My Free Speech Political Quotations and Commentaries Directory and Log
---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Political/PoliticalQuotationsCommentaries.htm
The Economist: World in 2013 (Annual summary of world economics trends
from The Economist magazine) ---
http://www.economist.com/theworldin/2013
The USA's National Debt is Now Over $16 trillion and spinning out of control
---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Who are the major investors in slightly over $11 trillion of that USA National
Debt?
"Who Owns the U.S. Treasury Market?" by Barry Ritholtz,
Ritholtz, February 1, 2013 ---
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/02/
Note the pie charts.
The Great Pretender ---
http://www.youtube.com/embed/6Zy297Xgr8Q
The buck stops everywhere else except here.
Author unknown
"Obama's Budget Abdication Breaks 92 Year Tradition," by Mike Flynn,
Brietbart, March 12, 2013 ---
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/03/12/obamas-budget-abdication-breaks-92-year-tradition
Barack Obama certainly enjoys the trappings and
perks of the Office of President. The actual job of being President,
however, doesn't seem to interest him. His desire to avoid being tied to any
specifics of any proposal have caused him to do what no modern President has
done. He is the first President since 1921 to abdicate the task of drafting
a federal budget to Congress.
Congress established the modern budget process in
1921. Under the terms of the law, the President is required to submit a
budget for the federal government no later than the first Monday in
February. Obama has only met this statutory deadline once during his
Presidency, a record worse than any modern President. Obama has missed the
deadline 4 times. Prior to him, all the Presidents back to 1921 together
missed the deadline twice.
Pentagon officials recently advised the House Armed
Services Committee that the President's budget wouldn't be delivered until
April 8th, a 9 week delay that trumps any previous delay. Worse, though, the
long delay means that Congress will initiate its own debate on the budget,
without input from the Executive Branch.
On Tuesday, Rep. Paul Ryan unveiled the House GOP
budget proposal. On Wednesday, Senate Democrats will unveil their first
budget proposal in 4 years. By the time Obama gets around to submitted his
mandated proposal, Congress will have had almost a month to deliberate on
its proposals.
As we've seen throughout his tenure, Obama prefers
lofty rhetoric over the day-to-day give-and-take required to enact
legislation. He spoke in general, focus-tested, words about ObamaCare, the
stimulus, financial services regulation and a host of other issues, while
leaving the gritty, horse-trading work to Congress.
After Congress had finished, Obama appeared on the
scene, Zelig-like, to put his signature to its work. He probably scheduled
the bill-signings around tee times.
One of the central jobs of the Presidency is to
manage the Executive Branch. The Office is responsible for making sure
federal agencies can meet their mission with the resources available. Obama,
however, can't be bothered to report to Congress what resources he believes
the government needs to meet its mission.
We were told Obama would be an historic President.
I don't think his unprecedented abdication on the budget is what they had in
mind.
Even the
IPCC and British Meteorological Office now recognize
that average global temperatures haven’t budged in almost 17 years. No evidence
suggests that
sea level rise, storms, droughts or other weather and
climate events or trends display any statistically significant difference from
what Earth and mankind have experienced over the last 100-plus years.
Paul Driessen ---
Click Here
Sequestration will cost 170 million jobs
Maxine Waters, USA Congresswoman since 1990
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) named Waters to its
list of corrupt members of Congress in its 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2011 reports.
http://jhpolitics.com/2013/02/dem-congresswoman-sequestration-to-cost-170-million-jobs/
That's more than the entire 141 million workers in the United States. In Year
2000 there were 75,247,000 male workers and 65,616,000 workers. Hence
sequestration will wipe out the entire USA labor force plus nearly 30 million
non-existent workers.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/05/art2full.pdf
Rep. Walters meant to say an estimated 171,000 jobs which is a 0.0012 proportion
of the labor force. The actual number is unknown because on any day our
government leaders might agree to raise or lower that number by finally
demonstrating leadership and statesmanship at long last.
The 171,000 estimated lost jobs is less than 1.4% of the 12,298,303 currently
unemployed workers in the USA ---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Some estimate as high as 700,000 jobs might be lost, but nobody knows the true
answer because of confounding impacts of economic growth (the Dow hit an all
time high when sequester kicked in) and ways of saving jobs by cutting other fat
from the budget (like having Joe Biden take Amtrak from Washington DC to his
home in Delaware --- which is faster than his $100,000+ helicopter ride to catch
Air Force 2 for a short hop to Delaware.
From the CFO Morning Ledger on March 1, 2013
Barring a bipartisan political miracle, President
Obama today will sign an order directing government agencies to begin
implementing $85 billion in budget cuts. The cuts aren’t likely to spark a
fiscal crisis or government shutdown just yet,
the NYT notes, and
“the immediate impact on most Americans will be exactly nothing.”
Instead, the actual cash outlays will decline slowly —
by about $42 billion in the seven months through September, according to the
CBO. Furloughs of civilian workers will probably be the most noticeable
element– but they aren’t scheduled to start until early April. And any
subsequent hit to spending may not be clear for months,
the WSJ’s Sudeep Reddy writes.
The impact will also differ from region to region. Communities dependent on
defense money will be hit hard. Other regions could be left wondering what
the fuss is about as weeks or months pass without a noticeable effect on
economic activity.
Meanwhile, some
budget experts worry this battle could be damaging for another reason. By
focusing on a proportionally small level of spending, the sequester fight is
distracting attention from longer-term deficit issues that need to be
addressed, write
the Journal’s Damian Paletta and Janet Hook.
Even cuts that have some bipartisan support, like limiting the growth of
future Social Security benefits or ending farm subsidies, have been shelved
because of all the brinkmanship. “If they could get this fixed, the economy
is poised to take off,” says Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan.
Read
the latest updates on the sequester here. ---
http://on.wsj.com/ZOjppW
"Sequester: Not Even a Cut," by John Stossel, Townhall, March 6, 2013 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2013/03/06/john-stossel-n1526347?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
If you're reading this, you've survived the
"sequester" cuts!
That may surprise you, since President Obama
likened the sequester to taking a "meat cleaver" to government, causing FBI
agents to be furloughed, prosecutors to let criminals escape and medical
research to grind to a halt!
The media hyped it, too. The NBC Nightly News said,
"The sequester could cripple air travel, force firefighter layoffs -- even
kick preschoolers out of child care!"
The truth is that the terrifying sequester cuts
weren't even cuts. They were merely a small reduction in government's
planned increase in spending. A very small reduction.
After a decade, the federal government will simply
spend about $4.6 trillion a year instead of $4.5 trillion (in 2012 dollars).
And still members of Congress, Republicans
included, look for ways to delay the cuts, like spreading them out over 10
years instead of making any now. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., asked, "If we cannot
do this little bit ... how are we ever going to balance the budget?"
Actually, we don't even need to balance the budget.
If we just slowed the growth of government to 1 or 2 percent a year, we
could grow our way out of unsustainable debt.
Paul recommends freezing hiring of federal workers,
staying out of most foreign military conflicts and eliminating four
Cabinet-level departments: Housing, Education, Energy and Commerce. Why do
we even have a Commerce Department? Commerce just happens. The free market
provides housing and energy. Education is funded by states.
Those Cabinet departments don't exist just to help
you. The housing budget funds vouchers that give people an incentive not to
seek higher-paying jobs, plus advocacy groups and in a few cases even homes
for the bureaucrats themselves.
Federal education spending pleases education
bureaucrats and teachers unions but doesn't raise kids' test scores. Energy
subsidies go to "green" crony capitalists like those who ran Solyndra. The
Commerce Department awards taxpayer-funded trips to politically connected
CEOs to promote their companies overseas.
We could cut still more departments. I'd start with
the departments of Labor and Agriculture. Workers can labor and farmers can
farm without federal help.
Continued in article
Blue is Blue
From the TaxProf Blog on March 6, 2013
The Fiscal Times:
The Ten Worst States for U.S. Taxes:
-
New York
-
New Jersey
-
California
-
Vermont
-
Rhode Island
-
Minnesota
-
North Carolina
-
Wisconsin
-
Iowa
-
Maryland
The left of liberal governor of Vermont claims that his state's welfare
generosity motivates Vermonters not to seek employment (at least the kind that
does not pay cash under the table in the underground economy) ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Political/PoliticalQuotationsCommentaries.htm#VermontWelfare
Case Studies in Gaming the Income Tax Laws ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/TaxNoTax.htm
Question
With global warming, worse coastal storms, and rising oceans is repeated
rebuilding of flood zones a good idea?
The government is spending billions to repeatedly rebuild flood zones on our
eastern seaboard ---
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/coastal-rebuild.png
"Larger Spending Cuts Would Help the Economy: Countries that
stabilized their budgets have averaged $5-$6 of actual spending cuts per dollar
of tax hikes," by Michael J. Boskin, The Wall Street Journal, March
4, 2013 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323549204578315752295424028.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h
President Obama's most recent prescription for
economic growth—more government stimulus spending, new social programs,
higher taxes on upper-income earners, subsidies for some industries and
increased regulation for all of them—is likely to have the same anemic
results as in his first administration.
