Topic: Government and Politics

Who Killed Gun Control?

By
David Boaz

The Establishment is very concerned this morning that the representatives of the people have resisted demands for stricter gun control measures. The president calls it “shameful.” The New York Times editorial board intones, “The Senate Fails America.” Dana Milbank of the Washington Post deplores a lack of “courage” on Capitol Hill, though some might think it takes courage to defy the overwhelming drumbeat of the national media.

Whatever the merits and popularity of the specific measures that went down to defeat in the Senate on Wednesday, I think the Establishment fails to appreciate the depth of American support for the Second Amendment. NPR and other media have lately noted a growing libertarian trend in American politics. That’s not just about taxes, Obamacare, marijuana, and marriage equality. It also involves gun rights. After each high-profile shooting, support for gun control rises. But it tends to fall again in short order, as public opinion reverts to the baseline of strong support for gun rights.

I was struck by this poll graphic in the Washington Post on Wednesday. Despite the virtually unanimous support for stricter gun control in the national media, along with other opinion shapers such as Hollywood and the universities, and despite the mass shootings that have received so much attention in our modern world of 24-hour news channels, Americans are becoming more convinced that guns make your family safer. 

 Washington Post Poll on Guns

The fact is, America is a country fundamentally shaped by libertarian values and attitudes. Our libertarian values helped to create the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and those documents in turn shape our thinking about freedom and the limited powers of government. In their book It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States, Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marx write, “The American ideology, stemming from the [American] Revolution, can be subsumed in five words: antistatism, laissez-faire, individualism, populism, and egalitarianism.” If political scientists Herbert McClosky and John Zaller are right that “[t]he principle here is that every person is free to act as he pleases, so long as his exercise of freedom does not violate the equal rights of others,” then we can expect Americans to cling to their gun rights for a long time.

The New Republic’s daily email this morning asks, “Who killed gun control?” Who? The Americans.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Political Philosophy

New GAO Study Mistakenly Focuses on Make-Believe Tax Expenditures

By
Daniel J. Mitchell

I’m very leery of corporate tax reform, largely because I don’t think there are enough genuine loopholes on the business side of the tax code to finance a meaningful reduction in the corporate tax rate.

That leads me to worry that politicians might try to “pay for” lower rates by forcing companies to overstate their income.

Based on a new study about so-called corporate tax expenditures from the Government Accountability Office, my concerns are quite warranted.

The vast majority of the $181 billion in annual “tax expenditures” listed by the GAO are not loopholes. Instead, they are provisions designed to mitigate mistakes in the tax code that force firms to exaggerate their income.

Here are the key findings.

In 2011, the Department of the Treasury estimated 80 tax expenditures resulted in the government forgoing corporate tax revenue totaling more than $181 billion. …approximately the same size as the amount of corporate income tax revenue the federal government collected that year. …According to Treasury’s 2011 estimates, 80 tax expenditures had corporate revenue losses. Of those, two expenditures accounted for 65 percent of all estimated corporate revenues losses in 2011 while another five tax expenditures—each with at least $5 billion or more in estimated revenue loss for 2011—accounted for an additional 21 percent of corporate revenue loss estimates.

Sounds innocuous, but take a look at this table from the report, which identifies the “seven largest corporate tax expenditures.”

GAO Tax Expenditure Table

To be blunt, there’s a huge problem in the GAO analysis. Neither depreciation nor deferral are loopholes.

Read the rest of this post »

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Tax and Budget Policy

Questions for Secretary Sebelius

By
Michael F. Cannon

Secretary of Health and Humans Services Kathleen Sebelius has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill, testifying in favor of President Obama’s proposed budget and generally trying to assure members of Congress that all is well with ObamaCare implementation. Even supporters of the law are freaking out nervous, as I discuss here.

Since everyone else is pestering Sebelius with questions, I thought I would post some questions I would like to hear her answer.

Read the rest of this post »

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care

Video of Baucus’ ‘Train Wreck’ Comments

By
Michael F. Cannon

Perhaps you have now heard that today ObamaCare’s primary author, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), predicted a “huge train wreck” when the law takes full effect later this year. Here’s the video: 

Max Baucus, Obamacare’s Lead Author, Sees “Huge Train Wreck Coming”

Edited for you by the folks at American Commitment. They even coined a hashtag: #trainwreck.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care

WSJ: ‘Roofer Union Calls for Repeal of Obama Health Law’

By
Michael F. Cannon

Take it, Janet Adamy:

A labor union representing roofers is reversing course and calling for repeal of the federal health law, citing concerns the law will raise its cost for insuring members.

Organized labor was instrumental in getting the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, but more recently has voiced concerns that the law could lead members to lose their existing health plans. The United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers is believed to be the first union to initially support the law and later call for its repeal.

