Topic: Government and Politics

Max Baucus, ObamaCare’s Lead Author, Sees ‘Huge Train Wreck Coming Down’

By
Michael F. Cannon

I should probably just turn this one over to Sam Baker at The Hill:

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Wednesday he fears a “train wreck” as the Obama administration implements its signature healthcare law.

Baucus, the chairman of the powerful Finance Committee and a key architect of the healthcare law, said he’s afraid people do not understand how the law will work.

“I just see a huge train wreck coming down,” Baucus told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a Wednesday hearing. “You and I have discussed this many times, and I don’t see any results yet.”

Baucus pressed Sebelius for details about how HHS will explain the law and raise awareness of its key provisions, which are supposed to take effect in just a matter of months.

“I’m very concerned that not enough is being done so far — very concerned,” Baucus said.

He pressed Sebelius to explain how her department will overcome entrenched misunderstandings about what the healthcare law does.

“Small businesses have no idea what to do, what to expect,” Baucus said.

Citing anecdotal evidence from small businesses in his home state, Baucus asked Sebelius for specifics about how it is measuring public understanding of the law.

“You need data. Do you have any data? You’ve never given me data. You only give me concepts, frankly,” Baucus told Sebelius.

Sebelius said the administration is not independently monitoring public awareness of specific provisions, but will be embarking on a substantial education campaign beginning this summer.

Baucus is facing a competitive reelection fight next year, and Republicans are sure to attack him over his role as the primary author of the healthcare law.

A messy rollout of the law’s major provisions, just months before Baucus faces voters, could feed into the GOP’s criticism.

Wednesday’s hearing wasn’t the first time Democrats — including Baucus — have raised concerns about the implementation effort. But while other lawmakers have toned down their public comments as they’ve gotten answers from Sebelius, Baucus said Sebelius has not addressed his fears.

“I’m going to keep on this until I feel a lot better about it,” Baucus told Sebelius…

Enrollment in the healthcare law’s insurance exchanges is slated to begin in October, for coverage that begins in January. Baucus, though, said he’s worried exchanges won’t be ready in time.

“For the marketplaces to work, people need to know about them,” Baucus said. “People need to know their options and how to enroll.”

Who knew that running the health care sector would be hard.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care

Obama’s Hospital Admission

By
Michael F. Cannon

My latest, at National Review Online:

Buried deep within President Obama’s $3.77 trillion budget is a tiny little proposal to increase Medicaid spending by $360 million. In a budget as large as this one, $360 million is scarcely worth mentioning. It amounts to less than one-hundredth of one percent of total outlays. But this 0.01 percent is worth mentioning, because it proves the president’s health-care law will not work…

With this proposal, President Obama has admitted that:

1. The PPACA is not likely to reduce uncompensated care in 2014…

2. The PPACA won’t reduce the deficit…

3. Hospitals can stop crying poverty…

4. States don’t need to expand Medicaid to protect hospitals.

The Washington Post reports that rescission of the DSH cuts “could make it a bit easier for states not to expand the Medicaid program. If they know the additional dollars are coming in, there’s a bit less worry about turning down the Medicaid expansion funds.” At the same time, the president has undercut expansion supporters by admitting that expanding Medicaid will not reduce uncompensated care.

The president’s budget shows that the brave state legislators who have been fighting the Medicaid expansion in states like Ohio and Florida were right all along — and it makes expansion supporters, like Governors Rick Scott (R., Fla.) and John Kasich (R., Ohio), look rather silly.

This relatively small spending item is a big admission that the president’s health-care law simply won’t work, and it should provide encouragement to state officials who are still resisting the massive increase in deficit spending, government bureaucracy, and health-care costs the PPACA embodies.

Read the whole thing.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care

Entitlement Spending Is America’s Biggest Fiscal Challenge, but Discretionary Spending Is Still Far too High

By
Daniel J. Mitchell

If America descends into Greek-style fiscal chaos, there’s no doubt that entitlement programs will be the main factor. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Disability are all fiscal train wrecks today, and the long-run outlook for these programs is frightful.

Just look at these numbers from the Bank for International Settlements and OECD to see how our fiscal future is bleaker than many of Europe’s welfare states.

Simply stated, if we don’t implement the right kind of entitlement reform, our children and grandchildren at some point will curse our memory.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry about other parts of the budget, including the so-called discretionary programs that also have been getting bigger and bigger budgets over time.

That’s why I want to add some additional analysis to Veronique de Rugy’s recent piece in National Review Online, which might lead some to mistakenly conclude that these programs are “shrinking” and being subject to a “Big Squeeze.”

