Dissecting the Real Cost of ObamaCare

The following are remarks made by Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, about the cost of the House and Senate health-care bills at President Obama’s Blair House summit on health care, Feb. 25:

Look, we agree on the problem here. And the problem is health inflation is driving us off of a fiscal cliff.

Mr. President, you said health-care reform is budget reform. You’re right. We agree with that. Medicare, right now, has a $38 trillion unfunded liability. That’s $38 trillion in empty promises to my parents’ generation, our generation, our kids’ generation.

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Up Next! On Live TV! A Battle Over … Health Care?

When he jousts with Congressional Republicans over health care policy during a televised meeting on Thursday, President Obama will seek to portray his adversaries as sharing many of the broad goals of his legislation and also strive to unify Congressional Democrats to press ahead and adopt a bill, senior White House officials and leading Democrats say.

But Mr. Obama, top White House advisers and Congressional leaders of both parties are under no illusion that the meeting will resolve more than a half-century of disagreements over health care policy. Instead, Democrats say, they hope the event will create a climate that helps revive their legislation in Congress and prove to the American public that they are willing to hear out Republicans and even adopt their ideas.

“We may not be able to resolve all the disagreements, but we ought to be able to thrash out areas of broad agreement,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser. “The fact is, there are broad areas of agreement on elements of this, and hopefully that will become apparent here.”

Mr. Axelrod added, “Sitting side by side working through these issues is better than not sitting side by side and dealing with distortions.”

Republican leaders have not yet committed to attending the session and have said they doubt the sincerity of Mr. Obama’s bipartisan overtures, given his refusal to discard the Democrats’ legislation and start over. But senior Republican aides said that party leaders planned to participate and that a chief goal would be to portray the president as defying the will of the American people if he continues pushing for an expansive and expensive bill.

The meeting is fraught with risk, and also offers potential rewards, for each side.

White House officials said that by Monday they would unveil Mr. Obama’s own comprehensive proposal, focused on uniting Democrats who spent much of the past year deeply divided on many points. Administration officials and Congressional Democrats have expressed hopes that the meeting will help generate support for a plan to attach health care legislation to a budget bill, which would prevent a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

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Unions and liberal groups blast Reid’s $15 billion jobs bill as ‘puny’

Unions and liberal groups have dismissed Sen. Harry Reid’s $15 billion jobs bill as “puny” while calling for larger stimulus measures.

More than two dozen organizations, including the AFL-CIO, National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP) and National Council of La Raza, warned Democratic leaders in Congress to avoid tackling the troubled economy through incremental action.

They urged the Senate to pass the $15 billion jobs measure, which features a hiring tax cut for small businesses, but called for much more legislation to bring down an unemployment rate the White House projects to average 10 percent this year, more than 9 percent next year and over 8 percent in 2012.

“If this $15 billion was the only thing [that passed], that would be like having an amputated arm and sticking a Band-Aid on the end of it,” said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, on a conference call Friday.

Lawrence Mishel, head of the union-backed Economic Policy Institute think tank, described the $15 billion bill being pushed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as “small, puny.”

In addition to the $13 billion hiring tax credit, Reid’s bill includes money to extend the federal trust fund for highway and other transportation projects, a tax break allowing businesses to write off losses from depreciating equipment and bonds for state and local government infrastructure projects. Reid has set up a Monday procedural vote to bring the bill up for debate, and Democrats hope to pass it later next week.

The left-leaning coalition is proposing its own jobs package that goes beyond the House Democrats’ $154 billion jobs bill, which passed without House Republican votes in December.

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CPAC Organizers Try to Turn Up Hip Quotient With Video Games, Rap

Organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference are taking pains this year to gear their summit toward students and the under-30 crowd, offering a slew of new media workshops and an entertainment lineup befitting a college campus. 

Here’s the vision for this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference: Outside, Lou Dobbs is waxing cranky on the country’s economic decline. Inside, the hip crowd will be playing video games, watching movies, eating snacks and listening to rap music. 

In a bid to make conservative chic, organizers of the annual meet-up of Republican Party faithful and right-wing firebrands are taking pains this year to gear their summit toward students and the under-30 crowd. Added to the menu are a slew of new media workshops and an entertainment lineup befitting a college campus. 

Organizers say the conference, which kicks off Thursday in Washington, has had a large college-age contingent for years now. But they are making an extra push to attract and entertain that crowd with youth-oriented talks and the addition of something called the XPAC Lounge — a room one organizer dubbed the “hub of fun.” 

