by | ARTICLES, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS
Oopsies!
The White House website (whitehouse.gov) still shows the original “If you like your health plan, you can keep it” promise. See the text here on www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/healthcare-overview:
Health Care that Works for Americans
On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, putting in place comprehensive reforms that improve access to affordable health coverage for everyone and protect consumers from abusive insurance company practices.
For those Americans who already have health insurance, the only changes you will see under the law are new benefits, better protections from insurance company abuses, and more value for every dollar you spend on health care. If you like your plan you can keep it and you don’t have to change a thing due to the health care law.
For the uninsured or those who don’t get their coverage through work, a key component of the Affordable Care Act will take effect on October 1, when the new Health Insurance Marketplace open for business, allowing millions of Americans to comparison shop for a variety of quality, affordable plans that best meet their health care needs”.
And the screenshot:
This is different than the speech he gave just a few days ago, where he gave qualifiers on the “if you like your plan, you can keep it.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed. So we wrote into the Affordable Care Act, you’re grandfathered in on that plan. But if the insurance company changes it, then what we’re saying is they’ve got to change it to a higher standard. They’ve got to make it better, they’ve got to improve the quality of the plan they are selling. That’s part of the promise that we made too. That’s why we went out of our way to make sure that the law allowed for grandfathering.
After the speech above, The Daily Caller reported that Obama made the original promise at least 29 times. Does this make 30?
Perhaps the same IT guys in charge of maintaining healthcare.gov are in charge of updating Whitehouse.gov.
UPDATE, NOV 7: Foxnews is showing another page of whitehouse.gov’s healthcare reform section, which also currently states this:
“For Americans with insurance coverage who like what they have, they can keep it. Nothing in this act or anywhere in the bill forces anyone to change the insurance they have, period.”
Too bad Obama doesn’t read his own website.
by | BLOG, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, QUICKLY NOTED
In Animal Farm, the most important of the Seven Commandments of Animalism was the “All Animals Are Equal” Commandment. Upon this, Animalism was supposed to thrive.
Later, Napoleon gains power, drives out Snowball, moves into Mr. Jones white house, sells Boxer to the glue factory, and enjoys whiskey while the animals work. Animalism is struggling to survive and suddenly, the maxim is changed. It becomes:
“All Animals are Equal, But Some are More Equal Than Others”
In a strikingly similar way during this new age of Obamacare, we were repeatedly told that “if you like your plan, you can keep it”
Now, today we get the Animal Farm version:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed. So we wrote into the Affordable Care Act, you’re grandfathered in on that plan. But if the insurance company changes it, then what we’re saying is they’ve got to change it to a higher standard. They’ve got to make it better, they’ve got to improve the quality of the plan they are selling. That’s part of the promise that we made too. That’s why we went out of our way to make sure that the law allowed for grandfathering.
I guess Obama expects that we won’t remember what he said. After all, he is our leader of Obamacarism. He has nothing to really apologize for. The Obamapology blames everyone else.
Surely it is the fault of the “bad apple” insurers who had such terrible plans to offer to begin with. Surely it is our fault because we couldn’t possibly have known any better or even really truly liked the plans we had picked.
Now, all insurance plans are equal. But some are more equal than others. (And those that aren’t equal will be canceled).
by | BLOG, POLITICS
What a year it has been since Hurricane Sandy hit the US on October 28-30, 2012. The size and scope of Superstorm Sandy is a perfect analogy of the the fiscal ineptitude that has churned up in Congress over the last year.
Nearly three months after the Hurricane, the Sandy Relief bill was passed. It almost didn’t make it in Congress at all, having been caught up in the “Fiscal Cliff” crisis of January 1, 2013. No one denied that those citizens who were affected by the catastrophic and legendary storm deserved help. However, the bill was mired down by pork and Congressional dysfunction.
