Tag Archives: political parties

Obamacare’s Year in Review

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The Daily Caller had a summary of the wonderful year that Obamacare had in 2011.  Here are some…highlights…of that year.

Jan. 26: Pharmaceutical company Abbott Labs cuts 1,900 jobs “in response to changes in the health-care industry, including U.S. health-care reform and the challenging regulatory environment.”

Feb. 16: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testifies before the Senate Finance Committee and admits that the CLASS Act, a key portion of the law that was touted as a $70 billion savings, is “totally unsustainable.” Sebelius says her department has the authority to rework the legislation to make CLASS tenable.

Hold that thought.

March 23: [T]he House Committee on Energy and Commerce finds that the temporary Early Retirement Reinsurance Program will spend its allotted $5 billion far earlier than its 1 Jan 2014 expiration date.

March 30: The CBO estimates that health care reform will cost $1.1 trillion, an increase of $90 billion from its February estimate.

May 17: The Daily Caller reports that 20 percent of new waivers from Obamacare have gone to gourmet restaurants, nightclubs, and fancy hotels in former House Speaker and current House Minority Leader (D, CA) Nancy Pelosi’s district.  These waivers are to a provision of Obamacare that requires companies annually to increase the amount of coverage they provide their employees.

Hold that thought, too.

June 8: A McKinsey & Company survey of over 1,300 private sector employers found that 30 per cent of them definitely or probably would stop offering insurance to their employees after the law is implemented in 2014.

June 18: HHS decides that it will accept no more new or renewal waiver applications (for those exemptions from requirements annually to increase the amount of coverage provided) after Sep 22 of this year.

So much for the Pelosi Preferred waivers.

June 21: Middle-class Americans eligible for subsidized health care allegedly intended for poor people, a feature discovered after Obama signed Obamacare into law.  Medicare’s chief actuary says the policy “doesn’t make sense.”

Well, NSS.  On the other hand, no one needed to know about this before the bill was passed.

July 18: An Employment Policies Institute report finds that the Affordable Care Act would incentivize employees to switch to a government-subsidized insurance exchange even if employers were to continue their health care coverage, costing taxpayers “significant[ly].”

Oct. 13: A federal inspector general finds that the IRS is having trouble collecting the 10-percent federal tanning tax established by the law.

Oct. 14: HHS completes its review of the CLASS Act, determining that “we do not have a path to move forward,” Sebelius says.  CLASS remains on the books, but the administration essentially gives up on it.

So much for “rework the legislation to make CLASS tenable.”

Nov. 9: The National Federation of Independent Business releases a report saying that in 2012 the law’s new health insurance tax will reduce private sector jobs by between 125,000 and 249,000.

Nov. 14: The Supreme Court agrees to hear arguments on the Affordable Care Act.

Dec. 18: Health care experts doubt that the federal insurance exchange program will be fully operational by the Jan. 1, 2014 deadline, since many states have refused to implement the state exchange program, the Washington Post reports.

This was the bill that was so wonderful that all of us—including our representatives who were hell-bent on passing it—could simply wait until it was passed before we found out what was in it.

Hypocrisy

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For some time, President Obama has been demanding that the payroll tax cut, due to expire at the end of this year, be extended for another year—the whole year, together with a blanket extension of the unemployment subsidy.  Leaving aside the wisdom of defunding Social Security as a means of providing a tax cut, or of paying the unemployed for not working, let’s explore what’s happened with Obama’s demand.

Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have refused to pay for a one-year payroll tax cut and the unemployment subsidy extension with any means that doesn’t include a parallel tax increase elsewhere, as they demand a continuation of their class war programs.  Failing to get agreement for that for a complete year’s extension, the Senate passed a two month extension of the tax cut and subsidy—with, I’m embarrassed to say, the complicity of Senate RINOs who lack the character or courage required to fight this class war.  Certainly, at the end of those two months, the Progressive demand for tax increases on Americans of whom they disapprove will resume, even more loudly.

The House had passed, some time prior, a bill that would have extended the payroll tax cut for the entire year, extended the unemployment subsidy on a gradually decreasing schedule, and paid for all of it without tax increases anywhere else, but with spending cuts only.

When the Senate passed their two-month bill, they ran for the exits to start their precious month-long vacation, their personal welfare being more important to these Senators than the welfare of us Americans.  On the way out the door, they ordered the House to pass the Senate bill with no further argument.

The House rejected the Senate’s failure and voted, instead, to send the two bills to a House-Senate conference committee to resolve the differences, as is the normal way of doing business in the Congress.  “Let’s get this done today,” House Speaker John Boehner told Obama in an effort to enlist the President’s help to get the bill which Obama has been demanding passed.  However.

Reid is actively refusing to negotiate.  He’s actively refusing to bring the Senate back—or to send any Senators back to take part in the conference committee.  He demands that his two-month bill be passed by the House as a precondition to any negotiations.  And he’s castigated those evil Republicans for holding out for Obama’s year-long extension.

Obama is actively refusing to negotiate on the passage of his own bill.  He says:

Now let’s be clear.  The bipartisan compromise that was reached on Saturday is the only viable way to prevent a tax hike on January 1. The only one.

