The GOP Congress Hates (Except When It Loves) Federal Spending
“You saw the House act,” Rep. Eric Cantor snapped to a reporter last Friday. Yeah, act like a petulant 4-year-old!
The majority leader of the GOP-controlled House has long been a whiney ideological brat who stamps his tiny feet in peevish anger whenever he can’t get his way on legislation. In this particular incident, Cantor tried to pretend that the House had approved more federal aid for thousands of Americans who’ve been devastated by natural disasters this summer. However, he had sabotaged his own “act” by slipping a poison pill into it.
You see, “federal aid” is a four-letter word to right-wing ideologues like Eric, so for weeks he had stalled the emergency funding that hard-hit families desperately need. Cantor and his fellow anti-government dogmatists in the House turned a straightforward humanitarian bill into their political football, insisting that any increase in funds must first be wholly paid for by cutting spending on other public needs. His ploy has become known as the “Cantor Doctrine” — budget purity first, people’s needs last.
Actually, his this-for-that demand could’ve easily been met if Cantor had agreed to cut things America definitely does not need, such as the $4-billion-a year subsidy doled out to Big Oil. But — whoa! — in Cantorworld, oil giants are gods that shower manna from heaven on Republican campaigns, so it’s blasphemy even to think of cutting that money.
Instead, Cantor went after Big Oil’s most dreaded nemesis: companies that are making fuel-efficient and clean energy vehicles. Thus, the Cantorites decreed that there’d be no more disaster relief until the federal loan program to foster development of this green industry was slashed by $1.5 billion.
This would have been a political hat trick for the GOP extremists — striking a blow for their anti-government absolutism, doing a favor for a major campaign funder and defunding an Obama-backed program that helps him with voters.
Luckily, Cantor’s nuttiness was so extreme that a bipartisan vote by 79 senators killed his political scheme — this time.
You’d think that aid for storm victims would be beyond politics. But nothing is too far out for right-wing cultists like Cantor.
Well, you might think, at least the leaders of the tea party-infused Republican Congress are consistent in their opposition to big infusions of federal dollars into the economy, right?
Absolutely! Unless you count infusions of taxpayer funds into projects favored by corporations in their districts.
For example, a favorite target of howling Republican ridicule has been President Obama’s effort to stimulate our moribund economy by making government-backed loans to job-creating, green-energy projects. In particular, they’re presently assailing a 2009 loan guarantee of $535 million that the Obamacans awarded to the failed solar-panel maker Solyndra. This loan to a financially shaky company, they wail, is proof that green energy programs are a waste and are just about politics. GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell recently sputtered in a rage that “the White House fast-tracked a half-billion dollar loan to a politically connected energy firm.”
Fair enough — the Solyndra deal does stink. However, Mitch’s tirade would’ve had a lot more moral punch if it were not for Zap Motors. In 2009, even as the Kentucky senator was loudly deriding Obama’s original stimulus program, he was quietly making not one, but two personal appeals to Obama’s energy secretary, urging that a quarter-billion-dollar loan guarantee be awarded to Zap for a clean energy plant it wanted to build in McConnell’s state.
Never mind that Zap Motors had its own shaky financial record, it was (as McConnell now says of Solyndra) “a politically-connected energy firm.” Connected directly to him, that is. The senator’s robust support of Zap came after the corporation hired a lobbyist with close ties to Mitch, having been a frequent financial backer of the senator’s campaigns.
The moral of this Republican morality tale is that they hate government spending, except when they love it. For them, political morality is relative — decry federal largesse loudly, but when it serves your own political needs, hug it quietly … and tightly.
By: Jim Hightower, Common Dreams, Originally published by Creators.com, September 28, 2011
Blame Greed, Not Obama For Rise In Health Insurance Premiums
It’s Obama’s fault
Isn’t everything? I can’t believe what I am hearing and reading. Insurance companies are raising their premiums and, of course, that is President Obama’s fault. It’s that damn “Obamacare.” Ah, no, it isn’t.
Insurance companies have been raising their subscriber’s premiums for years before Mr. Obama was president; actually, even before he was “Senator Obama.”
