Martin Feldstein

Harvard’s Jeffrey Miron Explains Why the Stimulus Package Failed

by Hans Bader on October 31, 2010 · 12 comments

in Economy, Stimulus to Nowhere

Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron explains why the $800 billion stimulus package failed in a recent article.

What’s interesting about Dr. Miron’s critique is that he shows how the stimulus was a failure even if you take for granted liberal assumptions about economic policy (such as Keynesian economic theory), since it was so badly designed and executed that it failed to achieve its goals, spending wastefully while failing to revive the economy.  Indeed, the stimulus was so poorly tailored to the economy (and the goal of reducing unemployment) that Miron concludes that it was designed to reward politically connected “constituencies” and special-interest groups, like public-employee unions, rather than being focused on ”economic stimulus.”

Other Harvard economics professors like Robert Barro have also criticized the stimulus package. Barro called it “the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s.”  Former Obama economic advisor Martin Feldstein, a Harvard professor who is a big believer in stimulus packages in principle, said that the stimulus designed by Obama and congressional Democrats was “poorly done”

Much stimulus money has been wasted.  It has gone to prisoners and dead people, wasteful welfare spending, abandoned bridges to nowhere, and unnecessary government buildings.  The stimulus subsidized foreign green jobs and wiped out jobs in America’s export sector.

The “’stimulus’ is not the road to economic recovery. It’s the problem, not the solution, writes Nobel Prize winning economist Vernon L. Smith.” Other Nobel Laureates like Gary Becker have also criticized the stimulus package.  200 economists signed a statement publicly opposing the stimulus package in an ad published in the Washington Post and New York Times.

“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.”

Moderates Criticize Health Care Bill As It Advances in Senate; Experts Gave Bill A “Failing Grade”

by Hans Bader on November 23, 2009

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

On Saturday, the Senate voted 60-to-39, along party lines, to press towards passage of a massive health care bill, by blocking a Republican filibuster.  Senators ignored the fact that the bill received a failing grade from health care experts like the Dean of Harvard Medical School, since it will raise taxes, deficits, and medical costs, while reducing lifesaving medical innovations.

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 yesterday, 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 healthcare 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.”

Healthcare Bill Advances in Senate, Despite Receiving Failing Grade from Health Experts; Democrats Block Filibuster in Party-Line Vote

by Hans Bader on November 21, 2009

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

The healthcare bill is on the verge of passing the Senate, despite the fact that it has received a failing grade from healthcare experts like the Dean of Harvard Medical School, and the fact that it will increase taxes, deficits, and medical costs, while reducing lifesaving medical innovations.

In a 60-to-39 vote, Senators voted to quash a Republican filibuster, moving it closer to a final vote where it will need the votes of only 51 of the Senate’s 60 Democrats to pass it (60 votes are needed to stop a filibuster). The vote was along strict party lines: all 60 Democrats voted to advance the bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) lined up the 60 votes through payoffs to wavering Senators and left-wing 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 healthcare 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.   It is one of the most expensive bills of all time.  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, and cost taxpayers at least twice as much as predicted.

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 healthcare plan without government interference.

The bill does nothing to curb massive waste and fraud in existing government healthcare 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 healthcare 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 is relying on $2 trillion in imaginary savings to pay for his health care plan. He is also relying on tax increases, which breaks Obama’s campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle class.  Obama’s support for the bill, which will massively increase the deficit in the future, also breaks his promise not to sign a healthcare bill that adds even “one dime” to the deficit, now or in the future.

“ObamaCare’s Crippling Deficits”

by Hans Bader on September 9, 2009

in Healthcare, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere

Martin Feldstein, an economic advisor to Obama, criticized “ObamaCare’s Crippling Deficits” in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, noting that “the higher taxes, debt payments and interest rates needed to pay for health reform mean lower living standards.”

Obama probably chose Feldstein as an adviser because of Feldstein’s support for big stimulus packages during recessions. But selecting him was politically unwise, since Feldstein has a history of candidly criticizing Presidents for allowing deficit spending to continue after recessions end (as an economic adviser to President Reagan, he warned against Reagan’s budget deficits), and Obama’s proposed budgets would result in massive, unprecedented budget deficits long after the current recession is over — despite major tax increases. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obama’s plans would produce an eye-popping $9.3 trillion in deficits, double the baseline left by the Bush Administration.