Only three weeks after the fiscal cliff deal that raised taxes on the highest income earners, Congress managed to figure out how to fritter away a year’s worth of that revenue that was raised (after many months of wrangling and negotiations, mind you). By raising the tax rates on the wealthiest citizens, which was a longtime objective of Obama’s, here was finally something tangible to soak the rich so the the rich could “pay their fair share” This, we were told, was absolutely necessary to raise revenue because of our deficit. The tax increase was to provide the government with $600 Billion in revenue over ten years (roughly $60 billion each year).
But when Congress finally got its hands on Sandy Relief, a bill with good intentions, they created a half-pork barrel spending/half-relief spending measure. Once the Mulvaney amendment failed, a $17 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bill with a 1.63 percent cut to discretionary programs, the final version of Sandy Relief metastasized into the monstrosity passed. It was spending spree bill that was not offset by equal and opposite cuts. It fully added $50.5 Billion dollars to the deficit — three weeks after the tax hike on the rich for the purpose of deficit reduction.
The stinging part of the Sandy Relief Bill was that it wasn’t all hurricane relief. Also included were items such as $10 million for FBI salaries, $2 billion for road construction across the country, as well as funding for the Head Start program and roof repairs at the Smithsonian. Such items did not belong in the Sandy Relief Bill. Only about a third was actually for relief: $17 billion was for aid, while another $33 billion was for “other”
This has nothing to do with whether the non-Sandy provisions of the bill were worthwhile or not. But there is no reason why those extra provisions shouldn’t be dealt with on the same playing field as all the other potentially important uses of our federal tax dollars. Why did these particular spending measure bypass the intense oversight and scrutiny that every expenditure in the budget requires of our legislators so that we don’t overspend our revenue? Herein lies a neverending problem.
At the end of the day, the tax hike on the rich was almost entirely wiped out by the Sandy Bill. By voting up the $50.5 Billion in “aid” that was crafted, (and if you combine that amount with the $9 billion for the National Flood Insurance Program also approved in January 2013), Congress spent the entire sum of a year’s worth of revenue from the rich’s “fair share” — with most of it going to fund more government instead of reducing the deficit — in one fell swoop.
Here we are a year later. The AP reported this week citizens impacted by Sandy have had a lot of waiting to do with very little to show for it in New York City. “Because the federal government has only released the first tranche — about $700 million — of the roughly $60 billion package of storm recovery aid approved by Congress, city officials say they still don’t know how much money they’ll be able to distribute to storm victims”.
And more: “About 24,000 families have signed up for the city’s Build-It-Back program, which will help pay for repairs, elevate their homes and reimburse them for repairs that have already completed, among other things. But many still haven’t received any money nearly a year after the storm“.
How can this be? How is it that Congress has only released $700 million so far? The $17 billion “aid” part of the Sandy Relief bill included the following:
$5.4 billion for FEMA to provide immediate relief to families and pay for temporary housing, debris removal and crisis counseling.
$5.4 billion went to major transportation agencies in New York and New Jersey
$3.9 billion to repair damages to publicly owned hospitals, roads and utilities
$1.35 billion to the Army Corps of Engineers
$287 million for national parks
$235 million for veteran facilities
$32 million for Amtrak
$6 million to replenish and stock food banks and soup kitchens.
It is gross incompetence that supposedly only $700 million of a $50 billion aid package — 1.2% — has been released by Congress. Where are the funds? And what about the non-aid parts of the bill? The $33 billion in pork? Have those funds been distributed?
Equally disturbing is the revelation this week that the very company responsible for the disasterous Obamacare website (CGI Federal Inc.) also received funds to distribute for Sandy Relief. According to the Daily Caller, CGI “assisting the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the distribution of $1.7 billion in relief for Hurricane Sandy”. This was verified by a memo obtained by Freedom Works. Notes of the minutes of the memo record that
Mr. Nelson presented that the State received a $1.7 billion allocation in CDBG Disaster Recovery aid from HUD to aid impacted businesses and residences. He stated that the State’s Action Plan was approved on April 26, 2013 and HTFC is currently in a phase of implementing the program. He stated that in this phase, the corporation needs to stand-up its recovery programs as soon as possible to deliver critical resources, and in order to do so, the corporation requires immediate access to consultant services to assist in policy and procedure development, training, surge capacity, and call center assistance, and stated that CGI Federal Inc. could provide such services.