Recall: The $825 billion stimulus program did
little economic good at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars per job,
even based on the administration's own inflated job estimates. Cash for
Clunkers cost $3 billion merely to shift car sales forward a few months. The
PPIP (Public-Private Investment Program for Legacy Assets) to buy toxic
assets from the banks to speed lending generated just 3% of the $1 trillion
that the program planners anticipated.
And now? Mr. Obama proposes universal preschool
($25 billion per year), "Fix it First" repairs to roads and bridges, plus an
infrastructure bank ($50 billion), "Project Rebuild," refurbishing private
properties in cities ($15 billion), endless green-energy subsidies, and a
big hike in the minimum wage. The president and Senate Democrats also demand
that half the spending cuts under sequestration be replaced with higher
taxes.
These proposals are ill-considered. The evidence
sadly suggests the initial improvement in children's cognitive skills from
"Head Start" quickly evaporates. Higher minimum wages increase unemployment
among low-skilled workers. A dozen recent studies in peer-reviewed journals,
including one by the president's former chief economic adviser Christina
Romer, document the negative effects of higher taxes on the economy.
As for adventures in industrial policy, former
Obama economic adviser Larry Summers wrote a memo in 2009 about the
impending $527 million loan guarantee to Solyndra and other recipients of
government largess. "The government is a crappy v.c. [venture capitalist],"
he wrote, in what is also the best postmortem. In 2010, Harvard economist
Edward Glaeser concluded in the New York Times that infrastructure is poor
stimulus because "It is impossible to spend quickly and wisely." Federal
infrastructure spending should be dealt with in regular appropriations.
Will more spending today stimulate the economy?
Standard Keynesian models that claim a quick boost from higher government
spending show the effect quickly turns negative. So the spending needs to be
repeated over and over, like a drug, to keep this hypothetical positive
effect going. Japan tried that to little effect, starting in the 1990s. It
now has the highest debt-to-GDP ratio among the countries of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—and that debt is a
prime cause, as well as effect, of Japan's enduring stagnation.
The United States is heading in this wrong
direction. Even if the $110 billion in annual sequestration cuts are allowed
to take place, the Congressional Budget Office projects that annual federal
spending will increase by $2.4 trillion to $5.9 trillion in a decade. The
higher debt implied by this spending will eventually crowd out investment,
as holdings of government debt replace capital in private portfolios. Lower
tangible capital formation means lower real wages in the future.
Since World War II, OECD countries that stabilized
their budgets without recession averaged $5-$6 of actual spending cuts per
dollar of tax hikes. Examples include the Netherlands in the mid-1990s and
Sweden in the mid-2000s. In a paper last year for the Stanford Institute for
Economic Policy Research, Stanford's John Cogan and John Taylor, with Volker
Wieland and Maik Wolters of Frankfurt, Germany's Goethe University, show
that a reduction in federal spending over several years amounting to 3% of
GDP—bringing noninterest spending down to pre-financial-crisis levels—will
increase short-term GDP.
Why? Because expectations of lower future taxes and
debt, and therefore higher incomes, increase private spending. The U.S.
reduced spending as a share of GDP by 5% from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s.
Canada reduced its spending as share of GDP by 8% in the mid-'90s and 2000s.
In both cases, the reductions reinforced a period of strong growth.
An economically "balanced" deficit-reduction
program today would mean $5 of actual, not hypothetical, spending cuts per
dollar of tax hikes. The fiscal-cliff deal reached on Jan. 1 instead was
scored at $1 of spending cuts for every $40 of tax hikes.
Keynesian economists urge a delay on spending cuts
on the grounds that they will hurt the struggling economy. Yet at just
one-quarter of 1% of GDP this year, $43 billion of this year's sequester
cuts in an economy with a GDP of more than $16 trillion is unlikely to be a
major macroeconomic event.
Continued delay now leaves a long boom as the only
time to control spending. There was some success in doing this in the
mid-1990s under President Clinton and a Republican Congress. More commonly
the opposite occurs: A boom brings a surge in tax revenues and politicians
are anxious to spread the spending far and wide.
In any case, the demand by Mr. Obama and Senate
Democrats that any dollar of spending cuts in budget agreements this spring
(to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year and when the debt
limit again approaches) be matched by an additional dollar of tax hikes is
economically unbalanced in the extreme. Those who are attempting to
gradually slow the growth of federal spending while minimizing tax hikes
have sound economics on their side.
Mr. Boskin, a professor of economics at Stanford University and
senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, chaired the Council of Economic
Advisers under President George H.W. Bush. This op-ed is based on the
author's testimony last week before the U.S. Congress Joint Economic
Committee.
Wasted Stimulus Money on a Korean Company's Fake Chevy Volt Batter Factory
---
Click Here
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2013/03/11/obamas-keeps-it-real-fake-plant-for-fake-products-for-fake-cars-n1530489?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
. . .
“An investigation by the U.S. Department of
Energy's Office of Inspector General,” reports Mlive.com, “blasted the
federal government for negligent oversight and LG Chem for wasteful spending
of a $151 million stimulus project to build batteries for electric cars.
Despite spending a majority of the money, LG Chem has yet to produce a
battery.”
LG Chem’s defense seems to be: “Oh. You mean, we
were supposed to WORK for that money, not play video games?”
Wired Magazine says, “LG Chem officials submitted
those non-productive labor costs [that is, the costs for playing video
games, etc.] for reimbursement because they were ‘unfamiliar with the types
of costs that were allowable.’”
Even worse is the $528.7 million cash U.S. government "loan" given to Al
Gore to manufacture Fisker luxury electric cars in Finland ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisker_Automotive#Sales
In July 2012, Fisker shut down all production and
hired financial adviser Evercore Partners to find new partners and
investors, but in December 2012 Fisker claimed it was not for sale. With
government credit lines suspended and no income, company officials have
sought further government loans and subsidies, and continued to search for
investors, lenders, and buyers, and still hopes to find customers in China,
England, and continental Europe.By the end of 2012, the search for funding
continued, and Fisker had to cease development of the second model line
which was around 90% complete.
. . .
After drawing $193 million, the government froze
Fisker's credit line in May 2011 after it was determined that the company
had not met milestones set as conditions for the loan and hired Houlihan
Lokey to assist in monitoring Fisker's progress. The loan received
additional scrutiny for being awarded for the manufacture of luxury vehicles
that are too expensive for much of the general public. Fisker investor Ray
Lane responded that the issues were being blown out of proportion due to
election year politics.
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
"Mandated Wages and Discrimination," by Walter E. Williams,
Townhall, March 6, 2013 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2013/03/06/mandated-wages-and-discrimination-n1525477?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
Let's work through an example. Suppose 100 yards of
fence could be built using one of two techniques. You could hire three
low-skilled workers for $15 each, or you could hire one high-skilled worker
for $40. Either way, you get the same 100 yards of fence built. If you
sought maximum profits, which production technique would you employ? I'm
guessing that you'd hire one high-skilled worker and pay him $40 rather than
hire three low-skilled workers for $15 each. Your labor costs would be $40
rather than $45.
Suppose the high-skilled worker came into your
office and demanded $55 a day. What would be your response? You'd probably
tell him to go play in the traffic and hire the three low-skilled workers.
After all, hiring the three low-skilled workers for $45, to get the same 100
yards of fence, would be cheaper than the $55 a day now demanded by the
high-skilled worker.
The high-skilled worker is not stupid and knows
that's exactly what you'd do. He will do a bit of organizing first,
convincing decent, caring people that low-skilled workers are being
exploited and not earning a living wage and that Congress should enact a
minimum wage in the fencing industry of at least $20. After Congress enacts
a minimum wage of $20, what then happens to the chances of a high-skilled
worker's successfully demanding $55 a day? They go up because he's used the
coercive powers of Congress to price his competition out of the market.
Because of the minimum wage, it would cost you $60 to use the three
low-skilled workers.
The minimum wage not only discriminates against
low-skilled workers but also is one of the most effective tools of racists
everywhere. Our nation's first minimum wage came in the form of the
Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. During the legislative debate over the Davis-Bacon
Act, which sets minimum wages on federally financed or assisted construction
projects, racist intents were obvious. Rep. John Cochran, D-Mo., supported
the bill, saying he had "received numerous complaints in recent months about
Southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and
bringing the employees from the South." Rep. Miles Allgood, D-Ala.,
complained: "That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and
he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition
with white labor throughout the country." Rep. William Upshaw, D-Ga., spoke
of the "superabundance or large aggregation of Negro labor." American
Federation of Labor President William Green said, "Colored labor is being
sought to demoralize wage rates." The Davis-Bacon Act, still on the books
today, virtually eliminated blacks from federally financed construction
projects when it was passed.
During South Africa's apartheid era, the secretary
of its avowedly racist Building Workers' Union, Gert Beetge, said, "There is
no job reservation left in the building industry, and in the circumstances,
I support the rate for the job (minimum wage) as the second-best way of
protecting our white artisans." The South African Nursing Council condemned
low wages received by black nurses as unfair. Some nurses said they wouldn't
accept wage increases until the wages of black nurses were raised. The South
African Economic and Wage Commission of 1925 reported that "while definite
exclusion of the Natives from the more remunerative fields of employment by
law has not been urged upon us, the same result would follow a certain use
of the powers of the Wage Board under the Wage Act of 1925, or of other
wage-fixing legislation. The method would be to fix a minimum rate for an
occupation or craft so high that no Native would be likely to be employed."
