deficits

Governors Criticize Health Care Bill for Increasing Unemployment and State Budget Deficits; Tax Increases and Medicare Cuts in Bill Rise

by Hans Bader on March 18, 2010

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony

Governors are now criticizing the health care bill backed by the Obama administration, saying it will cause health care costs and state deficits to skyrocket, while driving up unemployment.  Arizona Governor Janice Brewer said the bill would end up “exacerbating our state’s fiscal woes by billions of dollars.” Rhode Island’s Donald Carcieri said “this legislation is bad for Rhode Island, its taxpayers, seniors, and economy….This bill is not about health care. It’s about ideology and special interests.” Indiana’s Mitch Daniels said it would lead to insurance “premium increases ranging up to 78 percent,” “huge tax increases” for medical “device manufacturers” that employ many, and “job losses” and “a job killing tax of $2,000 per employee” that “will be levied on many companies.”

Earlier, Tennessee’s governor, Phil Bredesen (D), called the bill the “mother of all unfunded mandates,” saying it will force states to spend so much that they will have to either massively raise taxes, or run large budget deficits that violate state constitutions.

The health care bill has now been changed to add additional tax increases, such as increasing the tax on uninsured individuals by an extra $2 billion and on employers by $25 billion. Also added are new cuts to Medicare Advantage, increased by $13.7 billion (to $131.9 billion), and Medicare Advantage interactions, by $53 billion (to $70.4 billion).  This is according to the Congressional Budget Office.  But the CBO has cautioned that “the agency has not thoroughly examined the reconciliation proposal to verify its consistency with the previous draft,” so there may be additional major changes that remain undisclosed until the House votes on the bill.

While the CBO has scored the health care bill as not increasing the federal deficit, thanks to the many tax increases in the bill, it has done so only by accepting many accounting gimmicks that even pro-Obama journalists have admitted are deceptive and conceal the bill’s enormous cost and the fact that it will massively increase the deficit.

Earlier, health care cost expert James C. Capretta explained how “Obamacare Is A Budgetary Disaster” that will cost at least $1.4 trillion more than promised.

The Congressional Budget Office, which refused to question Obama’s gimmicks to lowball the cost of his health care plan, nevertheless admits that “President Obama’s policies would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.”

There are $3,000,000,000,000 in tax increases in Obama’s budget.  But he’s spending money at such a furious pace that the deficit will skyrocket anyway: “The president’s budget would borrow 42 cents for each dollar spent in 2010,” and “double the national debt over the next decade.”  Obama recently ran up the largest budget deficit in history, by a huge margin.

ObamaCare would reduce medical innovation, raise taxes, drive up insurance premiums, and break campaign promises.  It  would cut the quality of  care, while imposing restrictions that failed when tried at the state level.  It ignores advice from experts about how to cut costs.

Even Associated Press Says “Beware” of Obama’s Health Care Overhaul; Retired Judge Calls Health Care Tactic Unconstitutional

by Hans Bader on March 17, 2010

in Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Legal, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony

Even the Associated Press admits that President Obama is not telling the truth about his health care plan and how it would affect health insurance premiums, in a news story entitled, “FACT CHECK:  Premiums Would Rise Under Obama Plan.”  (The Associated Press is so pro-Obama that it depicted criticism of Obama’s links to the unrepentant former terrorist Bill Ayers as somehow being “racist” even though Ayers is white, and so liberal that it claimed that the Democratic Party platform was “centrist”).   The AP writes, “Buyers, beware: President Barack Obama says his health care overhaul will lower premiums by double digits, but check the fine print.”  The AP notes that the Congressional Budget Office “concluded that premiums for people buying their own coverage would go up by an average of 10 percent to 13 percent, compared with the levels they’d reach without the legislation.”

Earlier, the AP admitted that Obama’s health care plan “would drive up the deficit by billions of dollars,” and that Obama was not telling the truth about the extent to which abortions are covered under his plan.

The procedural gimmick that congressional leaders plan to use to enact Obamacare is unconstitutional, writes law professor Michael McConnell, who recently retired as a judge on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals (clearing the way for Obama to appoint a replacement), in the Wall Street Journal.  The so-called “Slaughter solution” violates Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court’s rulings in Clinton v. New York (1998) and INS v. Chadha (1983).

