The Cost

Reform: Remember when Nancy Pelosi promised that Americans would fall in love with ObamaCare once it was the law of the land? Turns out barely half of Democrats now like it.

The Kaiser Family Foundation has tracked public support for ObamaCare since the law was passed. It’s never been very popular, but now support has hit a new low of 34% due in part to erosion in Obama’s own party. The month ObamaCare passed, more than three of four Democrats approved of it. Now, just over half do, and only one in five has a “very favorable” view. Even worse, just 27% of Democrats think the law will make them and their families better off.

But how can this be, loyalists ask, when ObamaCare is already helping people? Just ask any “adult child” on his parents’ health plan, or all those small businesses benefiting from the insurance premium tax credit?

But as each month brings new Obama-Care failures, fewer Democrats seem to be buying such baloney.

Thanks to “reform,” for example, insurance premiums shot up 9.5% this year, reversing a decade-long trend toward lower annual increases. Just a few days ago, the White House was forced to abandon the law’s long-term care insurance provision because it was financially unworkable. And it’s had to pass out more than 1,500 waivers to prevent millions from losing coverage. The temporary “high risk” pools meant to help those with pre-existing conditions are a bust.

And we haven’t even mentioned the pernicious and wildly unpopular centerpiece of ObamaCare — the mandate that everyone buy insurance or else. This is scheduled to start in 26 months, unless the Supreme Court finds it unconstitutional.

Every Republican presidential candidate has called for repealing this mess before it can do any more damage. Repeal will never happen, though, as long as Obama sits in the White House. And should the GOP fail to win the next election, by 2017 it will be all but impossible to unscramble the ObamaCare egg.

Fortunately, the more the public understands the stakes involved, the more likely Obama will be safely back in Chicago in 2013, while a Republican president happily flushes ObamaCare down the drain.

When President Obama announced changes to rules on repaying college student loans, he said his goal was to ease the financial burden of getting a degree.

“We’ve made it a priority to make college more affordable, reduce your student loan debt,” he told students in Denver, unveiling his plans to make it easier for college graduates to get out from under their debt obligations.

But if the history of college financial aid (and other government attempts to protect consumers from costs) is any guide, Obama’s plan will likely backfire.

Over the past three decades, financial aid has rocketed up 438% after inflation, says the College Board. That’s largely due to huge hikes in more than a dozen federal grant and loan programs.

“By providing aid and subsidized loans, the government is trying to protect students, but the effect is perverse,” said Jane Shaw, president of the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Raleigh, N.C. “They increase demand and enable colleges to hike tuitions virtually without restraint.”

An increase in the average student loan of $1 was associated with net tuition that’s 93 cents higher at public schools and 55 cents higher at private schools, according to Andrew Gillen of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.

A 2007 study by University of Oregon economists concluded that colleges “tend to absorb most federal student aid by increasing their tuition revenue,” according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

That doesn’t necessarily mean students are getting a better education. From 1993 to 2007, per-student spending on administration climbed twice as fast as spending on instruction, a Goldwater Institute study found.

The same phenomenon has occurred in health care, where government for decades has worked to shield consumers from direct costs, fueling health care cost inflation by encouraging demand and giving doctors and hospitals greater license to raise prices.

Today, the government pays directly for over 44% of care, according to data compiled by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

And federal tax policy encourages generous employer-provided insurance by deducting premium costs from taxable income, a $100 billion-plus annual subsidy, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. The 2,156 state benefit mandates further insulate consumers from the direct costs.

Consumers now pay just 12% of the nation’s health care tab out of pocket vs. nearly half in 1960, fueling much of the nation’s health care inflationary spiral.

“Providers aren’t competing for business based on price,” said John Goodman, president of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. “And if they’re not competing on price, they have no reason to lower cost.”

And education and health care fixes almost always add to these existing subsidies, providing still more inflationary fuel.

ObamaCare will further cut out-of-pocket spending by expanding insurance coverage and requiring more generous benefits.

When it comes to college education, the last three presidents all passed huge increases in aid,with each boasting that theirs was the biggest investment in college “since the G.I. Bill.”

