Friday, June 18, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Congress wants ANOTHER $1 Billion for Teen Jobs
But are the really helping?
Last years Stimulus put $1.2 Billion towards creating jobs for youths, as we can see, like most of the break the bank spending coming out of D.C. -- it didn't work....
From ABC News --
The "American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act," sponsored by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), comes during high levels of youth unemployment. In July 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the national youth unemployment rate between ages 16 and 24 was 18.5 percent, the highest since the statistics were first recorded in 1948.
"I hope logic will prevail," New York State Labor Commissioner Colleen Gardner, pushing for its passage, told ABCNews.com. "We can't just look at it as a billion dollars, we're looking at the future of young people and an economic development tool because the money goes to economies in our United States."
Gardner hopes logic will prevail out of this shell game? Exactly what logic is that -- Teach children that it is our government that is supposed to create jobs? It sounds more like indoctrinating children with the thoughts that it is the purpose of our government to be the almighty creator of jobs. This is nothing more than buying future votes for socialist "of the state, by the state" policies.
This money being taken out of our economy NOT going into it. If teens were hired by businesses needing summer help or filling part time positions because of increased consumer spending -- it would be money going into the economy.
It also appears Gardner is using the same failed math calculations created for the current & often incorrect estimates of the Administration for current adult job creation which would be the same math President Obama used to get 57 States (48+2=57) for the amount of teen jobs created if this bill passes....
If the bill passes, Gardner said it could create 20,000 summer jobs in New York, where unemployment between ages 16 and 24 is at 17.9 percent with a statewide general rate of 8.6 percent. Apart from good habits, Gardner added that summer jobs were also important for the local economy because many teens often quickly turn around to spend that money in their own community, showing what's called "high-velocity dollars."
Jobs for teenagers and young adults are being swept away now by a perfect storm of dwindling stimulus money for youth employment and slim state revenues. "It's a combination of factors that's hitting at the same time," said Jonathan Larsen, policy associate at the National Youth Employment Coalition, noting that last year's stimulus tapped $1.2 billion for youth jobs.
The perfect storm Larsen refers to is a man-made disaster -- a perfect $53 trillion & growing man-made storm of disastrous proportions created by unsustainable entitlement spending & bankrupting the future of the "blinded by bailout dollars" teens they are supposed to be helping. In effect they are creating a generation of how will the government help me now teens that will be like indentured servants to the same government that supposedly helped them get a job!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Small Business facing $11B More in Taxes Over next 10 Years
From ABC News --
While a possible increase in taxes on the "carried interest" of hedge fund and private equity money managers is getting all the attention, in the same bill Congress is also creating a tax mess for small-business owners in the form of an $11 billion tax hike over the next 10 years.
The tax increase was included in H.R. 4213, a peddler's wagon of legislation (new spending, physicians' reimbursement, extensions of expired tax breaks, etc.) that was passed by the House in a narrow vote just before Memorial Day and is now being considered by the Senate. The Democratic-backed Senate version of the bill includes the same tax on small business.
The tax hit affects the owners of small S corporations (a common way many small businesses are organized) in "professional service businesses"--doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, architects and so on. An S corp pays no taxes but passes through all its profits to its owners' tax returns, even when those profits or "distributions" are reinvested in the business.
So what is a professional service business? Lawyers, accountants, doctors, dentists, architects, athletes, performing artists, consultants all will be included, according to the statute.
Note this new tax is imposed regardless of the dollars involved; it doesn't matter if, as an S corporation owner, you had $300,000 or $30,000 in nonwage profits--this tax will hit you.
Why is Congress raising taxes now on small-business owners? It is to offset other items in this same bill that the House wants--not just the extension of tax breaks but spending such as the Build America Bonds provision, which provides $28 billion in highly subsidized bond authority to state and local governments (with getting millions in fees). Read More....
And our current Congress claims they are for the little guy!
Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC) Assaults College Student
Please let Congressman Etheridge know how you feel about his disgraceful & criminal actions!
http://etheridge.house.gov/
Rep. Bob Etheridge
Washington, DC
1533 Longworth House Office Bldg
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone:(202) 225-4531
Fax:(202) 225-5662
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Leaked Documents Show Most Employee Health Care Plans WILL NOT be "Grandfathered" under Obama Care
In a late Friday afternoon blog post followed by a fuller early evening report, David Hogberg and Sean Higgins at Investors Business Daily confirmed that Obama’s never-credible core promise is on the brink of being shattered, and that the employer-related calculations by Cato’s Cannon were essentially correct (graphically illustrated by IBD at the top right):Earlier this year, in his “Can we lose health coverage? Yes we can” column, syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock made a point asserted in dozens if not hundreds of columns and reports during the hide-and-seek legistlative process that ultimately led to the passage of what is commonly known as ObamaCare: The President’s core promise relating to the statist health care legislation that ultimately became law in March — namely that “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what” — could not and would not be kept.