A CBS News commentary notes that ObamaCare would create perverse incentives for employers to create a divisive two-tier labor market, and for some employees to keep their income from rising lest they lose more in government health care subsidies than they would gain in take-home pay due to provisions in ObamaCare that condition health-care subsidies on not increasing your income beyond a specified level, and thus constitute a “massive penalty if their income rises.”

A pro-Obama New York Times columnist admits that ObamaCare’s enormous cost is hidden by dishonest gimmicks.  Earlier, health care cost expert James C. Capretta explained how “Obamacare Is A Budgetary Disaster” that will cost at least $1.4 trillion more than promised.

A governor explains how Obamacare would cause massive harm to his state, such as “job losses,” and says it would add “more than a trillion dollars to the national debt.”

There are $3,000,000,000,000 in tax increases in Obama’s budget.  But he’s spending money at such a furious pace that the deficit will skyrocket anyway: “The president’s budget would borrow 42 cents for each dollar spent in 2010,” and “double the national debt over the next decade.”

Obama’s health care plan will further increase deficits, as even Democrats have admitted.   Obamacare would reduce medical innovation, raise taxes, drive up insurance premiums, break campaign promises, and increase state deficits.  It  would cut the quality of  care, while imposing restrictions that failed when tried at the state level.  It ignores advice from experts about how to cut costs.

The Hidden Costs of Health Care Reform: “Obamacare Is A Budgetary Disaster”

by Hans Bader on March 8, 2010 · 2 comments

in Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, International, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony

The health care bills backed by President Obama will cost $2.3 trillion, not the $900 billion Obama claims, and will be a “budgetary disaster” that drives up the national debt, explains health care expert James C. Capretta.  The Obama administration managed to hide $1.4 trillion in costs generated by the health care reform bill though a series of budgetary “gimmicks” that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is required to treat as valid in scoring the bill’s enormous cost.

Although the CBO is low-balling the costs of ObamaCare, even it concedes that as a whole, “President Obama’s policies would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.”

ObamaCare spends money on frills like “cultural competency,” while cutting spending on crucial things like anesthesia.

Most Americans oppose the health care legislation backed by the president. It would reduce lifesaving medical innovation, raise taxes, drive up insurance premiums, break many campaign promises, and increase state budget deficits.  It  would jeopardize the quality of medical care, while imposing restrictions that failed when tried at the state level.  It ignores advice from doctors and federal experts, and lessons from countries with universal health care, about how to keep costs down.

Fact-checkers say Obama is lying about health care. Obama often contradicts himself. In the very same speech, Obama claimed that Medicare is “unsustainable” and “running out of money,” then contradicted himself by claiming that “Medicare is a government program that works really well,” making it a model for national health care.  The bill does nothing to curb massive waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, even though it proposes to make massive cuts in Medicare (cuts so painful that most of them will never happen: year after year, Congress waives “the annual cut in fees paid by Medicare to physicians” mandated by an earlier law).

A CNN commentary noted that Obama’s plan would take away “5 freedoms,” contradicting Obama’s claim that the bill will leave you free to choose your doctor and keep your health care plan without government interference.

ObamaCare has also attracted criticism from groups like the Civil Rights Commission for containing both racial preferences and lower standards for treatment in predominantly-minority institutions, potentially harming both white applicants and minority patients.  This racial discrimination appears to violate court rulings like the Supreme Court’s Adarand decision, and the Rothe ruling by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

Obama’s Policies Will Increase National Debt by $9.7 trillion, Says Congressional Budget Office

by Hans Bader on March 6, 2010 · 3 comments

in Economy, Environment, Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Legal, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere

“President Obama’s policies would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday. . .The 10-year outlook by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is somewhat gloomier than White House projections, which found that Obama’s policies would add $8.5 trillion to the debt by 2020.”

That’s from the an article in The Washington Post summarizing the findings of a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office.

As the Associated Press notes, “The deficit picture has turned alarmingly worse. . .Economists say that deficits of that size are unsustainable and could put upward pressure on interest rates, crowd out private investment in the economy and ultimately erode the nation’s standard of living.”

