Monthly Archives: September 2013

Democracy and Parties

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Much has been made, especially in the recent press, of the “civil war” going on in the Republican Party, with the proximate subject being the contest over tactics for handling Obamacare while funding the government.

Think about that for a moment, though.

One party demands submission to the party line.  Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, UT) are well known for their ability to enforce party discipline, and they have the able help of their seconds, Congressman Steny Hoyer (D, MD) and Senators Chuck Shumer (D, NY) and Dick Durbin (D, IL).  This party’s decisions are made behind closed doors, and the results are presented to the public with no discussion of alternatives.

The other party openly debates, often with considerable zeal, the party’s position on strategy and tactics, on particular issues, and on the party’s defining principles.  No decision is taken secretly; the debate is right out front for the public to see—and to participate.

Both parties claim democratic principles as their core.

One party actually lives those principles.  There’s no civil war going on.  That’s the messiness of democracy.  That’s democracy in action.

Some More on Obamacare

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…which Democrats want to shut down the government rather than negotiate about.

“Do you have a large deductible?” asks [former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug] Holtz-Eakin.  “How much do you have to pay before the insurance starts picking up the cost?”

Analysts expect deductibles to be in the $5,000 to $6,000 range for the lowest level of [Obamacare] coverage, the Bronze Plan.

Dan Mendelson, CEO and founder at Avalere Health in Washington,says, “So, if you’re in a Bronze Plan, the premiums are going to be relatively low, you know, as HHS said, in some cases people won’t pay premiums at all.

“But there are going to be very high out of pocket costs and deductibles in some cases are going to be over $5,500.”

And that $5,500 is, amortized, an additional $460/mo in potential medical expenses that have to be paid by the “insurance” policy holder before the policy itself pays a dime.  Co-pays are on top of that.

Look again at that deductible.  In order to be eligible for an HSA, a man had to buy a “high-deductible” insurance policy.  A policy with an annual deductible of $3,000 or more.  Hmm….

Current policies, which rapidly are becoming unavailable, were not that expensive.

Government Shutdown

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The Democrats are demanding one at the top of their lungs.  The House passed a bill that funds the government for the next few months; delays Obamacare for a year; removes Obamacare’s medical device tax that’s already costing jobs; and guarantees our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines get paid in the event of a government shutdown.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, UT) says, “No.”

To be absolutely clear, the Senate will reject both the one-year delay of the Affordable Care Act and the repeal of the medical device tax[.]

And

…the White House vowed President Obama would veto the plan….

What we have here, then, is the Democratic Party preferring to shut down the government—rejecting a bill that funds it.  We have the spectacle of the Democratic Party rejecting a bill that pays our military—the very men and women who defend with their lives, in Secretary John Kerry’s words, these Democrats’ right to be stupid.  We have the…foolishness…of the Democratic Party rejecting a bill that provides for the rescission of a job-killing tax.

Why? Because the bill also delays Obamacare for a year—after President Barack Obama, by diktat, already has delayed major parts of it, such as the Employer Mandate, for that same year.

How dishonest is this?  How destructive of our economy is this?  All for the sake of two egos.

Obama said last week that one shouldn’t “threaten to burn the house down simply because you haven’t gotten your way.”  Yet here he is doing exactly that.  He and Reid need to figure out how to yes to the 99% they’re getting in this bill instead of demanding to shut down the government over his precious 1%.

Republicans, and Republicans

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[Screwed up this weekend.  Got distracted buying a car at a busy dealership and didn’t get anything up yesterday.  My apologies.]

Buried in a Howard Kurz op-ed last Thursday was this bit from Senator John McCain (R, AZ).  Kurz described McCain’s…dismay…with Senator Ted Cruz’ (R, TX) speech against funding Obamacare, then quoted McCain:

[W]e fought as hard as we could in a fair and honest manner, and we lost.

One of the reasons was because we were in the minority, and in democracies, almost always the majority governs and passes legislation….

No, John, you haven’t lost until you surrender.  You, personally, didn’t lose when you were captured by the North Vietnamese and held prisoner all those years, all those years ago.  You fought the next battle—in prison, a years-long battle—and you fought the next battles, lots of them, in your subsequent political career.

McCain, and the Republican Party generally, need to remember that example from (personal) history and fight on.  The minority party lost a battle in 2010.  That’s no excuse for surrendering the struggle now.

There’s a difference between “almost always” and “always.”  There’s a difference between courage and meekly accepting points for a good, but losing, try.

European Central Budget Authority?

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The IMF wants a central budget authority for the European Union: it wants the member nations of the EU to subordinate their sovereign budgetary duties to the demands of a “higher authority.”  However, it wants that without the federalism that must accompany such a subordination.

Worse, the IMF claims—they’re serious about this, mind you—that everything would be all right.  In answer to objections of nations like Germany, who wish to preserve their budgets and their sovereignty from the persistent demands of economically weaker nations, the IMF insists that such “risk sharing”

means that, at any point in time, countries experiencing better cyclical conditions support those at the other end of the spectrum; it does not mean the same country is always on the giving or receiving end[.]

Except, of course, that it means exactly that.  The nations rimming the Mediterranean, for instance, have entirely different concepts of the role of government in men’s lives and even of the purpose of money than have, for instance, the nations of central Europe—Germany, e.g., and Poland, whose concepts are different yet from those of England (not a member of the euro zone, to their benefit) or France (who is a member).  The risk transferors always will be the same, and those forced to accept the risk under the IMF’s scheme, also always will be the same.

The IMF says further:

A full-fledged budget at the euro-area level would allow for risk sharing both through revenues…and through spending.

Sound economies would be required, under the IMF’s scheme, to take on the risk the profligate economies are inflicting.

Unfortunately, the differences in fundamental principles make federalism across Europe a pipe dream.  The impossibility of federalism means a central budget authority can only be a disaster for the perennially stronger economies, while doing nothing at all to help the weaker.

It isn’t necessary to go any farther than that, except to note an example of the IMF’s breathtaking…naiveté.  They propose, for instance,

a “rainy day” fund that would distribute money to countries experiencing economic shocks.  The IMF says that annual contributions of 1.5%-2.5% of the euro zone’s gross national product would have been sufficient to provide…shock absorbers….

A built-in, automatic bailout fund.  No need for economic discipline by a government here.  There are other hare-brained schemes in the IMF’s…suggestions…but they’re all variations on this idea of automatic bailouts for the needy countries.