In that column, Murdock quoted Cato Institute analyst Michael Cannon as follows:
“Obama’s definition of ‘meaningful’ coverage could eliminate the health plans that now cover as many as half of the 159 million Americans with employer-sponsored insurance, plus more than half of the roughly 18 million Americans in the individual market. … This could compel close to 90 million Americans to switch to more comprehensive health plans with higher premiums, whether they value the added coverage or not.”
Internal administration documents reveal that up to 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage because of ObamaCare.
Small firms will be even likelier to lose existing plans.
The “midrange estimate is that 66% of small employer plans and 45% of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfathered status by the end of 2013,” according to the document.
In the worst-case scenario, 69% of employers — 80% of smaller firms — would lose that status, exposing them to far more provisions under the new health law.
…. The 83-page document, a joint project of the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and the IRS, examines the effects that ObamaCare’s regulations would have on existing, or “grandfathered,” employer-based health care plans.
Draft copies of the document were reportedly leaked to House Republicans during the week and began circulating Friday morning. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., posted it on his Web site Friday afternoon.
… In a statement, Posey said the document showed that the arguments in favor of ObamaCare were a “bait and switch.”
… (A White House) source conceded: “It is difficult to predict how plans and employers will behave in the coming years, but if plans make changes that negatively impact consumers, then they will lose their grandfather status.”
… In total, 66% of small businesses and 47% of large businesses made a change in their health care plans last year that would have forfeited their grandfathered status.
When one looks at the list of what would cause a plan to get de-grandfathered compiled by Hogberg and Higgins, it’s easy to see why the percentages are so large.
The referenced Treasury document (an 83-page PDF) lays out how employers might react to the new law on Page 36:
Plan sponsors and issuers can decide to:
- Continue offering the plan or coverage in effect on March 23, 2010 with limited changes, and thereby retain grandfathered status;
- Significantly change the terms of the plan or coverage and comply with Affordable Care Act provisions from which grandfathered health plans are excepted; or
- In the case of a plan sponsor, cease to offer any plan.
Option 1 would be nice, but as the IBD reporters noted in the bolded paragraph in the excerpt above, most employers would have run afoul of it during the past year. This means that they would have been forced into Options 2 or 3. Employers choosing Option 2 would have to buy pre-designed and very expensive coverage through the bill’s health insurance exchanges. Employers choosing Option 3 would force their employees to buy pre-designed and very expensive coverage through those same exchanges.
If the legislation stands, the end result over a not very long time will be that the large majority of employers and employees will be stuck in the exchanges, the roach motels of health care — Once you go in, you can’t come out. Statist mission accomplished.
The Associated Press has noticed the story too, but with the weakest of headlines: “Health overhaul to force changes in employer plans.” The content isn’t much better. Earth to AP reporter Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar: ObamaCare, as predicted by so many during the previous year by experts most of the establishment press willfully ignored, will cause many employers to drop their insurance entirely.
Wall Street Influence on Financial Reform Conference Committee
Democratic and Republican leadership in both the House and Senate have named 43 individuals to a conference committee tasked with hammering out the final version of the Congress' financial regulatory reform legislation.
Since 1989, all political action committees and individual employees of companies classified by the Center as part of the finance, insurance and real estate sector (FIRE) have contributed more than $695 million to the campaign committees and leadership PACs of current members of the 111th Congress.
More than $112 million from these interests has benefited the Democrats and Republicans named to the conference committee, which will reconcile differences between the Wall Street reform measures passed by the House and Senate.
Among specific interest groups within the FIRE sector, commercial banks were found to have given about $18 to a member of the conference committee out of every $100 donated to all current members of Congress.
The median amount of contributions from Wall Street interests received by the committee's 16 House and Senate Republicans ($1.75 million) is 81 percent larger than the median amount received by the committee's 27 Democrats ($969,600) -- although the parties have received nearly the same amount when one compares averages.
The conferees who have received the most from the FIRE sector since 1989 are Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). Schumer has received more than $17.5 million, while Dodd has received more than $15.1 million.
The next highest recipient of contributions from Wall Street interests has received less than half as much as either Schumer or Dodd. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the
ranking Republican member of the Senate Banking Committee, has collected more than $7.5 million.
The eight-figure sums collected by Schumer and Dodd increase the Democrats' average as a whole.
Thanks in large part to their hauls from Wall Street, Senate Democrats on the conference committee have received an average of 72 percent more from the FIRE sector than Senate Republican on the conference committee. More...
