in rejecting the Medicaid expansion, including governors Branstad (Iowa), Brownback (Kansas), Haley (South Carolina), Heineman (Nebraska), Jindal (Louisiana), and, not surprisingly, Scott Walker (Wisconsin). At least seven other governors, including Bentley (Alabama), Bryant (Mississippi), Daniels (Indiana), Deal (Georgia), Fallin (Oklahoma), McDonnell (Virginia), Perry (Texas), and Jay Nixon (Missouri), a Democrat, had previously made statements suggesting that they were unlikely to expand their programs. Nevada had earlier passed regulations paving the way to participate in the expansion, but Governor Sandoval has since indicated he may reconsider.
In rejecting Obamacareâs Medicaid expansion, these governors will be saving their state taxpayers billions of dollars. Initially, the federal government would have provided additional funding to cover the expansion, but those additional funds would have been phased down, starting in 2017. Eventually state taxpayers would have had to pick up much of the extra cost. For example, over ten years, the Medicaid expansion would have cost taxpayers in states such as Florida, Kansas, and Texas more than $20 billion each, while in New Jersey, for example, the expansion could cost as much as $35 billion. (In fairness, a few states such as California do emerge as net winners under the expansion formula, but they are clearly the exception, and there are plenty of other reasons why they should resist participating.)
On the other hand, if a state does not expand its Medicaid program, most of those who would have been eligible for Medicaid will now become eligible for subsidies through Obamacareâs health-insurance exchanges. Those subsidies are paid in full by the federal government. That much should be an easy call for any fiscally responsible governor, although the reasons to forgo the exchanges and the subsidies they entail are strong as well.
Beyond the Medicaid expansion, at least four governors have joined Governor Scott in explicitly refusing to set up a state-based insurance exchange: Jindal, Perry, and Walker, as well as Democratic New Hampshire governor John Lynch. Perhaps as many as 35 other states have simply not taken the actions necessary to establish exchanges. That may be less explicit a revolt, but it has the same result.
Of course, if states refuse to set up an exchange, Obamacare gives the federal government the authority to step in and operate an exchange itself in those states. But there is reason to doubt that the federal government has either the ability or the money to do so. Congress has not appropriated any funding for this purpose and seems unlikely to do so.
More important, as my colleague Michael Cannon has discovered, a little-discussed provision of Obamacare makes federal subsidies for insurance available only through those exchanges that the states set up themselves. So, while the federal government does have the power to create exchanges in states that refuse to do so, it cannot offer subsidies through those federally run exchanges.
Moreover, it is those subsidies that actually trigger the penalty under Obamacare for employers who fail to provide workers with insurance. Obamacare requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance or pay a tax, but only if at least one employee qualifies for subsidies under the exchange. Therefore, if subsidies can be provided only through a state-authorized exchange, a state could potentially block the employer mandate altogether, simply by refusing to establish an exchange.
The Obama administration and the IRS, unsurprisingly, have claimed that they have the right to unilaterally rewrite the law, yet again, to close this loophole. But, at the very least, this would be open to legal challenge. And perhaps next time the Supreme Court will get it right.
So, by refusing to go along with Obamacareâs Medicaid expansion and by blocking state-run exchanges, governors are not just saving state taxpayers money. They are potentially reducing future federal spending by as much as $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.
While congressional Republicans have been reduced to taking symbolic repeal votes, and Mitt Romney struggles to determine whether or not the individual mandate is a tax, governors â and state legislators â have become the real heroes of the fight against Obamacare.
by Michael D. Tanner
One of the few bright spots in the Supreme Courtâs ruling on Obamacare was its 7â2 decision striking down the Obama administrationâs attempt to blackmail states into going along with a massive and costly expansion of Medicaid. Barely a day later, Florida governor Rick Scott announced that his state would not expand Medicaid eligibility to 133 percent of the poverty level, which comes out to roughly $30,000 per year for a family of four, or allow single, childless men to participate in the program. Earlier, Scott had rejected another key component of Obamacare, refusing to establish a state insurance exchange. He had even returned grants and other funding that the previous governor had received to help implement the legislation.
Scott was quickly joined by at least six other GOP governors in rejecting the Medicaid expansion, including governors Branstad (Iowa), Brownback (Kansas), Haley (South Carolina), Heineman (Nebraska), Jindal (Louisiana), and, not surprisingly, Scott Walker (Wisconsin). At least seven other governors, including Bentley (Alabama), Bryant (Mississippi), Daniels (Indiana), Deal (Georgia), Fallin (Oklahoma), McDonnell (Virginia), Perry (Texas), and Jay Nixon (Missouri), a Democrat, had previously made statements suggesting that they were unlikely to expand their programs. Nevada had earlier passed regulations paving the way to participate in the expansion, but Governor Sandoval has since indicated he may reconsider.