So, Obama, who has been demanding a year-long extension of the payroll tax cut for Americans, doesn’t really mean it.  The only bill he wants is his pet Harry Reid’s two-month extension.  And an opportunity to fight again for divisive tax increases on Americans whom he doesn’t like.

When in Danger or in Doubt

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Congressman Mike Honda (D, CA) had this to say about the Stimulus Bill of 2009:

…was put together because we didn’t know what the hell was going on and you know, and we were trying to do things that we thought might help stimulate the economy[.]  We set aside quite a bit of money for what we call ‘shovel ready projects’ which we thought would create jobs right away but it didn’t.

Run in circles, scream and shout.  So, do even more of it.

It [The 99 Percent Act] will increase our deficit but we need to increase our deficit right now to make that investment and make that place so that we can get this thing started.

This is what the Congressional Progressive Caucus proudly says about the 99 Percent Act:

We need a law as big as the problem it’s trying to fix, and that’s exactly what this is.

Run in circles, make big government.

How very Progressive of them.

Joblessness

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Here are some data on Americans and our quests for work.

Financial Times‘ Ed Luce offers some statistics (the article may be behind a paywall):

In December 2007, the US economy employed 146 million people. Four years later, it languishes at 140 million.  At the current rate of job creation it will take another two and a half years to regain 2007 levels—taking the replacement cycle to as much as 78 months….  Even that understates the problem, since in that time the population will have risen by more than 10 million.

and

At the start of the recession, the employment-to-population rate was 62.7 per cent. The rate is now 58.5 per cent….  According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 per cent.

Notice that last.  Here are some back of the envelopment calculations: in 2007, according to the US Census, the working-age population of the US (which I’ve unilaterally defined as men and women between 20 and 64 years old) was a bit shy of 181 million Americans.  Thus, that 4% drop in the employment-to-population rate represents a loss of some 7.25 million Americans from the labor force—7.25 million who have, with the terrible economy we’ve had for the last four years, given up looking for work.  If they still were looking, that’s what would run the “unemployment rate” up to 11 %.

In the last three years, the “official” unemployment rate has run from 7% to as high as 10%, stabilized at around 9% for most of these three years, and last month fell to 8.6%, a number that disguises the foregoing.  In all, some 2 million more Americans—that are still looking—are out of work today than at the start of 2009.

There’s one more interesting statistic.  This one does a better job of measuring the quality of the jobs available: the unemployed and underemployed combined rate is pushing 20 per cent.  This isn’t a number that says an American isn’t getting paid what he wants, or thinks he deserves—none of us are that—this is a number that says Americans don’t have as much work per day as we want—it includes all less than full time workers who want to be full time.

And there’s this from the Democratic National Committee Chairwoman and Congresswoman (D, FL), Debbie Wasserman Schulz in an exchange with Gretchen Carlson:

Carlson: Unemployment has gone up precipitously since [Obama] took office.

Wasserman Schulz: That is simply not true.

Among Luce, Carlson, and Wasserman Schulz, someone has lost track of the situation.

A Couple of Odds and Ends

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Today President Obama showed up (finally) for the tax holiday debate, and he demanded that Republicans stop being obstructionist and accede to his payroll tax holiday extension—to be paid for, of course, by raising taxes elsewhere.  But Obama proceeds in his argument in his usual way, with a presentation of a false dichotomy: agree to the tax cut, in this case, and the countervailing tax increase; or you’re in favor of the rich at the expense of the working stiff.  Of course there is bipartisanship on this question—both parties refuse to consider an income tax cut of the same size, instead.  In addition to which, there is another alternative: pay for the tax cut—wherever it might appear—with spending cuts somewhere else.  After all, the government already has enough money, and it’s already spending far too much.  But that’s Progressive bipartisanship: gimme those tax raises.  Period.  Tax increases are non-negotiable.  And it is, of course, a matter of rich vs. working stiff.  They couldn’t possibly both be Americans.

And there’s this concerning the Middle East and the our disengagement from it.  In Turkey on one of his whistle stops on his tour of the Middle East, Vice President Biden insisted that sanctions have “isolated” Iran and reduced its influence, even though with Chinese and Russian obstruction and German and Japanese continued business ties to the regime, the sanctions don’t have much bite.  The sanctions have, though, “at a minimum, apparently, caused significant discussion internally.”  He’s apparently quite sure about that.  We’re showing those Iranians.  We’ve given them something for their small talk.  For sure.

Finally,  there’s this on diversity in our institutions of higher learning.  The Obama administration has thrown out an Evil Bush interpretation of a Supreme Court ruling concerning affirmative action during admission processes.  Whereas the Bush requirement recognized that quotas are not allowed, the Obama version, in its own GUIDANCE ON THE VOLUNTARY USE OF RACE TO ACHIEVE DIVERSITY AND AVOID RACIAL ISOLATION IN ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS, weasel-words quotas back into play.  And never mind merit—that comes second.  This illustrates the change:

Bush guidelines: “Before using race, there must be a serious good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives.”

Obama guidelines: “Institutions are not required to implement race-neutral approaches if, in their judgment, the approaches would be unworkable.”

On the other hand, bipartisanship, stern sanctions, and merit from Progressives—maybe these aren’t so disparate….