The President’s healthcare proposals will add still more to the national debt, which he is attempting to conceal through budget gimmicks.  Even Democrats have expressed alarm about their unaffordable cost.

In the 2008 campaign, Obama promised a “net spending cut,” but as soon as he was elected, he proposed massive increases in federal spending instead.  It’s one of a long series of broken promises by the President.

Obama broke his campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year by signing a regressive SCHIP excise tax increase, and by proposing a cap-and-trade global-warming tax that could charge up to $2 trillion, a massive cost that Obama himself has said will be passed “on to consumers,” as well as homeowners and motorists. (In 2008, Obama privately admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle that if he was elected, electricity bills would “skyrocket” under his Administration, but it didn’t report that).

Obama broke seven campaign promises dealing with transparency and clean government in signing the $800 billion stimulus package.  Obama claimed the stimulus package was needed to avert “irreversible decline.” But the Congressional Budget Office concluded before and after its passage that the stimulus package will actually cut the size of the economy in the long run.

Obama persists in pushing a government takeover of health care, event though most Americans oppose his plan. It would reduce lifesaving medical innovation, raise taxes, drive up insurance premiums and the deficit, break many campaign promises, and impose heavy burdens on state budgets.  It  would also jeopardize the quality of medical care for many, while imposing restrictions that failed when tried at the state level, and ignoring advice from federal and academic experts, and lessons from countries with universal healthcare, about how to keep costs down.

Obama recently nominated to a key federal appeals court a left-wing radical who seeks to make welfare a constitutional right, at taxpayer expense — a radical sometimes suggested as a future Supreme Court nominee.

Grading Obama’s First Year

by Ryan Young on January 22, 2010

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Stimulus to Nowhere

CEI released a comprehensive report card this week on the Obama administration’s first year in office. My contribution is below; the full report card is here. Take a look.

C- Office of Management and Budget – Peter Orszag, Director
Grader: Ryan Young, Journalism Fellow

Spending and deficits are far higher than under President George W. Bush, himself a big spender. But Obama can’t be given all the blame. The bailout and stimulus spending programs that caused much of the fresh red ink got their start under Bush. In a potentially positive regulatory development, the number of pages in the Federal Register decreased from 79,435 in 2008 to 69,676 in 2009. Of course, the contents of those pages matters more than how many of them there are. And on that front, the new administration is business as usual.

“Would ObamaCare Reduce Innovation?”: Health Care Bill Would Cause Preventable Deaths

by Hans Bader on November 30, 2009 · 2 comments

in Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Labor, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony

“Would ObamaCare Kill Medical Innovation?”  That’s the question posed by health care expert Michael Cannon.  His answer is yes:  “President Obama’s health plan would likely reduce such innovation, to the detriment of the entire world.”

Other experts agree.  Harvard Medical School’s Dean said the health care bills backed by Obama would reduce “our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies” that save lives.

England’s government-run NHS health care system results in “10,000 unnecessary cancer deaths” every year.  “Hundreds of patients died needlessly at an NHS hospital due to appalling care.”

That is just the tip of the iceberg in what ObamaCare will cost our society.  It would also raise taxes, deficits, and medical costs.

As I noted earlier, the Senate recently voted 60-to-39, along party lines, to press towards passage of a massive health care bill, blocking a Republican filibuster.

Afterward, however, the bill drew criticism even from moderate Democrats who usually support the Obama administration, which backs the bill.  Veteran Washington Post editorialist David Broder called the bill a “budget buster in the making,” saying it will violate President Obama’s “pledge that health insurance reform will not add to our federal budget deficit over the next decade.”  He pleaded with the Obama administration and Congress not to “pass along unfunded programs to our children and grandchildren.”

In the Examiner, a Democrat who backed Obama in 2008 criticized the administration for backing a health care bill that violates Obama’s campaign promises by raising taxes on the middle class, citing the bill’s many tax increases, such as its tax on uninsured people and taxes on cosmetic surgery and other medical procedures.

Earlier, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen (D) criticized ObamaCare for driving up state spending and budget deficits, calling it “the mother of all unfunded mandates.”

Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson today called ObamaCare a generational rip-off.  Earlier, he noted that the health care bill is “hypocritical” and “dishonest” and aggravates the worst features of the “status quo.”

In the Senate, all Democrats voted for the bill.  But many received payoffs for doing so.  And there really are no “moderate” Democrats left in the Senate: most of its so-called “moderate” Democrats are not moderate or conservative on anything except on a handful of social issues needed to survive in a “red state,” like gun control.  No Senate Democrat today deviates from the liberal party line as often as the moderate Democrats who once served in the Senate, like Senators Alan Dixon of Illinois and J. James Exon of Nebraska.

As I noted on Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) lined up the 60 votes through payoffs to wavering Senators and powerful unions (some mismanaged unions will receive a taxpayer bailout of their health plans, to the tune of up to $10 billion).

The Dean of Harvard Medical School recently gave Obama’s health care plan a “failing grade,” saying it will harm America’s health and finances, and hamper medical innovations needed to save patients’ lives.  Dean Jeffrey S. Flier wrote in The Wall Street Journal that along “with dozens of health-care leaders and economists,” he had concluded that the bill “will markedly accelerate national health-care spending,” would harm care “by overregulating the health-care system in the service of special interests such as insurance companies,” and would reduce “our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies” that save lives.

Other experts agree.  The health care “reform” bill backed by President Obama “would reduce senior care,” increase “medical costs,”  and “could jeopardize access to care for millions,” report health care experts at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  The House recently passed a similar bill by the razor-thin margin of 220 to 215.

The bill will raise taxes on the middle class.  It will increase taxes on individuals, employers, and hospitals, impose new taxes on medical devices and cosmetic surgery, and levy a 40% tax on health-care plans above $8,500.  It will increase the deficit, drive up state government spending, and cost taxpayers at least twice as much as predicted.  It is one of the most expensive bills of all time.

It contains special-interest pork, such as payoffs for trial lawyers, and racial preferences that drew criticism from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The bill restricts national competition in health insurance, which is permitted in countries with cheaper health care.

ObamaCare spends money on frills like “cultural competency,” while cutting spending on crucial things like anesthesia.

“ObamaCare is all about rationing,” and tax increases, says one of Obama’s own economic advisers, Martin Feldstein.

Fact-checkers say Obama is lying about health care. Obama often contradicts himself. In the very same speech, Obama claimed that Medicare is “unsustainable” and “running out of money,” then contradicted himself by claiming that “Medicare is a government program that works really well,” making it a model for national health care.

CNN noted that Obama’s plan would take away “5 freedoms,” contradicting Obama’s claim that the bill will leave you free to choose your doctor and keep your health care plan without government interference.

The bill does nothing to curb massive waste and fraud in existing government health care systems like Medicare and Medicaid, even though it proposes to make massive cuts in Medicare (cuts so painful that most of them will never happen: year after year, Congress waives “the annual cut in fees paid by Medicare to physicians” mandated by an earlier law.  The cuts were added to the bill only to reduce its apparent cost.  As economist and former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin notes in The Wall Street Journal, the promised cuts to pay for ObamaCare will not happen: “Senate Democrats chose to ignore this reality and rely on the promise of a cut to make their bill add up. Taking note of this fact . . . destroys any pretense of budget balance.”)

Backers of ObamaCare have refused to cut medical costs through malpractice reform, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saying that such reforms would save “only” $54 billion.  The Pacific Research Institute estimates that just one type of cost that could be reduced through malpractice-lawsuit reform — defensive medicine — costs around $200 billion annually (which is almost as much as France spends annually on health care for all of its citizens; like most countries, France has no punitive damages, and fewer lawsuits against doctors).

One reform opposed by the Democrats — setting up specialized health tribunals to hear malpractice cases — would be particularly helpful. Replacing uninformed juries with specialized health courts would provide more consistent rulings from case to case, eliminate meritless cases, reduce defensive medicine, and more speedily compensate injured people who truly are victimized by doctors’ carelessness. Such tribunals already exist in countries like “Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and New Zealand.”