Whether support for minimum wages is motivated by
good or by evil, its effect is to cut off the bottom rungs of the economic
ladder for the most disadvantaged worker and lower the cost of
discrimination.
"Republicans and Their Faulty Moral Arithmetic: Conservative values
and money issues are worth less than concern for the poor," by Arthur
Brooks, The Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2013 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324338604578326350052940798.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h
In the waning days of the 1992 presidential
campaign, President George H.W. Bush trailed Bill Clinton in the polls. The
conventional wisdom was that Mr. Bush seemed too aloof from voters
struggling economically. At a rally in New Hampshire, the exhausted
president started what was probably the fourth campaign speech of the day by
reading aloud what may have been handed to him as a stage direction:
"Message: I care."
How little things have changed for Republicans in
20 years. There is only one statistic needed to explain the outcome of the
2012 presidential election. An April YouGov.com poll—which mirrored every
other poll on the subject—found that only 33% of Americans said that Mitt
Romney "cares about people like me." Only 38% said he cared about the poor.
Conservatives rightly complain that this perception
was inflamed by President Obama's class-warfare campaign theme. But
perception is political reality, and over the decades many Americans have
become convinced that conservatives care only about the rich and powerful.
Perhaps it doesn't matter. If Republicans and
conservatives double down on the promotion of economic growth, job creation
and traditional values, Americans might turn away from softheaded concerns
about "caring." Right?
Wrong. As New York University social psychologist
Jonathan Haidt has shown in his research on 132,000 Americans, care for the
vulnerable is a universal moral concern in the U.S. In his best-selling 2012
book "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and
Religion," Mr. Haidt demonstrated that citizens across the political
spectrum place a great importance on taking care of those in need and
avoiding harm to the weak. By contrast, moral values such as sexual purity
and respect for authority—to which conservative politicians often give
greater emphasis—resonate deeply with only a minority of the population. Raw
money arguments, e.g., about the dire effects of the country's growing
entitlement spending, don't register morally at all.
Conservatives are fighting a losing battle of moral
arithmetic. They hand an argument with virtually 100% public support—care
for the vulnerable—to progressives, and focus instead on materialistic
concerns and minority moral viewpoints.
The irony is maddening. America's poor people have
been saddled with generations of disastrous progressive policy results, from
welfare-induced dependency to failing schools that continue to trap millions
of children.
Meanwhile, the record of free enterprise in
improving the lives of the poor both here and abroad is spectacular.
According to Columbia University economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin, the
percentage of people in the world living on a dollar a day or less—a
traditional poverty measure—has fallen by 80% since 1970. This is the
greatest antipoverty achievement in world history. That achievement is not
the result of philanthropy or foreign aid. It occurred because billions of
souls have been able to pull themselves out of poverty thanks to global free
trade, property rights, the rule of law and entrepreneurship.
The left talks a big game about helping the bottom
half, but its policies are gradually ruining the economy, which will have
catastrophic results once the safety net is no longer affordable.
Labyrinthine regulations, punitive taxation and wage distortions destroy the
ability to create private-sector jobs. Opportunities for Americans on the
bottom to better their station in life are being erased.
Some say the solution for conservatives is either
to redouble the attacks on big government per se, or give up and try to
build a better welfare state. Neither path is correct. Raging against
government debt and tax rates that most Americans don't pay gets
conservatives nowhere, and it will always be an exercise in futility to
compete with liberals on government spending and transfers.
Instead, the answer is to make improving the lives
of vulnerable people the primary focus of authentically conservative
policies. For example, the core problem with out-of-control entitlements is
not that they are costly—it is that the impending insolvency of Social
Security and Medicare imperils the social safety net for the neediest
citizens. Education innovation and school choice are not needed to fight
rapacious unions and bureaucrats—too often the most prominent focus of
conservative education concerns—but because poor children and their parents
deserve better schools.
Defending a healthy culture of family, community
and work does not mean imposing an alien "bourgeois" morality on others. It
is to recognize what people need to be happy and successful—and what is most
missing today in the lives of too many poor people.
By making the vulnerable a primary focus,
conservatives will be better able to confront some common blind spots.
Corporate cronyism should be decried as every bit as noxious as statism,
because it unfairly rewards the powerful and well-connected at the expense
of ordinary citizens. Entrepreneurship should not to be extolled as a path
to accumulating wealth but as a celebration of everyday men and women who
want to build their own lives, whether they start a business and make a lot
of money or not. And conservatives should instinctively welcome the
immigrants who want to earn their success in America.
With this moral touchstone, conservative leaders
will be able to stand before Americans who are struggling and feel
marginalized and say, "We will fight for you and your family, whether you
vote for us or not"—and truly mean it. In the end that approach will win.
But more important, it is the right thing to do.
Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute and
author of "The Road to Freedom" (Basic Books 2012).
"Arizona's Immigration Shift ," by Clint Bolick, The Wall Street
Journal, March 6, 2013 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323628804578348332211976010.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h
Nothing better exemplifies the rapidly changing
political terrain over immigration than Arizona's emerging role as a leader
for reform.
For the past decade, Arizona led the nation in
efforts to thwart illegal immigration, passing a ballot measure limiting
benefits to illegal immigrants in 2004, adopting employer sanctions in 2007
and enacting S.B. 1070 in 2010. Immigration eclipsed all other issues and
became a litmus test for Republican primary candidates. Sheriff Joe Arpaio
of Maricopa County and State Sen. Russell Pearce became national celebrities
for their hard-line stands.
Any Republican caught uttering the words
"comprehensive immigration reform" was branded a "pro-amnesty" traitor by
the party's rank and file. When Sen. John McCain was challenged from the
right in the 2010 primary after leading a failed immigration reform effort,
he retreated to a "secure the border first" position in which most Arizona
Republicans have sought refuge. Sen. Jeff Flake, elected last year, adopted
the same approach against a conservative primary challenger despite having
built a more moderate record during his years as a congressman.
Yet Mr. McCain and Mr. Flake now are among the
leading advocates of comprehensive immigration reform, constituting
one-quarter of the Senate's "Gang of Eight" that is trying to forge a
bipartisan reform consensus. Arizona's recent past would suggest that they
are courting political suicide. The fact that both senators are taking the
risk illustrates how suddenly and significantly the immigration debate has
changed in Arizona.
The shift began when Mr. Pearce, the author of S.B.
1070, was successfully recalled less than a year after he became state
Senate President in 2011. Mr. Pearce attributed his loss to the fact that he
faced a single challenger, a moderate Republican who was elected with
Democratic support. But when Mr. Pearce sought his old seat in 2012, he was
soundly defeated in the Republican primary by a fellow conservative whose
main difference with Mr. Pearce was over immigration.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Arpaio eked out a re-election
victory with 50.7 percent of the vote, despite dumping $7 million into the
county-wide campaign and outspending his little-known Democratic opponent by
more than 15 to 1.
Mr. Pearce's loss and Mr. Arpaio's close call made
it possible for Republicans to take a more moderate stand on immigration.
The growing strength of Hispanic voters made it imperative.
Between 2008 and 2012, fueled largely by hostile
immigration policies, Hispanic voter registration increased by 40 percent
and voter turnout by 23 percent. Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona came
within five points of defeating Mr. Flake for the Senate. Meanwhile,
Democrats won all three of the competitive congressional races, taking a 5-4
majority in the House delegation.
Leading Republicans, including conservative
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, are reaching across the aisle to
find common ground on immigration reform at the grassroots level. Meanwhile,
Arizona Republicans for the first time in many years elected a state party
chairman who did not campaign on a hard-line immigration platform.
Some remain strident on the issue. In a broadside
against the Gang of Eight approach, the House Republicans (Trent Franks,
Paul Gosar, David Schweikert, and Matt Salmon) wrote, "Only after first
securing our borders can we begin to contemplate discussions of additional
immigration reform."
But the view of an increasing number of Arizonan
Republicans is that the converse is true—comprehensive immigration reform is
necessary in order to reduce the incentive to cross the border illegally.
The fact that such an insight seems to be taking hold in Arizona, of all
places, should give rise to optimism that long-overdue national immigration
reform may well be within reach.
Mr. Bolick is litigation director at the Goldwater Institute and
co-author with Jeb Bush of "Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution."
Jensen Comment
Although unions and African Americans have not historically embraced
comprehensive immigration reform, they seem to be increasingly joining in the
current proposed legislation for such reforms that include increased efforts to
restrain illegal immigration. However, there is still some union resistance ---
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/02/05/union-representing-federal-agents-resists-immigration-reform/
Zimbabwe printing of cash leads to Zimbabwe-like inflation that now prints $1
billion dollar bills. It takes more than one of these bills to buy one chicken
egg.
Fed Buyback in "Quantitative Easing" = Zimbabwe-Style Printing of Dollars
to Pay Government Bills Without Taxing or Borrowing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_Easing
Bernanke declared he will continue printing trainloads of cash until the
unemployment rate falls below 6.5%. That might take forever plus one day as
manufacturing and service robot technology explodes across the USA.