Mr. Nelson stated that the corporation entered into a short term contract with CGI, Federal Inc. on a discretionary basis of $49,000 to start with these critical disaster recovery efforts, and he requested that the Board approve a contract with CGI Federal Inc., procured on an emergency basis as justified under Executive Order 63, for an amount up to $4,280,000 for a term through March 31, 2016.
The company that charged the federal government more than $600 million to build a website that has failed miserably is the very same company that received a contract for another $4 + million through 2016 to help distribute Sandy aid, a task at which it has also failed miserably.
One year after Superstorm Sandy, we can clearly see the failings of Congress in its fiduciary responsibility.
It approved tax hikes on the wealthy under the guise of deficit reduction — $60B a year for 10 years
It approved as a relief bill nearly the same amount that was to be raised by the tax hikes — a bill that was 2/3 pork and only 1/3 relief — that increased government spending
It has only released 1.2% ($700 million) of the $50+ billion in aid
It contracted enormous sums of federal tax dollars with CGI, a company that is being paid 1) to assist with distributing nearly $2 billion in aid and 2) is the chief architect behind the Obamacare website abomination
And yet, just a few days ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave a radio interview in which he spelled out the next phase of budget negotiation, where he once again calls for more taxes:
“The only people who feel there shouldn’t be more coming in to the federal government from the rich people are the Republicans in the Congress. “Everybody else, including the rich people, are willing to pay more. They want to pay more.”
He also went on to announce that the only way there could be some sort of Congressional “grand bargain” would be under the conditions that the Republicans would have to agree to more tax revenue:
“They have their mind set on doing nothing, nothing more on revenue, and until they get off that kick, there’s not going to be a grand bargain on — there’s not going to be a small bargain,” Reid said. “We’re just going to have to do something to work our way through sequestration.”
William Pitt the Younger sagely observed that “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” We constantly hear how the government needs more money . After a year of particularly gross fiscal mismanagement in Congress — from Hurricane Sandy to the Fiscal Cliff to Sequestration to the government shutdown to Healthcare.gov the Democrats still have the gall to sound the call for more taxes.
The trillion dollar question then becomes: What Will Republicans Do?
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, OBAMA, POLITICS
In case you missed it, Harry Reid displayed the most incredible mind reading skills this past week during an interview on Nevada Public Radio.
As reported by Roll Call, the Senate Majority Leader explained that, “The only people who feel there shouldn’t be more coming in to the federal government from the rich people are the Republicans in the Congress,” He went on to declare that “Everybody else, including the rich people, are willing to pay more. They want to pay more.”
He also went on to announce that the only way there could be some sort of Congressional “grand bargain” would be under the conditions that the Republicans would have to agree to more tax revenue:
“They have their mind set on doing nothing, nothing more on revenue, and until they get off that kick, there’s not going to be a grand bargain on — there’s not going to be a small bargain,” Reid said. “We’re just going to have to do something to work our way through sequestration.”
For those who are short on memory, the Republicans agreed to tax increases on the wealthy immediately after we went over the “Fiscal Cliff” last January. Obama did not get his $250K threshold to raise taxes to 39.6% for “upper earners”, but he did get a $400K single/$450K married couple threshold. January 1, 2013 was the original sequestration deadline. With the Fiscal Cliff deal, the sequestration decision was booted again for two months.
Fast forward to the end of February with sequestration talks and the March 1 deadline looming. The White House and liberal media began discussing in earnest the possiblity of more taxes, especially after it was pointed out by Bob Woodward that sequestration did indeed originate with Obama.
After the Republicans didn’t blink on sequestration and the cuts went into play, Investors Daily revealed on March 1 that Obama’s “sequestration” plan was $1 Trillion in new revenue. That was followed up by Pelosi’s announcement that same afternoon that there would be “no sequestration deal without new taxes”. But sequestration stayed, much to the chagrin of the Democrats.