Earlier, Feldstein warned that the cap-and-trade energy-rationing scheme backed by the “Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats” would “have a trivially small effect on global warming while imposing substantial costs on all American households. And to get political support in key states, the legislation would abandon the auctioning of permits in favor of giving permits to selected corporations.” He notes that “the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the resulting increases in consumer prices” from capping the amount of carbon dioxide energy users can emit “would raise the cost of living of a typical household by $1,600 a year,” a figure that “would rise significantly” from year to year.

Unlike Feldstein, who sees Obama’s stimulus package as poorly-designed but nonetheless providing a modest short-term boost to the economy, I think that the stimulus package destroyed jobs even in the short run. The Congressional Budget Office predicted that the stimulus package would shrink the economy “in the long run,” by burdening the economy with increased national debt, but increase the economy in the short run, i.e., by the next election. That’s why Congress and Obama passed it: short-run political gain.

ObamaCare is full of special-interest giveaways and constitutionally-dubious provisions like racial preferences and set-asides, which has led to ObamaCare being criticized by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

The Obama Administration is also full of left-wing ideologues who can’t be counted on to competently manage something as vast as a national health-care system. (Recently, Obama’s Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, resigned after revelations that he signed a petition alleging that George Bush may have been behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Jones was hired despite the fact that Obama was well aware that he had been a “self-avowed communist,” and had defended Al Qaeda and repeatedly engaged in race-baiting). And it has mismanaged things like the $60 billion in auto bailouts, which ripped off taxpayers and non-union retirees to enrich the UAW union, and the cash-for-clunkers program, which cost far more than predicted and ran out of money after just a few days.

Feldstein earlier called into question Obama’s claims about how ObamaCare will supposedly let you keep your health coverage while cutting costs. “ObamaCare is all about rationing,” says Feldstein. Feldstein also noted that Obama’s health-care plan would harm people with insurance, and massively raise taxes.

Feldstein, a Harvard professor, warns that “For the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, the Obama health plan is bad news. It means higher taxes, less health care and no protection if they lose their current insurance because of unemployment or early retirement.” Obama’s plan would “cost more than $1 trillion,” and raise the top federal “income-tax rate from 35 percent today to more than 45 percent,” he notes.

Fact-checkers say Obama is lying about health-care. CNN Money says that ObamaCare will take away 5 freedoms.

ObamaCare is likely to be a costly boondoggle like his stimulus package, which funds waste like a $15 million border-crossing facility for a deserted area on the Canadian border that only 3 people cross per day.

I’ve criticized Obama Administration officials like Van Jones because they are wacky, not because they are liberal. Elections have consequences, and President Obama, being duly elected President, is entitled to pick liberal nominees to carry out his policies. Some conservatives seem to have forgotten this, in attacking even well-qualified liberal nominees to head executive branch agencies, like Obama’s nomination of leading liberal law professor Cass Sunstein to head the OIRA and be the Administration’s “regulatory czar.” There is no point in defeating his nomination; any replacement for Sunstein will be just as liberal, just less competent. In that sense, it would be as pointless as the filibuster that blocked the appointment of Henry Foster to be Surgeon General under Bill Clinton.

Obama Health-Care Plan Will Harm People With Insurance, and Raise Taxes, Obama Adviser Says

by Hans Bader on July 28, 2009 · 14 comments

in Healthcare, Insurance, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere

Obama’s health-care plan is drawing criticism from one of his own advisers, Harvard University’s Martin Feldstein. In today’s Washington Post, Feldstein warns that “For the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, the Obama health plan is bad news. It means higher taxes, less health care and no protection if they lose their current insurance because of unemployment or early retirement.” Obama’s plan would “cost more than $1 trillion,” and raise the top federal “income-tax rate from 35 percent today to more than 45 percent,” he notes.

As CNN earlier noted, Obama’s plan would take away “5 freedoms,” including 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 well as his recent pledge that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to rush the health-care bill through Congress before most people can even figure out what’s in the bill. That’s how she pushed through Congress the $800 billion stimulus package, which contained hidden provisions that ended welfare reform, and which is now projected to cut the size of the economy “in the long run.” (The stimulus package was supposed to deliver a short-run “jolt” that would quickly lift the economy, but unemployment rose rapidly after its passage, and the package has actually destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector, as well as subsidizing welfare and waste.)