This
policy really discourages saving in less risky investments like long-term bank
CDs now paying way less than one percent per year
This
policy is truly a tax on senior citizens who counted on living, at least in
part, on the interest income of their investments. Due to the Fed's Quantitative
Easing there is virtually no interest income on safe investments. Thus we have
really taxed the savings of senior citizens and forced them to burn up savings
capital in their retirement years.
Pension funds like TIAA will have to become less generous in providing
retirement annuities to college employees who are hesitant to take on more
fluctuating risk in annual retirement incomes that accompany stock market and
real estate alternatives having more financial risk.
From the CFO Morning Ledger on February 26, 2013
Ben Bernanke isn’t budging in his support for
continued bond buying. “Keeping long-term interest rates low has helped
spark a recovery in the housing market and has led to increased sales and
production of automobiles and other durable goods,” he said in his
semiannual report to Congress yesterday.
Mr. Bernanke faced some hostile questioning from the
Senate Banking Committee – particularly from Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.),
who told the Fed chief that his easy-money policies were sparking a global
currency war and creating “faux” stock-market wealth. He also accused Mr.
Bernanke of “throwing seniors under the bus” by pushing down interest rates
and reducing their returns on savings. Mr. Bernanke was pretty perturbed by
those comments,
the WSJ’s Jon Hilsenrath notes.
He shot back by pointing out that his record of keeping inflation low and
stable is better than that of any Fed chairman since World War II. Today,
Mr. Bernanke delivers the same remarks to the House Financial Services
Committee, where he’s likely to get raked over the coals by other critics.
As we noted yesterday, low rates have played a big
part in the pension woes companies are facing these days. But the low-rate
environment also offers opportunities for companies to borrow cheaply and
use the proceeds to make investments or return cash to shareholders.
Home Depot Chief
Financial Officer Carol Tomé — who also sits on the board of directors of
the Atlanta Fed –
told CFOJ’s Maxwell Murphy that her company may
borrow up to $4 billion to nearly double its expected 2013 share
repurchases. So long as the after-tax cost of any new debt is less than the
yield on Home Depot stock, a debt-fueled buyback is “just a good trade,” she
said.
Jensen Comment
Bernanke declared he will continue printing trainloads of cash until the
unemployment rate falls below 6.5%. That might take forever plus one day as
manufacturing and service robot technology explodes across the USA.
This
policy really discourages saving in less risky investments like bank CDs now
baying way less than one percent per year.
This
policy is truly a tax on senior citizens who counted on living, at least in
part, on the interest income of their investments. Due to the Fed's Quantitative
Easing there is virtually not interest income on investments. Thus we have
really taxed the savings of senior citizens and forced them to burn up their
capital in their retirement years.
Pension funds like TIAA will have to become less generous in providing
retirement annuities to college employees who are hesitant to take on more
fluctuating risk in annual retirement incomes that accompany stock market and
real estate alternatives having more financial risk. I was lucky enough to
acquire my TIAA lifetime annuities before these deals commenced to sower.
Zimbabwe printing of cash leads to Zimbabwe-like inflation that now prints $1
billion dollar bills. It takes more than one of these bills to buy one chicken
egg. I suspect I will only live long enough to see the price of one egg in the
U.S. soar to $100. I don't want to be young again.Advice from The
Washington Post's Barry Ritholz for Dealing With Quantitative Easing
(February 27, 2013) ---
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/02/qe-is-still-here-and-what-you-should-do/
Yesterday’s testimony by
Fed chair Ben Bernanke makes it clear that QE is here to stay for the
foreseeable future. Rather than tilt at windmills, you need to accept
this fact, and adjust accordingly.
Here are a few of the
things that you should be doing in response to zero interest rate
policy:
• Refinance
your home, locking in a 30 year fixed rate (if you can
afford a 15 year fixed, do that). This is a no brainer and the best
way to take advantage of zero rates for most families.
• Shorten
the duration of your bond holdings. Rates will go up
eventually, so those 10 year durations and longer should be 7 years
max.
•
Buy or Lease a new car. (Ben
wants you to) assuming you can afford to
• Evaluate your risk assets:
Since the March 2009 lows, stocks are up over 100%. If you
participated in most or all of this, congrats. If you completely
missed a move where equities doubled, you need to think about why.
Perhaps its time to
make suitable changes.
• Anticipate
and plan for the next correction: Monday’s 2% whackage
should have made you think about what the next 10-20% move down will
be like. What should your response be? What is it more likely to be?
Anticipating panic decision-making in advance helps you avoid the
worst of it.
•
Reduce/renegotiate any outstanding consumer debt. This is
the worst sort of debt, used to pay for depreciating baubles. IUf
you must, refinance it at lower rates.
• Are you a
trader or an investor? Make the appropriate palns for your
own timeline. Traders don’t hold losers after their prices drop;
Investors don’t flit in and out of markets.
Remember, review the
emergency procedures in the card (seatback in front of you) when you are
on the ground — not after an engine flames out at 30,000 feet.
"TBP Guide to Car Leasing & Buying," by Barry Ritholtz, Ritholtz
Blog, February 26, 2013 ---
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/02/guide-leasing-buying/
Jensen Caution
In the good old days when savings like CDs paid worthwhile interest rates, there
was a better argument for leasing so that you could put your savings to work
helping to make the lease payments. Thanks to the Fed's Quantitative Easing
program you now make virtually nothing on your safe investments like bank CDs..
Hence, there may be more incentive to buy a car rather than lease. However, in
the 21st Century, leasing deals have become much more attractive largely because
dealers can borrow money a next to nothing interest.
Hence, it pays to look at the above TBP Guide before making a lease versus
buy decision.
However, Bob Jensen is generally against buying or leasing a new car. Only
once in my life did I buy a new car, and that was because of the Cash for
Clunkers deal offered to me by the government. I think many people buy new cars
when gently used cars are a better personal financing deal. I only recommend new
cars for people who drive lots and lots or men who want to show off for the
women.
Quantitative Easing: Ben Bernanke Versus an Overwhelming Majority of
Economists
"Economists increasingly wary of Fed's stimulus policy," by Don Lee,
Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2013 ---
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-fed-policy-20130304,0,6248976.story
Even as top Federal Reserve officials continue to
defend their economic stimulus, a growing number of industry and academic
economists view the Fed's policy now as too aggressive -- with two-thirds of
those recently surveyed saying the central bank should terminate its
controversial bond-buying program this year.
The survey, of 196 members of the National Assn.
for Business Economics, found that a slim majority of them consider the
central bank's monetary policy as "about right." But 44% of them said the
Fed's policy was "too stimulative." That is up from just 26% who gave that
response in September.
The marked shift in attitude reflects the
increasing concerns inside the Fed as well, in the wake of the central
bank's decision in December to keep buying a total of $85 billion in
Treasury and mortgage-backed securities monthly in a bid to lower long-term
interest rates to boost spending and investment.
The survey was released Monday as the association
held its annual economic conference at which the Fed's vice chairman, Janet
Yellen, laid out a case for the central bank's expansive monetary policy.
Yellen, in an address to the group meeting in
Washington, D.C., said the policy was justified given the nation's
still-troubled labor market, with high unemployment and underemployment, and
the outlook for continued subdued inflation.
She said she did not see indications that the Fed's
massive bond purchases had impaired the operations of financial markets. Nor
was there "persuasive evidence" that the Fed's easy-money policies had led
to excessive risk-taking that was creating asset bubbles, she said, echoing
remarks that Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke made last week in congressional
testimony.
"At present, I view the balance of risks as still
calling for a highly accommodative monetary policy to support a stronger
recovery and more rapid growth in employment," Yellen, considered a leading
candidate to succeed Bernanke as chairman, said in her prepared remarks.
Many in the audience listening to her speech would
agree that the Fed's bond purchases have been effective in stimulating the
economy; in fact, about two-thirds of the association's members surveyed
said so. Still, a similar two-thirds wanted the Fed to end the bond
purchases some time in 2013, which would be earlier than what many investors
see as the termination date.
Fed policymakers have not said explicitly when they
would stop the asset purchases, which many economists also fear will spark
runaway inflation down the road. What the Fed committee has pledged is that
it will continue the bond buying until there has been a "substantial
improvement" in the outlook for the job market.
Volcker: Fed Shouldn’t Wait Too Long to Unwind Stimulus (read that stop
printing trillions of dollars to pay government's bills) ---
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/03/04/volcker-fed-shouldnt-wait-too-long-to-unwind-stimulus/
"Obama's Pelosi II Strategy The Washington Post reveals the real
second-term priority," The Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2013 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323494504578340562616234822.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h
.
Old Washington hands have been scratching their
heads about the start of President Obama's second term, with its aggressive
liberal priorities and attacks on Republicans. Whatever happened to
governing? Well, the answer arrived this weekend as the Washington Post
reported that Mr. Obama's real plan for the next two years is
returning
Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker in 2014.
"The goal is to flip the Republican-held House back
to Democratic control, allowing Obama to push forward with a progressive
agenda on gun control, immigration, climate change and the economy during
his final two years in office, according to congressional Democrats,
strategists and others familiar with Obama's thinking," reports the Post,
which is hardly hostile to the President.
