Archive for December, 2009

The number of promises Barack Obama made about health care in his first year in office is staggering.  With New Year’s eve quickly approaching and a whole new year for the President to make and break New Year’s resolutions there is not time to dissect every promise he made on the topic. Suffice it to say that he made some incredible ones. No wonder so many were duped into voting for him. In one campaign speech or another he just about promised everything but a cure for cancer. I haven’t gotten through all the speeches yet, so I wouldn’t put it past him to have promised that at some point. Nevertheless, here are two of his more famous health care resolutions and how he broke them:

Promise: If you like your doctor you can keep him.

“Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you… First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan.  Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.”

Broken:

Ever the wily politician, Obama later backed off this promise, replacing it with the more malleable statement that “nobody is going to force you to leave your health care plan.” Translation: the government bill will create strong incentives for you or your employer to change or drop coverage, but we’re not going to “make” you.

Even this concession is not true. Plans will now have to meet “minimum benefits standards” to survive under the bill currently being considered. While this sounds all well and good, the young and healthy who may only want minimal coverage in return for lower costs will be forced to sign up for a more expensive plan. In addition, the bill’s odd incentive structure, actually encourages employers to pay a penalty and drop coverage for their employees. Under the new health care bill, the mandated penalty for dropping coverage is much less than the cost of insuring a worker. The CBO estimated that about 3 million people otherwise covered by employment based plans would not be covered under the proposal.

Promise: I will protect seniors’ Medicare benefits

This is one of my favorites simply because how hypocritical it all turned out to be. At a campaign debate, Barack Obama criticized McCain for attempting to finance his health care plan by making cuts to Medicare:

“…Medicare is already facing a looming shortfall. [So] what would Senator McCain’s cuts mean for Medicare at a time when more and more Americans are relying on it? It would mean a cut of more than 20% in Medicare benefits next year. If you count on Medicare it would mean fewer places to get care and less freedom to choose your own doctors. You’ll pay more for your drugs, you’ll receive fewer services, you’ll get lower quality care. I don’t think that’s right. In fact, it ain’t right.”

Broken: $460 billion in cuts later, the President’s statement appears less than genuine. Even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf found that the cuts,

“[C]ould lead many plans to limit the benefits they offer, raise their premiums, or withdraw from the program.”

Even Medicare’s chief actuary found that,

“Over time, a sustained reduction in payment updates . . . would cause Medicare payment rates to grow more slowly than . . .the providers’ cost of furnishing services to beneficiaries. Thus, providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable and . . .may end their participation in the program.”

Two more of President Obama’s New Year’s resolutions fallen by the wayside. At least it makes me feel better about breaking my promise to eat more vegetables.

- Brandon Greife, Political Director

Promise: No Taxes for Middle Class Families

Barack Obama may as well have said “read my lips.” His similar and oft made promise to not raise taxes on the middle class has become nearly as ubiquitous and famous in his first 365 days. Throughout his campaign and his presidency he has often repeated the quote,

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

He also repeatedly vowed that,

“If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.”

It is hard to imagine a clearer statement. But in case there was any ambiguity, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs clarified that, “The statement didn’t come with caveats.” Further, he explained the rationale behind the promise,

“I don’t think any economist would believe that, in the environment that we’re in, that raising taxes on middle-class families would make any sense.”

Broken:

This promise didn’t last long either. A mere 16 days into his presidency, Obama signed a law which increased the federal excise tax on tobacco by 156 percent. According to statistics collected by Americans for Tax Reform the median income for smokers is $36,000 and 55% of smokers are considered “working poor.”

That tax increase will be dwarfed by the amount middle class families will have to pay under the new health care bills. The bill, currently being debated in conference, will break Obama’s pledge in a number of ways. First, the bill calls for a new excise tax on high cost or “gold-plated” insurance plans. Even assuming none of the owners of these expensive plans make less than $250,000 – the insurance companies will simply spread their tax hit onto all the plans they offer. Since the government is mandating that everyone is insured – the middle class will bear the burden of this increase.

Second, beginning in 2010 the consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax. Those within three times the federal poverty level would have to pay a $750 penalty. Although the administration has labeled it a “penalty” the extra costs work like an excise tax – exactly what the president promised he would not do.