Here we are now, post-government shutdown. Obamacare is failing badly. Obamacare was supposed to be a source of revenue for the government over 10 years with its myriad of taxes — except that no one is signing up. The Democrats look bad, and the Congressional Dems are warming to the idea of a one-year delay, the very thing that many Republicans have been calling for ad nauseum.
What is Harry Reid to do? Why, talk about sequestration, of course. Let’s talk about how billions in cuts have been made to the government because the Republicans have “refused to compromise”. Let’s put the blame game back on them and off of the Democrats who voted hook, line, and sinker for Obamacare. Let’s stir the pot and talk about how tough sequestration is for everyone. Ergo, we need to fix the government budget with more revenue.
Pay attention folks. The Democrats are frustrated because of Obamacare right now. In the coming weeks, we’ll see renewed energetic playbook buzzwords talks of a “balanced approach”, a “compromise”, and a “grand bargain” approach to budget discussions…except that the only approach from the Democrats will be a firm call and firm stand for more revenue via tax increases.
Leviathan is wounded. And hungry. And he’s coming for your wallets.
by | ARTICLES, OBAMA, POLITICS
The Democrats (and some others) have been screaming for all the country to hear that the upcoming debt ceiling vote should not have to be. After all, once Congress passes a law that involves paying for something, and the President signs it, the country has an obligation to “pay its bills”, right?
Wrong. This rationale is utter nonsense, as Congress has the sequence of events exactly backward. If Congress passes any law that would have the effect of increasing the country’s debt above the plainly existing (for all to see) debt limit, and has not first dealt with the obligation of how to get the debt ceiling increased so that the bills could be paid, Congress and all the members who have voted for those bills have abrogated their fiduciary responsibility.
For more than 100 years until WWI, Congress was obligated under law to approve each spending measure that resulted in accrued debt. Bonds were either approved or not approved, which kept spending and debt limits in check. That procedure is no longer in affect today. That is unfortunate.
For those who advocate for an unlimited debt ceiling, one should place their same arguments in an individual or business context. For instance, if a family only has $1,000 of available cash reserves, and for some reason commits itself to spend $1,200, where does the blame lie? And from where does the extra $200 come? And should that family have a continuous, open-ended stream of money to spend as it sees fit? Or look at it from a business perspective — every business wants to spend to succeed. However without the prudence and final decisions of the Chief Financial Officer obligated to operate under yearly and long-term budgets, the business runs the risk of swiftly becoming insolvent.
The same common sense should be applied to Congress as it once was. Do we spend before we know how we are going to pay for it, or do we know how we are going to pay for it before we spend? Let’s please get our sequence straight and financial house in order.
by | BLOG, ECONOMY, OBAMA, POLITICS
On the eve of the government shutdown, Obama remarked that “I shouldn’t have to offer anything”, and that he’s always ready to have a conversation:
“Steve when you say what can I offer? I shouldn’t have to offer anything,” Obama said. “They’re not doing me a favor by paying for things that they have already approved for the government to do. That’s part of their basic function of government; that’s not doing me a favor. That’s doing what the American people sent them here to do, carrying out their responsibilities.
“I have said consistently that I’m always happy to talk to Republicans and Democrats about how we shape a budget that is investing in things like early childhood education, rebuilding our roads and bridges and putting people back to work, growing our economy, making sure that we have the research and development to stay at the cutting edge and that deals with some of our long-term debt issues. But we’re not going to accomplish those things if one party to this conversation says that the only way that they come to the table is if they get 100 percent of what they want and if they don’t, they threaten to burn down the house”
So, let’s do a trip down memory lane to see how Obama’s grand budget ideas have turned out in the last few years.
President Obama’s proposed FY2012 budget was voted down by the Democrat-led Senate 97–0. Not one Democrat or Republican Senator would sponsor it, put his name to it, or vote for it. And that budget was no prize—according to the Congressional Budget Office, that proposal never had an annual deficit of less than $748 billion, would double the national debt in 10 years and would see annual interest payments approach $1 trillion per year.
