Today in Washington, D.C. - April 25, 2013
The House is in session but their actions on the floor both yesterday and and as of this report today are editorially not worth reporting. The issues addressing oversight and inquires by committees do continues but are stonewalled by Obama administration.
The Senate reconvened and resumed consideration of S. 743, the Internet sales tax bill. Votes on amendments to the bill are possible today. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) filed cloture on the bill yesterday, and if there is not an agreement on amendments, a cloture vote on the bill (to cut off debate) will be held tomorrow morning. As shared before, unfortunately, some of our Senators are in the pockets of certain interests and appear willing to expand or create bureaucratic barriers for doing business on the Internet. The losers will be the American people and small businesses. For more detailed information, view this previous article.
Yesterday, the Senate voted 74-23 to proceed to S. 743. The Senate also voted 96-0 on the confirmation of both Sylvia Burwell to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget and Jane Kelly to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit.
The public has been decrying the false blaming flight delays on sequestration. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal shared America's frustration, “As travelers nationwide are learning, the White House has decided to express its dislike of the sequester—otherwise known as modestly smaller government—by choosing to cut basic air traffic control services. . . . Start with the Federal Aviation Administration, better known as the Postal Service without the modern technology. Flyers directly fund two-thirds of the FAA's budget through 17 airline taxes and fees—about 20% of the cost of a $300 domestic ticket, up from 7% in the 1970s. Yet now the White House wants to make this agency that can't deliver what passengers are supposedly paying for even more dysfunctional. Ponder this logic, if that's the right word: The sequester cuts about $637 million from the FAA, which is less than 4% of its $15.9 billion 2012 budget, and it limits the agency to what it spent in 2010. The White House decided to translate this 4% cut that it has the legal discretion to avoid into a 10% cut for air traffic controllers. Though controllers will be furloughed for one of every 10 working days, four of every 10 flights won't arrive on time. The FAA projects the delays will rob one out of every three travellers of up to four hours of their lives waiting at the major hubs. . . . The White House could keep the controllers on duty simply by allocating more furlough days to . . . other non-essential workers. Instead, the FAA is even imposing the controller furlough on every airport equally, not prioritizing among the largest and busiest airports. San Francisco's Napa Valley airport with no commercial service will absorb the same proportion of the cuts as the central New York radar terminal, which covers La Guardia, JFK and Newark International, as well as MacArthur, Teterboro, New Haven, Republic and other regional fields.”
Instead of calling on The White House to put politics aside and fix this situation, Senate Democrats have instead been pushing a bill that they wrote overnight to do away with the sequester for the rest of the year by using phony savings from war spending that won’t occur. Sen. McConnell said that “Late yesterday afternoon, the Majority Leader handed us a hastily crafted bill and then asked if we could pass it before anybody had even seen it. Apparently someone on the other side realized they had no good explanation for why they hadn’t prevented the delays we’ve seen at airports across the country this week, so they threw together a bill in a feeble attempt to cover for it. It’s embarrassing. It actually proposes to replace the President’s Sequester cuts with what’s known around here as OCO."
What's an OCO? In a letter last year, former Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Coburn explained: “The funds allocated for OCO or “war savings” are not real, and every member of Congress knows this. The funds specified for Overseas Contingency Operations in future budgets are mere estimates of what our nation’s wars cost may be in the future. And since it is likely that future OCO costs will be significantly less than the placeholders in the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates, it is the height of fiscal irresponsibility to treat the difference between the assumed and actual OCO costs as a ‘savings’ to be spent on other programs."
Leader McConnell points out that this letter was from the former Democrat nominee for Vice President. "So there’s bipartisan consensus that this thing we call OCO is a fiscally irresponsible gimmick. The Director of the Concord Coalition has called it ‘the mother of all…gimmicks.’ The President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget called it a ‘glaring gimmick.’ So, whether OCO is the mother of all gimmicks, or just a glaring one – everybody other than the Majority Leader evidently agrees on one thing: it’s the height of fiscal irresponsibility.”