All told these taxes on the middle class will add up to a lot of dimes.

- Brandon Greife, Political Director

Promise: Transparency

From the White House website:

“President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history.”

The promises of transparency extended beyond the public, where disinfecting sunlight could be shone on a process dominated by special interests and lobbyists, to the minority party. President Obama and Nancy Pelosi both gave assurances that bills would be negotiated around a table, where anyone with an opinion would be able to voice it, and minority amendments could be given full consideration. In their own words,

“That’s what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are.” – Obama, during a Jan. 31, 2008, debate in Los Angeles

“Bills should generally come to the floor under a procedure that allows open, full, and fair debate consisting of a full amendment process that grants the Minority the right to offer its alternatives, including a substitute.” – Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) “A New Direction For America“

Broken:

This promise quickly fell by the wayside as soon as Democrats figured it was not politically expedient. This became especially true in the bitter health care debate where “behind closed doors” and “smoke filled rooms” became the favorite descriptions of the ongoing negotiations. Democratic leaders quickly realized that their bill was not going to be popular with the public. Rather than cross the partisan divide to hammer out a compromise capable of winning public support, they painted Republicans as a “the party of no” who brought no ideas to the table. By incorrectly touting themselves as the only party in town with any attempt at a solution, they could dupe the people into a flawed one. Politics as usual rather than the transparency we were promised.

In the words of the Washington Post,

“But instead of allowing Republicans to fully participate in deliberations, as promised after the Democratic victory in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, Democrats now say they will use House rules to prevent the opposition from offering alternative measures, assuring speedy passage of the bills and allowing their party to trumpet early victories.” 

From a later column,

But now, as a Senate vote on health-care legislation nears, those negotiations are occurring in a setting that is anything but revolutionary in Washington: Three senators are working on the bill behind closed doors.

Not content to merely keep the opposition in the dark, Democratic leaders kept their own party locked out of the room. Apparently with nation-changing legislation, its better to not let Senators see what they are voting on,

But after weeks of Senate Finance Committee public hearings, the Senate negotiations are now an invitation-only affair in Reid’s office. The majority leader is unlikely to expand his group, even as some senators unhappy with parts of the legislation, such as  John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), have asked to be in the room.

- Brandon Greife, Political Director

January 1^st is quickly approaching bringing with it the hope that we can actually live up to our New Year’s resolutions. Most of us don’t have a good track record with these sorts of promises. The gym will be packed for a month and the ice cream and pizza will slowly regain its stranglehold over our diets, but other than a few pounds, little is lost. President Obama also made some promises last January, promises which carried much more national significance than my waist size. But as with many January resolutions, many pledges that carried him into the White House, were quickly forgotten come February…

Promise: Sunlight Before Signing

“When there is a bill that ends up on my desk as the president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government is doing.”

“Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.”

Broken:

This one didn’t take too long to break. The very first bill Obama signed into law as president, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, was signed into law two days after it passed through the House.

A mere four months into the Obama presidency, eleven bills had been signed by the President, six had been posted online at all, and none have been posted for a full five days before being signed.

Promise: Cut Pork Out of the Federal Diet

At the first presidential debate in Oxford, Miss., Obama declared,

“[W]e need earmark reform. And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.”

Broken:

As CNN reports, In February, Obama passed his $787 billion stimulus aimed at jolting the declining U.S. economy. Before a joint session of Congress, Obama declared: “Now, I’m proud that we passed a recovery plan free of earmarks.”

But this was a statement that didn’t even hold water with members of his own party. As Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo, said after the president’s pronouncement, “There was just a roar of laughter – because there were earmarks,”.”

But merely admitting there were earmarks doesn’t tell the full story. A little digging by Politico found that there were over 9,000 of them, covering more than a dozen cabinet agencies and spread throughout the 1,132 page bill. The Obama administration in a sly attempt to avoid the apparent hypocrisy called the plan “unfinished business” from last year – apparently exempting it from his promise.

Check back over the next week as the CRNC will be highlighting more of President Obama’s broken New Year’s Resolutions.