Shaw said, “Government will keep doing what it’s doing until there’s a broad understanding by the public of the adverse effects produced by these attempts to shield consumers from costs.”(IBD)

So keep ripping the band-aid off slowly and it will hurt longer. But at least, that way the Democrats can mile the blame someone else for it longer. Now that’s a up-side! 🙂

While speaking at Virginia Democratic Senate Caucus fundraiser today, former President Bill Clinton claimed that no successful country on earth operates on the notion that government is the problem. He then listed a variety of things that the government “provides” for the people, including affordable healthcare, economic opportunity, education opportunity and “getting to the future.”

Considering test scores have decreased significantly since the Department of Education was founded, healthcare premiums have skyrocketed with the passing of ObamaCare and the economy isn’t growing because of smothering government regulation, I’d say Clinton is a bit off the  mark on this one. (Katie Pavlich).

Now say it with me y’all: IT”S THE REPUBLICAN’s FAULT! IT’s THE “RICH”‘s Fault! IT’s THE TEA PARTY’s FAULT!

Ta Da! Problem solved! 🙂

http://www.mrctv.org/videos/businesswoman-closes-shop-after-threats-occupy-san-diego-moochers

Oh, and that Blizzard, in the Northeast–Global Warming! 🙂

Enjoy.

No Groping either!

 

Stimulus 2.0

If voters believe Stimulus 1.0 got the job done, they should be open to accepting version 2.0.  But did it succeed? Let’s examine the evidence:
    (1) The president’s economic advisors projected that in the stimulus would halt unemployment at eight percent.  In its absence, they warned, unemployment could reach as high as nine percent.  This was a major selling point of the bill.  Two years and hundreds of billions of dollars later, the national unemployment rate remains above nine percent, and the numbers aren’t improving.  If the active labor force were the same size as it was when Obama took office (it has shrunk considerably due to discouraged workers), the national unemployment rate would be approaching 12 percent.

    (2) The president said the stimulus would “lift two million Americans from poverty.”  US poverty levels have now reached all-time highs.  In the year after the stimulus passed, 2.6 million Americans fell into poverty.

    (3) The president said middle class family incomes would soar by thousands of dollars thanks to his stimulus.  As reported above, the national median income (a good measure of the middle class’ collective financial standing) has dipped to its lowest level since 1997.

    (4) The president incessantly trumpeted the promise of countless “shovel-ready” projects to sell the public on the stimulus.  Earlier this year, Obama himself joked that such projects didn’t really exist.  Hilarious!

    (5) The president guaranteed “unprecedented transparency” in the process of doling out stimulus dollars.  Funds were then released to phantom Congressional districts and tax cheats, and were used to subsidize wasteful, redundant, and useless pork projects.  As we now know, this “unprecedented transparency” also entailed rushing approval for reckless multimillion dollar loan guarantees to a politically-connected “green” firm, ignoring internal warning flags, and deliberately concealing evidence of impending failure until it was too late for Congress to intervene.  Unprecedented!

    (6) As I’ve discussed on several occasions, even if you *fully accept* the White House’s own “jobs saved and/or created by the stimulus” numbers (OMB pegs this statistic at 2.4 million, still a million short of the presidents boasts in 2009), the math works out to nearly $300,000 per job.  Early analysis suggests that the president’s new jobs plan would likely trigger a reprise of that breathtakingly inefficient undertaking.  Also, an independent on-the-ground study that doesn’t rely on flawed government multipliers and formulas to measure the stimulus’ true employment impact reveals that OMB and CBO’s numbers are way off.
    (7) Roughly two million fewer Americans have jobs today than when the stimulus passed.

If Leftists view all of this as “success,” and believe suggestions to the contrary are “lies,” I suppose I’m finally beginning to understand why they still love President Obama.  The trouble for them is that Average Americans just aren’t drinking the hope-flavored Kool Aid any longer.  That’s gotta burn.  In fact, several prominent Democrats — including Harry Reid — don’t seem especially eager to pass Stimulus 2.0.  Neither does the public.  This has got me, got me questioning, where is the love? (Guy Benson)
And now along with Solyndra, there has been at least 4 more companies (mostly “green”) that got stimulus money went bankrupt.

Now that’s the kind of record of success we all want a repeat of don’t we?

