Category Archives: regulation

One More Nail

Posted on by
Reply

…in what should be Obamacare’s coffin. Even if repeal will take some years and a Republican President.

More than half of tax filers who received subsidies for health insurance premiums may owe hundreds of dollars because they got tax credits that were too large, complicating an already messy tax season that has seen about 800,000 incorrect tax statements sent to consumers who obtained coverage via the federal HealthCare.gov exchange.

Almost six weeks into tax filing season, 52% of people who enrolled in insurance through state or federal exchanges are finding they must pay back a portion of their tax credits, according to a report Tuesday by tax preparation firm H&R Block Inc. and based on their clients. The average amount paid back is $530….

This isn’t even a sort-of funny parody, anymore.

More Excessive Government

Posted on by
Reply

US financial regulators are focusing renewed attention on Wall Street pay and are designing rules to curb compensation packages that could encourage excessive risk taking.

Regulators are considering requiring certain employees within Wall Street firms hand back bonuses for egregious blunders or fraud as part of incentive compensation rules the 2010 Dodd-Frank law mandated be written, according to people familiar with the negotiations. Including such a “clawback” provision in the rules would go beyond what regulators first proposed in 2011 but never finalized.

Congress created a bureaucracy, and it expanded it enormously with that Dodd-Frank. Now the bureaucrats have to do something to justify their existence. Regulators gotta regulate. And so we get this.

Never mind that the free market is a fine regulator, and “certain employees” and their “Wall Street firms” employers will be severely and promptly regulated when those excessive risks fail.

Government intrusion isn’t just not needed, though, it’s counterproductive. Now businesses, on and off Wall Street, will incur additional costs as they seek compliance, additional costs as they seek work-arounds, additional costs from the expanded field for nuisance suits (and legally legitimate ones), additional costs as they’re forced to negotiate even more complex compensation packages in order to hire the best, rather than the second best.

Such regulatory nonsense also is in large part duplicative and so wasteful. For instance:

Some banks are already voluntarily recouping money from employees who engage in misconduct or excessive risk.

We already have adequate laws (not regulations) on the books to handle both criminal and civil misconduct. Additional regulation here would be useless.

Too, that some businesses think such procedures are appropriate for them does not at all justify government interfering to impose such procedures on all of business.

Update: Corrected a typo in the third paragraph: Government intrusion isn’t just not needed….  <sigh>

The Judicial Branch and the Law

Posted on by
Reply

In a couple of weeks, the Supreme Court will hear a case involving Federal subsidies to health coverage purchasers who bought their plans on ObamaMart instead of State exchanges. The Obamacare law limits those subsidies to purchasers via State exchanges argue the plaintiffs; the government demurs.

Some ACA critics fear the Supreme Court may hesitate to block the current subsidies because of a lack of confidence in the legislative branch in general.

Against that backdrop, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said

The current Congress is not equipped really to do anything[.]

That claim is the pseudo-logic President Barack Obama uses to justify his Executive Orders and “executive actions” that deliberately bypass Congress, and unconstitutionally so.

Justice Ginsburg, and others of like mind on the Supreme Court, may be entirely right on Congress’ ability—or willingness—to act. However, she, and they, would do well to remember that the Constitution they’re sworn to uphold does not authorize the Court to legislate in place of, or in addition to, Congress.

Justice Ginsburg and her fellows would do well to remember that the judiciary’s task is first to determine whether a law comports with the Constitution as the Constitution is written, and if it’s legitimate, to apply that law as that law is written.

Full stop.

Democrats and Those Pesky Laws

Posted on by
Reply

Three senior House members told The Associated Press that they plan to strongly urge the administration to grant a special sign-up opportunity for uninsured taxpayers who will be facing fines under the law for the first time this year.

The three are Michigan’s Sander Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, and Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, and Lloyd Doggett of Texas. All worked to help steer Obama’s law through rancorous congressional debates from 2009-2010.

Because, voters. Because, law? That’s too inconvenient; just ignore it.

The Obamacare law—which Democrats have been trying to stifle debate about by insisting “It’s the law of the land”—specified the signup period. If these worthies want to change the signup period, they need to change the law—which they helped write this way—not ignore it.

The lawmakers say they are concerned that many of their constituents will find out about the penalties after it’s already too late for them to sign up for coverage, since open enrollment ended Sunday.

Wait, what? These Democrats haven’t been talking to their constituents about their responsibilities under these Democrats’ law? Not since 2010? At all!?

Oh, yeah. Voters.

A Fatal Flaw

Posted on by
Reply

In a piece for Wired, FCC MFWIC Tom Wheeler offered rationalization for his decision to dismantle the Internet. He opened his apologia with this remarkable claim:

This proposal is rooted in long-standing regulatory principles….

That’s the problem. Regulatory “principles” proceed from the assumption that government regulation is a universal and primary good.

Of course, that’s precisely backward—and backwards. A free market is almost universally self-regulating: make a bad product, people find out and stop buying—the producer goes out of business. Lie about a product, people find out and stop buying—even if the product itself might be sound—and the producer or seller goes out of business. And so on.

Almost universally: yes, there are conditions within which government regulation is warranted. But such regulation must proceed from the fundamental assumption that regulating is bad or unnecessary, and the regulation proposer must prove—not merely justify—why this proposed regulation is necessary (not merely useful in some sense).

Wheeler’s regulatory travesty must be halted. Even its mere suggestion is sound reason for Congress to act—perhaps unsuccessfully until 2017 with a Republican President, too—now to reign in, to severely circumscribe, the regulatory authority of all Departments and Agencies.