Monthly Archives: March 2012

“Free” Contraceptives and Abortions

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As the Supreme Court takes up the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act this week, I want to talk a bit about a small aspect of that Act that’s also been in the news lately—the mandate to provide free birth control and pregnancy “correction” services.  I’ll have some ramblings on the PPACA itself in a nearby post.

The original Health and Human Services mandate was that employers would be required to provide contraception and abortion health insurance coverage at no additional cost to their employees.  After the hue and cry over this assault on religious freedom—too many faith-based employers exist—President Obama “compromised” by putting the mandate off onto these employers’ insurance companies.  Of course this ignores all those faith-based employers that self-insure, but enough is enough—the Progressives have accommodated, now it’s on the rest of us to compromise by sitting down and shutting up.

The Wall Street Journal, in a recent editorial, talked about the economic aspect of this adjusted mandate, focusing on the still free part of the services.  The WSJ asked

Insurers are banned from charging higher premiums for extra benefits, so out of what mists will the necessary dollars materialize?

Health and Human Services claims that

Actuaries and experts have found that coverage of contraceptives is at least cost neutral, and may save money, when taking into account all costs and benefits for the issuer.

These must be the same actuaries and experts that assured Congressman Henry Waxman (D, CA) that PPACA itself wouldn’t be raising the cost of health insurance, so how dare AT&T, et al., announce just such cost increases in their SEC filings?

On the other hand, goes the argument, faith-based employers can simply hire insurers to run benefits and then directly pay their workers’ bills.  In this way, religious organizations will pay for the contraception and abortion coverage with only a token middle man.   But this is just a cynical sophistry.  Whether paying directly or through a “token middle man,” these organizations are still being forced to pay for a violation of their teachings and their conscience.

And this brings me to a larger problem with this mandate, the reduction on individual freedom that it represents.  Ann Patchett, in another op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, argues with a straight face that

If you are a Catholic, as I am, and birth control is covered in the insurance plan of the Catholic institution that employs you, you still don’t have to use it.

This is certainly true.  But she ignores the critical aspect of this: “you,” woman or man, must still pay for it.  Even though it violates your conscience, your religious teaching, to do so.

She goes on, with a justification all too common among Progressives:

If you are galled by the idea of paying for the birth control of people you do not know, people who might be using it to have wanton sex, stop and make a list of all the other troubling ways your tax dollars are spent. Contraception will probably not make the top 10.

Thus, because others have done wrong, or in this case because there are already a lot of misuses of our tax dollars, it’s OK to commit this wrong.  There’s an interesting logic.  Furthermore, this bit of argument carefully elides the loss of choice: no longer can a woman or a man choose to buy, or not to buy, contraception or abortion.  Now we all must buy them.

Finally, the argument also carefully elides a larger loss of freedom: the freedom of religion and conscience.  Now men and women of faith must violate their religious teachings, their conscience—not of their own free will (and the Progressives have made much of their non sequitor that vast hordes of Catholic women use contraception and even (gasp!) get abortions), but from government fiat.  Government supplants conscience, Government supplants God.

Green Energy and Financing

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The Copper Mountain power plant, a solar (photovoltaic) power plant in Boulder City, NV, produces enough electricity to power 17,000 homes.

This isn’t a typical “green” energy project, though.  This is a true green energy one: aside from $60 million in federal and state tax incentives, the project, including the 450 acres of land obtained to house the collectors, was entirely privately financed.  The tax incentives I consider a wash, because those are typical offerings from any jurisdiction in order to induce companies of any industry to locate their business here, rather than there.

Scott Crider, spokesman for Copper Mountain’s parent Sempra US Gas & Power, points out that the solar plant is a winner for taxpayers, estimating that the plant will generate $2 for the governments involved for every $1 in tax incentives over the next 30 years.

Copper Mountain and Sempra demonstrate that serious projects need no government largess.  Moreover, that payoff ratio gets even better when projects are wholly privately financed.

One for the Good Guys

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“The Clean Water Act prohibits the discharge of any pollutant by ‘any person,’ without a permit, into ‘navigable waters’,” noted the Supreme Court in the summary of its just concluded ruling in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency.  It went on in that summary:

The Sacketts, petitioners here, received a compliance order from the EPA, which stated that their residential lot contained navigable waters and that their construction project violated the Act.

