Tag: Senate

Our System of Government Exists to Prevent This Kind of Thing

By
Michael F. Cannon

The Hill’s Congress Blog asks, “Will the Senate pass a health care reform bill before it adjourns for the year?”

I answer:

It’s not looking good – nor should it.

The Reid bill becomes less popular with each passing day.  (So too does President Obama’s handling of health care.)

CBS News is reporting that Reid wants to hold a vote before Christmas because he doesn’t want senators to go home and hear from their constituents.

Reid has been systematically suppressing a complete cost estimate of his bill.

Reid’s manager’s amendment will make unknown, countless, and dramatic changes to that 2,074-page bill – and Reid wants to vote on it before anyone knows what those changes are.

Even Max Baucus admits that not a single senator understands the Reid bill.

Our federalist system, the separation of powers, our bicameral national legislature, six-year terms for Senators, staggered Senate elections, and the Senate’s procedural rules all exist precisely to prevent what Reid is trying to do: ram a sweeping piece of legislation through Congress without due consideration.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care

Tax Hike Commission

By
Chris Edwards

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee is holding hearings today focused on Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Judd Gregg’s (R-NH) idea to set up a special Task Force to draft a deficit-reduction plan. The plan would get fast-tracked through Congress for a vote and “everything would be on the table.”

For taxpayers, this idea creates the threat of large tax increases on top of all the other tax increases being discussed in Congress. While the senators supporting a Task Force express valid concerns about the government’s exploding debt, the plan could launch a drive to impose a European-style value-added tax in America.

In theory, such a Task Force could come up with some meaty and long-overdue cuts to the federal budget. But nine of the senators co-sponsoring the Conrad-Gregg Task Force, including Conrad, voted in favor of the massive spending bill passed by the Senate on Sunday, which increased appropriations by 10 percent in a single year.

In calling for deficit reduction, Senator Conrad says that “it is no longer enough for Congress to simply talk about reform; it is time for action and leadership.” But Senator Conrad certainly hasn’t shown reform leadership on farm subsidies. So until he and his colleagues start restraining their own spending appetites, it’s safe to assume that ”everything on the table” really just means a sneaky, under-the-table tax increase.

Topics: 
General, Tax and Budget Policy

Obama on Health Care: Half Right

By
Michael D. Tanner

President Obama gave what seems like his thousandth exclusive health care interview last night, this one to ABC News’s Charles Gibson.  In trying to sell his health care plan, the president warned that if Congress does not pass legislation controlling health care costs, the federal government “will go bankrupt.”  He also warned that unless health care is reformed, “your premiums will go up.”

 The president is absolutely correct about that.  The only problem is that, according to the president’s own chief health care actuary, the bills that Congress is now considering do nothing to restrain either federal health care spending or total health care costs.  In fact, Rick Foster, chief actuary at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) says that if Congress passes the bill now before the Senate, health care spending will actually increase by $234 billion more over the next 10 years than if we did nothing. 

And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the congressional bills do little or nothing to reduce the growth in insurance premiums. Even if a bill passes, premiums will roughly double by 2016, and keep rising after that.   But for millions of Americans the bill will actually make things worse.  According to CBO, the Senate bill would actually increase insurance premiums by 10-13 percent for Americans who buy their insurance through the non-group market, that is those who don’t receive insurance from their employer.  Those 10-13 percent increases are over and above the increases that would occur if we did nothing.    

On the other hand, if the president were really serious about controlling health care costs and lowering premiums, he wouldn’t need to spend trillions of dollars and take over one-sixth of the US economy; he could try some of the ideas written about here, and here, and here.

Topics: 
General, Health Care

Reid Won’t Even Tell His Base What He’s Asking Them to Swallow

By
Michael F. Cannon

Here’s my answer to today’s “Big Question” on The Hill’s Congress Blog:

Now that the “public option” is dead, both the Left and the Right should be able to agree: the Senate bill is nothing but a $450 billion bailout of the private insurance companies.

In fact, the bailout may be several multiples of that figure.

That $450 billion just represents checks that the Treasury would write to private insurance companies. The Reid bill would also force nearly every U.S. citizen to fork over cash to the private insurance companies — no matter how lousy a deal they offer. A recent CBO memo reveals that Reid has been meticulously working behind closed doors to conceal the full cost of his private-insurer bailout.

The Left and the Right should insist that Reid produce a complete CBO score that reveals the full cost of his bill’s private-insurer bailout — in particular, the cost of the individual and employer mandates.