The editors of The Washington Post chided Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democrats for acting like there was no better solution. “[I]t does not follow that the air-traffic crunch can be fixed only by eliminating sequestration, as Mr. Reid argued. ‘We cannot and should not only address the FAA cuts,’ he said. ‘We cannot ignore the sequestration’s overall effect on Americans.’ White House spokesman Jay Carney chimed in with the demand that Republicans either support another short-term tax and spending measure to postpone the sequester ‘or take up the president’s balanced approach to broader deficit reduction that would eliminate the sequester entirely.’”
The Post editors add, “if the air-traffic furloughs pose both a big inconvenience and a short-term danger to the U.S. economy — and they do — it would be irresponsible to let them go on until an unlikely grand bargain is struck, or even to use them as political leverage to achieve one. Mr. Reid is not a powerless bystander; he should work with the White House and Republicans to help the FAA offset the furloughs, which account for $160 million of the $637 million FAA sequester. That’s not small change, but surely it could be scrounged out of the Transportation Department’s $70 billion budget, given appropriate legislation.”
As Leader McConnell said, “[T]he President rejected the flexibility we proposed on the Sequester for obvious political reasons. He wanted these cuts to be as painful for folks as possible as an excuse to raise taxes to turn them off. Well, it’s not working. Even his own party is starting to abandon him on this issue. But the broader point is this – even without the flexibility we proposed, he already has the flexibility he needs to make these cuts less painful. He should exercise it. . . . [T]he real solution, as I’ve said, is for the Administration to accept the additional flexibility we’d like to give it to make these cuts in a smarter way, and to get rid of wasteful spending first.”
Today, in an op-ed for Reuters, Sen. Mitch McConnell addressed the pending Obamacare "train wreck." “When even a key architect of Obamacare says the law’s implementation will resemble a ‘train wreck,’ it is clear that its biggest remaining supporters need to finally level with the American people about what’s in store — starting with President Barack Obama. The president must step into the breach and explain to the public that skyrocketing premiums and a raft of new taxes, penalties and fees are coming their way. It may not be easy, but the president has a responsibility to explain as frankly as possible what this law will mean — before its major components take effect. . . .”
The Washington Post (through liberal Ezra Klein’s blog no less) reports today, “Maryland’s biggest health insurer proposed raising premiums for individual policies by an average of 25 percent next year, saying that President Obama’s health law would require it to accept even the sickest applicants, driving up costs. . . . Across the country, insurers are beginning to propose premiums for the plans they will offer on the health insurance exchanges — online marketplaces for individuals to compare and purchase policies — due to open for enrollment Oct.1. CareFirst’s move indicates major insurance companies will not shy away from proposing large premium hikes — and placing the blame on the new federal regulations. . . CareFirst, which provides insurance to 70 percent of Marylanders with individual policies, said the rate increase is necessary because, under the law, it can no longer refuse coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions. The company expects a huge influx of sick people that will drive up costs, according to its filings with the Maryland Insurance Administration. ‘The biggest driver of the increase is opening up the market to all comers,’ said CareFirst CEO Chet Burrell. ‘The premiums reflect that.’”
Leader McConnell also shared in his op-ed. “For many families and individuals, especially younger Americans, the law will lead to increased health insurance premiums. These have already gone up $2,370 per family since Obama took office, not down by $2,500 as he promised. And this is before most of Obamacare’s most costly mandates have even taken effect. For many business owners, Obamacare will mean a crushing tower of red tape, demonstrated by the nearly 20,000 pages of regulations already issued.