In rejecting Obamacareâs Medicaid expansion, these governors will be saving their state taxpayers billions of dollars. Initially, the federal government would have provided additional funding to cover the expansion, but those additional funds would have been phased down, starting in 2017. Eventually state taxpayers would have had to pick up much of the extra cost. For example, over ten years, the Medicaid expansion would have cost taxpayers in states such as Florida, Kansas, and Texas more than $20 billion each, while in New Jersey, for example, the expansion could cost as much as $35 billion. (In fairness, a few states such as California do emerge as net winners under the expansion formula, but they are clearly the exception, and there are plenty of other reasons why they should resist participating.)
On the other hand, if a state does not expand its Medicaid program, most of those who would have been eligible for Medicaid will now become eligible for subsidies through Obamacareâs health-insurance exchanges. Those subsidies are paid in full by the federal government. That much should be an easy call for any fiscally responsible governor, although the reasons to forgo the exchanges and the subsidies they entail are strong as well.
Beyond the Medicaid expansion, at least four governors have joined Governor Scott in explicitly refusing to set up a state-based insurance exchange: Jindal, Perry, and Walker, as well as Democratic New Hampshire governor John Lynch. Perhaps as many as 35 other states have simply not taken the actions necessary to establish exchanges. That may be less explicit a revolt, but it has the same result.
Of course, if states refuse to set up an exchange, Obamacare gives the federal government the authority to step in and operate an exchange itself in those states. But there is reason to doubt that the federal government has either the ability or the money to do so. Congress has not appropriated any funding for this purpose and seems unlikely to do so.
More important, as my colleague Michael Cannon has discovered, a little-discussed provision of Obamacare makes federal subsidies for insurance available only through those exchanges that the states set up themselves. So, while the federal government does have the power to create exchanges in states that refuse to do so, it cannot offer subsidies through those federally run exchanges.
Moreover, it is those subsidies that actually trigger the penalty under Obamacare for employers who fail to provide workers with insurance. Obamacare requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance or pay a tax, but only if at least one employee qualifies for subsidies under the exchange. Therefore, if subsidies can be provided only through a state-authorized exchange, a state could potentially block the employer mandate altogether, simply by refusing to establish an exchange.
The Obama administration and the IRS, unsurprisingly, have claimed that they have the right to unilaterally rewrite the law, yet again, to close this loophole. But, at the very least, this would be open to legal challenge. And perhaps next time the Supreme Court will get it right.
So, by refusing to go along with Obamacareâs Medicaid expansion and by blocking state-run exchanges, governors are not just saving state taxpayers money. They are potentially reducing future federal spending by as much as $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.
While congressional Republicans have been reduced to taking symbolic repeal votes, and Mitt Romney struggles to determine whether or not the individual mandate is a tax, governors â and state legislators â have become the real heroes of the fight against Obamacare.
Obama is centrist. You're a right-wing nutjob. That's why you can't understand why reasonable people support him.
The Economist Asks
Is Barack Obama a centrist?
10537 votes 67% say yes 33 % no.
Voting opened on Nov 3rd 2011
America Has Too Many Teachers
by Andrew J. Coulson
President Obama said last month that America can educate its way to prosperity if Congress sends money to states to prevent public school layoffs and "rehire even more teachers." Mitt Romney was having none of it, invoking "the message of Wisconsin" and arguing that the solution to our economic woes is to cut the size of government and shift resources to the private sector. Mr. Romney later stated that he wasn't calling for a reduction in the teacher forceâbut perhaps there would be some wisdom in doing just that.
Since 1970, the public school workforce has roughly doubledâto 6.4 million from 3.3 millionâand two-thirds of those new hires are teachers or teachers' aides. Over the same period, enrollment rose by a tepid 8.5%. Employment has thus grown 11 times faster than enrollment. If we returned to the student-to-staff ratio of 1970, American taxpayers would save about $210 billion annually in personnel costs.
Or would they? Stanford economist Eric Hanushek has shown that better-educated students contribute substantially to economic growth. If U.S. students could catch up to the mathematics performance of their Canadian counterparts, he has found, it would add roughly $70 trillion to the U.S. economy over the next 80 years. So if the additional three million public-school employees we've hired have helped students learn, the nation may be better off economically.
To find out if that's true, we can look at the "long-term trends" of 17-year-olds on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress. These tests, first administered four decades ago, show stagnation in reading and math and a decline in science. Scores for black and Hispanic students have improved somewhat, but the scores of white students (still the majority) are flat overall, and large demographic gaps persist. Graduation rates have also stagnated or fallen. So a doubling in staff size and more than a doubling in cost have done little to improve academic outcomes.
Nor can the explosive growth in public-school hiring be attributed to federal spending on special education. According to the latest Census Bureau data, special ed teachers make up barely 5% of the K-12 work force.
