The health care “reform” bill drafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid adds new tax increases, and costs twice as much as its promised $849 billion price tag.

The tax increases (in billions) include:

1. 40% excise tax on health coverage in excess of $8,500 (individuals) / $23,000 (families). . .
2. Additional 0.5% Medicare (Hospital Insurance) tax on wages in excess of $200,000 ($250,000 for joint filers) – begins in 2013 – $54 B tax increase
3. Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers…

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President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package creates imaginary jobs, while destroying ones in the real world.

Billions from the stimulus are being spent on creating tens of thousands of imaginary jobs in 440 phantom Congressional districts, according to the government’s own web site:

Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist. . . . The web site…

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When the Senate Finance Committee votes on President Obama’s health care plan, it won’t even have the text of the bill in existence.  It will just be voting on a summary of what the bill will supposedly contain. Senate Democrats voted down Republican proposals that the bill’s text be made available to Senators and the public 72 hours before the vote.

And the bill itself is likely to be changed by Senate leaders at the last minute, right before the Senate…

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Your host Richard Morrison welcomes returning guest co-host William Yeatman and special guest commenter Ryan Radia to the program for Episode 61 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with the FCC’s just-announced proposal for “net neutrality,” Treasury documents that reveal the true cost of cap-and-trade legislation and the plan for getting over California’s great depression. We then move on to the G20 Summit’s potential path to prosperity and the ever-expanding scandal that is ACORN.

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The Greens keep trying to change the subject when it comes to what the released Treasury documents about cap-and-trade actually show.  They’ve got a bunch of talking points and, by Jove, they’re sticking to them.  One of them is this one, from the Environmental Defense Fund’s spokesman:

In terms of the Waxman-Markey bill, “Every one of the independent analyses out there show small costs,” Kreindler added.

Really?  Every one?

What about this one? (”The annual cost of emissions permits to energy users will…

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Today’s excerpt from CEI’s film, Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself, is on cap-and-trade.  

What is cap and trade?

Cap-and-trade is Al Gore’s (and the environmental community’s) leading “solution” to the alleged “climate crisis”–the centerpiece, for example, of the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty.

There are many technical  issues in the design and implementation of a cap-and-trade program, but the basic idea is as follows. 

The government establishes a legal limit–a “cap”–on the total quantity of greenhouse gases that regulated (”covered”) entities may emit. Each covered entity must acquire one federally-created or -certified allowance (permit,…

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After the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) calculated the enormous costs of an all-encompassing health care scheme with a bloated public option, members of Congress from both parties asked for more due diligence before rubber stamping the plan.

 Yet today, the U.S. House of Representatives may rush through another piece of poorly designed command-and-control legislation that the CBO just yesterday said could have its own tremendous costs.  Though advertised as giving shareholders more “say” over CEO pay, the “Corporate and Financial Institution…

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CNN notes that there are “5 freedoms you’d lose in health care reform” as promoted by the Obama Administration: the freedom to choose your doctors, the freedom to choose what’s in your plan, the freedom to keep your existing plan, the freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, and the freedom to choose high-deductible coverage.

Earlier, we described how Obama’s health-care plan would destroy many affordable health-care plans, raise taxes on the middle class, and break Obama’s campaign promises, as…

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“The budget deficit increased by $192.3 billion in March, and is near $1 trillion just halfway through the budget year.”

It’s going to get worse. The Obama Administration’s proposed budgets would produce $9.3 trillion in red ink, more than double the $4.4 trillion in red ink that would have been produced by Bush’s already huge budgets. Economist Michael J. Boskin estimates that Obama’s plans will result in $163,000 in increased taxes in the future for the typical tax-paying family.

Balanced budgets won’t…

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In 2008, Obama promised a “net spending cut” (although he never did come up with cuts to offset his proposed spending increases). Obama broke this campaign promise in a big way with his proposed budget, which could bankrupt the United States, according to senior Senators.

Obama’s budget would increase spending levels so much that budget deficits would rise by $4.8 trillion to $9.3 trillion while taxes would increase by $1.9 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Yet Obama’s campaign workers have apparently learned nothing from this. Across…

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Obama’s budget would explode the national debt while increasing taxes. That’s the conclusion of the Congressional Budget Office, controlled by lawmakers who support Obama. “The President’s proposals would add $4.8 trillion to the national debt,” increasing “the cumulative deficit from 2010 to 2019 to $9.3 trillion.” The budget also adds $1.9 trillion in tax increases.

And the stimulus bill Obama claimed was needed to avert “disaster” and “irreversible decline“? It will shrink the economy over the long run, since its “increase in government debt…

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Federal bailouts and related spending proposed by the Obama Administration now total 8 trillion dollars, according to the American Institute for Economic Research.

To pay for exploding federal spending, Obama’s Congressional allies are mulling huge tax increases. Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Cal.) wants a 90 percent tax rate. Obama has spent more in his first 50 days, by far, than George Bush spent on the entire Iraq War. That includes a pork-filled $800 billion stimulus package that deceptively repealed welfare reform, and that the…

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In a magnificent display of self-delusion, the green movement is holding a demonstration at the Capitol’s power plant today to protest the continued use of coal to keep people warm. Although I’d love to put the continued operation of Congress at the mercy of the weather, there is a more important point here. Coal is Affordable energy increases people’s income, keeps them in jobs, and keeps them alive. Here is a brief summary of some important research on the subject.

The…

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The bloated $800 billion “stimulus” package would not only create a mountain of debt, it would harm the economy in the long run. Congressional leaders claim that their pork-filled “stimulus” plan would help the economy, but the Congressional Budget Office admits otherwise. It predicts a smaller economy in 10 years if the stimulus plan is enacted.

Why, then, do Congressional leaders (and Obama) support the stimulus plan? Because it might ever-so-slightly reduce unemployment over the short run, helping them get reelected in…

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The porcine stimulus bill passed by the House contains $15 billion in capital investments and loan guarantees for renewable energy projects and new electric transmission lines.  But the billions of dollars targeted toward renewable energy aren’t likely to generate many “green collar” jobs anytime soon.  That’s because the environmental and permitting regulations for these types of projects typically take years.  This is particularly true for new transmission lines.  And without the new transmission lines, new solar or wind power stations…

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