- Brandon Greife, Political Director

We’ve been called Generation Y, Millennials, Generation Next, and Echo Boomers. Some who are less impressed with our accomplishments have labeled us as the Entitlement Generation and Trophy Kids. But a new and more apt nickname has appeared for our generation. As Paul Vieira of the Canadian Financial Post explains,

We’re largely familiar with Generation X and Generation Y. But perhaps it is time to brace for the emergence of another generation in the United States– Generation T, where T stands for tax.

This group can be described as young Americans, maybe aged 16 to 30, stuck with forking over higher taxes to pay off the debt legislators built up in the years leading up to the great recession, and then allowed to swell substantially in a bid to save the economy from disaster.

The American members of Generation T are likely to be hit with taxes their parents were lucky enough to avoid. Among the types they will get quite acquainted with is the VAT, or value-added tax.

Nobody will like it, analysts warn, and protests are bound to bubble. But in the end investors will demand it in return for buying the bucket-loads of bonds Washington has to sell to finance the programs that legislators are reluctant to cut.

Nobody in Washington seems to understand this. Or worse, nobody seems to care. But to be honest they have little incentive to. The concern of all lawmakers, despite what they may say publicly, is reelection. And Congressmen know that you get reelected by bringing home new pork projects and creating entitlement programs. Voters, just like today’s consumers, love stuff – especially stuff that appears to come at no cost.

But there is no such thing as a free lunch. Unfortunately for our generation, lawmakers continue to crank out big-government programs while pushing the deficit to record levels. What’s more, we haven’t given them a reason to stop. Congress quickly discovered that older people are more likely to vote, especially in mid-term elections. Thus, they can focus on creating legislation geared towards older generations who will live to see the benefits, but not the bill. But we have a historic chance to self-correct and get our generation’s ledger back in black ink. As Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute says,

“[We] have the electoral strength to send a message in coming election cycles that [we] don’t want to become tax slaves, bailing out their elders for their profligate ways.

Young people need to figure out that the big government policies of both parties in recent years are particularly disastrous for them. Big governments kill job opportunities, kill new industries, kill innovation, kill dynamism, and kill growth. The young need to stand up and defend themselves against the fiscal insanity in Washington, else they will be crushed by a tidal wave of taxes never seen by any generation in American history.”

We are in a position to choose our fate. Help us take back Washington in 2010.

- Brandon Greife, Political Director

Young adults have been hit especially hard by the economic recession. As one of Barack Obama’s key constituencies on his way to the White House you would think that the President would be attuned to the troubles of the young adult demographic. You’d be wrong. His record in dealing with issues pertinent to youth has been egregious. Even more surprising, given his status as the first minority president, Obama has been widely criticized for his failure to address the unemployment crisis among inner-city communities. Nevertheless, his actions have shown that improving the economy is on the back burner, in favor of a health care reform plan that disadvantages youth of all stripes by forcing us to subsidize older and sicker individuals.

Sensing a strong shift in the political winds President Obama and Congressional Democrats made a half-hearted effort to improve the lagging economy. The only answer they have come up with so far looks much like their last failed attempt – throw money at the problem and hope things work out. But while this bill does have some advantages over the ridiculously wasteful stimulus, it still fails in one major regard…it does NOTHING for young adults. As the New York Times explains,

The House’s jobs bill is an honorable effort to increase jobs among construction workers, teachers, firefighters and other adults — hence its name, the Jobs for Main Street Act. But it is seriously deficient in one important respect. It does not do nearly enough to address the ominous shortfall of jobs among the young people who have been driven from the job market — and marginalized economically — in record numbers.

The problem is especially alarming in low-income, minority communities where the jobless rate for high school students is hovering near 90 percent.

The part-time jobs that were once a rite of passage began to disappear rapidly at the start of this decade. According to an analysis released this week by Andrew Sum, director of Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies, employment rates among teenagers have dropped nearly four times faster than the rate among adults since 2000.

As a consequence, he says, men 65 and older — people old enough to be their grandfathers — are now more likely to find work than 16- to 19-year-olds.

According to the analysis, the joblessness rate for teenagers generally is the highest ever since the country began keeping statistics just after World War II. Things are especially bleak for low-income black students: only 4 in 100 found work this fall.

This is worrisome on several counts. First, young people who do not find work tend to become discouraged early on and stop trying. They fail to develop the work force skills that make them attractive to employers, which means that they are likely to remain unemployed or underemployed well into their adult years.