Obama’s proposed FY2103 budget was defeated in the House of Representatives by a vote of 414-0. That was a $3.6 trillion budget proposal that included, among many things, tax hikes and increased energy spending. No Democrats would even vote for that one either.
Obama submitted his FY2014 budget late by two months, in April of this year. By that time, the House had already created and voted on a budget, as did the Senate (first time for the Senate in a few years). OBama’s FY2014 budget was $3.8 trillion this time, and managed to upset both sides of the aisle — the Republicans because it containted more tax hikes, and the Democrats, because it made systemic changes to Social Security. Incidentially, Obama’s budgets were late 4 out of 5 budget cycles, 2010 being the only year he submitted it on time.
So here we have arrived at a government shutdown. Obama’s recent budgets have been continuously and unilaterally rejected by both the Senate and the House, by both Democrats and Republicans, and we are 1616 days without a budget. So please Mr. Obama, don’t offer us anything more. Your ideas have been tried and found wanting. Get out of the way.
by | BLOG, ECONOMY, OBAMA, POLITICS
Do as I say, not as I do. That is the modus operandi of President Obama. He whines to everyone that he despises these Congressional deadlines, and that it is patently unfair of the Republican to let things slide to the last minute. However, that is precisely what he wants. In the time between one deadline to another, Obama himself never presents a plan for anything. It’s disingenuous.
Obama complains that decisions should be discussed and negotiated and worked out, and points a finger at a “do nothing Congress”, but in fact, he wants everything to be done at the last minute. We know this to be true by his leadership, or lack thereof. There is no dealing with cuts or budget items in between crises, unless it is an executive order circumventing the normal process. He continuously talks and talks and talks about how he is “willing to discuss” but then brings nothing to the table as a starting point for discussion.
Classic Obama — full of hot air, no substance; plenty of blame, but no true action. And no, ruling by Executive fiat to avoid being to “no” in Congress is not leadership. The fact that Obama facilitates no discussions or presents no working actionable items in between various deadlines proves that he is not about leading by example. The last-minute scrambling is his backdrop for grandstanding. It’s about perpetuating crises as leverage for outrageous policies that the majority of Americans do not want.
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, OBAMA, POLITICS
Supporters of President Obama continually try to rationalize his decisions on the basis of some philosophical and moral philosophy. In fact, it does seem clear to most rational thinkers that, in fact, the President chooses the most politically expedient position at the moment. Nothing makes this clearer than Obama’s all-over-the-lot positions on the debt ceiling.
CNS News released an excerpt” from President Obama’s speech given on September 18 at the Business Roundtable in D.C. During his discussion, Obama remarked,
“Now, this debt ceiling — I just want to remind people in case you haven’t been keeping up — raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt; it does not somehow promote profligacy. All it does is it says you got to pay the bills that you’ve already racked up, Congress. It’s a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved.”
However a speech given in 2006 by then-Senator Obama on the occasion of raising the debt ceiling under President George Bush paints a completely different picture. Back then, Obama actually laments that that Federal spending has not been reduced, which he in turn blames for an increase in deficits, therefore resulting in more money borrowing and a need to raise the debt ceiling:
“Tax breaks have not been paid for by reductions in Federal spending, and thus the only way to pay for them has been to increase our deficit to historically high levels and borrow more and more money. Now we have to pay for those tax breaks plus the cost of borrowing for them”
What else did Senator Obama say? He also described Bush’s increase of federal debt by $ 3.5 trillion over 5 years to be “reckless fiscal policies”, and a sign of “leadership failure”.
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is ‘‘trillion’’ with a ‘‘T.’’ That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers. And over the next 5 years, between now and 2011, the President’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion”
Yet in merely three years of Obama’s Administration, from 09/30/09 – 09/30/12 (the last year for which figures were available), the debt increased $ $4.1 Trillion, from $1,909,829,003,511.75 to $16,066,241,407,385.89. These numbers were taken from Treasurydirect.gov. Obama’s own fiscal policies have proven to be worse.