…there is another number to look at in that budget. It’s the shrinking share of the budget consumed by discretionary spending (spending on things like defense and infrastructure) to make space for mandatory spending and interest. This is the Big Squeeze. …in FY 2014 mandatory spending plus interest will eat up 67 percent of the budget, leaving discretionary spending with 33 percent of the budget (down from 36 percent in FY 2012). Now by FY 2023, mandatory and interest spending will consume 77 percent of the total budget. Discretionary spending will be left with 23 percent of the budget.

She’s right that discretionary spending is becoming a smaller share of the budget, but it’s important to realize that this is solely because entitlement outlays are growing faster than discretionary spending.

Here’s some data from the Historical Tables of the Budget, showing what is happening to spending for both defense discretionary and domestic discretionary. And these are inflation-adjusted numbers, so the we’re looking at genuine increases in spending.

Discretionary Spending FY62-14

As you can see, defense outlays have climbed by about $100 billion over the past 50 years, while outlays for domestic discretionary programs have more than tripled.

If that’s a “Big Squeeze,” I’m hoping that my household budget experiences a similar degree of “shrinking”!

Veronique obviously understands these numbers, of course, and is simply making the point that politicians presumably should have an incentive to restrain entitlement programs so they have more leeway to also buy votes with discretionary spending.

But I’d hate to think that an uninformed reader would jump to the wrong conclusion and decide we need more discretionary spending.

Particularly since the federal government shouldn’t be spending even one penny for many of the programs and department that are part of the domestic discretionary category. Should there be a federal Department of Transportation? A federal Department of Housing and Urban Development? A federal Department of Agriculture?

No, NO, and Hell NO. I could continue, but you get the idea.

The burden of federal government spending in the United States is far too high and it should be reduced. That includes discretionary spending and entitlement spending.

P.S. For those who don’t have the misfortune of following the federal budget, “entitlements” are programs that are “permanently appropriated,” which simply means that spending automatically changes in response to factors such as eligibility rules, demographic shifts, inflation, and program expansions. Sometimes these programs (such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc) are referred to as “mandatory spending.”

The other big part of the budget is “discretionary spending” or “appropriations.” These are programs funded by annual spending bills from the Appropriations Committees, often divided into the two big categories of “defense discretionary” and “nondefense discretionary.”

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Tax and Budget Policy

Margaret Thatcher and Eastern Europe

By
Dalibor Rohac

A week ago, my colleague Marian Tupy wrote movingly about his personal encounter with Lady Thatcher. Although I never had a chance to speak with her at any length, I echo his sentiments in my recent piece for the Spectator (U.K.), where I argue that both the substance of her policies and the symbolic value of her actions - such as her visit to Gdańsk in November 1988 - played an important role in post-communist transitions:

Symbols matter. In Czechoslovakia, the communist party newspaper, Rudé právo (‘The Red Law’) chose to ignore the Gdańsk episode, providing instead a short notice about her talks with the Polish government about ‘the need to energise economic cooperation between the two countries’. But there was no coming back. In Poland it took less than two months since Thatcher’s visit for the Polish regime to recognise that it was fighting a losing war and start talks with Solidarity, which would lead to dismantling of communism in the country. Czechs and Slovaks had to wait for another year.

The concluding paragraph:

In short, her success in fixing the British economy gave Eastern Europe an example to aspire to. Thanks to her example, Eastern Europeans of the early 1990s understood well that bold and sometimes painful reforms were a necessary condition for Western levels of prosperity. Somehow, I doubt that the current generation of Western leaders are inspiring the same sentiments in citizens of emerging democracies of the world.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics

Changing the World, Little By Little

By
Roger Pilon

If ever you wondered how important institutions were for changing the climate of ideas, the Chronicle of Higher Education released a cover article today, “How Conservatives Captured the Law,” that should settle the question. Written by Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin – she a Boston attorney, he a Suffolk University law professor and former president of the far left National Lawyers Guild, whom I’ve debated more than once – it’s a surprisingly dispassionate chronicle of the growth and influence of the Federalist Society over the past 30 years.

Cato, our outreach, and our Supreme Court Review come in for mention early on. And the Legal Studies Institute of The Fund for American Studies, in which I co-teach, gets credit at the outset. But the main focus is understandably on the Federalist Society. Reflecting on its origins at the society’s 25th anniversary gala, Justice Antonin Scalia remarked, “We thought we were just planting a wildflower among the weeds of academic liberalism, and it turned out to be an oak.” It did indeed, with a membership today of more than 50,000 lawyers and law students, lawyer chapters in 75 cities, and student chapters in every accredited law school in the country, the society last year held nearly 2,000 events, including many involving Cato people.