“After the law was passed, I had great hope…that maybe the rough spots would be worked out and we’d have a great law,” said Kinsey Robinson, international president of the union, which represents 22,000 commercial and industrial roofers…

Mr. Robinson says the union’s concerns about the law began to pile up in recent months after speaking with employers.

The roofers’ union’s current insurance plan caps lifetime medical bill payouts at $2 million for active members and $50,000 for retirees. Next year, the plan has to remove those caps in order to comply with the health law. Other aspects of the retiree plan must become more generous in order to meet the law’s minimum essential coverage requirements next year. All that will increase the cost of insuring members, Mr. Robinson said, and has prompted the union to weigh eliminating the retiree plan.

Adding to those cost concerns is a new $63-per-enrollee fee on health plans that pays insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions next year. Looking ahead to 2018, when the law levies an excise tax on high-value insurance plans, Mr. Robinson predicts that at least some of the union’s plans will get hit by it…

Over time, Mr. Robinson says, his optimism that regulators or lawmakers would address the union’s concerns diminished. “I don’t think they are going to get fixed,” he said. On Tuesday, the union called for a repeal of the health law or a complete reform of it.

Will the last ObamaCare supporter please turn off the lights?

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care

Will the Last ObamaCare Supporter Please Turn off the Lights?

By
Michael F. Cannon

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) was the primary author of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known colloquially and affectionately as ObamaCare. Today, he predicted his own law would cause a “huge train wreck” when the federal government begins implementing it fully later this year. He’s not the only one who’s worried. Other Democratic senators have expressed concerns. An Obama administration official recently offered this vote of confidence:

We are under 200 days from open enrollment, and I’m pretty nervous…The time for debating about the size of text on the screen or the color or is it a world-class user experience, that’s what we used to talk about two years ago…Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.

How could Baucus come to fear his own bill? Maybe because he never read it, as he admitted to his Libby, Montana, constituents in 2010:

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT): It’s A Waste Of Time For Me To Read The Health Care Bill

Naturally, a Baucus flack later clarified what he meant:

Senator Baucus wrote the bill that passed the Finance Committee and then worked with his colleagues to write the health care bill that is law today. He has spent years crafting this policy and hundreds of hours reading and perfecting it. There is simply no question that he understands the provisions in the health care law…

If so, perhaps Baucus could explain the law to his colleague, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). Rockefeller may have spent more time studying health care than any other U.S. senator, Baucus included. For example, Rockefeller founded the Alliance for Health Reform and headed the organization for more than a decade. And yet Rockefeller finds ObamaCare to be “the most complex piece of legislation ever passed by the United States Congress” and “just beyond comprehension”:

Democrat Sen. Jay Rockefeller: ObamaCare is “Just Beyond Comprehension”

But can we really blame Baucus if ObamaCare supporters – including himself – didn’t understand the bill they were passing? After all, he warned us that not all of them would understand it:

Max Baucus, Author of the HEALTH BILL concedes, not all Senators can understand it!

So to recap: Baucus wrote an early draft of the law, helped to write subsequent drafts, didn’t read the final law, totally understands it, and now fears it.

Will the last ObamaCare supporter please turn off the lights?

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care

Reason.com: ‘6 Reasons Why States Should Continue to Oppose ObamaCare’

By
Michael F. Cannon

Drawing from my white paper “50 Vetoes: How States Can Stop the Obama Health Law,” Reason’s Peter Suderman highlights six reasons why states should refuse to implement any part of ObamaCare. Here are two:

3. Refusing to create an exchange potentially protects a state’s businesses from the law’s employer mandate.Obamacare fines any business with 50 or more employees that does not offer health coverage of sufficient value—as determined by the federal government—$2,000 per employee (exempting the first 30 workers).  The employer penalties, however, are triggered by the existence of the law’s subsidies for private health insurance. And as Cannon notes, the text of Obamacare specifically states that those subsidies are only available in states that choose to create their own exchanges. The IRS has issued a rule allowing for subsidies in states that reject the exchanges, but a lawsuit is already under way to challenge it. 

4. States also have the power to protect as many as 12 million people from the law’s individual mandate—the “tax” it charges individuals for not carrying health insurance. Obamacare requires that nearly everyone maintain health coverage or pay a penalty—a “tax,” according to the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the law last year. But Obamacare also exempts individuals who would have to pay more than 8 percent of their household income for their share of their health insurance premiums. So if states bow out of the exchanges, and as a result the law’s private insurance subsidies are no longer available, then the mandate will no longer apply to the low and middle income individuals who would have to pay more than 8 percent of their income to get health insurance. Cannon estimates that if all 50 states were to decline to create exchanges, a little more than 12 million low and middle-income individuals would be exempt from the law’s mandate.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care

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