So because we are in so much more debt, we need to raise the debt ceiling yet again. And we find Obama at his recent speech rationalizing the need to raise the debt ceiling in order to preserve the full faith and credit of the United States for the future:
“And I have responsibilities at this point not just to the current generation but to future generations, and we’re not ‘going to set up a situation where the full faith and credit of the United States is put on the table every year or every year and a half, and we go through some sort of terrifying financial brinksmanship because of some ideological arguments that people are having about some particular issue of the day. We’re not going to do that.”
But what was did Obama think about his responsibilities to current and future generations and the full faith and credit of the United States back in 2006? As a Senator, Obama used that same argument against raising the debt ceiling
“Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘‘the buck stops here.’’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”
It’s quite clear: What Obama said and thought as a Senator during the Bush administration in 2006 versus what Obama says and thinks as the President in 2013 regarding the very same topic, the debt ceiling, yields two very different sets of conclusions. When Obama argued against the debt ceiling as a Senator, we were at $8.5 Trillion in federal debt created in a span of 200+ years. A mere 7 years later, we have managed to double that number, with 5 of those 7 years under Obama’s watch. The explosive growth of federal debt under President Obama is gross fiduciary negligence.
The full text of Obama’s 2006 speech is here.
An interesting thing to note about Obama’s 2006 speech against the debt ceiling. The original text of the speech should be in the Senate archives online, but it was removed months ago after an NRO article drew attention to it in January 2013. Shortly after that article ran, the link to the speech came back as an “error”.
Unsurprisingly, the link has yet to be fixed as of this morning. When the link originially disappeared, the Heritage Foundation was able to get a copy of the text from the Government Printing Office (gpo.gov). They dug it up there because the online Senate file was scrubbed.
And after the NRO article ran, I reproduced it here in its entirety. It almost sounds…..conservative. Obama-the-President wouldn’t like that.
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, OBAMA, POLITICS
Today we have reached 1600 days without an operating budget for our country. But who’s actually counting right now? And why should we care?
Currently, we have Syria at the forefront of discussion, which has put any substantive monetary debates on the back burner. Besides the question of whether or not to authorize and spend money on Syria, Congress also faces both if and how to fund the government past September 30 in the form of a CR, whether or not to defund Obamacare, and what to do with the impending debt ceiling limit.
So here’s a little primer on the fiscal State of the Union.
According to the US Debt Clock, we are $16,970,000,000 in debt. The US Debt Clock is an unofficial tally of our excessive spending.
The federal deficit increased by $146 billion in August, as reported by the CBO four days ago. Yet this conflicts with reports from the Treasury Department.
Yet as reported by CNSnews, “According to the Daily Treasury Statements that the Treasury publishes at 4:00 p.m. on each business day, the debt subject to the legal limit has remained at exactly $16,699,396,000,000–or about $25 million below the legal limit–every day since May 17.”
This makes 118 days, with the September 12 report being the most current, that the debt has stayed at $16,699,396,000,000.
Why is this important? The current debt ceiling limit is $16,699,421,095,673.60. According to the debt clock, however, and if CBO reports for June, July, and August were added to the Treasury statements amount since May 17th, we would be way past the debt ceiling limit. In fact, August alone would have crossed the threshold. So what is our current debt?
Incidentally, the reason why Congress even has to consider the question of funding the government or shutting it down past September 30 (the last day of the fiscal year) is that there is no operating budget. The last time the Senate passed a budget was April 29, 2009. Nearly the entirety of Obama’s time as President has been this way. For the Senate to abrogate its basic fiduciary responsibilities in such a major way is unconscionable.
Today also marksthe five year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on September 15, 2008, the largest in U.S. history. This event triggered the instability of the stock market and marks the starting point for the economic stress and downturn that has plagued the nation for the last five years.