Sources close to the Congressional investigation into the loans that the Obama administration made to bankrupt solar company Solyndra, say that Congress is likely to attempt to scuttle an agreement that the administration reached last February that allowed major investors to take precedent over US taxpayers in the liquidation of the company.

In February 2011, Solyndra renegotiated with creditors, including the United States Government, in order to try to avoid bankruptcy. In that deal, an investment group funded by Obama donor George Kaiser, gave Solyndra $75 million in additional money in the form of debt on the condition that the US Government took a subordinated position in any bankruptcy after the first $150 million was returned to the government.

What that means is that in a liquidation of Solyndra, the administration will allow that the first $150 million goes to the government, the next $75 million  goes to Kaiser’s fund. That would leave the government with a balance of $377 million outstanding unless a liquidation fetches more than $225 million.

In that case, the Kaiser investor group would likely control the amount of money that is eventually paid out to the government and other creditors and shareholders. This is a technique, known as a “cram down,” that is often used by investors looking to gain control of a troubled company at the expense of other investors.
Those “investors” being Taxpayers. 🙂

But  good Democrat Billionaires (who is not evil by the way) must be protected so he can give Obama more money for his re-election after all.

Instead of embracing the economic philosophies of Hayek or Keynes the Obama administration follows the teachings of another influential thinker: J. Wellington Wimpy, the notorious hamburger moocher of the old Popeye cartoons.

Wimpy used to say, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a Hamburger today.” President Obama says, “I’ll gladly pay you next decade for a $450 billion jobs bill today.” In his speech to Congress, the president demanded immediate passage of his program, promising to reveal later how he planned to fund it.

Now it’s clear he wants $460 billion in new taxes, but only over 10 years—covering barely 10 percent of the program when the money’s spent next year. Obama knows Congress won’t approve, making clear the only job his plan is meant to save is his own. Wimpy-nomics may be amusing in a cartoon, but alarming in a commander-in-chief. (townhall)

Wimpy used to say, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a Hamburger today.” President Obama says, “I’ll gladly pay you next decade for a $450 billion jobs” In his speech to Congress, the president demanded immediate passage of his program, promising to reveal later how he planned to fund it. (townhall)

This week’s Obamacare scandal du jour comes from a congressional panel that concludes the administration lied to push a costly long-term care program known as Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS). Internal documents obtained by lawmakers from a committee of House and Senate Republicans reveal officials in Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were acutely aware that the program was unsustainable and suppressed the information from Congress and the public.

The bicameral committee lists its findings in a scathing report that says HHS knew CLASS was likely to collapse as it pushed hard to pass it. While senior HHS officials publicly confirmed that CLASS was solvent, they privately called it “a recipe for disaster” in internal communications obtained as part of the probe. In fact, they had been warned by federal healthcare experts that the entitlement program would likely require a federal bailout or another insurance mandate.  

CLASS is supposed to provide long-term care insurance, including nursing home payments and in-home nursing care. Benefits are supposed to be funded with contributors’ premiums and not taxpayer money. However, under the current structure, it would need more enrollees (234 million) than the entire American workforce. Internal communications released this week indicate CLASS would essentially require federal subsidies or a mandate forcing all workers to pay into the government’s new program. (Judical Watch)

The Obama campaign has outdone itself again. First the creepy tapping e-mails. Now this — Attack Watch, a site designed to “Get the facts. Fight the smears . . . and help stop the attacks on the President before they start.”

This, like most features of the Obama reelection campaign, is a less appealing version of Something That Worked in 2008. In 2008, it was called Fight the Smears. The interface was friendly and hope-colored.

This time, it’s dark and angry and Web 1.0. It looks like the guy who designs 9/11 conspiracy Web sites finally got his big break.

 Copyright © 2011 by Obama for America

Nothing says, “Wow, we’re feeling really good going into the election season” like “HERE IS AN ANGRY PREEMPTIVE WEBSITE WITH ATTACK IN ITS NAME.”

But this is like telling your audience not to think about elephants. “Especially do not think of voting for elephants,” Attack Watch adds.

Stop attacks before they start? This is like that old trick where you ask political candidates, “And how many times did you murder your wife?” We all know how this turns out. We’ve seen “Inception.”

Who designed your page interface? George Orwell?

Makes me feel better, how about  you?