“Employers have already planned layoffs due to uncertainty surrounding this law, according to the Federal Reserve. Obamacare could result in up to 800,000 fewer jobs, according to some estimates. For many part-time workers, the law means less take-home pay as employers reduce hours to comply with the law’s mandates. Colleges in Ohio and Pennsylvania are reportedly limiting the number of classes adjunct professors can teach; Virginia state agencies are reducing part-time employee hours to no more than 29, and a national soft-pretzel chain has begun moving to a ‘kiosk’ store model that will allow it to cut down on full-time employees. We’ve even seen a union reverse its position on the law and call for repeal, partially because it could ‘cause a loss of work.’ Clearly, this isn’t the ‘reform’ Americans were promised.”
Over and over and over and over and over again we’ve seen the consequences of Democrats jamming this unpopular health care law through and how it falls far short of the promises President Obama made about it.
As Leader McConnell said on the Senate floor this morning, We’ve been saying this since day one. We said a government takeover of healthcare would raise health costs and premiums. We said it would raise taxes on the middle class. We said it would force millions of Americans to give up insurance plans they liked and wanted to keep. We said it would bury families and small businesses in a literal mountain of regulations. And we said it would cost our country jobs. We shouted these things from the rooftop throughout the health care debate. A few of us may have even said it would be a ‘train wreck.’ Until now, the President’s allies mostly ignored or brushed off our concerns. But you know what? With each passing day, it appears clearer and clearer that we were right to sound the alarm. Only now are Washington Democrats starting to come around to the reality of what they passed.”
He continued, “In some ways, I’m glad to see more and more Washington Democrats and their allies come around to the reality of what they’ve done. Earlier this year, Democrats helped us repeal the CLASS Act, for instance. Last month, the Senate voted – 79 to 20 – to repeal the law’s job-killing medical device tax. And just last week, we saw a union reverse course and come out for repeal of the law. I hope more will join us in repealing it in its entirety, root and branch. . . . Americans can rest assured that Republicans will keep working to repeal this law. I hope more of the President’s allies will join us in that fight too. Because we all owe our country better than this. . . . stop this ‘train wreck’ before things get even worse.”
Tags: Washington, D.C. the sequester, FAA, airline flight delays, Obamacare, train wreck To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
The House is in session but their actions on the floor both yesterday and and as of this report today are editorially not worth reporting. The issues addressing oversight and inquires by committees do continues but are stonewalled by Obama administration.
The Senate reconvened and resumed consideration of S. 743, the Internet sales tax bill. Votes on amendments to the bill are possible today. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) filed cloture on the bill yesterday, and if there is not an agreement on amendments, a cloture vote on the bill (to cut off debate) will be held tomorrow morning. As shared before, unfortunately, some of our Senators are in the pockets of certain interests and appear willing to expand or create bureaucratic barriers for doing business on the Internet. The losers will be the American people and small businesses. For more detailed information, view this previous article.
Yesterday, the Senate voted 74-23 to proceed to S. 743. The Senate also voted 96-0 on the confirmation of both Sylvia Burwell to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget and Jane Kelly to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit.
The public has been decrying the false blaming flight delays on sequestration. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal shared America's frustration, “As travelers nationwide are learning, the White House has decided to express its dislike of the sequester—otherwise known as modestly smaller government—by choosing to cut basic air traffic control services. . . . Start with the Federal Aviation Administration, better known as the Postal Service without the modern technology. Flyers directly fund two-thirds of the FAA's budget through 17 airline taxes and fees—about 20% of the cost of a $300 domestic ticket, up from 7% in the 1970s. Yet now the White House wants to make this agency that can't deliver what passengers are supposedly paying for even more dysfunctional. Ponder this logic, if that's the right word: The sequester cuts about $637 million from the FAA, which is less than 4% of its $15.9 billion 2012 budget, and it limits the agency to what it spent in 2010. The White House decided to translate this 4% cut that it has the legal discretion to avoid into a 10% cut for air traffic controllers. Though controllers will be furloughed for one of every 10 working days, four of every 10 flights won't arrive on time. The FAA projects the delays will rob one out of every three travellers of up to four hours of their lives waiting at the major hubs. . . . The White House could keep the controllers on duty simply by allocating more furlough days to . . . other non-essential workers. Instead, the FAA is even imposing the controller furlough on every airport equally, not prioritizing among the largest and busiest airports. San Francisco's Napa Valley airport with no commercial service will absorb the same proportion of the cuts as the central New York radar terminal, which covers La Guardia, JFK and Newark International, as well as MacArthur, Teterboro, New Haven, Republic and other regional fields.”