People who do not find work in their early years also have higher dropout rates and are more likely to commit crimes — meaning they are at higher risk of becoming permanent burdens to society.

Earlier this month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a think tank representing developed nations, urged the federal government to take steps to keep young people from dropping out of the job market. Most importantly, it called on federal officials to do a better job of reaching out to “disconnected youth” with training and support that helps them find work.

The House’s jobs bill includes some commendable employment provisions for young people. But what’s needed, Mr. Sum and others say, is a broader, coordinated stimulus plan that would reach disengaged inner-city teenagers who are increasingly being left out of the economy.

Given the risks of doing nothing, Congress would be wise to consider the idea.

- Brandon Greife, Political Director

Could this really get any worse for Democrats? Polls have consistently shown that the public, including young adults, oppose the Democratic health care plan. Seeing their electoral fortunes taking a nosedive, Democrats have opting to retire rather than face a election day embarrassment. Now they must battle public opinion on two more fronts, both of which stem from problems within their own party.

First, Democratic Rep. Parker Griffith announced that he was switching parties on the eve of a critical health care vote. Democrats, who had been fighting the public perception that the recent rash of retirements was due to a change in national mood, now must face the fact that 2010 may be a banner year for the Republican party. After all, Parker Griffith’s home district in Alabama had never elected a Republican to Congress – never.

Not content to quietly switch while the news-cycle was focused on the looming passage of the health care bill in the Senate, Parker Griffith hammered his former party in a statement:

“As the 111^th Congress has progressed I have become increasingly concerned that the bills and policies pushed by the Democratic leadership are not good for north Alabama or our nation, and more importantly they do not represent my values or convictions. . . I now believe that I have to go even further, and stand with a party that is more in tune with my beliefs and convictions. . . I take this step because I believe this nation is at the crossroads and I can no longer align myself with a party that continues to pursue legislation that is bad for our country, hurts our economy, and drives us further and further into debt. . . After watching this agenda firsthand I now believe that the differences in the two parties could not be more clear.”

Second, the increasing infighting among Democrats appears to have weakened the momentum on reform. In recent days the health care storyline has become one of pork-barrel politics and vote-buying. But rather than attempt to explain the different treatment for different states, Democratic senators are wondering why they were left out of the gift-giving this holiday season. As Ben Nelson explains,

“Three senators came up to me just now on the [Senate] floor, and said ‘Now we understand what you did. We’ll be seeking this funding too.”

One of them may have been Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, who mused,

“When you look at it, I thought well, God, good, it is going to be the impetus for all the states to stay at 100 percent (coverage by the federal government). So he might have done us all a favor.”

I’m all for eliminating unfunded mandates from state budgets, but completely undermining the premise of Medicaid, as Sen. Harkin suggests, would add hundreds of billions to the national debt.

The uproar over these backroom deals is now spreading to state governments. A prime example came yesterday, where South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster said that he plans on organizing his colleagues in several states to scrutinize the dealmaking that helped the Democrats achieve the 60 votes necessary in the Senate.

Democrats are being attacked from all angles and from across the political spectrum. It seems that even in this season of “peace on earth and goodwill toward men”- people are rightly outraged over this bill.

- Brandon Greife, Political Director

Yesterday we outlined a few of the pork projects that were included in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s final version of the health care reform bill. One of the more notorious was Nebraska’s “Cornhusker Kickback” in which Ben Nelson sold his vote in exchange for his state being exempt from ever having to pay for the legislation’s Medicaid expansion.

The other senator from Nebraska, Mike Johanns decried his colleagues’ special treatment saying,

“There should be no special deals, no carve-outs for anyone in this health care bill; not for states, not for insurance companies, not for individual senators. I said at the beginning of this debate that changes of this magnitude, affecting one-sixth of our economy, must be fair. In fact, that’s one of the six reform principles I publicly outlined and I stand by it today.

“The special deal for Nevada was wrong, the carve-outs for Louisiana, Vermont, and Massachusetts are wrong, and the same applies to the backroom deal for Nebraska. All of the special deals should be removed. If the bill cannot pass without carve-outs, what further evidence is needed that it is bad policy?