That’s where the video games and the junk food will be. 

“We’re gonna have the most popular games. There’ll be Guitar Hero. There’ll be Dance Revolution. There’ll be Call of Duty,” said Kevin McCullough, the radio host who created the XPAC Lounge with actor Stephen Baldwin. 

There’ll be a distinct conservative component, no doubt. Icons of the right like Ann Coulter and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele are expected to speak there and work the room. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody of Joe-the-Plumber stature came in three times a day to come in and rally the kids,” CPAC spokesman Ian Walters said. 

But organizers are putting a premium on the fun factor. The lounge will be equipped with Nintendo Wii and Xbox, McCullough said. It will feature about 10 video game stations, two with seven-foot screens. “Old school” games like air hockey and foosball will also be on hand. 

It will be the scene of a late-night “rap/jam session” on Thursday and a conservative comedy lineup on Friday. FoxNews.com’s Strategy Room will also be broadcasting from the XPAC Lounge.

McCullough said organizers wanted to give younger conference-goers, who can buy a three-day lounge ticket for $20, a place to hang while the older crowd attends the high-priced nightly dinners. Plus, he said, conservatives are trying to attract more young activists and replicate the kind of success President Obama had in winning over young supporters in 2008. 

“We think that same thing can happen for people who are right of center,” he said. “More than anything, that generation simply needs a pat on the back and the encouragement of, ‘We believe in you.’” 

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Audit finds US census preparations wasted millions

Census preparations wasted millions as temps collected checks for excessive travel, training.

The Census Bureau wasted millions of dollars in preparation for its 2010 population count, including thousands of temporary employees who picked up $300 checks without performing work and others who overbilled for travel costs.

Federal investigators caution the excessive charges could multiply once the $15 billion headcount begins in earnest next month unless the agency imposes tighter spending controls, according to excerpts of a forthcoming audit obtained by The Associated Press.

On a positive note, investigators backed the Census Bureau’s decision to spend $133 million on its advertising campaign, saying it was appropriate to boost public awareness. The spending included a $2.5 million Super Bowl spot that some Republicans had criticized as wasteful.

The findings by Todd Zinser, the Commerce Department’s inspector general, highlight the difficult balancing act for the Census Bureau as it takes on the Herculean task of manually counting the nation’s 300 million residents amid a backdrop of record levels of government debt.

Because the population count, done every 10 years, is used to distribute U.S. House seats and billions in federal aid, many states are pushing for all-out government efforts in outreach since there is little margin for error — particularly for Democratic-leaning minorities and the poor, who tend to be undercounted. At the same time, the national headcount will employ 1 million temporary workers and is the most expensive ever, making it a visible sign of rising government spending.

The federal hiring has been widely touted by the government as providing a lift to the nation’s sagging employment rate — but investigators found it also had waste.

The audit, scheduled to be released next week, examined the Census Bureau’s address-canvassing operation last fall, in which 140,000 temporary workers walked block by block to update the government’s mailing lists and maps.

While the project finished ahead of schedule, Census director Robert Groves in October acknowledged the costs had ballooned $88 million higher than the original estimate of $356 million, an overrun of 25 percent. He cited faulty assumptions in the bureau’s cost estimates

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The McConnell Plan

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn’t claim to have developed an economic stimulus plan of his own. But he does favor a cluster of proposals that, when packaged together, are a simple, sensible program for rejuvenating the economy.

I take the liberty of dubbing it the McConnell Plan (without asking the Republican leader’s approval). If enacted, the plan would do a great deal more to boost the economy and increase employment than the “jobs bill” that President Obama and congressional Democrats are cooking up.

McConnell’s set of proposals would do several specific things.  First and foremost, it would provide a measure of certainty to the business and investment community about the future.  The aim:  Produce economic conditions conducive to private investment, economic growth, and job creation.

And the plan would restrain the budget deficit and the national debt, without indulging in what is universally regarded as counterproductive during an economic downturn–raising taxes.

McConnell mentioned two steps to reduce uncertainty about the economic future when I interviewed him recently, and he’s repeated them publicly since then.  One is to declare the effort to enact Democratic health care reform–ObamaCare–over.  “That would be a great relief to American business looking at health care taxes,” he told CNN.