The implication of these facts is clear: America's public schools have warehoused three million people in jobs that do little to improve student achievementâpeople who would be working productively in the private sector if that extra $210 billion were not taxed out of the economy each year.
We have already tried President Obama's education solution over a time period and on a scale that he could not hope to replicate today. And it has proven an expensive and tragic failure.
To avoid Greece's fate we must create new, productive private-sector jobs to replace our unproductive government ones. Even as a tiny, mostly nonprofit niche, American private education is substantially more efficient than its public sector, producing higher graduation rates and similar or better student achievement at roughly a third lower cost than public schools (even after controlling for differences in student and family characteristics).
By making it easier for families to access independent schools, we can do what the president's policies cannot: drive prosperity through educational improvement. More than 20 private-school choice programs already exist around the nation. Last month, New Hampshire legislators voted to override their governor's veto and enact tax credits for businesses that donate to K-12 scholarship organizations. Mr. Romney has supported such state programs. President Obama opposes them.
While America may have too many teachers, the greater problem is that our state schools have squandered their talents on a mass scale. The good news is that a solution is taking root in many states.
by Andrew J. Coulson
President Obama said last month that America can educate its way to prosperity if Congress sends money to states to prevent public school layoffs and "rehire even more teachers." Mitt Romney was having none of it, invoking "the message of Wisconsin" and arguing that the solution to our economic woes is to cut the size of government and shift resources to the private sector. Mr. Romney later stated that he wasn't calling for a reduction in the teacher forceâbut perhaps there would be some wisdom in doing just that.
Since 1970, the public school workforce has roughly doubledâto 6.4 million from 3.3 millionâand two-thirds of those new hires are teachers or teachers' aides. Over the same period, enrollment rose by a tepid 8.5%. Employment has thus grown 11 times faster than enrollment. If we returned to the student-to-staff ratio of 1970, American taxpayers would save about $210 billion annually in personnel costs.
Or would they? Stanford economist Eric Hanushek has shown that better-educated students contribute substantially to economic growth. If U.S. students could catch up to the mathematics performance of their Canadian counterparts, he has found, it would add roughly $70 trillion to the U.S. economy over the next 80 years. So if the additional three million public-school employees we've hired have helped students learn, the nation may be better off economically.
To find out if that's true, we can look at the "long-term trends" of 17-year-olds on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress. These tests, first administered four decades ago, show stagnation in reading and math and a decline in science. Scores for black and Hispanic students have improved somewhat, but the scores of white students (still the majority) are flat overall, and large demographic gaps persist. Graduation rates have also stagnated or fallen. So a doubling in staff size and more than a doubling in cost have done little to improve academic outcomes.
Nor can the explosive growth in public-school hiring be attributed to federal spending on special education. According to the latest Census Bureau data, special ed teachers make up barely 5% of the K-12 work force.
The implication of these facts is clear: America's public schools have warehoused three million people in jobs that do little to improve student achievementâpeople who would be working productively in the private sector if that extra $210 billion were not taxed out of the economy each year.
We have already tried President Obama's education solution over a time period and on a scale that he could not hope to replicate today. And it has proven an expensive and tragic failure.
To avoid Greece's fate we must create new, productive private-sector jobs to replace our unproductive government ones. Even as a tiny, mostly nonprofit niche, American private education is substantially more efficient than its public sector, producing higher graduation rates and similar or better student achievement at roughly a third lower cost than public schools (even after controlling for differences in student and family characteristics).
By making it easier for families to access independent schools, we can do what the president's policies cannot: drive prosperity through educational improvement. More than 20 private-school choice programs already exist around the nation. Last month, New Hampshire legislators voted to override their governor's veto and enact tax credits for businesses that donate to K-12 scholarship organizations. Mr. Romney has supported such state programs. President Obama opposes them.
While America may have too many teachers, the greater problem is that our state schools have squandered their talents on a mass scale. The good news is that a solution is taking root in many states.
Mitt Romney's Secret Weapon - If He Can Bring Himself to Use It
by Jim Powell
By upholding Obamacare, Chief Justice John Roberts has given Mitt Romney a significant opportunity in the election campaign. But he could blow it if he doesnât use a âsecret weapon.â
The Supreme Court decision assures that Obamacare will be among the top campaign issues, and polls continue to suggest that a majority of voters donât like it.
Roberts offered what might become known as trans-gender justice (first itâs one thing, then itâs another) that seems to have outraged many independents as well as Republicans who want to uphold the Constitution, not sanction arbitrary power. Robertsâ decision could spur a higher turnout among voters critical of Obamacare.