Sen. Johanns went beyond mere words, offering an amendment this morning which would have stripped the major earmarks from the Reid bill. On his website, Sen. Johanns listed some examples of the backroom deals that aided in securing the votes necessary for passage:

• Eliminating or reducing the Medicaid unfunded mandate on Nebraska, Vermont, and Massachusetts (starting on page 96, line 9)
• Exempting certain health insurance companies in Nebraska and Michigan from taxes and fees (starting on page 367, line 6)
• Providing automatic Medicare coverage for anyone living in Libby, Montana (starting on page 194 – section 10323)
• Earmarking $100 million for a “Health Care Facility” reportedly in Connecticut (starting on page 328)
• Giving special treatment to Hawaii’s Disproportionate Share Hospitals (starting on page 101, line 6)
• Boosting reimbursement rates for certain hospitals in Michigan and Connecticut (starting on page 174 – section 10317)
• Mandating special treatment for hospitals in “Frontier” States like Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Wyoming (starting on page 208 — Sec 10324)

Democratic Senator Max Baucus from Montana, who stands to gain mightily from several of the earmarks, was said to have looked surprised that someone would raise such an amendment. Baucus then said,

“I appreciate the senator’s desire to want to cut payments to his own state, but I object.”

Baucus, like many Senate Democrats, simply cannot comprehend that the public’s distaste for the bill will not go away by giving them a few million in pork projects or even a few billion in special treatment – this is about demanding good policy for the entire nation.

UPDATE: Harry Reid is now finding out just how precarious that slippery slope was. Fox News reports that other Democratic Senators, realizing that they left a bunch of money on the table by supporting the legislation too early, are now seeking some pork of their own to bring home.

- Brandon Greife, Political Director

The latest from CRNC political cartoonist Dave Hatch:

The Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, and the Mystery Millions. The health care bill achieved 60 votes in the Senate not because 60 people agreed with it, but because of these backdoor deals which will end up costing the taxpayer billions of dollars.

The Louisiana Purchase: Being one vote shy of the 60 needed to further debate on the health care reform bill,  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid slyly included a provision to increase Medicaid funds for one state – Landrieu’s Louisiana. But rather than attempt an explanation for selling her vote for $100 million, Landrieu countered,

“I will correct something. It’s not $100 million, its $300 million, and I’m proud of it and will keep fighting for it.”

The Cornhusker Kickback: Having proceeded through debate, the Senate health care experiment had one last hurdle to overcome – the 60 votes to defeat cloture. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NB) was the lone remaining holdout, claiming that the bill did not go far enough to prohibit federal funds being used for abortion. Given his previously strong opinions on a fundamentally moral issue, his opposition seemed clear. Harry Reid then dug deep into his back of tricks, and taxpayers pocketbooks, to secure Ben Nelson’s vote in deal that likely made Landrieu blush. In exchange for a “yes” vote, Nelson got permanent and full federal aid for his state’s expanded Medicaid population. Let me reiterate the word permanent because the nation will now be in the pocket of Nebraska forever.

It was clear Reid knew this was the correct button to push. Throughout the health care debate Nelson had expressed his worry that the expansion of Medicaid to everyone with incomes below 133 percent of the poverty line would explode state budgets. Well, after his sell-out, his contentions are more true than ever. On top of the billions in unfunded mandates included in the bill, other states must now pay Nebraska’s share of the Medicaid expansion. Apparently anything goes when it comes to the race for 60 votes.

The Mystery Millions: Among the litany of perks given to Democratic senators in exchange for votes:

• $100 million to an anonymous health care facility affiliated with a state public university
• $1.2 billion in Medicaid money for Vermont and Massachusetts
• An increase in Medicare payments to hospitals in any state where 50% of the counties are defined as “frontier” – Max Baucus of Montana would seem a prime beneficiary

If the bill was as popular as Obama and Senate Democrats would have us believe it seems odd that they were forced to resort to such tricks. Tricks may be too kind a word. As Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) described the vote-selling deals,

“This process is not legislation. This process is corruption. And it’s corruption that’s obvious to the average American in this country, and it’s a shame that that’s the only way we can come to consensus in this country is to buy votes.”

Corruption. That seems to be the early tone of the Obama presidency…a far cry from the change we were promised.

- Brandon Greife, Political Director