A little background at this point: the case got to the Supreme Court because Mike and Chantell Sackett began construction on their dream home in 2007, on a lot completely surrounded by a developed residential neighborhood, complete with lots of already existing sewer lines.

The EPA decided that this completely residentially surrounded lot had wetlands on it connected to navigable waters, and it issued a compliance order to desist from construction and to restore the wetlands (violation of the order carried potential penalties of $75,000 per day—for those keeping score at home, that works out to an accrued penalty of $130 million).  Rather than rolling over and giving up on their dream, the Sacketts sought relief in Federal District Court for the District of Idaho (their property was in Bonner County, ID), arguing among other things an illegal taking under the Constitution’s 5th Amendment.  The Court dismissed and the Ninth Appellate (of course) sided with the EPA and upheld the District Court.  After all, the Ninth held, the CWA has no mechanism for a private citizen to object to the EPA’s diktat, and so there was no standing to sue.  The Sacketts appealed to the Supremes.

The Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling was short and sweet in its essence:

The Sacketts may bring a civil action under the APA to challenge the issuance of the EPA’s order.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the Court, also had this to say about the government’s arrogance, particularly its claim that were EPA compliance orders subject to judicial review, the EPA’s ability to enforce clean water protections would be interfered with [emphasis mine]:

The Government warns that the EPA is less likely to use the orders if they are subject to judicial review.  That may be true—but it will be true for all agency actions subjected to judicial review.  The APA’s [Administrative Procedure Act, which provides for judicial review of agency rulings and orders] presumption of judicial review is a repudiation of the principle that efficiency of regulation conquers all.  And there is no reason to think that the Clean Water Act was uniquely designed to enable the strong-arming of regulated parties into “voluntary compliance” without the opportunity for judicial review—even judicial review of the question whether the regulated party is within the EPA’s jurisdiction.

Justice Samuel Alito, in a concurring opinion, added this about the government’s arrogance [emphasis added]:

The position taken in this case by the Federal Govern­ment—a position that the Court now squarely rejects—would have put the property rights of ordinary Americans entirely at the mercy of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees. …

Until the EPA sues them, they are blocked from access to the courts, and the EPA may wait as long as it wants before deciding to sue. … In a nation that values due process, not to men­tion private property, such treatment is unthinkable.

Although this particular EPA abuse began under another administration, it remains a glaring example of the unbridled self-importance of the agency and of its routine reach for additional power.

It’s also clear example of the necessity of abolishing this agency: it’s too far, and for too long, out of control, and it is irredeemable.

House 2013 Budget Blueprint

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This is, indeed, a contrast in visions.  We are in the middle of a struggle for the future of our country, and the budget blueprint lays out the parameters of that struggle.

This table, from the House’s Committee on the Budget’s Web site, lays out the contrast pretty clearly.

 

The President’s Budget

House Blueprint

pending

 Net $1.5 trillion increase relative to current policy Cuts spending by $5 trillion relative to President’s budget

Taxes

 Imposes a $1.9 trillion tax increase; Adds new complexity and new hurdles for hardworking taxpayers, making it more difficult to expand opportunity Prevents President’s tax increases; Reforms broken tax code to make it simple, fair, and competitive; clears out special interest loopholes and lowers everybody’s tax rates to promote growth

Deficits

 Four straight trillion-dollar deficits; Breaks promise to cut deficit in half by end of first term; Budget never balances Brings deficits below 3 percent of GDP by 2015; Reduces deficits by over $3 trillion relative to President’s budget; Puts budget on path to balance

Debt

 Adds $11 trillion to the debt – increasing debt as a share of the economy – over the next decade; Imposes $200,000 debt burden per household; Debt skyrockets in the years ahead Reduces debt as a share of the economy over the next decade; Charts a sustainable trajectory by reforming the drivers of the debt; Pays off the debt over time

Size of Government

 Size of government never falls below 23 percent of the economy, making it more difficult to expand opportunity Brings size of government to 20 percent of economy by 2015, allowing the private sector to grow and create jobs

National Security

 Slashes defense spending by nearly $500 billion; Threatens additional cuts by refusing to specify plan of action to address the sequester; Forces troops and military families to pay the price for Washington’s refusal to address drivers of debt Prioritizes national security by preventing deep, indiscriminate cuts to defense; Identifies strategy-driven savings, while funding defense at levels that keep America safe by providing $554 billion for the next fiscal year for national defense spending