It’s not hard to imagine how this would ease the minds of the CEOs and owners of businesses and prompt them to invest in expansion and begin hiring.  However, it would be up to Obama to put his health care legislation “on the shelf,” as McConnell is urging.  Instead, the president wants Republicans to join him in tweaking ObamaCare and making it a bipartisan bill.  That, in McConnell’s view, is a non-starter.   

The other McConnell idea is an extension of the Bush tax cuts, but not Obama-style.  The president wants to preserve the tax cuts for individuals earning less than $200,000 a year and couples making less than $250,000.

McConnell would extend the tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2010, for all taxpayers.   The top rate on individual income would stay at 35 percent, rather than increase to 39.6 percent.  The rate on capital gains would remain at 15 percent, not jump to 20 percent.  And instead of rising to 39.6 percent, the rate on dividends would stay at 15 percent.

There’s a solid reason for preserving Bush’s across-the-board cuts for those above Obama’s income cutoff.  It is these wealthier folks who do the bulk of private investing in America and thus most of the job creating.  Penalizing them with tax increases would discourage both their propensity and their ability to invest.

“If you’re a business now and you’re trying to figure out what the future is, you’re looking at health care taxes, you’re looking at capital gains taxes going up, dividend taxes going up,” McConnell said in a CNN interview. “If you’re a small business and pay taxes as an individual taxpayer, your taxes are going up.  So is that a great environment in which to expand employment?  I don’t think so.”

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Boehner: Don’t Wait for a Commission, Start Cutting the Deficit Now

House GOP Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today told Treasury Secretary Geithner that Democrats should “scrap the backroom deal” on their so-called “debt commission” and start over. According to CBS News, Boehner said “we should not kick the can down the road to a commission – we should start cutting now.” Boehner laid out several steps for real action on cutting the deficit by:

•”[R]epealing spending from the stimulus…”

•”[R]eturning TARP money to fight deficit reduction…”

•”[C]utting discretionary spending…” and

•”[A]dding real spending caps as the Republican budget did.”
The backroom deal between the president and Congressional Democrats would create a panel stacked in favor of raising taxes (watch Boehner here making that argument). According to National Review, Boehner outlined for Geithner how a truly bipartisan “debt commission” should work:
 
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Taxpayers pay $101,000 for Pelosi’s in-flight ‘food, booze’

Speaker’s trips ‘are more about partying than anything else’

It reads like a dream order for a wild frat party: Maker’s Mark whiskey, Courvoisier cognac, Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey’s Irish Crème, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewars scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey … and Corona beer.

But that single receipt makes up just part of the more than $101,000 taxpayers paid for “in-flight services” – including food and liquor, for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trips on Air Force jets over the last two years. That’s almost $1,000 per week.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Judicial Watch, which investigates and prosecutes government corruption, show Pelosi incurred expenses of some $2.1 million for her use of Air Force jets for travel over that time.

“Speaker Pelosi has a history of wasting taxpayer funds with her boorish demands for military travel,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said today. “And these documents suggest the Speaker’s congressional delegations are more about partying than anything else.”

Pelosi, D-Calif., recently joined President Obama on a Judicial Watch list of Top 10 corrupt politicians because of her “sense of entitlement,” the group said.

“Politicians believe laws and rules (even the U.S. Constitution) apply to the rest of us but not to them. Case in point: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her excessive and boorish demands for military travel. Judicial Watch obtained documents from the Pentagon in 2008 that suggest Pelosi has been treating the Air Force like her own personal airline,” the evaluation said.

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Dems Vow to Resurrect Health Care Bill

Searching for path forward, congressional Dems vow to pass a health care bill

Giving up on overhauling the nation’s health care system is not an option, the top House Democrat said Wednesday as lawmakers looked to President Barack Obama for guidance in his State of the Union address on how to revive the stalled legislation.

Asked if Congress might abandon a health care initiative beset with political and policy problems, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., responded: “I don’t see that as a possibility. We will have something.”

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer told congressional staff that Obama will use Wednesday night’s address to reiterate his commitment to an ambitious remake of the nation’s health care system, similar to the call he issued last September after critics seized the momentum during a summer of angry town hall meetings.

Although lawmakers don’t expect to hear a specific prescription for how to move forward, Pfeiffer said the president would offer “additional details” on his health care goals.

The speech comes as Democrats are struggling to find a way to advance health care legislation after the loss of a Massachusetts Senate seat last week cost them the 60-vote majority needed to deliver.

“The president is a strong persuader, as they say, and I think it makes an awful lot of difference, and I think he will bring everybody together,” said Rep. John Larson, D-Conn.

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