The article says that shortly after finishing his
speech on Election Night last year, Mr. Obama called Mrs. Pelosi and
Steve Israel, who
runs the Democratic House re-election campaign, to discuss 2014. The
strategy fits Mr. Obama's unprecedented new effort to raise $50 million in
$500,000 chunks to fund Organizing for Action (OFA), which will spend
millions in GOP-held districts. Mr. Israel says he met in January with Jim
Messina, Mr. Obama's 2012 campaign manager who now runs OFA, to discuss the
2014 races.
White House press secretary Jay Carney pushed back
against the article on Monday, saying 2014 is "not a focus" for Mr. Obama.
But that looks like an attempt at damage control after the Post blew the
White House's cover. Mr. Obama has to appear to want bipartisan deals even
as he prepares the ground for blaming Republicans in 2014 when those efforts
fail.
This is already clear on the budget, as Mr. Obama
insists on a second tax increase that Republicans can't accept. We're also
increasingly worried about White House sabotage on immigration reform, as it
pushes the bill left on a guest-worker program and enforcement. Mr. Obama is
doing exactly what you'd expect if he doesn't want a deal and plans to use
the issue to drive minority turnout in 2014.
It's important to understand how extraordinary this
is. Presidents typically try to secure major bipartisan deals in their fifth
or sixth years, before their political capital ebbs. That's what Bill
Clinton and Ronald Reagan did, and George W. Bush tried on Social Security.
Mr. Obama seems to think he can use the next two years mainly to set up a
Pelosi House that would let him finish his last two years with a liberal
bang.
The next time you hear Mr. Obama, House Democrats
or one of their media acolytes talk about GOP "obstructionism," refer them
to the Washington Post article that shows what they really intend for the
current Congress. Bipartisan failure is their strategy.
"Politicians have fallen off the Civility Cliff and need to be
Sequestered: The Lost Art of Civility," by Accounting Professor Steven
Mintz, Ethics Sage, March 4, 2013 ---
http://www.ethicssage.com/2013/03/politicians-have-fallen-off-the-civility-cliff-and-need-to-be-sequestered-.html
"EU Chiefs Tell Italy There’s No Alternative
to Austerity," by James G. Neuger, Bloomberg, February 26, 2013 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-26/merkel-s-euro-doctrine-threatened-as-italians-reject-austerity.html
European Union leaders piled pressure on Italy’s
rival factions to form a unity government committed to budget rigor after a
deadlocked election stirred fears of an quagmire that would re-ignite the
euro debt crisis.
In a message that resonated in Rome, EU President
Herman Van Rompuy warned in Tallinn, Estonia, that backsliding on budget
discipline and economic reforms would shatter market confidence in the
17-nation currency union’s crisis management.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I don't know whether to file this under Italian humor or economics or the Mafia.
I think humor is a better file when it comes to Italians.
"Slavery used to teach Math in NYC
Schools: Slavery Examples Raise Insensitivity to new Highs (or lows),"
by Accounting Professor Steven Mintz, Ethics Sage, February 25, 2013 ---
http://www.ethicssage.com/2013/02/slavery-used-to-teach-math-in-nyc-schools.html
. . . but with the current allocation of corn to
ethanol and animal production, we end up with an estimated 3 million calories of
food per acre per year, mainly as dairy and meat products, enough to sustain
only three people per acre. That is lower than the average delivery of food
calories from farms in Bangladesh, Egypt and Vietnam
"It’s Time to Rethink America’s Corn System: Only a tiny fraction
of corn grown in the U.S. directly feeds the nation’s people, and most of that
is from unhealthy, high-fructose corn syrup," by Jonathan Foley, Scientific
American, March 5, 2013 ---
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=time-to-rethink-corn
Nothing dominates the American landscape like corn.
Sprawling across the Midwest and Great Plains, the
American Corn Belt is a massive thing. You can drive from central
Pennsylvania all the way to western Nebraska, a trip of nearly 1,500 miles,
and witness it in all its glory. No other American crop can match the sheer
size of corn.
So why do we, as a nation, grow so much corn?
The main reason is that corn is such a productive
and versatile crop, responding to investments in research, breeding and
promotion. It has incredibly high yields compared with most other U.S.
crops, and it grows nearly anywhere in the country, especially thriving in
the Midwest and Great Plains. Plus, it can be turned into a staggering array
of products. Corn can be used for food as corn flour, cornmeal, hominy,
grits or sweet corn. It can be used as animal feed to help fatten our hogs,
chickens and cattle. And it can be turned into ethanol, high-fructose corn
syrup or even bio-based plastics.
No wonder we grow so much of the stuff.
But it is important to distinguish corn the crop
from corn the system. As a crop, corn is highly productive, flexible and
successful. It has been a pillar of American agriculture for decades, and
there is no doubt that it will be a crucial part of American agriculture in
the future. However, many are beginning to question corn as a system: how it
dominates American agriculture compared with other farming systems; how in
America it is used primarily for ethanol, animal feed and high-fructose corn
syrup; how it consumes natural resources; and how it receives preferential
treatment from our government.
The current corn system is not a good thing for
America for four major reasons.
The American corn system is inefficient at feeding
people. Most people would agree that the primary goal of agriculture should
be feeding people. While other goals—especially producing income, creating
jobs and fostering rural development—are critically important too, the
ultimate success of any agricultural system should be measured in part by
how well it delivers food to a growing population. After all, feeding people
is why agriculture exists in the first place.
Although U.S. corn is a highly productive crop,
with typical yields between 140 and 160 bushels per acre, the resulting
delivery of food by the corn system is far lower. Today’s corn crop is
mainly used for biofuels (roughly 40 percent of U.S. corn is used for
ethanol) and as animal feed (roughly 36 percent of U.S. corn, plus
distillers grains left over from ethanol production, is fed to cattle, pigs
and chickens). Much of the rest is exported. Only a tiny fraction of the
national corn crop is directly used for food for Americans, much of that for
high-fructose corn syrup.
Yes, the corn fed to animals does produce valuable
food to people, mainly in the form of dairy and meat products, but only
after suffering major losses of calories and protein along the way. For
corn-fed animals, the efficiency of converting grain to meat and dairy
calories ranges from roughly 3 percent to 40 percent, depending on the
animal production system in question. What this all means is that little of
the corn crop actually ends up feeding American people. It’s just math. The
average Iowa cornfield has the potential to deliver more than 15 million
calories per acre each year (enough to sustain 14 people per acre, with a
3,000 calorie-per-day diet, if we ate all of the corn ourselves), but with
the current allocation of corn to ethanol and animal production, we end up
with an estimated 3 million calories of food per acre per year, mainly as
dairy and meat products, enough to sustain only three people per acre. That
is lower than the average delivery of food calories from farms in
Bangladesh, Egypt and Vietnam.
Only a tiny fraction of corn grown in the U.S.
directly feeds the nation’s people, and most of that is from unhealthy,
high-fructose corn syrup
In short, the corn crop is highly productive, but
the corn system is aligned to feed cars and animals instead of feeding
people.
There are a number of ways to improve the delivery
of food from the nation’s corn system. First and foremost, shifting corn
away from biofuels would generate more food for the world, lower demand for
grain, lessen commodity price pressures, and reduce the burden on consumers
around the world. Furthermore, eating less corn-fed meat, or shifting corn
toward more efficient dairy, poultry, pork and grass-fed beef systems, would
allow us to get more food from each bushel of corn. And diversifying the
Corn Belt into a wider mix of agricultural systems, including other crops
and grass-fed animal operations, could produce substantially more food—and a
more diverse and nutritious diet— than the current system.
The corn system uses a large amount of natural
resources. Even though it does not deliver as much food as comparable
systems around the globe, the American corn system continues to use a large
proportion of our country’s natural resources.
In the U.S., corn uses more land than any other
crop, spanning some 97 million acres— an area roughly the size of
California. U.S. corn also consumes a large amount of our freshwater
resources, including an estimated 5.6 cubic miles per year of irrigation
water withdrawn from America’s rivers and aquifers. And fertilizer use for
corn is massive: over 5.6 million tons of nitrogen is applied to corn each
year through chemical fertilizers, along with nearly a million tons of
nitrogen from manure. Much of this fertilizer, along with large amounts of
soil, washes into the nation’s lakes, rivers and coastal oceans, polluting
waters and damaging ecosystems along the way. The dead zone in the Gulf of
Mexico is the largest, and most iconic, example of this.
And the resources devoted to growing corn are
increasing dramatically. Between 2006 and 2011, the amount of cropland
devoted to growing corn in America increased by more than 13 million acres,
mainly in response to rising corn prices and the increasing demand for
ethanol. Most of these new corn acres came from farms, including those that
were growing wheat (which lost 2.9 million acres), oats (1.7 million acres
lost), sorghum (1 million acres lost), barley, alfalfa, sunflower and other
crops. That leaves us with a less diverse American agricultural landscape,
with even more land devoted to corn monocultures. And according to a recent
study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
roughly 1.3 million acres of grassland and prairie were converted to corn
and other uses in the western Corn Belt between 2006 and 2011, presenting a
threat to the waterways, wetlands and species that reside there.
Looking at these land, water, fertilizer and soil
costs together, you could argue that the corn system uses more natural
resources than any other agricultural system in America, while providing
only modest benefits in food. It’s a dubious trade-off—depleting natural
resources to deliver relatively little food and nutrition to the world. But
it doesn’t need to be that way. Innovative farmers are exploring other
methods for growing corn, including better conventional, organic, biotech
and conservation farming methods that can dramatically reduce chemical
inputs, water use, soil losses and impacts on wildlife. We should encourage
American farmers to continue these improvements.