Martin Feldstein, one of Obama’s own advisors, has said that Obama’s health care plan would explode the federal budget deficit and lead to “crippling deficits,” as well as “higher taxes, debt payments, and interest rates” that would cut America’s standard of living. Feldstein also noted that Obama’s health care plan would harm people with insurance, and predicted that it would lead to massive tax increases. Other analysts have predicted that it will drive up medical costs and inflation.

Obama has relied on $2 trillion in imaginary savings to pay for healthcare “reform.”

Reid Health Care Bill Adds New Tax Increases, Costs Twice As Much As Promised

by Hans Bader on November 19, 2009 · 3 comments

in Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony

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 of branded drugs – begins in 2010 – $22 B tax increase
4. Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices – begins in 2010 – $19 B tax increase
5. Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices – begins in 2010 – $60 B tax increase
6. Cut in half (to $500K) the amount of an executive’s compensation that a health plan can deduct from its corporate income taxes – begins in 2013 . . .
7. Impose 5% excise tax on cosmetic surgery and similar procedures – begins for surgery in 2010 – $6 B tax increase!

The bill will cost far more than projected. The bill uses “accounting tricks” to keep the short-term costs down, by temporarily raising taxes before spending explodes. But in every year thereafter, it will increase the deficit, notes an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office. “In its true first decade (2014 to 2023), CBO projects the bill’s costs to be $1.8 trillion — double the price Reid is advertising.”

The Dean of Harvard Medical School, Jeffrey S. Flier, gave the health care bill a “failing grade” in an analysis published yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, saying that it would drive up costs and stifle medical innovation.

The health care “reform” bills “would reduce senior care,” increase “medical costs,”  and “jeopardize access to care for millions,” reported experts at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.    They will explode state and federal deficits, and contain payoffs for trial lawyers and racial preferences.

ObamaCare spends money on frills like “cultural competency,” while cutting spending on crucial things like anesthesia.

Fact-checkers say Obama is lying about health care.  In a speech, Obama claimed that Medicare is “unsustainable” and “running out of money,” then contradicted himself by claiming that “Medicare is a government program that works really well,” making it a model for national health care.

A CNN commentary noted that Obama’s plan would take away “5 freedoms,” such as the freedom to choose your doctors, keep your existing plan if you like it, and choose what’s in your plan.

Health-Care “Reform” Bills Increase Costs, Endanger Access for Millions, Federal Experts Say

by Hans Bader on November 15, 2009 · 1 comment

in Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation

The healthcare “reform” bill backed by Obama “would reduce senior care,” and “could jeopardize access to care for millions,” report healthcare experts at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The bill also “increases medical costs” through inflation, increasing health-care costs to 21.1 percent of GDP by 2019.

The House of Representatives recently passed the bill by a vote of 220 to 215.

According to the federal experts, the bill would likely either cost much more than projected, or result in some “hospitals and nursing homes” deciding to ”stop taking Medicare altogether,” notes the Washington Post.

The bill will increase taxes to “European levels of taxation,” while failing to provide European-style universal coverage.  It will vastly increase the costs of our health care system, rather than reducing it to European levels.   It reinforces foolish restrictions on national competition in health insurance, which do not exist in Europe.

Doctors afraid of being wrongly sued for malpractice despite providing good quality care order unnecessary tests (or defensive medicine), which wastes at least $200 billion annually. That’s nearly as much money as France spends on health-care for all its citizens.  The bill does nothing to reduce such costs, ignoring lessons from Europe.  (Many European countries have specialized health courts, rather than American-style jury trials, to cut lawyers’ bills, speedily compensate the injured, and prevent American-style baseless lawsuits against doctors.)

In European countries like France, doctors don’t need to be paid as much, because competing professions, like lawyers, are paid less.  European law is generally much more conservative than American law when it comes to lawsuits, including lawsuits against doctors.  Punitive damages are generally forbidden, and lawsuits are discouraged by making unsuccessful plaintiffs pay the other side’s legal bills.

The health-care bills backed by Obama also contain lots of waste and subsidies for politically-correct things like “cultural competency,” while cutting spending on crucial things like anesthesia.

Obama’s proposals contain provisions that he falsely claims will cut costs, but which actually exploded costs when tried by state governments.