Roberts ruled that the Obamacare mandate is simultaneously a âpenaltyâ and a âtax,â an unprecedented claim apparently first advanced by the Obama administrationâs lawyer during oral arguments last March. As a New York Times headline put it, âThe Health Mandate Is Not A Tax, Except When It Is.â
The idea could have come straight out of Alice in Wonderland. âIf I had a world of my own,â Alice thought, âeverything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isnât. And contrary-wise; what it is wouldnât be, and what it wouldnât be, it would. You see?â
In their dissenting opinion, justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito wrote that Roberts conjured âa creature never hitherto seen: A penalty for constitutional purposes that is also a tax for constitutional purposes. Of course, in many cases what was a regulatory mandate enforced by a penalty could have been imposed as a tax upon permissible action; or what was imposed as a tax upon permissible action could have been a regulatory mandate enforced by a penalty. But we know of no case, and the Government cites none, in which the imposition was, for constitutional purposes, both.â
Roberts didnât review the law as he found it. He arbitrarily rewrote the law, performing a legislative function. The law described the mandate as a penalty, not a tax. Obamacare was never sold as a tax. Members of Congress didnât pass it as a tax. The administration hoped the law would be constitutional on the basis of the ever-expanding Commerce Clause. Roberts upheld Obamacare by asserting an unlimited taxing power.
As a tax, the mandate violates Obamaâs solemn vow never to sign a middle class tax hike. âIf you are a family making less than $250,000,â he promised during the 2008 campaign, âyou will not see your taxes go up. Not your capital gains tax, not your payroll tax, not your income tax. No tax!â Many voters will get tax bills rather than health care freebies, and they could become angry when they realize they elected the Wizard of Oz.
Romneyâs options? He has repeatedly critiqued Obamacare, and he has vowed to start repealing it on day one of his administration, if he wins the election.
Romney will have to go beyond his critiques of Obamacare, however, and offer a simple alternative with specifics. Ronald Reagan campaigned successfully with just three key points. The simpler Romneyâs proposed program, the more people will be able to remember it and support it. Romney will go nowhere with a health care plan as bulky as his 59-point jobs plan.
Romneyâs health care plan should offer everyone more choices and provide incentives for people to be concerned about costs, like consumers of other services. Health insurance must belong to individuals and be portable, rather than tied to employers via business expense tax deductions. Romneyâs plan should foster competition, not a witchesâ brew of extortion and regulatory breaks that marked the Obama administrationâs back-room dealings with Big Pharma. Certainly consumers should be free to buy health insurance across state lines. It should be legal to buy inexpensive health insurance policies offering the most basic coverage. People shouldnât be forced to pay higher premiums that subsidize other peopleâs risks, some of which (like smoking and obesity) are affected by lifestyle choices. It doesnât make sense to try helping the minority without health insurance by adopting a system (Obamacare) that would cause millions of people to lose health insurance coverage they want to keep.
In addition to questions about Romneyâs plan, many people wonder whether the Republican Party has the resolve to repeal Obamacare.
During the 1960s, there was talk about repealing Medicare, but obviously nothing came of that. Republican President Richard Nixon actually expanded Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits. Reagan promised to abolish the Department of Education (which didnât educate anyone) and the Department of Energy (which didnât produce any energy), but those bureaucracies are still around â with bigger budgets than ever. Republican President George W. Bush ushered in a new Medicare entitlement, the prescription drug program. When President Obama announced his plan to help pay for Obamacare by cutting $500 billion from Medicare, Republicans rushed to defend Medicare â the entitlement thatâs going broke the fastest.
The most important issue for Romney is skepticism about his resolve, since the government-run health care plan he promoted in Massachusetts was a model for Obamacare. Romney has steadfastly defended Romneycare. He has strained credibility by insisting that government-run health care is okay for a state but not for the federal government.
Government-run health care, whether at the state or federal level, tends to have similar problems. When government taxes the general population, then channels some of the proceeds into a particular sector, this can drive up costs in that sector. State health care subsidies (as in Massachusetts) generate upward pressure on health care costs there, and federal health care subsidies generate upward pressure on health care costs across the country. Governments commonly try to control costs by introducing price controls that make it harder to provide health care. This is why many doctors stop accepting Medicare or Medicaid patients. In addition, there are rationing boards that determine who will be permitted to get various procedures and medications â and who will be denied. Elderly patients are most likely to be denied.
Since Roberts issued his decision, the president has been busy reminding everybody that Obamacare, including the mandate, was based on Romneycare.
What is Romney going to say when he debates Obama? The president will have an opportunity to ask how Romney could seriously criticize Obamacare, since he never disavowed Romneycare.
The public is likely to become increasingly confused as Romney critiques Obamacare while continuing to suggest that Romneycare is doing fine.
As long as Romney declines to acknowledge that Romneycare was a mistake, Obama will be able to keep him on the defensive.â¦.
Romneyâs mistake with government-run health care in Massachusetts is a policy mistake, not something serious like a moral shortcoming. In any case, voters have forgiven many moral shortcomings. Clintonâs supporters didnât abandon him because of his Oval Office escapades, even after he was impeached. The press remained spellbound by John F. Kennedy, despite his hyper-womanizing. Grover Cleveland was accused of fathering an illegitimate child, and his opponents coined what seemed to be a devastating slogan, âMa! Ma! Whereâs my pa?â But Cleveland displayed courageous candor. He acknowledged that he had an affair with the woman in question and that itâs possible he was the childâs father. Well, Cleveland won the election, which led to a second slogan gleefully answering the first one. The entire string became: âMa! Ma! Whereâs my pa? Gone to the White House! Ha! Ha! Ha!â
What voters donât like is blatant lying. Nixon, of course, is Exhibit A. With his back room scheming and his claims of Executive Privilege, he engineered the Watergate cover-up to hide incriminating evidence. The cover-up turned out to be worse than the botched burglary at the Democratic National Committee offices. The ensuing scandal was not unlike the situation Obamaâs Attorney General Eric Holder finds himself in now for refusing to provide documents ânow hidden behind Executive Privilege â about the administrationâs botched âFast and Furiousâ scheme that channeled semi-automatic weapons to Mexican drug lords and resulted in the death of a U.S. border patrol agent
So itâs difficult to understand why Romney stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that Romneycare was a mistake. Maybe he fears Obama will hammer him relentlessly for his candor. He might be called a flip-flopper (again). But since most voters seem to dislike Obamacare, they must dislike Romneycare, too. Far from being antagonized by Romneyâs candor, the anti-Obamacare and anti-Romneycare majority would probably congratulate Romney for coming home at last, after his time in the wilderness.
People donât typically pile on a person who acknowledges his mistakes. People tend to be forgiving, because everyone makes mistakes. People admire candor and humility.
It takes a strong person to publicly acknowledge his mistakes, and a Romney moment of candor could dramatically display his strength and enhance his personal appeal. He would show himself to be human, vulnerable and bold. Such candor could electrify his campaign and improve prospects for replacing Obamacare with commonsense health care reforms.
If Romney is ever going to make such a bold move, now is the time, amidst the groundswell of outrage at the administrationâs high pressure tactics that intimidated the chief justice and threaten our future.
by Jim Powell
By upholding Obamacare, Chief Justice John Roberts has given Mitt Romney a significant opportunity in the election campaign. But he could blow it if he doesnât use a âsecret weapon.â
The Supreme Court decision assures that Obamacare will be among the top campaign issues, and polls continue to suggest that a majority of voters donât like it.
Roberts offered what might become known as trans-gender justice (first itâs one thing, then itâs another) that seems to have outraged many independents as well as Republicans who want to uphold the Constitution, not sanction arbitrary power. Robertsâ decision could spur a higher turnout among voters critical of Obamacare.
Roberts ruled that the Obamacare mandate is simultaneously a âpenaltyâ and a âtax,â an unprecedented claim apparently first advanced by the Obama administrationâs lawyer during oral arguments last March. As a New York Times headline put it, âThe Health Mandate Is Not A Tax, Except When It Is.â
The idea could have come straight out of Alice in Wonderland. âIf I had a world of my own,â Alice thought, âeverything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isnât. And contrary-wise; what it is wouldnât be, and what it wouldnât be, it would. You see?â
In their dissenting opinion, justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito wrote that Roberts conjured âa creature never hitherto seen: A penalty for constitutional purposes that is also a tax for constitutional purposes. Of course, in many cases what was a regulatory mandate enforced by a penalty could have been imposed as a tax upon permissible action; or what was imposed as a tax upon permissible action could have been a regulatory mandate enforced by a penalty. But we know of no case, and the Government cites none, in which the imposition was, for constitutional purposes, both.â
Roberts didnât review the law as he found it. He arbitrarily rewrote the law, performing a legislative function. The law described the mandate as a penalty, not a tax. Obamacare was never sold as a tax. Members of Congress didnât pass it as a tax. The administration hoped the law would be constitutional on the basis of the ever-expanding Commerce Clause. Roberts upheld Obamacare by asserting an unlimited taxing power.
As a tax, the mandate violates Obamaâs solemn vow never to sign a middle class tax hike. âIf you are a family making less than $250,000,â he promised during the 2008 campaign, âyou will not see your taxes go up. Not your capital gains tax, not your payroll tax, not your income tax. No tax!â Many voters will get tax bills rather than health care freebies, and they could become angry when they realize they elected the Wizard of Oz.
Romneyâs options? He has repeatedly critiqued Obamacare, and he has vowed to start repealing it on day one of his administration, if he wins the election.
Romney will have to go beyond his critiques of Obamacare, however, and offer a simple alternative with specifics. Ronald Reagan campaigned successfully with just three key points. The simpler Romneyâs proposed program, the more people will be able to remember it and support it. Romney will go nowhere with a health care plan as bulky as his 59-point jobs plan.