The authors’ dispassionate account notwithstanding, it takes little imagination to see where they stand:

The Federalist Society’s membership includes many brilliant and sincere theorists who raise important and interesting issues. On the other hand, the society’s critics say, its overall impact is reactionary. By glorifying private property, demonizing government intervention (particularly at the federal level), insisting that originalism is the only legitimate method of constitutional interpretation, embracing American exceptionalism as a reason to remain apart from global governance, and pushing related policies, these critics say, the society advocates a form of social Darwinism that has been discredited by mainstream American legal thought since the 1930s.

Social Darwinism? That must be how Progressives see the eclectic group that speaks and debates through the Federalist Society’s auspices, because without so much as a beat in between, the authors continue:

Membership includes economic conservatives, social conservatives, Christian conservatives, and libertarians, many of whom disagree with one another on significant issues, but who cooperate in advancing a broad conservative agenda. They generally support individual rights and a free market, and prefer states’ rights to action by the federal government.

We do indeed, discrediting the “Darwinism” – the Hobbesian war of all against all – that is the product today of the jurisprudence of the 1930s. And in that cooperation there is a lesson. To be sure, we don’t always agree. But we agree on enough to be able to work together to get something done. Read the whole piece to see how much has been done.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Law and Civil Liberties, Political Philosophy

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Subsidizing the Security of Wealthy Allies

By
Christopher A. Preble

It’s Tax Day, and for millions of Americans that means ponying up to the IRS. The federal government does many things these days—most of which would be more efficiently carried out at the local level, or in the private sector. But Uncle Sam also engages in a particular form of charity that many Americans overlook: spending many tens of billions of dollars to defend wealthy, developed nations.

A new Cato infographic puts it all in perspective. It shows how much American taxpayers spend to subsidize the security, and to defend the interests, of other nations that are more than capable of defending themselves.

Read the rest of this post »

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Government and Politics, Tax and Budget Policy

Supreme Court Ducks Key Second Amendment Issue — For Now

By
Ilya Shapiro

Alas this morning the Supreme Court declined to review Kachalsky v. Cacace the challenge to New York City’s effective ban on carrying firearms (which I’ve previously discussed).  To correct some early media reports, this does not mean that the Court upheld the law or affirmed the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  It simply means that the scope of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms outside the home remains an open question, subject to divergent rulings in the lower courts.

But those lower-court rulings have indeed diverged greatly, creating what lawyers call a “circuit split.”  The Second Circuit in Kachalsky applied a nominal intermediate scrutiny that ultimately became perfunctory deference to the legislature, with the burden on the plaintiffs to justify the exercise of their rights. The Seventh Circuit, meanwhile, in an opinion by Judge Richard Posner in Moore v. Madigan, struck down Chicago’s complete prohibition on carrying firearms, finding that Illinois could not justify such extreme measures.  For “a severe burden on the core Second Amendment right of armed self-defense,” the same court ruled in an earlier case, the government must provide “an extremely strong public-interest justification and a close fit between the government’s means and its end.””  The D.C. and Fourth Circuits, meanwhile, have presumed the constitutionality of legislated restrictions, although D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote an important dissent suggesting that the scope of the right to carry should be determined by analogizing historical practice and precedent.

Those who follow firearms policy now recognize that this issue that was left open by District of Columbia v. Heller – the scope of the individual right that the Second Amendment protects – is crying out for resolution.  As Cato said in the brief we filed supporting the Kachalsky petition:

The Second Amendment’s scope and the means of assessing restrictions on that right thus remain largely undefined. No other constitutional right has been so left to fend for itself in the lower courts. This Court has not hesitated to seize opportunities to ensure the protection of other constitutional rights—recognizing historically based categorical rules, developing comprehensive methodologies, and announcing robust standards. The Second Amendment merits, and now needs, the same solicitude.

Whatever analytical approach the Court ultimately employs, the time has come to begin filling in the picture that the Court outlined in Heller, and to bring some harmony to the cacophony below.

We’ll now have to wait a bit longer for the Court to do that. As is always the case, the Court doesn’t give reasons for granting or denying review, but it’s possible that the Court didn’t want to take a gun case from the Second Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Connecticut, where the Newtown shootings occurred.  Or it may be waiting for Moore v. Madigan, because taking a petition brought by a state government would be seen as less discretionary – and would also allow the Court to focus on a complete ban on the right to carry rather than severe restrictions.  (D.C. and Illinois are the only jurisdictions that have flat bans, while 10 states, including New York, “may issue” such licenses in practice, but most rarely do in practice except to celebrities and former law enforcement officers.  The vast majority of states “shall issue” carry licenses unless the applicant has a felony conviction or mental illness, while a handful don’t require a license at all.)  

In any event, the issue isn’t going away and there’s only so long that the Court will be able to bear the legal incongruity and uncertainty. As former solicitor general Paul Clement – who represented the NRA in McDonald v. Chicago – put it, “They’re eventually going to have to take it.”

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Law and Civil Liberties

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