I have a family plan to cover my husband and our two children; but I also own two small businesses and cover my employees’ healthcare at both companies. The large private PPO provider who I won’t name, but has the color of the sky in their title (ahem), has increased my premiums for both group plans and my individual family plan at least once a year for the past five years. And when I phone them and ask why, they don’t have an answer. They certainly don’t say: It’s President Obama’s fault and the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
As a matter of fact, the president of Kaiser also stated that healthcare reform is not the reason for the increased premiums; at best, it might contribute to 1 percent; so what is the other 99 percent? What is the reason these insurance companies keep increasing our premiums?
How can healthcare reform increase our premiums? Due to the increased number of people being covered by the reform act (mostly children and students who may remain on their parent’s plan), there are more people purchasing plans, whether employers or employees, which actually brings more money to those insurance companies. So why the increase?
Every time my plan has been increased, I have phoned to ask what additional benefits I am receiving for that cost increase; and every time the answer is the same: none. When I ask why, no one knows. But I know, it’s greed.
All, not some, all of the heads of these insurance companies earn millions of dollars a year in their paychecks. The insurance companies are one of the few in America not being negatively affected by our economy. Don’t believe me? Check their stock prices, or the stock prices of most medical related companies for that matter.
Actually, the increase in premiums, whether a person has an HMO or a PPO, just helps to support the need not only for healthcare reform, but for further reform, specifically a public option.
These increases are proof that the public needs another option, an affordable option. And the mandate? That drives business to the insurance companies, so they should be reducing the premiums. Insurance companies will say that many people are requesting a higher deductible; of course we are, it’s a bad economy and most of us want to pay less per month, taking the risk that we won’t end up in the E.R. or need surgery, etc.
And according to my doctor-husband, that’s a big risk. He’s an orthopedic surgeon. Patients used to come see him when they were in pain—let’s say their knee hurt. Now they come when their bones are sticking out—when they’re chronic.
So the increased prices by the insurance companies should be blamed on the insurance companies. They are hurting our healthcare system, doctors’ ability to provide proper care, and the economy as well; especially when so many Americans head to the E.R. once they’re chronic, which further bankrupts the system.
Bottom line—don’t blame Obama. Blame the insurance companies. They’re the bad guys this time around.
By: Leslie Marshall, U. S. News and World Report, September 29, 2011
Sharp Rise In Premiums Exposes Health Insurers’ Greed
According to a study released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 2011 health insurance premiums for employer-sponsored family healthcare benefits rose 9 percent over last year’s prices, leaving employees to pay, on average, $4,129 and employer contributions at $10,944. The number represents a surprising rise given that increases experienced in 2010 were just 3 percent.
So, why the sudden increase?
We know that Americans are using fewer medical services since the economy took a dive as people are staying away from the doctor and putting off non-life saving surgeries, such as knee and hip replacements, until they have more confidence that they will have the money required to pay deductibles and co-pays. We also know that fewer medical services are being utilized as a result of the increased popularity of Health Safety Accounts which require deductibles in excess of $2,000 per family, and employer provided policies that have increasingly large deductibles and co-pays.
As a result, can it possibly make sense that medical costs are increasing by the 9 percent reflected in the hefty premium hikes? In a word, no.
That will not stop the anti-Obamacare forces, of course, from putting the blame squarely on healthcare reform. In a sense, I suppose the Affordable Care Act does bear some of the responsibility—if you can consider motivating the health insurers to falsely inflate their prices, by forcing them to do the right thing, to be a blamable offense.
Beginning next year, health insurers will be required to justify any increases in premium rates above 10 percent. They will further be obligated to refund money to customers if an insurer is found to have spent less than 85 percent of their premium income on medical expenses. Thus, it is hardly a stretch to conclude that the insurers are simply taking their last chance to raise premium rates before they find themselves having to be more accountable to the government, particularly when they are pretty much admitting to as much.
As noted by Reed Ableson in The New York Times:
Throughout this year, major health insurers have defended higher premiums—and higher profits—saying that their expenses would rise once the economy recovered and people believed they could again afford medical care. The struggling economy will probably keep suppressing demand for medical care, particularly as people pay a larger share of their own medical bills through higher deductibles and co-payments, according to benefits consultants and others. About three-quarters of workers now pay part of the bill when they go see a doctor, and nearly a third have a deductible of at least $1,000 if they have single coverage, up from just one in 10 in 2006, according Kaiser.