Romneyâs health care plan should offer everyone more choices and provide incentives for people to be concerned about costs, like consumers of other services. Health insurance must belong to individuals and be portable, rather than tied to employers via business expense tax deductions. Romneyâs plan should foster competition, not a witchesâ brew of extortion and regulatory breaks that marked the Obama administrationâs back-room dealings with Big Pharma. Certainly consumers should be free to buy health insurance across state lines. It should be legal to buy inexpensive health insurance policies offering the most basic coverage. People shouldnât be forced to pay higher premiums that subsidize other peopleâs risks, some of which (like smoking and obesity) are affected by lifestyle choices. It doesnât make sense to try helping the minority without health insurance by adopting a system (Obamacare) that would cause millions of people to lose health insurance coverage they want to keep.
In addition to questions about Romneyâs plan, many people wonder whether the Republican Party has the resolve to repeal Obamacare.
During the 1960s, there was talk about repealing Medicare, but obviously nothing came of that. Republican President Richard Nixon actually expanded Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits. Reagan promised to abolish the Department of Education (which didnât educate anyone) and the Department of Energy (which didnât produce any energy), but those bureaucracies are still around â with bigger budgets than ever. Republican President George W. Bush ushered in a new Medicare entitlement, the prescription drug program. When President Obama announced his plan to help pay for Obamacare by cutting $500 billion from Medicare, Republicans rushed to defend Medicare â the entitlement thatâs going broke the fastest.
The most important issue for Romney is skepticism about his resolve, since the government-run health care plan he promoted in Massachusetts was a model for Obamacare. Romney has steadfastly defended Romneycare. He has strained credibility by insisting that government-run health care is okay for a state but not for the federal government.
Government-run health care, whether at the state or federal level, tends to have similar problems. When government taxes the general population, then channels some of the proceeds into a particular sector, this can drive up costs in that sector. State health care subsidies (as in Massachusetts) generate upward pressure on health care costs there, and federal health care subsidies generate upward pressure on health care costs across the country. Governments commonly try to control costs by introducing price controls that make it harder to provide health care. This is why many doctors stop accepting Medicare or Medicaid patients. In addition, there are rationing boards that determine who will be permitted to get various procedures and medications â and who will be denied. Elderly patients are most likely to be denied.
Since Roberts issued his decision, the president has been busy reminding everybody that Obamacare, including the mandate, was based on Romneycare.
What is Romney going to say when he debates Obama? The president will have an opportunity to ask how Romney could seriously criticize Obamacare, since he never disavowed Romneycare.
The public is likely to become increasingly confused as Romney critiques Obamacare while continuing to suggest that Romneycare is doing fine.
As long as Romney declines to acknowledge that Romneycare was a mistake, Obama will be able to keep him on the defensive.â¦.
Romneyâs mistake with government-run health care in Massachusetts is a policy mistake, not something serious like a moral shortcoming. In any case, voters have forgiven many moral shortcomings. Clintonâs supporters didnât abandon him because of his Oval Office escapades, even after he was impeached. The press remained spellbound by John F. Kennedy, despite his hyper-womanizing. Grover Cleveland was accused of fathering an illegitimate child, and his opponents coined what seemed to be a devastating slogan, âMa! Ma! Whereâs my pa?â But Cleveland displayed courageous candor. He acknowledged that he had an affair with the woman in question and that itâs possible he was the childâs father. Well, Cleveland won the election, which led to a second slogan gleefully answering the first one. The entire string became: âMa! Ma! Whereâs my pa? Gone to the White House! Ha! Ha! Ha!â
What voters donât like is blatant lying. Nixon, of course, is Exhibit A. With his back room scheming and his claims of Executive Privilege, he engineered the Watergate cover-up to hide incriminating evidence. The cover-up turned out to be worse than the botched burglary at the Democratic National Committee offices. The ensuing scandal was not unlike the situation Obamaâs Attorney General Eric Holder finds himself in now for refusing to provide documents ânow hidden behind Executive Privilege â about the administrationâs botched âFast and Furiousâ scheme that channeled semi-automatic weapons to Mexican drug lords and resulted in the death of a U.S. border patrol agent
So itâs difficult to understand why Romney stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that Romneycare was a mistake. Maybe he fears Obama will hammer him relentlessly for his candor. He might be called a flip-flopper (again). But since most voters seem to dislike Obamacare, they must dislike Romneycare, too. Far from being antagonized by Romneyâs candor, the anti-Obamacare and anti-Romneycare majority would probably congratulate Romney for coming home at last, after his time in the wilderness.
People donât typically pile on a person who acknowledges his mistakes. People tend to be forgiving, because everyone makes mistakes. People admire candor and humility.
