Tag Archives: political parties

Another Use for OPM

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It turns out that most members of Congress do not pay their interns a dime for their efforts.  There’s some validity to this; those interns get a potful of practical political experience and some resume material.

What makes this interesting, though, is that nearly every one of the Congressional Democrats who demand a minimum wage be paid—and who demand the current minimum wage be raised to $10/hr or more—are included in those who don’t pay their interns anything.

Employment Policies Institute found that 96% of House and Senate sponsors of the minimum wage bill do not pay their interns.  That includes lead bill sponsors, like Senator Tom Harkin (D, IA), according to the study.

It’s not only “Do as I say, not as I do,” it’s also “Do it with OPM.”

Hmm….

More Obamacare Dishonesty

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It’s gotten so blatant that now they’re not even trying to disguise it.

What the Obama administration said publicly:

Per John Goodman:

Week after week, month after month, the Obama administration kept telling us everything’s working fine, there’s no problem and then they turn on a dime and fire their contractor.

President Barack Obama himself, through his Press Secretary, Jay Carney:

I didn’t see the article [containing statements to CGI’s replacement contractor on the ObamaMart re-do] I’m not aware of those statements[.]

What HHS said in its no-bid (!) contract request to Accenture, who’s replacing CGI on the ObamaMart Web development/fix:

the problems with the website puts “the entire health insurance industry at risk”…potentially leading to their default and disrupting continued services and coverage to consumers.

And

without the fixes “the entire health care reform program is jeopardized.”

And

if the problems were not fixed by mid-March, “they will result in financial harm to the government.”

Actually, not so much the government, beyond the precious egos of the current Senate and White House occupants, rather the financial harm is to those funding the government—us taxpayers—in the form of wasted taxes, higher health coverage costs, less access to the medical facilities of our choice, etc.

Among those fatal flaws is that ObamaMart’s back end—the part that’s supposed to transmit enrollment data, subsidy eligibility and amount, and so on to the insurer—hasn’t been built.  Not after almost four years since Obamacare was enacted, not nearly four months after the ObamaMart Web site was forced live and the failures of the site and of the law made manifest.

But the Obama administration continues to insist, publicly, that everything’s jake.

We’re Gonna Keep the Stall Going

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…move along.

At a joint appearance with Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, John Baird, [Secretary of State John] Kerry said he has not received a crucial environmental report on the $7 billion pipeline, which would carry oil from western Canada to refineries in Texas.

“My hope is that before long, that analysis will be available, and then my work begins[.]”

Never mind that the “analysis” has been going on for the better part of a decade.

Then Kerry added this bit of mendacity:

I can promise our friends in Canada that all the appropriate effort is being put into trying to get this done effectively and rapidly.

Who does he think he’s kidding?

Attacking the Institution of the United States Senate

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Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL) had some thoughts on the matter last Thursday in a Senate floor speech.

Our late colleague Senator Robert Byrd liked to say that there have been two great Senates in history: the Roman Senate and the US Senate.  He understood the special and crucial role the Senate fulfills in our Constitutional Republic.

And

Yet, in the last few years, we have witnessed the dramatic erosion of Senators’ rights and the dismantling of the open legislative process.

We fund the government through massive omnibus bills that no one has had the time to read or analyze.  Senators are stripped of their right to offer amendments.  Bills are rushed through under threat of panic, crisis, or shutdown.  Secret deals rule the day, and millions of Americans are essentially robbed of their ability to participate in the legislative process.

And

One of the tactics by which Majority Leader [D, NV, Harry] Reid has suppressed Senators’ rights and blocked open debate has been a technique called “filling the tree.”  What this means, basically, is that when a bill comes to the floor, the Leader will use his right of first recognition to fill all of the available amendment slots on a bill and block any other Senator from offering amendments.  One man stands in the way of his 99 colleagues.  But, not alone really.  His power exists only as long as his majority concurs and supports his actions. This…prevents Senators from being held accountable by their votes on the great issues of the day.
…
In so doing, the Leader denies the citizens of each state their equal representation in the Senate.  Majority Leader Reid, in his effort to protect his conference from casting difficult votes—in order to shield his Majority from accountability—has essentially closed the amendment process.  He has shut down one of the most important functions that Senators exercise to represent the interests of their constituents.