Obama has been at the helm for the duration of this financial crisis. Yet his fiscal policies have failed to relieve the nation of high unemployment:
“The unemployment rate in September 2008 was 6.1 percent—up from a relatively stable 5 percent that had been the peak unemployment for the 30 months preceding December 2007. The unemployment rate steadily rose throughout 2008 and the beginning of 2009, spiking at 10.2 percent in October 2009. We still haven’t gotten back to the prerecession levels of unemployment. We haven’t even gotten back to the mid-recession unemployment of five years ago. The employment picture for this August was particularly bleak, with an Obama-presidency-low unemployment rate of 7.3 percent masking sharp downward revisions to the previous months’ jobs gains. At August’s rate of job growth, it’d take nearly two years for the economy to get back to 5 percent unemployment.
”
Our fiscal health is poor today. Is the current state of our Republic how it was meant to be when our Founding Fathers created it? Thomas Jefferson wisely observed, “I place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared”.
The CBO confirms the massive deficit spending that has characterized this administration. The Treasury reports reveal unexplainable debt data that don’t square up to with the CBO and may be masking a debt amount that has surpassed the statutory limit. And Obama’s Democrat-led Senate has failed to pass a budget in 1600 days, forcing an impending showdown for Congress and its excitable politicians who can’t decide whether to fund our government past another 15 days.
These are the fiscal realities facing the nation from the man behind the curtain at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, HYPOCRISY, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS
Eye-opening words of HHS Secretary Sebelius yesterday:
“This is no longer a political debate; this is what we call the law,” Sebelius told a group that includes Democrats and Republicans, elected officials, political appointees and bureaucrats. “It was passed and signed three years ago. It was upheld by the Supreme Court a year ago. The president was re-elected. This is the law of the land.”
Except when it is not.
If this is the law of the land, why is our President of the United States picking and choosing the parts of law that he wants to implement and/or delay?
Just this morning, Forbes is reporting “that another costly provision of the health law—its caps on out-of-pocket insurance costs—will be delayed for one more year”.
Recently, there was a delay in the employer mandate.
Before that, “there was the announcement, buried in the Federal Register, that the administration would delay enforcement of a number of key eligibility requirements for the law’s health insurance subsidies, relying on the “honor system” instead”
And for starters in April 2012, there was a delay of Obamacare’s Medicare cuts until after the election.
Oh, and don’t forget the security flaws and delays recently revealed. Deadlines for security safeguard have been missed, and the date to implement that system has been moved to September 30 (one day before the exchanges open).
Here’s the problem. Sebelius and the Obama Administration want to use the argument “It’s the law of the land!” when they are criticizing Republicans for questioning Obamacare. At the same time, they are not followign the “law of the land” when they are moving deadlines, delaying implementation of the law, and using the honor system.
Michael McConnell wrote an excellent piece last month in the WSJ entitled ” Obama Suspends the Law: Like King James II, the president decides not to enforce laws he doesn’t like. That’s an abuse of power”
He points out the simple fact that “Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution states that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so”.
Indeed. When Obama decides to pick and choose the parts of the law he wishes to execute, he is not upholding “the law of the land”.
Is Obama using Obamacare to set up a series of precedents for which he easily dispenses with troubling or inconvenient laws or statutes, in order to expand his Presidential powers?
There are many reasons why Americans should continue to be wary of Obamacare. These include:
Fiscal — Staggering costs of the system, rising costs of premiums, etc
Medical — Not being able to keep your doctor or healthplans as promised. Concerns about rationing, death panels, etc.
Personal — Your information is, at this time, not secure, and is overseen by unregulated “navigators” (think TSA)
Operational — Obamacare was signed into law in March 2010. It was expected to be fully implemented January 1, 2014. Yet in those almost four years, Americans have seen delays, missed deadlines, cost changes, and more. If Obamacare can’t even be implemented without substantial missteps along the way, what confidence does the public have that it will run efficiently and properly?
Constitutional — Obama is ignoring deadlines contained in the law and delaying parts that are problematic
Americans will have varying opinions as to which of these concerns above is most acute. However, the Constitutional aspect might very well be the most troublesome. Invoking the “law of the land” when chastising your political opponents, while simulataneously ignoring the “law of the land” is the height of executive hubris. An expansion of power by the Executive Branch undermines our entire American system of government.