Instead of calling on The White House to put politics aside and fix this situation, Senate Democrats have instead been pushing a bill that they wrote overnight to do away with the sequester for the rest of the year by using phony savings from war spending that won’t occur. Sen. McConnell said that “Late yesterday afternoon, the Majority Leader handed us a hastily crafted bill and then asked if we could pass it before anybody had even seen it. Apparently someone on the other side realized they had no good explanation for why they hadn’t prevented the delays we’ve seen at airports across the country this week, so they threw together a bill in a feeble attempt to cover for it. It’s embarrassing. It actually proposes to replace the President’s Sequester cuts with what’s known around here as OCO."
What's an OCO? In a letter last year, former Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Coburn explained: “The funds allocated for OCO or “war savings” are not real, and every member of Congress knows this. The funds specified for Overseas Contingency Operations in future budgets are mere estimates of what our nation’s wars cost may be in the future. And since it is likely that future OCO costs will be significantly less than the placeholders in the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates, it is the height of fiscal irresponsibility to treat the difference between the assumed and actual OCO costs as a ‘savings’ to be spent on other programs."
Leader McConnell points out that this letter was from the former Democrat nominee for Vice President. "So there’s bipartisan consensus that this thing we call OCO is a fiscally irresponsible gimmick. The Director of the Concord Coalition has called it ‘the mother of all…gimmicks.’ The President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget called it a ‘glaring gimmick.’ So, whether OCO is the mother of all gimmicks, or just a glaring one – everybody other than the Majority Leader evidently agrees on one thing: it’s the height of fiscal irresponsibility.”
The editors of The Washington Post chided Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democrats for acting like there was no better solution. “[I]t does not follow that the air-traffic crunch can be fixed only by eliminating sequestration, as Mr. Reid argued. ‘We cannot and should not only address the FAA cuts,’ he said. ‘We cannot ignore the sequestration’s overall effect on Americans.’ White House spokesman Jay Carney chimed in with the demand that Republicans either support another short-term tax and spending measure to postpone the sequester ‘or take up the president’s balanced approach to broader deficit reduction that would eliminate the sequester entirely.’”
The Post editors add, “if the air-traffic furloughs pose both a big inconvenience and a short-term danger to the U.S. economy — and they do — it would be irresponsible to let them go on until an unlikely grand bargain is struck, or even to use them as political leverage to achieve one. Mr. Reid is not a powerless bystander; he should work with the White House and Republicans to help the FAA offset the furloughs, which account for $160 million of the $637 million FAA sequester. That’s not small change, but surely it could be scrounged out of the Transportation Department’s $70 billion budget, given appropriate legislation.”
As Leader McConnell said, “[T]he President rejected the flexibility we proposed on the Sequester for obvious political reasons. He wanted these cuts to be as painful for folks as possible as an excuse to raise taxes to turn them off. Well, it’s not working. Even his own party is starting to abandon him on this issue. But the broader point is this – even without the flexibility we proposed, he already has the flexibility he needs to make these cuts less painful. He should exercise it. . . . [T]he real solution, as I’ve said, is for the Administration to accept the additional flexibility we’d like to give it to make these cuts in a smarter way, and to get rid of wasteful spending first.”