So, the insurance company defense is that they expect prices to rise sometime in the future (clearly an undefined period) and they want to be ready. Somehow, this justifies them to dramatically raise their premium prices now, at time when their costs are actually less and their profits are through the roof.
Not only is such behavior astoundingly predatory, the insurers are playing a major role in keeping the economy in the dumps, as it is precisely this sort of unnecessary premium increase that causes employers to avoid hiring more employees.
For those who believe that we should leave it to the free market to establish the prices in the medical system (of which insurance will always be a necessary part), maybe they can explain how the system is working in this instance? In a time where patient control has risen dramatically as consumers decide if and how they will—or will not—spend on medical services now that they have greatly increased responsibility for the familiy medical bills as a result of much higher deductibles, and at a moment where there are substantially reduced claims coming onto health insurers’ balance sheets due to diminished use of medical services, exactly what is the free market concept that justifies an insurance company raising their premium rates? What’s more, at a time when fewer people are using physician’s services, why would costs go up?
Free market principles would suggest that lower demand should produce lower prices. But that is clearly not what is happening.
I know what some of you are thinking—but before you say it’s all the government’s fault, I would hasten to point out that, with an apples-to-apples comparison, there are no substantial new regulations hitting physicians this year that did not exist last year. And before you blame the president’s health care reform program for the insurance companies’ usurious behavior, note that the two million young people who have been added to the insurance roles as a result of Obamacare’s permitting these people to stay on the family insurance policy, would not increase an insurance company’s costs by 9% over last year’s prices. Indeed, adding all of these healthy kids to the insurance pools should help insurers spread risk more effectively while collecting additional premium revenues.
The bottom line is that there is absolutely no justification whatsoever for the health insurance industry hitting employers with a 9 percent increase. It is a simple matter of greed and it is precisely that greed that has long made access to healthcare continuously more difficult for middle class Americans.
By: Rick Ungar, Mother Jones, September 27, 2011
The Republican’s Imaginary Class War
Suppose they threw a class war and nobody came?
The Republican Party is up in arms this week in response to President Obama’s proposal to help close the deficit by requiring the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share of taxes. Specifically, the president has proposed the “Buffett Rule,” named for billionaire Warren Buffett, which would ensure that millionaires pay as fair a share in income tax as do all working Americans. In response, GOP budget guru Rep. Paul Ryan resurrected one of his party’s favorite talking points, calling the proposal “class warfare.” Others have been following his rhetorical lead. In last night’s GOP debate in Florida, Mitt Romney asserted that “the president’s party wants to take from some people and give to others” and Newt Gingrich insisted that people on unemployment insurance are getting paid “for doing nothing.” Republican leaders seem to be preparing for an all-out assault from low-and-middle income Americans whom they bizarrely believe are intent on stealing their cash.
The Republicans’ “class warfare” accusation is both ironic and cynical.
It’s ironic because, in the midst of the current economic and jobs crisis, where a huge number of Americans are desperately hurting — with homes underwater, with unemployment insurance running out and health insurance gone, with kids in over-crowded classrooms in buildings that are decaying — the rich are getting richer and large corporations are sitting on record profits. Income inequality in the U.S. is at its highest since the precarious days of the late 1920s. One third of Americans who were raised in middle class households can fall out of the middle class as adults. A political elite beholden to the wealthiest CEOs has pursued policies that take money out of the pockets of the neediest to create ever-larger tax breaks for the wealthy. The richest one percent of Americans now earn almost a quarter of the country’s income and control 40 percent of its wealth — a level of inequality not seen since the days before Social Security and Medicare and the social safety net as we know it. If there is “warfare” going on between the “haves” and the “have nots” it’s pretty clear who is waging war on whom.