It takes a strong person to publicly acknowledge his mistakes, and a Romney moment of candor could dramatically display his strength and enhance his personal appeal. He would show himself to be human, vulnerable and bold. Such candor could electrify his campaign and improve prospects for replacing Obamacare with commonsense health care reforms.
If Romney is ever going to make such a bold move, now is the time, amidst the groundswell of outrage at the administrationâs high pressure tactics that intimidated the chief justice and threaten our future.
Romneyâs Fundraising Success
http://www.dickmorris.com/romneys-fundraising-success-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/
http://www.dickmorris.com/romneys-fundraising-success-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/
"Consumer credit jumped $17.1 billion in May for the largest increase in what has been a strong year for this series. The news is especially good given a giant $8.0 billion jump in revolving credit which is by far the strongest gain of the recovery. Consumer willingness to use credit cards could give a boost to what have been sluggish retail sales in recent months. Nonrevolving credit, which is being driven higher by strong demand for student loans including in the latest month, rose $9.1 billion ."
The Presidentâs $8 Billion Coincidence
http://my.brainshark.com/The-President-s-8-Billion-Coincidence-356086344
http://my.brainshark.com/The-President-s-8-Billion-Coincidence-356086344
The Audacity to Lie
by Newt Gingrich
...The audacity of deliberate dishonesty in the Obama administration's reaction to the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare is unlike anything we have seen in American history.
A majority of the Court agreed the Commerce Clause could not be used to justify Obamacare, as many on the left had argued. The decision stated that police powers were reserved to the states. In other words, if the case for the law rested only on the claim that the individual mandate was a penalty, authorized under the Commerce Clause, then Obamacare would be unconstitutional.
Chief Justice Roberts' decision, however, pivoted and -- with the votes of the four liberal members of the Court -- ruled that Obamacare was constitutional precisely because it was not a penalty but was instead a tax.
Chief Justice Roberts had in effect saved Obamacare by establishing a trap which might destroy it.
Obamacare was already opposed by 60 percent of the American people according to most polls before the Court ruling.
Since advocates of Obamacare must concede their project is a massive tax increase in addition to bad policy, it should become excruciating to sustain politically even though the Court upheld its constitutionality. The Chief Justice virtually set the stage for this rejection when he wrote:
"The Government argues that if the commerce power does not support the mandate, we should nonetheless uphold it as an exercise of Congress's power to tax. According to the Government, even if Congress lacks the power to direct individuals to buy insurance, the only effect of the individual mandate is to raise taxes on those who do not do so, and thus the law may be upheld as a tax...The Government asks us to interpret the mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the Constitution."
Saddled with such unpopular policies and with a Presidential election looming only four months away, President Obama and his allies have just one recourse left: to lie, to manipulate, and to rewrite history.
In fact, the White House's deceitful response to the Court's ruling was so audacious that it brought back memories of President Obama's book title, "The Audacity of Hope," and his campaign manager's memoir, "The Audacity to Win."
Before the Democrats rammed the unpopular bill through Congress, President Obama argued vociferously that the individual mandate in the bill was not a tax. When in an interview with the president, George Stephanopoulos used the word "tax," President Obama interrupted him, saying, "No. That's not true, George ... Nobody considers that a tax increase ... You can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase."
Once his administration had succeeded in passing the legislation, President Obama promptly sent his Justice Department and his Solicitor General's to court to defend the law as a legitimate use of the Congress's authority to tax. Indeed, his administration's brief for the Supreme Court case contains long passages arguing that the mandate is a tax.
Because few people pay attention to details spelled out in the form of legal briefs, they thought they could get away with this duplicity.
But now that the Court has declared for everyone to see that Obamacare contains a massive tax increase, the gap between what the president told Americans when he was trying to sell us the law and what we have today is glaring.
Faced with a threat that could destroy his presidency and the Democratic lock on the Senate, Obama's campaign has reverted to the audacity to lie on a grand scale.
The Obama team's position is very straightforward. If the truth will defeat them then the truth has to disappear.
The consistency and boldness of their dishonesty has rattled even their supporters in the elite media. Under repeated questions and even attacks the Obama team comes back with the same dishonest mantra. Every question which cites a Supreme Court reference to a tax is met by an immediate use of the word penalty. With enormous discipline the Obama team and its Democratic Party surrogates have erased the word tax from their vocabulary.
According to the Obama team there is no tax in Obamacare. It is a penalty.
So we now have the dishonesty of an Obama administration which knows its biggest achievement would have been declared unconstitutional if it were a penalty but, now that the Court has decided it is a tax, goes back to claiming it is a penalty.
The Democratic consultants know that "penalty" is a much less dangerous word than tax. Therefore they decided on a "big lie" strategy.
If referring to the Obamacare "tax" would lead to a political disaster in four months then there had to be a coordinated and disciplined effort to replace the word tax with the word penalty. The president led the way and his White House and campaign spokespersons and surrogates promptly rushed out to reinforce the message.