The corn system is highly vulnerable to shocks.
Although a large monoculture dominating much of the country with a single
cropping system might be an efficient and profitable way to grow corn at an
industrial scale, there is a price to being so big, with so little
diversity. Given enough time, most massive monocultures fail, often
spectacularly. And with today’s high demand and low grain stocks, corn
prices are very volatile, driving spikes in the price of commodities around
the world. Under these conditions, a single disaster, disease, pest or
economic downturn could cause a major disturbance in the corn system.
Continued in article
Stereotyped as "naughty," boys quickly learn that
they are thought of as dumber and more trouble than girls. And that has
consequences.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, USA Today,
February 23, 2013 ---
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/02/25/title-ix-for-our-boys-column/1942991/
February 27, 2013 blog posting by University of Wisconsin Law Professor Ann
Althouse ---
http://althouse.blogspot.com/
"... there would be a national outcry and Title IX-style gender equity
legislation would be touted."
We expect males to solve their own problems.
There's no tradition of helping and help-seeking as there is with
females. Ironically, that tradition of helping females is patronizing
and paternalistic. Whether it's good for government to serve female
interests like that or not, it's hard to transfer that nurturing
attention onto boys. Is portraying boys as victims good for boys? It's
especially problematic if you are going to disparage the female
teachers:
It seems that teachers -- overwhelmingly
female -- just might be prejudiced against boys and it's hurting
their grades.
Might be...
By the way, the egregious example of prejudice against boys that
I've seen came from a male teacher. It was exactly the kind of
stereotyping of boyish behavior that the author of the linked article —
Instapundit — is talking about.
Make no mistake: I think there is a problem with boys in school. But
what is the solution?
Here's a hypothetical I made up for discussing the problem in my law
school constitutional law class. In a place I call Gendertopia, where
policy is based scientific research indicating that there are male and
female gendered learning styles, there's a plan for 2 high schools, both
of which will receive equal resources. The male-style school will have
labs, contests, aggressive sports, and strict discipline from the
teachers. Music class is all about using
Apple Logic Pro
9. The female model school has group projects
and mutual tutoring, positive reinforcement and self-esteem, yoga and
dance classes, and — for music — a strings program. Violins, violas, and
cellos are distributed.
Do you like my solution? (Don't assume all the
boys go to one school and all the girls go to the other school.)
Jensen Comment
According to a recent blog by Paul Carone. Ann Alhouse has the most visited blog
of all law professors who have blogs. Whether coming from the right or coming
from the left, Ann always calls it strongly as she feels.
"Woodward-Sperling Flap May Turn Tide," by Deborah J. Saunders,
Townhall, March 3, 2013 ---
Click Here
http://townhall.com/columnists/debrajsaunders/2013/03/03/woodwardsperling-flap-may-turn-tide-n1523955?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
There is a rule in Politics 2013 that's evident in
the flap about a White House aide's maybe threatening or not threatening
Washington Post veteran reporter Bob Woodward. The rule: The more
superficial the brouhaha the bigger its impact.
What public figures say is more important than what
they do, because cable TV and political blogs can cover a mud fight more
cheaply and more easily than they can a real story.
Quick synopsis: Woodward has reported doggedly on
the White House's role in putting "sequester" cuts -- $85 billion this year
-- in the 2011 Budget Control Act. Last week, as Woodward was writing that
President Barack Obama was moving the goal post in negotiations on those
cuts, a White House aide yelled at him on the phone for a half-hour,
Woodward says. Economic adviser Gene Sperling later sent him an email to
apologize for raising his voice. Sperling also wrote, "I think you will
regret staking out that claim."
The White House says no threat was intended. I
believe that. I also see why Woodward might perceive the exchanges as a
threat -- not to harm him physically but to deny him access. Without access,
Woodward cannot write best-selling books.
Why am I writing about what Ron Fournier, National
Journal editor-in-chief, described as "a silly distraction to a major
problem" -- Washington's failure to lead under a budget deadline? Because
this could be a turning point -- the moment when the White House press corps
starts pushing back.
As Fournier wrote, the Woodward flap is indicative
of the "increasingly toxic relationship between media and government."
Things have gotten so ugly that in the midst of the Woodward flap, Fournier
put an anonymous White House source on notice that if he continued to send
him emails filled with "vulgarity, abusive language" and you'll-regret-it
talk, Fournier would feel free to print said missives with attribution.
It would be nice if a more substantive dispute than
the White House's treatment of Woodward sparked this mild rebellion. Think
Benghazi. Yet there is a substantive dispute behind the fluffy fight.
As Politico reported, the White House "has, with
great success, fudged the facts. The administration has convinced a majority
of the country that Republicans are more to blame by emphasizing that
Republicans voted for the plan. Which they did -- after Obama conceived it."
In an October presidential debate, Obama claimed
that "the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something
that Congress has proposed. It will not happen." PolitiFact rated that claim
"mostly false." Obamaland's misinformation cookie is crumbling.
Continued in article
"Jury convicts former Detroit mayor Kilpatrick on corruption charges,"
Fox News, March 11, 2013 ---
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/03/11/jury-convicts-former-detroit-mayor-kilpatrick-on-corruption-charges/?test=latestnews
Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was convicted
Monday of corruption charges, ensuring a return to prison for a man once
among the nation's youngest big-city leaders.
Jurors convicted Kilpatrick of a raft of crimes,
including a racketeering conspiracy charge. He was portrayed during a
five-month trial as an unscrupulous politician who took bribes, rigged
contracts and lived far beyond his means while in office until fall 2008.
Prosecutors said Kilpatrick ran a "private profit
machine" out of Detroit's City Hall. The government presented evidence to
show he got a share of the spoils after ensuring that Bobby Ferguson's
excavating company was awarded millions in work from the water department.
Business owners said they were forced to hire
Ferguson as a subcontractor or risk losing city contracts. Separately,
fundraiser Emma Bell said she gave Kilpatrick more than $200,000 as his
personal cut of political donations, pulling cash from her bra during
private meetings. A high-ranking aide, Derrick Miller, told jurors that he
often was the middle man, passing bribes from others.
Internal Revenue Service agents said Kilpatrick
spent $840,000 beyond his mayoral salary.
Ferguson, Kilpatrick's pal, was also convicted of a
racketeering conspiracy charge. The jury could not reach a verdict on the
same charge for Kilpatrick's father, Bernard Kilpatrick, but convicted him
of submitting a false tax return.
Kwame Kilpatrick, who now lives near Dallas,
declined to testify. He has long denied any wrongdoing, and defense attorney
James Thomas told jurors that his client often was showered with cash gifts
from city workers and political supporters during holidays and birthdays.
The government said Kilpatrick abused the Civic
Fund, a nonprofit fund he created to help distressed Detroit residents.
There was evidence that it was used for yoga lessons, camps for his kids,
golf clubs and travel.
Kilpatrick, 42, was elected in 2001 at age 31. He
resigned in 2008 and pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in a different
scandal involving sexually explicit text messages and an extramarital affair
with his chief of staff.
The Democrat spent 14 months in prison for
violating probation in that case after a judge said he failed to report
assets that could be put toward his $1 million restitution to Detroit.
Voters booted his mother, Carolyn Cheeks
Kilpatrick, from Congress in 2010, partly because of a negative perception
of her due to her son's troubles.
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
March 4, 2013 message from Roger Collins
Rivetting - and chilling - account of a care
control system
breakdown.Its in the UK but could easily happen here. I sent this to a
colleague in our School of Nursing yesterday - this evening she's
suggested that we run a joint Nursing/School of Business seminar on the
report.
http://www.midstaffspublicinquiry.com/report
http://www.midstaffspublicinquiry.com/sites/default/files/report/Volume%201.pdf
http://www.midstaffspublicinquiry.com/sites/default/files/report/Volume%202.pdf
http://www.midstaffspublicinquiry.com/sites/default/files/report/Volume%203.pdf
Note - I found the .pdf files to be troublesome to
save; you may have
to specify that the file should be opened with Adobe Reader and then
save - but they repay the effort.
Two quotes from the Chairman of the Public Inquiry, which began in 2010
and cost around $20 million
"This is a story of appalling and unnecessary suffering of hundreds of
people. They were failed by a system which ignored the warning signs
and put
corporate self interest and cost control ahead of patients and their
safety. I have today made 290 recommendations designed to change this
culture and
make sure that patients come first.
……
There was a lack of care, compassion, humanity and leadership. The
most basic standards of care were not observed, and fundamental rights
to dignity were not respected. Elderly and vulnerable patients were left
unwashed, unfed and without fluids. They were deprived of dignity and
respect. Some patients had to relieve themselves in their beds when they
offered no help to get to the bathroom. Some were left in excrement
stained sheets and beds. They had to endure filthy conditions in their
wards. There were incidents of callous treatment by ward staff. Patients
who could not eat or drink without help did not receive it. Medicines
were prescribed but not given. The accident and emergency department as
well as some wards had insufficient staff to deliver safe and effective
care. Patients were discharged without proper regard for their welfare.