Obama’s planned tax-increases on some health-insurance plans, and abandonment of his campaign pledges about health-care, are part of a long line of broken promises by Obama, such as his pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” which he broke in a big way with proposed budgets that will explode the national debt through $9.3 trillion in massively increased deficit spending.

Obamacare would also apparently restrict resources for end-of-life care for the elderly, and mandate wasteful end-of-life counseling for the elderly (such as lecturing them about the right to hasten their own death by refusing nutrition).

Earlier, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office gave an honest but “devastating assessment” of the incredibly high cost of the health-care plans backed by Obama, which would cost well over a trillion dollars, to cover just a fraction of the uninsured.

Obama is angry about that truthful conclusion, as well as the CBO’s finding that his wasteful stimulus package will actually reduce the size of the economy “in the long run.” (Obama had claimed that only his stimulus package could save America from “disaster” and “irreversible decline“).

So Obama recently invited CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf, a Democratic appointee, to the White House to pressure him to reduce his cost estimates.

It is doubtful that Obamacare would live up to any of Obama’s claims. His other legislation hasn’t. His stimulus package has been a fiasco, as much of the public now realizes: just 25% say it has helped the economy.

Adviser Admits Obama’s Tax Increases May Kill Economic Recovery

by Hans Bader on May 14, 2009 · 2 comments

in Bailout Watch, Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, Energy, Environment, Features, Global Warming, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Stimulus to Nowhere

Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, who has advised Obama, warns that “the barrage of tax increases proposed in President Barack Obama’s budget could, if enacted by Congress, kill any chance of an early and sustained recovery.” He compares Obama’s tax increases to the ones that contributed to the Great Depression and the “Lost Decade” of economic stagnation and decay in Japan.

Feldstein, who serves on Obama’s economic advisory board, has also “warned of serious inflation and higher taxes down the road” as a result of Obama’s policies.

Feldstein singles out for criticism Obama’s proposed global-warming tax. “Mr. Obama’s biggest proposed tax increase is the cap-and-trade system of requiring businesses to buy carbon dioxide emission permits. . .CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf testified before the Senate Finance Committee on May 7 that the cap-and-trade price increases . . . would cost the average household roughly $1,600 a year, ranging from $700 in the lowest-income quintile to $2,200 in the highest-income quintile.”

That’s a highly regressive tax increase, since lowest-income earners don’t make a third of what highest-income earners make, but they would incur a third as much cost. It’s regressive in the same way as the 1932 excise tax increase by Herbert Hoover that deepened the misery of the Great Depression.

During the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover damaged the economy, and impoverished the American people, with costly, artificial attempts to stimulate the economy through increased government spending, financed by heavy taxes like the Revenue Act of 1932.

Obama earlier admitted that “under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” As Obama admitted, that cost would be directly passed “on to consumers” — just the way Herbert Hoover’s regressive excise taxes were in 1932. Although the tax’s supporters claim it will cut greenhouse gas emissions, it may perversely increase them and also result in dirtier air.

In reality, Obama’s proposed “cap-and-trade” tax is likely to raise $2 trillion over the next decade, far more than even Feldstein anticipates. That’s far more than the $646 billion the Administration earlier estimated — amounting to at least $3,100 per family per year. And that figure may be dwarfed by the amount of money siphoned from consumers to well-connected corporations that have learned how to game “cap-and-trade” schemes.

In the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover raised marginal tax rates to 63%, and went on a deficit spending binge. Similarly, Obama has proposed higher marginal tax rates, which will produce another $1.9 trillion in tax increases.

In spite of its massive size, Obama’s carbon tax won’t begin to pay for all his spending increases, such as a budget that will generate $4.8 trillion in increased deficits, Obama’s trillion-dollar toxic-asset program, and his $800 billion, economy-shrinking “stimulus” package, all of which contradict Obama’s campaign pledge of a “net spending cut.”

These tax increases are breaches of Obama’s campaign promise not to raise taxes on people making less than $250,000 a year, which he earlier broke by signing into law the regressive SCHIP excise tax increase.

It’s part of a long line of broken promises, such as Obama’s pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” which he discarded by offering mind-bogglingly large budgets that will explode the national debt through $9.3 trillion in massively increased deficit spending.