Other Democrats rapidly fell in line and talk shows were filled with Obama surrogates robotically repeating the "big lie" campaign.
If President Obama and his team succeed, the entire Supreme Court decision will have been rewritten in the news media by sheer mendacious repetition.
This is a level of systematic dishonesty worthy of Orwell's "1984" or of Pravda at the peak of the Soviet Empire. Uncomfortable facts become nonexistent. "Necessary" falsehoods become the new truth.
It is the opposite of the fundamental honesty needed for self government....
by Newt Gingrich
...The audacity of deliberate dishonesty in the Obama administration's reaction to the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare is unlike anything we have seen in American history.
A majority of the Court agreed the Commerce Clause could not be used to justify Obamacare, as many on the left had argued. The decision stated that police powers were reserved to the states. In other words, if the case for the law rested only on the claim that the individual mandate was a penalty, authorized under the Commerce Clause, then Obamacare would be unconstitutional.
Chief Justice Roberts' decision, however, pivoted and -- with the votes of the four liberal members of the Court -- ruled that Obamacare was constitutional precisely because it was not a penalty but was instead a tax.
Chief Justice Roberts had in effect saved Obamacare by establishing a trap which might destroy it.
Obamacare was already opposed by 60 percent of the American people according to most polls before the Court ruling.
Since advocates of Obamacare must concede their project is a massive tax increase in addition to bad policy, it should become excruciating to sustain politically even though the Court upheld its constitutionality. The Chief Justice virtually set the stage for this rejection when he wrote:
"The Government argues that if the commerce power does not support the mandate, we should nonetheless uphold it as an exercise of Congress's power to tax. According to the Government, even if Congress lacks the power to direct individuals to buy insurance, the only effect of the individual mandate is to raise taxes on those who do not do so, and thus the law may be upheld as a tax...The Government asks us to interpret the mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the Constitution."
Saddled with such unpopular policies and with a Presidential election looming only four months away, President Obama and his allies have just one recourse left: to lie, to manipulate, and to rewrite history.
In fact, the White House's deceitful response to the Court's ruling was so audacious that it brought back memories of President Obama's book title, "The Audacity of Hope," and his campaign manager's memoir, "The Audacity to Win."
Before the Democrats rammed the unpopular bill through Congress, President Obama argued vociferously that the individual mandate in the bill was not a tax. When in an interview with the president, George Stephanopoulos used the word "tax," President Obama interrupted him, saying, "No. That's not true, George ... Nobody considers that a tax increase ... You can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase."
Once his administration had succeeded in passing the legislation, President Obama promptly sent his Justice Department and his Solicitor General's to court to defend the law as a legitimate use of the Congress's authority to tax. Indeed, his administration's brief for the Supreme Court case contains long passages arguing that the mandate is a tax.
Because few people pay attention to details spelled out in the form of legal briefs, they thought they could get away with this duplicity.
But now that the Court has declared for everyone to see that Obamacare contains a massive tax increase, the gap between what the president told Americans when he was trying to sell us the law and what we have today is glaring.
Faced with a threat that could destroy his presidency and the Democratic lock on the Senate, Obama's campaign has reverted to the audacity to lie on a grand scale.
The Obama team's position is very straightforward. If the truth will defeat them then the truth has to disappear.
The consistency and boldness of their dishonesty has rattled even their supporters in the elite media. Under repeated questions and even attacks the Obama team comes back with the same dishonest mantra. Every question which cites a Supreme Court reference to a tax is met by an immediate use of the word penalty. With enormous discipline the Obama team and its Democratic Party surrogates have erased the word tax from their vocabulary.
According to the Obama team there is no tax in Obamacare. It is a penalty.
So we now have the dishonesty of an Obama administration which knows its biggest achievement would have been declared unconstitutional if it were a penalty but, now that the Court has decided it is a tax, goes back to claiming it is a penalty.
The Democratic consultants know that "penalty" is a much less dangerous word than tax. Therefore they decided on a "big lie" strategy.
If referring to the Obamacare "tax" would lead to a political disaster in four months then there had to be a coordinated and disciplined effort to replace the word tax with the word penalty. The president led the way and his White House and campaign spokespersons and surrogates promptly rushed out to reinforce the message.
Other Democrats rapidly fell in line and talk shows were filled with Obama surrogates robotically repeating the "big lie" campaign.
If President Obama and his team succeed, the entire Supreme Court decision will have been rewritten in the news media by sheer mendacious repetition.
This is a level of systematic dishonesty worthy of Orwell's "1984" or of Pravda at the peak of the Soviet Empire. Uncomfortable facts become nonexistent. "Necessary" falsehoods become the new truth.
It is the opposite of the fundamental honesty needed for self government....