Tag Archives: economics

Obama’s Debt Ceiling Strategy

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Pass increased spending and give me more tax revenue.  Period.  Oh, and hands off my pet projects.

The House of Representatives will agree to a debt ceiling increase (want to agree, for good or ill), if President Barack Obama will agree to spending reductions equal to, or greater than, the increase in the ceiling.  Obama says he refuses to negotiate at all on the debt ceiling.  Just raise it.  Or he’ll be forced to shut down the government for lack of borrowing authority.

The House of Representatives, along with a bipartisan collection of Senators, want to reform our tax code and use any increases in tax revenue that might result solely to pay down the national debt (and so to mitigate any future need to raise the debt ceiling anew).  Obama says that tax reform must, by design, result in increased tax revenue, with that increase to be committed solely to support increased spending.  Otherwise, he’ll be forced to shut down the government for lack of revenue.

Many Republicans want to pass a budget for the coming fiscal year, or failing that a Continuing Resolution for the coming months, that contains clauses that defund Obamacare—a program that Obama has already admitted isn’t ready for adult use.  Obama has said he’ll veto such a budget, even if it means he must shut down the government for lack of spending authority or income.

Obama is perfectly willing to shut down the government and blow up our economy if he can’t have all of this.  Not one or two of them—all of them.

Republican Non-Ideas for Health Insurance

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Here are some of those ideas put forward by Evil Republicans that President Barack Obama insists don’t exist.

  • Senators Tom Coburn (R, OK) and Mike Enzi (R, WY) have long advocated making health insurance completely portable so workers can take their plans with them from job to job.  Enzi first introduced a comprehensive bill including GOP reform proposals in 2007 and has updated it regularly.
  • Congressmen Sam Johnson (R, TX) and Charles Boustany (R, LA, and a cardiovascular surgeon) want to allow smaller companies to pool their risk to get the same discounts from insurance carriers that bigger companies do.
  • Congressmen Marsha Blackburn (R, TN) and Paul Ryan (R, WI) want to spark increased competition by allowing health-insurance policies to be sold across state lines, as are auto insurance policies.
  • Congressman Lamar Smith (R, TX) has championed medical liability reform at the federal level to rein in junk lawsuits, despite qualms that the issue should be left to the states.
  • Congressmen Mike Burgess (who practiced obstetrics and gynecology) and Joe Barton (both R, TX) have introduced bills to establish transparency in pricing and medical outcomes so patients can compare the costs for procedures at area hospitals and their relative success in performing them.
  • Congressman Bill Cassidy (R, LA), also a physician, has introduced a bill that would allow Medicaid patients to convert the value of their government benefit to pay for private coverage.
  • Congressman Tom Price (R, GA), an orthopedic surgeon, has introduced a comprehensive alternative to ObamaCare that includes many of the GOP’s reforms.
  • Congressman Phil Roe, (R, TN), a retired OB/GYN, will introduce a new ObamaCare replacement package next month when Congress returns.
  • The House Republican Study Committee wants to restore (even increase) amount families can save tax free for medical expenses; ObamaCare reduces that amount. Paired with health-savings accounts, such a move can put quality health care within the reach of many more families.  At competitive (read: lower) rates.

Notice all the actual doctors in that mix.  Possibly, they’re more worth listening to than a bunch of politicians whose only imperative is their personal political gain.

What are Republicans doing about these ideas?  Introducing, as noted above—and when they’ve controlled the House, passing—legislation.  But the obstructionist, Democrat “Just say no” Senate won’t even allow debate, much less voting on the bills.

Instead, these worthies, and President Barack Obama, oppose any reform that’s patient/doctor-centric, that omits government involvement, and that has actual competitive market forces—competition that strengthens the markets for health insurance and for health services—in play.  Indeed,

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) recently called ObamaCare “a step in the right direction,” but noted that his goal is “absolutely” a single-payer system in which government delivers all health care.  When he was running for president in 2008, Mr. Obama admitted he “would probably go ahead with a single-payer system” if he was “designing a system from scratch.”

Truly, a paucity of ideas.  However, it’s the Democrats who are lacking.  All they’ve got is the crashing train of Obamacare—as Obama himself has admitted with his extra-constitutional decision not to enforce critical components of that law, and thereby cutting those cars loose, only to crash into the wreckage after a short delay.

That’s the Point

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In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed concerning the California state government’s response to a state court finding that the state’s high-speed rail authority had violated the 2008 ballot initiative authorizing $10 billion in bonds for the 500-mile train’s initial construction, thereby hamstringing (temporarily) this white bullet train, Allysia Finley quoted Governor Jerry Brown (D) as saying,

It’s not a setback.  As we speak we’re spending money, we’re moving ahead.

Indeed. Isn’t that the point of this project that only a Democrat could love?  To spend money?

Wondering Why?

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…your gas prices are as high as they are?  It isn’t only the summer driving season.  It isn’t only limits on gasoline production at our refineries.  It isn’t even that ethanol-laced gasoline doesn’t even store well so that inventories can be built to smooth out the ebbs and flows of supply and demand.  Here’s another reason, alluded to in a Wednesday op-ed by Kimberly Strassel on a related topic.

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency issued its annual renewable-fuels mandate, telling refineries how much ethanol they must blend into the nation’s gas supply.  This quota, which grows each year, is becoming a horrific financial burden on the industry, forcing many refineries to buy federal ethanol “credits” to satisfy the rules.  The skyrocketing price of those credits is adding hundreds of millions of dollars to refineries’ annual costs.

Those costs are passed on.  To gasoline-buying customers like our neighborhood filling stations—and you and me.

Refiners say that, with declining demand for gasoline, next year (2014—oddly, a mid-term election year), the existing quota for ethanol use will force them to blend in more than 10% of ethanol into their gasoline production, which both adds to gasoline costs and isn’t safe for many of the engines that use gasoline—like some cars that are optimized only for 10% blends, and smaller engines such as those used in our lawnmowers.

Even at that, the mandated ethanol use quotas simply aren’t possible to get to.  The 2013 mandated quota is 6 million gallons (down, incidentally, from the EPA’s original laughable requirement of 1 billion (that’s with a “b”) gallons to be used this year); the nation’s total ethanol production for this year will top out below 50 thousand gallons.  The quota stands, though, so the refiners are required to go onto the EPA’s ethanol credit market that Strassel mentioned, and buy up enough credits to make up for their collective failure to use 950,000 gallons of ethanol.

Costs.

Responsibility

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The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt.  People must again learn to work instead of living on public assistance.

Cicero understood this in 55 BC.  Rome failed to recover her sense of responsibility—personal and individual, as communities, as a nation—at all levels.  Tyranny arrived shortly after Cicero published his realization.