And

Recently, this tactic manifested itself in a dramatic way.  To the surprise and shock of many, the December spending agreement contained a provision that cut the lifetime pension payments of current and future military retirees—including wounded warriors—by as much as $120,000.  I and other Senators had many ideas for how to fix this problem, but we were blocked from offering them by the Majority Leader.
…

So I would ask my colleagues: … Do you believe the Senate should operate according to the power of just one man?

There are other avenues of attack, also.

The erosion of the Senate has also been front and center in the budgeting process.  We are now in our fifth year without adopting a congressional budget resolution.  Instead, taxpayer dollars are spent through a series of backroom deals and last-minute negotiations.  Then we face a massive omnibus that is rushed to passage without amendment or meaningful review.  The American people have no real ability to know what’s in it or hold us, their elected representatives, accountable.

And

[U]nder the tenure of Majority Leader Reid, the budgeting process has been totally mismanaged.  We have ceased consideration of appropriations bills altogether, relying more and more on autopilot resolutions and catch-all behemoth spending packages.  In fiscal year 2006, for example, every single appropriations bill was debated, amended, and passed in the Senate.  In 2013, none were.

And

A more ominous development, however, is how the breakdown of the appropriations process in the Senate is now infecting the House of Representatives, and spreading like the plague.  In the first year of their majority, the Republican-led House marked up six appropriation bills and sent them to the Senate.  The Senate didn’t consider a single one.  Last year, the House passed eight appropriation bills and sent them to the Senate.  Again the Senate didn’t act.  This year, the futility of the House efforts began to show as the House passed only four bills.  But why should they?  Why should the House expose their members to politically tough votes when they know the Senate won’t?

Finally [emphasis added],

All of us owe our constituents an open, deliberative process where the great issues of the day are debated in full and open public view.  Each Senator must stand and be counted—not hide under the table.

Remember all of this, as you consider for whom to vote for your Senator in the upcoming primaries and mid-term elections.

Another Thought on Economic Mobility

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Gerald Auten and Geoffrey Gee wrote about “Income Mobility in the United States: New Evidence from Income Tax Data.”  It’s an extensive paper; I’m abstracting a couple of points in this post [emphasis added].

  • More than half of taxpayers…moved to a different income quintile over this period [1996-2005]. About half…of those in the bottom income quintile in 1996 moved to a higher income group by 2005.
  • Median incomes of taxpayers in the sample increased by 24% after adjusting for inflation. The real incomes of two–thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period.  Furthermore, the median incomes of those initially in the lowest income groups increased more in per centage terms than the median incomes of those in the higher income groups.  In contrast, the real median incomes of taxpayers who were in the highest income groups in 1996 declined by 2005.
  • The composition of the very top income groups changed dramatically over time.  Less than half…of those in the top 1% in 1996 were still in the top 1% in 2005.  Less than one–fourth of the individuals in the top 1/100th% in 1996 remained in that group in 2005.

Those evil 1%-ers not only had trouble staying in the 1%, a significant fraction of them were erstwhile bottom%-ers.

Taking economic mobility—income changes—relative to all taxpayers, Auten and Gee found this:

  • About 56% of taxpayers…in the lowest income quintile in 1996 had moved to a higher quintile by 2005.  While 29% moved up to the second quintile, nearly as many (27.4%) moved up two or more quintiles and 4.5% moved all the way to the top quintile.
  • More than twice as many middle–income taxpayers moved up to a higher income quintile…as dropped to a lower one[.]

Thomas Sowell had this comment on the matter three years ago:

Only by focusing on the income brackets, instead of the actual people moving between those brackets, have the intelligentsia been able to verbally create a “problem” for which a “solution” is necessary.  They have created a powerful vision of “classes” with “disparities” and “inequities” in income, caused by “barriers” created by “society.”  But the routine rise of millions of people out of the lowest quintile over time makes a mockery of the “barriers” assumed by many, if not most, of the intelligentsia.

And now comes President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party colleagues decrying exactly that static income inequality folderol in the middle of their failed economic recovery and the outcomes of their failed social control policies.  Truly, they are desperate to change the subject in this election year.