Health Security

 Doubles down on health care law, allowing government bureaucrats to interfere with patient care; Empowers an unaccountable board of 15 unelected bureaucrats to cut Medicare in ways that result in restricted access and denied care for current seniors, and a bankrupt future for the next generation Repeals President’s health care law; Advances bipartisan solutions that take power away from government bureaucrats and put patients in control; No disruption for those in or near retirement; Ensures a strengthened Medicare program for future generations, with less support given to the wealthy and more assistance for the poor and the sick

A couple of comments are in order (I’ll ignore the political hype in the characterizations in both sides of this table and address only the actual data provided).

First, notice that President Obama’s budget (about which neither he nor his Senate Democrat minions are serious; this is just a campaign speech) both increases Federal spending an enormous amount and increases taxes even more.  This certainly is one way to balance the budget (IFF the tax revenues resulting from those increases actually occur; however, raising taxes actually lowers tax revenue flowing by reducing the economic activity that produces those revenues), but it does so at the expense of our economy’s ability to function.  It constitutes $3.4 trillion dollars taken away from individual Americans and our businesses, either directly—those taxes—or indirectly by taking our spending decisions away from us and putting them into the hands of the Federal government.  It says that we Americans are utterly incapable of making our own money allocation decisions; we must yield those to our Betters in government.

The House budget blueprint, though (it’s certainly true that it could serve as a campaign speech, but it has the added—and critical—advantage of being an actual, workable budget blueprint), recognizes two fundamental things: the money involved is ours, not government’s; we only allocate some of our money to government to spend on our purposes (and not on government’s purposes).  Secondly, the government does not need the money, it does not need those taxes; government does need to spend less.  Period.  It really is that simple.

My second comment concerns the two plans’ attitude toward the appropriate size of government and from that their attitudes toward us Americans.  Obama wants to expand government, not only in size but in authority over our lives.  Government is the answer to our problems, and so the Progressives seek to increase our dependency on government.  Moreover this increase in dependency is not limited to those of us who already are government dependents.  Progressives want to make us all government wards.  We cannot be trusted to work out our own solutions, to make our own decisions.  We’re just not good enough at it.

The House blueprint, in stark contrast, shrinks the size and power of government.  This blueprint respects and trusts us Americans to make our own decisions, and to do a better job for each of us individually, as well as for any groups of us, than government can ever hope to do.  After all, at best, government is limited either to a one-size-fits-all solution (which perforce actually fits no one) or to a collection of “solutions” tailored to groups of us (groupings defined by government, mind you, not by us) that demands an army of bureaucrats to administer and another army of lawyers to interpret and defend.

The choice, then, is clear: whom should we elect this fall?  A collection of politicians who don’t trust us with our own lives, or a collection of politicians who are looking actually to reduce government’s—and their—power over us?

JOBS

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Who wants any of these?  Plainly not Progressives and their supporters.

The House of Representatives passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act on 8 March by a vote of 390-23 (yes, that’s 158 Democrats in the House that also voted for this bill.  Apparently not all Progressives are anti-JOB).

But now that it’s in the Democratic Party-controlled Senate, where is it?  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to allow it to be debated and voted on unless he got his approved judges voted up in his “jobs for judges” debacle.

Others, Progressives and turf-protecting bureaucrats and unions, also have weighed in in opposition.

SEC Chairman Mary Shapiro, whose regulatory empire would be reduced, however slightly, objects to a provision to exempt companies with annual revenues less than $1 billion from a variety of regulations like Dodd-Frank’s executive compensation rules and duplicative Sarbanes-Oxley audits of internal controls.  Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin joined this particular fray arguing that the agency that watched, while doing nothing, Allen Stanford and Bernie Madoff is somehow needed to oversee the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.

The accounting firms that stood around and watched Enron and WorldCom are objecting to a reduction in the mandate (i.e., guaranteed business and fees) for their “services”  stemming from an exemption for new companies from critical parts of SOX.

Unions, worried about their own loss of power in a free market environment, object because—well, just because.

Senate Progressives (other than Reid) object because it came from a Republican House.

The Senate vote will be interesting to watch.