"
Roger
Roger Collins
Associate Professor
OM1275
TRU School of Business & Economics
Non-profit hospital ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-profit_hospital
About 62% of the hospitals related medical care facilities are deemed to be
non-profit. The rest include government hospitals (20 percent) and for-profit
hospitals (18 percent.
Last night (March 4, 2013) on MSNBC Stephen Brill explained how
non-profit hospitals are becoming criminal rackets
Watch Stephen Brill being interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show
---
http://medcitynews.com/2013/02/wow-of-the-week-big-money-nonprofit-hospitals-get-roasted-in-steven-brills-sobering-time-piece/
On MSNBC Brill pointed out that Obamacare will exacerbate the problem largely
because of the concessions it made to the medical and pharmaceutical lobbies
throwing out money by the millions in Washington DC in order to take control of
the Affordable Care Act..
The so-called non-profit hospitals pay no taxes, including not paying local
property taxes that would be borne by for-profit hospitals. The fact that they
are called "non-profit" sounds terrific to the voting public and even patients.
They were and still are efficient when the non-profit organizations such as
churches that run them are committed more to care than executive salaries and
other rackets. The problem is that the churches and other legitimate charities
that own hospitals have been selling them to less-legitimate non-profit
organizations and in some cases even local communities who are not as
vigilant about such things as executive compensation of hospital administrators
and doctors who run these hospitals.
The racket typically begins with the aging of an order of nuns who own and
manage a non-profit hospital. Unlike Catholic priests who are taken care of by
the Church when they retire, Catholic nuns must fen for themselves. In some
cases the only thing of value to care for them in retirement is their hospital.
Sometimes they sell the hospital for other uses like an order of nuns sold its
hospital to Arthur Andersen accounting firm years ago to turn the buildings and
grounds into a training center for accountants in St. Charles, Illinois.
In other cases, however, dubious "organizations" are buying up the hospitals
to operate more unethically than most any for-profit organization you can think
of short of being the Mafia (in same cases it may even be the Mafia). It reminds
me of the city of Bell in California where the city council simply granted
themselves and the city's city manager and police chief hundreds of thousands in
salaries while being accountable to nobody but themselves ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell,_California#2010_City_Official_Corruption_Scandal
"Wow of the Week: Big-money nonprofit hospitals get roasted in Brill’s
TIME piece," by Deanna Pogorelc, MedCityNews, February 23, 2013 ---
http://medcitynews.com/2013/02/wow-of-the-week-big-money-nonprofit-hospitals-get-roasted-in-steven-brills-sobering-time-piece/
Initially, it might seem that Steven Brill’s
expose’ in the March 4 issue of TIME is dredging up some of same issues
we’re used to hearing about healthcare – that the U.S. spends more than any
other nation but doesn’t deliver better outcomes, and that patients have no
idea what they’re buying or how much it’s going to cost them.
But read beyond the headline and the first few
paragraphs and you’ll find a real gem in Brill’s overarching theme that even
today’s connected and engaged patients are still relatively powerless in the
framework of care that the healthcare industry has built. Technological
advancements are making healthcare more expensive, he argues, and the
industry has riled people up so much about who is and who should be footing
the bill for medical care that it’s distracted people away from the real
question we should be asking — Why are the bills so high?
Brill, a writer and the founder of CourtTV and
American Lawyer magazine, undertook a seven-month investigation in
which he went line-by-line through the medical bills of eight patients who
had received various kinds of care, from cancer treatment to a visit to the
emergency department, some with and some without insurance.
In the bills that patients received, Brill found
that they were being charged ludicrous amounts for things that cost
hospitals dollars and cents, like gauze pads, blankets used during surgery,
and generic household drugs. Whereas Medicare would only reimburse MD
Anderson Cancer Center around $20 for a chest X-ray, for example, the
hospital billed an under-insured patient $283.
And apparently, there’s no standard process behind
markups on hospital services. Brill points to the
chargemaster as the
culprit. It’s an internal list hospitals keep of the thousands of items they
charge for, but after he asked several different hospitals’ administrators
how they determined the prices on that list, he determined that “there seems
to be no process, no rationale, behind the core document that is the basis
for hundreds of billions of dollars in health care bills.”
The hospital’s hard-nosed approach pays off.
Although it is officially a nonprofit unit of the University of Texas,
MD Anderson has revenue that exceeds the cost of the world-class care it
provides by so much that its operating profit for the fiscal year 2010,
the most recent annual report it filed with the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, was $531million.
The profit margins of these huge nonprofit hospitals is feeding the
problem by enabling them to gobble up physician practices and smaller
hospitals in their areas, leaving patients with fewer choices and insurers
with less power to negotiate prices. Not to mention the six- and
seven-figure salaries top hospital executives are being paid.
Obamacare, he says, won’t fix these problems. Rather, Brill suggests
lowering the age for Medicare eligibility.
As currently constituted, Obamacare is going to
require people like Janice S. to get private insurance coverage and will
subsidize those who can’t afford it. But the cost of that private
insurance – and therefore those subsidies – will be much higher than if
the same people were enrolled in Medicare at an earlier age. That’s
because Medicare buys health care services at much lower rates than any
insurance company. Thus the best way both to lower the deficit and to
help save money for people like Janice S. would seem to be to bring her
and other near seniors into the Medicare system before they reach 65.
They could be required to pay premiums based on their incomes, with the
poor paying low premiums and the better off paying what they might have
paid a private insurer. Those who can afford it might also be required
to pay a higher proportion of their bills – say, 25% or 30% – rather
than the 20% they’re now required to pay for outpatient bills.
Meanwhile, adding younger people like Janice S.
would lower the overall cost per beneficiary to Medicare and help cut
its deficit still more, because younger members are likelier to be
healthier.
He makes mention of a single-payer system but focuses his proposed
solution instead on tightening anti-trust laws for hospitals, taxing the
profits of so-called nonprofit hospitals, outlawing the chargemaster and
pushing for tort reform, so that doctors don’t have to “order a CT scan
whenever someone in the emergency room says the word head,” as one hospital
administrator put it.
The Health Care Market is Not a Market --- It's Becoming More of a Fraud
"Video: Inside ‘Bitter Pill’: Steven Brill Discusses His TIME Cover
Story," Time Magazine, February 22, 2013 ---
http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-inside-times-cover-story-on-medical-bills/
Simple lab work done during a few days in the
hospital can cost more than a car. A trip to the emergency room for chest
pains that turn out to be indigestion brings a bill that can exceed the
price of a semester at college. When we debate
health care
policy in America, we seem to jump right to the issue
of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first question:
Why exactly are the bills so high?
Steven Brill spent seven months analyzing hundreds
of bill from
hospitals,
doctors, and drug companies and medical equipment
manufacturers to find out who is setting such high prices and pocketing the
biggest profits. What he discovered, outlined in detail in the
cover story of the new issue of TIME, will
radically change the way you think about our medical institutions:
· Hospitals arbitrarily set prices based on a
mysterious internal list known as the “chargemaster.” These prices vary from
hospital to hospital and are often ten times the actual cost of an item.
Insurance companies and Medicare pay discounted prices, but don’t have
enough leverage to bring fees down anywhere close to actual costs. While
other countries restrain drug prices, in the United States federal law
actually restricts the single biggest buyer—Medicare—from even trying to
negotiate the price of drugs.
· Tax-exempt “nonprofit” hospitals are the most
profitable businesses and largest employers in their regions, often presided
over by the most richly compensated executives.
· Cancer
treatment—at some of the most renowned centers such as
Sloan-Kettering and M.D. Anderson—has some of the industry’s highest profit
margins. Cancer drugs in particular are hugely profitable. For example,
Sloan-Kettering charges $4615 for a immune-deficiency drug named Flebogamma.
Medicare cuts Sloan-Kettering’s charge to $2123, still way above what the
hospital paid for it, an estimated $1400.
· Patients can hire medical billing advocates who
help people read their bills and try to reduce them. “The hospitals all know
the bills are fiction, or at least only a place to start the discussion, so
you bargain with them,” says Katalin Goencz, a former appeals coordinator in
a hospital billing department who now works as an advocate in Stamford, CT.
Brill concludes:
The health care market is not
a market at all.
It’s a crapshoot. Everyone fares differently based on circumstances they
can neither control nor predict. They may have no insurance. They may
have insurance, but their employer chooses their insurance plan and it
may have a payout limit or not cover a drug or treatment they need. They
may or may not be old enough to be on Medicare or, given the different
standards of the 50 states, be poor enough to be on Medicaid. If they’re
not protected by Medicare or protected only partially by private
insurance with high co-pays, they have little visibility into pricing,
let alone control of it. They have little choice of hospitals or the
services they are billed for, even if they somehow knew the prices
before they got billed for the services. They have no idea what their
bills mean, and those who maintain the chargemasters couldn’t explain
them if they wanted to. How much of the bills they end up paying may
depend on the generosity of the hospital or on whether they happen to
get the help of a billing advocate. They have no choice of the drugs
that they have to buy or the lab tests or CT scans that they have to
get, and they would not know what to do if they did have a choice. They
are powerless buyers in a sellers’ market where the only consistent fact
is the profit of the sellers.
"Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us," Time
Magazine Cover Story, March 4, 2013, pp. 16-65 (a very long article)
---
http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/
"Yes, Hospital Pricing Is Insane, But Why? Time magazine issues a
24,000-word memo on what we already knew," by Holman Jenkins Jr., The
Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2013 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323978104578334082993009730.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h
Without diminishing the epic scope of Steven
Brill's Time magazine piece about the U.S. health care system, he reiterates
in lengthy detail perversities that are already well known, without offering
a single useful insight on how it go that way, and even less on how to fix
it.
Yet Mr. Brill, founder of CourtTV and American
Lawyer magazine, author of books on terrorism and education, has written the
longest piece in Time's history—24,000 words—so attention must be paid.
That health-care costs are inflated compared to
what they would be in a reasonably transparent, competitive market (a point
Mr. Brill never clearly makes) won't be a revelation. That hospitals
allocate their costs to various items on their bills and price lists in ways
that are opaque and arbitrary is not a new discovery either.
He finds it shocking that a hospital charging
$1,791 a night won't throw in the generic Tylenol for free (instead charging
$1.50 each). But this is to commit the reification fallacy of thinking there
is some organic relationship between what a hospital charges for a
particular item and what that item costs in the first place.
He dwells on the irrationality of hospitals
charging their highest prices to their poorest customers, those without
insurance. But he's also aware that these customers often pay little or
nothing of what they are charged and hospitals reallocate the cost to the
bills of other patients. He even notes that a hospital might collect as
little as 18% of what it bills.
He vaguely gets that hospital price lists are memos
for the file, to be drawn out and waved as a reference in negotiations with
their real customers, the big health-care insurers, Medicaid, Medicare and
other large payers.
The deals hammered out with these customers tend
naturally to gravitate toward round numbers, leaving a hospital free to
allocate its costs and profits to specific items however it wants. Mr. Brill
may be offended that certain "non-profit" hospitals appear to be highly
profitable. He probably wouldn't be happier, though, if they diverted their
surplus revenues into even higher salaries and more gleamingly superfluous
facilities.
"What is so different about the medical ecosystem
that causes technology advances to drive bills up instead of down?" Mr.
Brill asks. But his question is rhetorical since he doesn't exhibit much
urge to understand why the system behaves as it does, treating its nature as
a given.
In fact, what he describes—big institutions
dictating care and assigning prices in ways that make no sense to an
outsider—is exactly what you get in a system that insulates consumers from
the cost of their health care.
Your time might be better spent reading Duke
University's Clark Havighurst in a brilliant 2002 article that describes the
regulatory, legal and tax subsidies that deprive consumers of both the
incentive and opportunity to demand value from medical providers. Americans
end up with a "Hobson's choice: either coverage for 'Cadillac' care or no
health coverage at all."
"The market failure most responsible for economic
inefficiency in the health-care sector is not consumers' ignorance about the
quality of care," Mr. Havighurst writes, "but rather their ignorance of the
cost of care, which ensures that neither the choices they make in the
marketplace nor the opinions they express in the political process reveal
their true preferences."
You might turn next to an equally fabulous 2001
article by Berkeley economist James C. Robinson, who shows how the
"pernicious" doctrine that health care is different—that consumers must shut
up, do as they're told and be prepared to write a blank check—is used to
"justify every inefficiency, idiosyncrasy, and interest-serving institution
in the health care industry."
Hospitals, insurers and other institutions involved
in health care may battle over available dollars, but they also share an
interest in increasing the nation's resources being diverted into health
care—which is exactly what happens when costs are hidden from those who pay
them.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Over a year ago Erika's Medicare-Anthem summary of charges for the month
included an $11,376 charge for out patient surgery that was mistakenly billed to
her account. We called our doctor who did the procedure in the hospital. Our
doctor responded not to bother her or the hospital --- since Medicare-Anthem
paid the entire bill it would not matter.
This bothered us since the woman (I assume it was a woman) may not have been
eligible for Medicare-Anthem. So I phoned Medicare. Medicare said not to bother
them and advised us to contact the hospital where the procedure took place. Any
corrections should be made by the hospital and the doctor.
So I called the hospital's accounting office. They asked that I send in a
copy of the Medicare-Anthem report. I hand-delivered the report to the the
hospital accounting office --- which is miles from the hospital.
Over the ensuing year we waited for a corrected Medicare-Anthem report.
Nothing! So I did a follow up visit to the hospital's accounting office. The
feedback was that since Medicare-Anthem paid the bill there was no need to
waste time correcting this item.
I keep thinking that some woman not eligible for Medicare got a windfall gain
here. Who cares if it was Medicare-Anthem that got screwed?
Erika and I changed to a doctor that we like better. But we cannot change
hospitals.
Moral of the Story
If the third party insurer gets billed mistakenly or pays too much nobody cares,
least of all the doctors and hospitals who got reimbursed.
Bob Jensen's threads on health care are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Question
Who is telling a lie?
Steven Brill wrote a long cover story for Time Magazine, In that story
he describes having his team examine eight very complicated hospital bills from
different hospitals. In every case they found that the bills were laced with
errors and overcharges in favor of the hospital and possible frauds.
Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us," Time
Magazine Cover Story, March 4, 2013, pp. 16-65 (a very long article)
---
http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/
The following week Stamford Hospital CEO Brian G. Grissler replied as shown,
in part, below. Steven Brill's reply to Grissler, Time Magazine, March
18, 2013, Page 2.
Brian G. Grissler
". . . Brill refused to share the patient's name or
the complete bill, so we are unable to answer those questions . . . "
Steven Brill Responds
"Stamford Hospital was shown the bill and never
disputed its authenticity. I made clear in the article the hospital settled
for cutting its bill entirely in half."
Jensen Comment
There are four possibilities behind this dispute:
- Brian Grissler could be lying through his teeth.
- Brian Grissler may not have thoroughly investigated the ultimate
resolution of this bill by his staff.
- Steven Brill could be lying through his teeth.
- Steven Brill and Brian Grissler may not be discussing the same bill
(although Brill claims he only picked one bill to examine from Stamford
Hospital).
My vote is that Answer 1 above is probably the correct answer, but we most
likely will never know.
From Paul Caron's TaxProf Blog on March 8, 2013
ObamaCare Tax Increases Are Double Original Estimate
Following up on Tuesday's post,
House Holds Hearing Today on The Tax-Related Provisions in the President’s
Health Care Law: Tax Foundation,
Obamacare Tax Increases Will Impact Us All:
The Joint Committee on Taxation recently
released a
96 page report on the tax provisions associated with Affordable Care
Act. The report describes the 21 tax increases included in Obamacare,
totaling $1.058 trillion – a steep increase from initial assessment. The
summer 2012 estimate is nearly twice the $569 billion estimate produced at
the time of the passage of the law in March 2010. ...
Provision |
2010 Estimate,
2010-2019, $billion |
2012 Estimate,
2013-2022, $billion |
0.9% payroll tax on wages
and self-employment income and 3.8% t tax on dividends, capital
gains, and other investment income for taxpayers earning over
$200,000 (singles) / $250,000 (married) |
210.2 |
317.7 |
“Cadillac tax” on high-cost
plans * |
32 |
111 |
Employer mandate * |
52 |
106 |
Annual tax on health
insurance providers * |
60.1 |
101.7 |
Individual mandate * |
17 |
55 |
Annual tax on drug
manufacturers/importers * |
27 |
34.2 |
2.3% excise tax on medical
device manufacturers/importers* |
20 |
29.1 |
Limit FSAs in cafeteria
plans * |
13 |
24 |
Raise 7.5% AGI floor on
medical expense deduction to 10% * |
15.2 |
18.7 |
Deny eligibility of “black
liquor” for cellulosic biofuel producer credit |
23.6 |
15.5 |
Codify economic substance
doctrine |
4.5 |
5.3 |
Increase penalty for
nonqualified HSA distributions * |
1.4 |
4.5 |
Impose limitations on the
use of HSAs, FSAs, HRAs, and Archer MSAs to purchase
over-the-counter medicines * |
5.0 |
4 |
Impose fee on insured and
self-insured health plans; patient-centered outcomes research trust
fund * |
2.6 |
3.8 |
Eliminate deduction for
expenses allocable to Medicare Part D subsidy |
4.5 |
3.1 |
Impose 10% tax on tanning
services * |
2.7 |
1.5 |
Limit deduction for
compensation to officers, employees, directors, and service
providers of certain health insurance providers |
0.6 |
0.8 |
Modify section 833 treatment
of certain health organizations |
0.4 |
0.4 |
Other Revenue Effects |
60.3 |
222** |
Additional requirements for
section 501(c)(3) hospitals |
Negligible |
Negligible |
Employer W-2 reporting of
value of health benefits |
Negligible |
Negligible |
Total Gross Tax
Increase: |
569.2 |
1,058.3 |
* Provision
targets households earning less than $250,000. ** Includes CBO’s
$216.0 billion estimate for “Associated Effects of Coverage
Provisions on Tax Revenues” and $6.0 billion within CBO’s “Other
Revenue Provisions” category that is not otherwise accounted for in
the CBO or JCT estimates. |
Source: Joint
Committee on Taxation Estimates, prepared by Ways and Means
Committee Staff |