Even more, this claim of “class warfare” that Republicans are touting is something quite dangerous. It’s an expression of a deeply cynical vision of our country, in which everyone is out for themselves, the suffering of the least fortunate is of no consequence to the most fortunate, and the American dream is off-limits to those who have lost their footing in a devastating economy. Fortunately, this is a vision that most people wholeheartedly reject. The task of our elected officials is to stop assuming the worst about their constituents’ insensitivity to the plight of their fellow Americans, to stop trying to pit us against each other and to start working toward an economic policy that works for everyone. Struggling Americans don’t want to take the American dream away from those who have achieved it and successful Americans don’t want to see their fellow citizens slip into permanent poverty.
The “class warfare” Republicans decry is all in the heads — and the destructive policies — of a small number of political leaders. While all but a few Republicans in Congress have signed a pledge to never raise taxes on corporations or the wealthy, the majority of Americans are much more pragmatic. According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, a whopping 71 percent of Americans — including 86 percent of moderates and 74 percent of independents — think that any plan to reduce the deficit should include both spending cuts and tax increases. 56 percent, including large majorities of moderates and independents said that wealthier Americans should pitch in and pay higher taxes to help reduce the deficit. A Gallup poll this week found that 53 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners support the president’s plan to eliminate corporate tax loopholes (a major element of the alleged “class warfare”), and majorities of GOP respondents supported spending that extra revenue on hiring public employees, funding public works projects and cutting payroll taxes on small businesses.
The Republicans’ invocation of “class warfare” is a political ploy that the vast majority of Americans want no part of. Warren Buffett is not alone.
By: Michael B. Keegan, Huffington Post, September 23, 2011
Rick Perry And The Texas Non-Miracle
About all those new jobs created under Gov. Rick Perry…
The Center for Immigration Studies reports some facts that should sprinkle a little cold water on over-heated claims for the low-wage/high-immigration Texas economic model.
Of jobs created in Texas since 2007, 81 percent were taken by newly arrived immigrant workers (legal and illegal).
Absorb that for a minute.
Native-born Texans have experienced a jobs catastrophe very similar to that of Americans everywhere else in the United States, reports CIS:
The share of working-age natives holding a job in Texas declined significantly, from 71 percent in 2007 to 67 percent in 2011. This decline is very similar to the decline for natives in the United States as a whole and is an indication that the situation for native-born workers in Texas is very similar to the overall situation in the country despite the state’s job growth.
What we are seeing here is not a pattern of job creation. It is a pattern of job displacement.
The large share of job growth that went to immigrants is surprising because the native-born accounted for 69 percent of the growth in Texas’ working-age population (16 to 65). Thus, even though natives made up most of the growth in potential workers, most of the job growth went to immigrants.
And by the way – it’s not just a matter of jobs “Americans won’t do.” As the decline in native-born employment shows, these are jobs natives used to do as recently as 2007. And the displacement is occurring higher and higher up the pay scale.
Immigrants took jobs across the educational distribution. More than one out three (97,000) of newly arrived immigrants who took a job had at least some college.
In all this, illegal immigration remains a huge factor, despite the often-heard claim that illegal immigration has slowed since the end of the housing bubble.
Of newly arrived immigrants who took jobs in Texas since 2007, we estimate that 50 percent (113,000) were illegal immigrants. Thus, about 40 percent of all the job growth in Texas since 2007 went to newly arrived illegal immigrants and 40 percent went to newly arrived legal immigrants.
A couple of conclusions follow:
1) There was no Texas miracle, from the point of view of the people who constituted the population of Texas back in 2007.
2) Rick Perry’s permissive view of immigration is not (as I’ve pointed out before) some compassionate-conservative exception to his no-soup-for-you economic policy. A permissive immigration is the indispensable prerequisite to the no-soup-for-you economy over which Perry presided.
3) Immigration is not an issue separate from the debate over employment and growth. It’s integral. You could plausibly argue in the 2000s that immigration was ancillary to job growth for Americans – or even that it somehow spurred job growth for Americans. In today’s context however, immigration is increasingly a substitute for job growth for Americans.
4) Mitt Romney finally has his answer the next time Rick Perry attacks him for Massachusetts poor jobs ranking in the early part of the 2000s.
“The numbers show, Governor, that your economic policy was great at creating jobs – for Mexico.”
By: David Frum, The Frum Forum, September 22, 2011
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