Left-wing Democrats will follow their own consciences when deciding how to vote. But they should force Reid to be honest about what he’s asking them to swallow.

Topics: 
General, Health Care

Rick Santorum and Limited Government?

By
David Boaz

santorumScary news today from Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker: despite losing his reelection bid in 2006, former senator Rick Santorum is still thinking about running for president. He tells Parker that he represents the Ronald Reagan issue trinity: the economy, national security and social conservatism. And he’s the limited-government guy:

Both pro-life and pro-traditional family, Santorum is an irritant to many. But he insists that such labels oversimplify. Being pro-life and pro-family ultimately mean being pro-limited government.

When you have strong families and respect for life, he says, “the requirements of government are less. You can have lower taxes and limited government.”

But Santorum is no Reaganite when it comes to freedom and limited government. He told NPR in 2005:

One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a libertarianish right. You know, the left has gone so far left and the right in some respects has gone so far right that they touch each other. They come around in the circle. This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone. That there is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.

He declared himself against individualism, against libertarianism, against “this whole idea of personal autonomy, … this idea that people should be left alone.” Andrew Sullivan directed our attention to a television interview in which the senator from the home state of Benjamin Franklin and James Wilson denounced America’s Founding idea of “the pursuit of happiness.” If you watch the video, you can hear these classic hits: “This is the mantra of the left: I have a right to do what I want to do” and “We have a whole culture that is focused on immediate gratification and the pursuit of happiness … and it is harming America.”

Parker says that Santorum is “sometimes referred to as the conscience of Senate Republicans.” Really? By whom? Surely not by Reaganites, or by people who believe in limited government.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Political Philosophy

FEHBP Plan Is No ‘Moderate Compromise’

By
Michael D. Tanner

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has announced that he has reached a super secret compromise on how to deal with the so-called public option for health reform.  While Reid said the agreement was too important to actually tell anyone what is in it, most of the details have been leaked to the press.

Rather than set-up a completely government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurance, Congress would establish a program similar to the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program (FEHBP), which currently covers government workers, including Members of Congress.  The FEHBP offers a variety of private insurance plans under a program managed by the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM).  Each year OPM uses the Federal procurement process to solicit bids from insurance companies to be one of the plans offered.  Premiums can vary, but participating plans operate under stringent rules.   As a model, the FEHBP is apparently acceptable to moderate Democrats because the insurance plans are private rather than government entities, while liberals like it because it is government regulated and managed.

In addition, the compromise plan would expand Medicare, allowing workers ages 55 to 65 to “buy in” to the program, and may also expand Medicaid.

A few reasons to believe this is yet another truly bad idea:

  1. In choosing the FEHBP for a model, Democrats have actually chosen an insurance plan whose costs are rising faster than average.   FEHBP premiums are expected to rise 7.9 percent this year and 8.8 percent in 2010.  By comparison, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that on average, premiums will increase by 5.5 to 6.2 percent annually over the next few years.  In fact, FEHBP premiums are rising so fast that nearly 100,000 federal employees have opted out of the program.
  2. FEHBP members are also finding their choices cut back.  Next year, 32 insurance plans will either drop out of the program or reduce their participation.  Some 61,000 workers will lose their current coverage.
  3. But former OPM director Linda Springer doubts that the agency has the “capacity, the staff, or the mission,” to be able to manage the new program.  Taking on management of the new program could overburden OPM.  “Ultimate, it would break the system.”
  4. Medicare is currently $50-100 trillion in debt, depending on which accounting measure you use.  Allowing younger workers to join the program is the equivalent of crowding a few more passengers onto the Titanic.
  5. At the same time, Medicare under reimburses physicians, especially in rural areas.  Expanding Medicare enrollment will both threaten the continued viability of rural hospitals and other providers, and also result in increased cost-shifting, driving up premiums for private insurance.
  6. Medicaid is equally a budget-buster. The program now costs more than $330 billion per year, a cost that grew at a rate of roughly 10.7 percent annually.  The program spends money by the bushel, yet under-reimburses providers even worse than Medicare.
  7. Ultimately this so-called compromise would expand government health care programs and further squeeze private insurance, resulting in increased costs and higher insurance premiums, and provide a lower-quality of care.

No wonder Senator Reid wants to keep it a secret.

Topics: 
General, Health Care

Thursday Links

  • Prepare to pay more: Today, an average insurance policy can cost about $2,985 for an individual or $6,328 for a family.  Under the Senate bill, those premiums will increase to $5,800 for an individual worker and $15,200 for a family plan by 2016.
Topics: 
Cato Publications, General

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