LibertyWeek 68: Take from the Rich, Give to Yourself

by Richard Morrison on November 9, 2009

in CEI Projects, Features, Podcast, Zeitgeist

Your host Richard Morrison teams up with Jeremy Lott and Josh Barro to bring you Episode 68 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with Saturday night’s healthcare vote in the House, Freddie Mac’s losing bets and a gift card scandal in Charm City. We then move on to Andrew Cuomo’s attack on Intel in New York and Josh tells us why we can expect more tax hikes in the future.

Obama One Year Later — A Legacy of Lies and Broken Promises

by Hans Bader on November 3, 2009

in Agriculture, Economy, Energy, Environment, Ethanol, Global Warming, Healthcare, Insurance, International, Legal, Natural Resources, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere, Trade

It’s been a year since the president was elected, and he’s already piled up an impressive list of lies and broken promises.

The broken promises include his pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” his promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, and his promise not to sign bills without first giving the public five days of notice.

The Congressional Budget Office says that Obama’s proposed budgets will explode the national debt through massive spending increases, increasing the already large deficits left behind by the Bush administration from $4.4 trillion to $9.3 trillion. His record-setting budgets flagrantly violate his promise to propose a “net spending cut.”

Obama broke his campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year by signing into law a regressive excise tax increase to expand the SCHIP program, and by proposing a cap-and-trade energy tax that could charge up to $2 trillion, a massive cost that Obama himself has said will be passed “on to consumers,” as well as homeowners and motorists. (In 2008, Obama privately admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle that if he was elected, electricity bills would “skyrocket” under his administration, but it didn’t report that.)

He also broke his promise not to raise taxes by backing health-care bills that would impose a laundry list of new taxes on the middle class, including a tax on uninsured people.  Americans for Tax Reform earlier summarized the tax increases in ObamaCare: an individual mandate tax of $900 per individual or $3800 per family (if you don’t have health insurance); an employer mandate tax of $400 per employee if health coverage is not offered; an “excise tax on high-cost health plans”; a “medicine cabinet tax”; capping Flexible-Spending Accounts (FSA’s); abolishing most HSAs; and increasing tax penalties for HSAs.

The costly cap-and-trade energy bill supported by Obama would lead to big tax increases, administration officials privately have conceded, even though they publicly claim otherwise.  “Officials at the Treasury Department think cap-and-trade legislation would cost taxpayers hundreds of billion in taxes, according to internal documents circulated within the agency and provided to The Washington Times” by CEI.  It could raise household taxes by $1761 per year, equivalent to a 15 percent tax increase.   It would also result in “loss of steel, paper, aluminum, chemical, and cement manufacturing jobs.”  (Obama earlier admitted that “under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”)

Although cap-and-trade backers claim it will cut greenhouse gas emissions, it may perversely increase them and also result in dirtier air, as well as harming forests and water supplies.   It would enrich politically-connected corporations, and result in massive destruction of the world’s forests.   By expanding ethanol subsidies and mandates, it would cause enormous “damage to water supplies, soil health and air quality.” Ethanol subsidies have already resulted in forests being destroyed in the Third World, and by diverting cropland to fuel production away from food production, they have already caused famines that have killed countless people in the world’s poorest countries.

Over and over again, Obama has broken his campaign promise to give the public five days of notice before signing bills into law, including his very first law, the trial-lawyer backed Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Obama also repeatedly made false claims about the Supreme Court decision that the Ledbetter law overruled, misstating the facts of that case and how long it gives employees to sue over pay discrimination (the Court did NOT say that employees have to sue even before discovering discrimination).

Obama broke seven campaign promises dealing with transparency and clean government in signing the $800 billion stimulus package, much of whose contents were secret until shortly before Congress voted on it, and whose 1400 pages went unread by most Congressmen who voted on it.  (It repealed welfare reform and contained loads of welfare, pork, and waste, while wiping out jobs in the export sector.)

Obama’s broken promises are part of a larger pattern of dishonesty. Obama claimed his $800 billion stimulus package was needed to avert “irreversible decline.” But the Congressional Budget Office concluded before and after its passage that the stimulus package will actually cut the size of the economy in the long run. Obama’s budgets don’t add up, either, piling up $9.3 trillion in red ink, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a staggering $2.3 trillion more than Obama claimed.

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →