What's In the Budget Deal?

Over at the blog Hot Air, Matt Berman and Sarah Mims report on the budget "deal":

Here's something different: Congress has actually come to a bipartisan budget agreement. The budget team's leaders, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., announced the deal Tuesday night.

Here are the big numbers you need to know, from a Senate Democratic aide:

·         It's a $1.012 trillion budget for fiscal year 2014.

·         $85 billion in total savings over ten years.

·         $63 billion in sequester relief over two years, split evenly between defense and non-defense budgets.

·         $23 billion in net deficit reduction over ten years.

·         Does not include unemployment insurance extension. Includes federal employee pension pay-ins.

The reporters describe this “bipartisan budget agreement” as something different. How about: “no good can come from this?” Patty Murray is a spendaholic liberal, and Paul Ryan is the same Paul Ryan who blew off Tea Party Patriots with his support of immigration “reform” (see CTPP blog here) and then diluted his commitment to defund Obamacare.

And those bullet points: who takes seriously any “savings” over a ten year period? Future congresses can ignore any reductions or freezes at pleasure; they are not bound by past actions.

Heritage Action has more buckets of cold water here: 

“Heritage Action cannot support a budget deal that would increase spending in the near-term for promises of woefully inadequate long-term reductions.’’ said the group.

The opposition from Heritage Action could put new pressure on congressional Republicans to oppose the deal if, after the details are released, the group decides to “score’’ the vote in its annual analyses of lawmakers’ voting record on conservative issues.

The likely opposition of many conservatives to the emerging deal means that House Democrats will have to vote for the deal in significant numbers — and many liberals are also unhappy with the emerging deal because it is expected to include cuts in pensions programs for federal employees.

. . .

However other Republicans including Mr. Ryan argues that mandatory program cuts over time are a more durable contribution to fiscal austerity than immediate, one-time cuts. And others, including Ms. Murray and many economists, argue that it makes more sense in a still-fragile recovery to postpone spending cuts into the future when the economy is stronger and better able to absorb cuts.

(WaPo report is here.) Exit question: How does more government spending strengthen the economy? 

Pearl Harbor 72 years ago

"A Day That Will Live In Infamy"

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor 72 years ago today. This photo is from Time Life (h/t Michelle Malkin). Click on the Time Life link for more history and photos.

The memorial USS Arizona a few years ago (photo credit: Pat Dooley)

 God bless our men and women in uniform.

# # #

Speaker Boehner signals support of amnesty

Photo credit: Oneoldvet.com

Roy Beck at NumbersUSA reports on the latest signal from Speaker John Boehner from Beck's email message yesterday:

In hiring a McCain open-borders expert, Boehner shows his commitment to forcing American workers to compete with millions more foreign workers

Our concern is with Speaker Boehner. After months of saying that he has no interest in anything like the Senate's S. 744 bill, why has he hired as his chief immigration aide somebody whose career is based on pushing bills like S. 744?

This is what I have been telling the media about what the new hire means:

It shows that Speaker Boehner remains committed to the corporate lobbies' quest for more foreign workers to hold down the wages of their American workers. His new hire has done almost nothing the last decade except work for giant increases in foreign labor. But Boehner still has to persuade at least 118 Republican House Members that their constituents would be okay with an expansion of immigration during the seventh year of high unemployment.

More at the NumbersUSA blog here.

Phyllis Schlafly’s most recent column here explains why this is not only bad short-term policy, it is also bad long-term for conservatives trying to strengthen the GOP from within by restoring core conservative values:

Looking at the political motivation of the groups pushing higher immigration and amnesty, it’s obvious that the Democrats promote large-scale immigration because it produces more Democratic votes. But why are some prominent Republicans pushing amnesty?

The pro-amnesty New York Times gleefully reported on October 26 the front-page news that big-business leaders and Republican big donors are gearing up for a “lobbying blitz,” backed up by money threats, to get Congress to pass amnesty. Big business wants amnesty in order to get more cheap labor and keep wages forever low, and that is a gross betrayal of the legal immigrants who hope to rise into the middle class and achieve the American dream.

The big donors poured $400,000,000 into the campaigns of losing establishment-backed Republican candidates in 2012. They would rather elect Democrats than conservative, social-issue, Tea Party-type, grassroots Republicans who don’t take orders from the establishment.

If the Republican Party is to remain nationally competitive, it must defeat amnesty in every form. Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID), summed it up: “I think it would be crazy for the House Republican Leadership to enter into negotiations with Obama on immigration, and I’m a proponent of immigration reform. He’s trying to destroy the Republican Party, and I think that anything that we do right now with the president on immigration will be with that same goal in mind, which is to destroy the Republican Party and not to get good policy.”

Time to call Speaker Boehner. Again. And send postcards to his Ohio office (shorter security delay):

Speaker Boehner’s details:

Butler County Office  PH (513) 779-5400

Miami County Office PH (937) 339-1524

Clark County Office   PH (937) 322-1120

D.C. Office

PH  (202) 225-6205

FAX (202) 225-0704

And his mailbox:

Speaker John Boehner

7969 Cincinnati-Dayton Road, Suite B

West Chester, OH 45069

Are you Aragorn?

Bill Whittle is a blogger, essayist, PJ Media’s host of Afterburner and co-host of Trifecta. His new essay “Shards” is posted here (h/t Mr. Instapundit). It’s not only worth the read, it's a shot in the arm, especially if it seems like our uphill battles keep getting steeper. 

Freedom is not the default state of man but rather a force field against tyranny that must be maintained every day through effort and hard work – there’s not one among you that does not look out into the free land that was handed to us by our ancestors with dismay, and the same sense of unfocused dread that a thousand generations felt as the sun dipped ever lower, day by day – because this time, perhaps, it will not climb again. 

The history of mankind has been to rule and to be ruled. For reasons that you and I will never understand, there exists in some people an insatiable desire to tell other people what to do; to bend others to their will. 

. . .  

I don’t know if we can stop the destruction of everything we love in this world. I don’t know that we can destroy this all-seeing eye that seems to watch us all now, day and night, in this once-free land. I don’t know if all of my efforts will amount to anything at all, in the end, and I don’t know if yours will either. 

I only know that every day I will make a decision to do everything I can to make sure my land, my realm, my America does not fall into darkness today.  

Obamacare Howlers on "All Fixed Day"

Plain Dealer columnist Kevin O’Brien always has a rational take on politics, and his column yesterday, “'The Obamacare website works now' joins the list of White House howlers,” hit some bulls-eyes (useful for conversations around leftover and upcoming turkey dinners): 

Rejoice.

The Obama administration has fixed the website. It is now officially good (enough). Just ask 'em and they'll tell you: "The website works. You like the website. These aren't the droids you're looking for."

. . .

Americans will get to spend the next couple of years finding out: a) whether they actually did manage to sign up for some kind of health insurance on the website; b) whether the website actually did manage to forward to some insurance company somewhere enough accurate data to make any specific individual recognizable to the health care system; and c) whether government-directed health care is actually as wonderful as our stark-naked emperor would have us believe.

The answer to a) and b) is going to be "no" in thousands — maybe millions — of cases.

The website has been screwed up long enough to do some serious damage. The chances that it is working properly now are roughly nil, so people who sign up after All Fixed Day are very likely to have their essential data dropped or scrambled, too.

It will take months or years just to discover whose records are mangled and the straightening-out will take years, for sure. Remember, this is a project undertaken by people who don't know what they're doing and who don't particularly care how the results affect individual lives.

. . .

Is there any reason whatsoever to believe that a government that can so completely bungle something as straightforward as the design and introduction of a website will do better with something as complicated as the management of a health care system that comprises one-sixth of the U.S. economy?

On Cyber Monday, the day after the White House proclaimed that all was well (enough) with the Obamacare website because it could handle 50,000 simultaneous visits (it can't), Amazon.com was making hundreds of sales per second to millions of customers without breaking a sweat. The rest of the retail side of the Web was humming, too — and quite efficiently.

Why should they be so efficient and the government be so inept? Because the government has no competition, makes the rules of the phony market and has compelled everyone to buy into its system.

Retailers compete with one another for every discretionary dollar and Americans have infinite options regarding what to spend and from whom to buy.

But in the phony market for U.S. health insurance, the government is both the proprietor and the sole customer.

Americans will pay what the government requires. They will wait until the government says it's their turn. They will get the treatment the government approves, and no more. They will put up with whatever inconveniences prove necessary for the government's convenience.

It's a deeply un-American way of doing anything, and every bit of it has been based on a pack of lies that cynically played on the hopes of the innocent and the ignorant. When it was rammed through Congress in the dead of night, the Republicans had proposed more than 30 alternatives. It's hard to believe that any of them would have been a worse idea.

We need to repeal Obamacare and start over. But even badly misplaced hope dies hard, and the Democrats have made it clear that they will pull down the economy rather than give up the political advantage that comes with being able to threaten voters with the loss of health care.

Misplaced hope awaits the day when this president keeps a promise.

A wiser hope awaits 2016 and deliverance from tyranny.

* * *

The full article is here. 

The Health Care Compact: The Best Path Forward

To learn more about the Health Care Compact currently in the OH House, click here.

From Breitbart --

There is no need, at this point, to belabor the problems with the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. Suffice it to say that millions of Americans have been negatively impacted by the new law, and that number will grow in the coming months and years.

The question now is what to do about it. Democrats are dividing into two camps: those who want to stand by the President’s signature achievement until the bitter end, and those who are running from Obamacare, trying to save their political careers.

At the same time, Republicans are just trying to stay out of the way. Having voted against the bill, regained control of the House in its wake, and attempted to repeal the ACA multiple times, they are enjoying their moment of vindication. They rightfully fear that any attempt to “fix” Obamacare will allow Democrats and the media to portray them as “co-owning” any problems that occur downstream. And there will be more problems.

But while the Republicans are in a much stronger position than they were at the time of the government shutdown, they are still in a strategic quandary. On the one hand, Obamacare is exacting a very real human toll in the country, and the longer they stand aside doing nothing, the more they will be painted as insensitive and unresponsive to the damage. And many voters, in the midst of a personal crisis, don’t really care who caused the problem. They just want it fixed.

On the other hand, once Republicans provide specifics on the “replace” part of their “repeal and replace” plan, Democrats will switch from defense to offense. If history serves as a guide, we can expect Republicans to propose a policy cooked up in one of the top Washington DC conservative think tanks: Cato, Heritage, AEI, Manhattan, etc. Or perhaps they will dust off Rep. Paul Ryan’s free market plan for reforming health care. But no matter its provenance, their plan will be perceived as pushing a “conservative” solution for the country, designed and implemented in Washington, DC. 

Such a move, once made, will put Democrats back on their home court, attacking Republican plans as heartless and greedy. And these attacks will continue into the 2014 election cycle.

So what can be done? Well, it might help to ask, “If you had to come up with the ideal plan going forward, what would it look like?” It might have the following elements:

• It would empower state and local governments to address the problems created by Obamacare (something they’re already doing in response to the website problems) while Washington, DC attempted to sort out the mess. 

• It would not require the repeal and replacement of Obamacare all at once (something that is politically unfeasible) but would allow health care regulations to be gradually adapted and changed on a state-by-state basis to meet the particular conditions in each state.

• It would make a serious impact on the long-term federal liabilities of the health care  system (liabilities that didn’t go away under ACA). 

• It would support insurance markets that are overseen by knowledgeable regulators who have decades of experience and are, in many cases, directly accountable to voters.

• It would already have received strong support from elected officials of both parties.

• It would accommodate a wide variety of health care policy solutions, from single-payer to health savings accounts to accountable care organizations, and would provide the funding to support any of them.

• It would be something that can be put in place quickly to help mitigate the damage currently being done by Obamacare.

Believe it or not, such an ideal plan already exists, and its legislation has already passed in 11 state legislatures and been signed into law in eight of those states. It’s called the Health Care Compact.

There are two basic parts of the Health Care Compact. First, it provides states with a “regulatory shield” that allows them to regain control over health care regulation in their state. Second, it takes all federal health care spending in a state and turns it into an annual mandatory transfer payment to that state, indexing it for changes in inflation and population.

Unlike the 2,200+ page Affordable Care Act, the Health Care Compact is remarkably simple. Weighing in at just four pages, it can be read and understood by every member of Congress. And its purpose is straightforward: shift the responsibility and authority (both regulatory and fiscal) for health care from the federal government to compacting states. And it can happen quickly; all that is required is Congressional consent for the compact to become operative.

There are no special restrictions on the kind of health care system a state may adopt under the Health Care Compact (other than normal Constitutional constraints). Vermont has already passed legislation to create a single-payer system; Utah was well on its way to creating a private market for health insurance prior to ACA and can now restart that effort; Massachusetts has a program, popular in that state, that was passed by Democrats and signed by Republican Gov. Mitt Romney.


These and other policy solutions would be allowed under the Health Care Compact. In fact, it is likely that we will see a different solution emerge for each state, customized for the particular demographics, policy preferences, and provider networks in that state.

Participation in the Health Care Compact is solely at the option of each state. States that wish to stay in the federal system are free to do so. And states are not required to drop federal health care programs upon joining the compact; they can stay in those programs until such time as they are prepared to provide a workable substitute for their citizens—as long as they foot the bill. And with the transfer of federal dollars to the state, they have the resources to do so.

Now, the Health Care Compact requires Congressional consent. But the frightening situation facing both parties today makes such consent politically viable.

For Republicans, the Health Care Compact provides the optimal solution to their current challenge: how to help Americans hurt by Obamacare without pushing a conservative policy that would generate even more uncertainty, or attempting a “fix” that could leave them sharing the blame for its failure. Leave it to the states to work through, while providing those states with the funds the federal government already collects and spends in that state. And because it shaves about $3 trillion from the next ten years of federal health care commitments, it is also fiscally prudent.

For Democrats, the Health Care Compact provides a lifeline that can save them from electoral disaster. By providing an state option to take control of health care regulation, they can enable their supporters—many of whom are eager for single-payer—to pursue their goals in their state, rather than being forced to fight to the death for a system that many already feel is just a warmed-over conservative policy.

Because the Health Care Compact is voluntary for states, fiscally sound, Constitutionally licit (there are over 200 interstate compacts in operation), policy neutral (allowing blue states to pursue blue solutions and red states to pursue red solutions), and adopted by eight states thus far with more on the way, it is the only practical response to Obamacare debacle.

Rahm Emanuel famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” What is less famous was his next sentence: “And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” Three years ago, it seemed a little crazy to think that Congress might ever consent to the Health Care Compact. But with a serious crisis underway, it is not only conceivable, it is the best path forward.

So it is time for Congress to consent to the Health Care Compact, and free the states to clean up the mess they’ve created. It’s time to turn a Washington failure into an American success—one state at a time.

Leo Linbeck III is a husband, father of five, construction, real estate, and biotechnology executive, on the faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, and is an education and political reformer.

Tell Speaker Boehner -- No More Empty Promises!

In a post on 9/29 titled "The 'Secret Playbook' for Congress' Budget Battle" made during the recent Continuing Resolution fight -- former Congressman Ernest Istook noted the Senate's attempt of secretly trying to waive the promised budget cuts of 2011 made in exchange for raising the debt ceiling at that time....

To start, Friday’s 68-30 Senate vote “waived the provisions” (Congress-speak for “broke the promises”) of the budget rules. The 2011 budget deal promised spending cuts in exchange for adding over $2 trillion to the debt ceiling.

Now Senators voted to free themselves from that 2011 promise. Expect them to offer new promises (to be broken at some future date) to justify another increase in the debt limit.

The Senate vote went mostly unnoticed because reporters focused instead on the vote on cloture. Every Democrat, aided by 12 Republicans, approved the waiver of budget rules; the roll call is online here.

While the vote for the above amended Senate CR did not pass the House, this attempt shows it is clear Congress is willing to waive any previous promised spending cuts. It should also be noted that Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) was one of the 12 GOP Senators that supported waiving the promised budget cuts made in 2011.

With that failure to waive the promised cuts, and now as we move closer to the deadline, we see both sides getting nervous and looking for a way around the promised cuts....

From AFP --

With the next fiscal crisis looming right after the holidays, members of Congress have an opportunity to live up to their agreements on getting federal spending under control. The House-Senate budget conference committee has a deadline of December 13 to find an agreement on spending for the rest of the 2014 fiscal year. Conferees and their colleagues in Congress should pass legislation at an overall spending level of $967 billion.

Despite agreeing to cut future spending in the Budget Control Act of 2011, many members of Congress are calling for passing legislation that exceeds the BCA spending caps. Senate Appropriations Chair Barbara Mikulski claimed on the Senate floor that these spending levels would be “devastating to our economy and to the functioning of government.”

Capping spending is important because it will start to bring the country on a fiscally sustainable path and reduce the burden on future generations. Unfortunately, Congress is poised to continue its troubling trend of unchecked spending and empty promises. The Senate budget resolution adheres to spending levels at $1.058 trillion, and the versions of the Continuing Resolution that Congress considered previous to the government shut down in October was at a $986 billion level. Both of these proposals break the agreed-upon spending caps.

The danger in passing legislation that exceeds $967 billion, as congressional appropriators would like to do, is that it would sent the message that elected officials in Washington are not serious about cutting spending. It would convey that Congress is happy to talk the talk on cutting spending, but when the votes come up, it doesn’t walk the walk.

Passing legislation exceeding $967 billion would also bring another round of sequester cuts beginning in January. Planning to spend more than the spending cap while relying on sequester to bring the levels down automatically is irresponsible budgeting and unrealistic. By no means is this to say that we should get rid of sequester, however—sequester is the best tool we have right now in keeping federal spending in check. Conservatives fought hard for sequester, and they should fight hard to keep it in place. Although a targeted approach to cutting spending would be better than an across-the board approach, keeping federal spending in check should be a top priority.

No more empty promises. Congress should live up to its agreement by passing a continuing resolution funding government at $967 billion spending level.

As the Spineless Speaker, John Boehner (202)225-6205, has the unique ability to negotiate himself out of a free lunch at a Soup Kitchen and failed on his promise to stand strong against Obamacare, it is of the utmost importance that conservative groups remain vigilant in our chorus of - No More Empty Promises!