Today, in an op-ed for Reuters, Sen. Mitch McConnell addressed the pending Obamacare "train wreck." “When even a key architect of Obamacare says the law’s implementation will resemble a ‘train wreck,’ it is clear that its biggest remaining supporters need to finally level with the American people about what’s in store — starting with President Barack Obama. The president must step into the breach and explain to the public that skyrocketing premiums and a raft of new taxes, penalties and fees are coming their way. It may not be easy, but the president has a responsibility to explain as frankly as possible what this law will mean — before its major components take effect. . . .”
The Washington Post (through liberal Ezra Klein’s blog no less) reports today, “Maryland’s biggest health insurer proposed raising premiums for individual policies by an average of 25 percent next year, saying that President Obama’s health law would require it to accept even the sickest applicants, driving up costs. . . . Across the country, insurers are beginning to propose premiums for the plans they will offer on the health insurance exchanges — online marketplaces for individuals to compare and purchase policies — due to open for enrollment Oct.1. CareFirst’s move indicates major insurance companies will not shy away from proposing large premium hikes — and placing the blame on the new federal regulations. . . CareFirst, which provides insurance to 70 percent of Marylanders with individual policies, said the rate increase is necessary because, under the law, it can no longer refuse coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions. The company expects a huge influx of sick people that will drive up costs, according to its filings with the Maryland Insurance Administration. ‘The biggest driver of the increase is opening up the market to all comers,’ said CareFirst CEO Chet Burrell. ‘The premiums reflect that.’”
Leader McConnell also shared in his op-ed. “For many families and individuals, especially younger Americans, the law will lead to increased health insurance premiums. These have already gone up $2,370 per family since Obama took office, not down by $2,500 as he promised. And this is before most of Obamacare’s most costly mandates have even taken effect. For many business owners, Obamacare will mean a crushing tower of red tape, demonstrated by the nearly 20,000 pages of regulations already issued.
“Employers have already planned layoffs due to uncertainty surrounding this law, according to the Federal Reserve. Obamacare could result in up to 800,000 fewer jobs, according to some estimates. For many part-time workers, the law means less take-home pay as employers reduce hours to comply with the law’s mandates. Colleges in Ohio and Pennsylvania are reportedly limiting the number of classes adjunct professors can teach; Virginia state agencies are reducing part-time employee hours to no more than 29, and a national soft-pretzel chain has begun moving to a ‘kiosk’ store model that will allow it to cut down on full-time employees. We’ve even seen a union reverse its position on the law and call for repeal, partially because it could ‘cause a loss of work.’ Clearly, this isn’t the ‘reform’ Americans were promised.”
Over and over and over and over and over again we’ve seen the consequences of Democrats jamming this unpopular health care law through and how it falls far short of the promises President Obama made about it.
As Leader McConnell said on the Senate floor this morning, We’ve been saying this since day one. We said a government takeover of healthcare would raise health costs and premiums. We said it would raise taxes on the middle class. We said it would force millions of Americans to give up insurance plans they liked and wanted to keep. We said it would bury families and small businesses in a literal mountain of regulations. And we said it would cost our country jobs. We shouted these things from the rooftop throughout the health care debate. A few of us may have even said it would be a ‘train wreck.’ Until now, the President’s allies mostly ignored or brushed off our concerns. But you know what? With each passing day, it appears clearer and clearer that we were right to sound the alarm. Only now are Washington Democrats starting to come around to the reality of what they passed.”
He continued, “In some ways, I’m glad to see more and more Washington Democrats and their allies come around to the reality of what they’ve done. Earlier this year, Democrats helped us repeal the CLASS Act, for instance. Last month, the Senate voted – 79 to 20 – to repeal the law’s job-killing medical device tax. And just last week, we saw a union reverse course and come out for repeal of the law. I hope more will join us in repealing it in its entirety, root and branch. . . . Americans can rest assured that Republicans will keep working to repeal this law. I hope more of the President’s allies will join us in that fight too. Because we all owe our country better than this. . . . stop this ‘train wreck’ before things get even worse.”
Tags: Washington, D.C. the sequester, FAA, airline flight delays, Obamacare, train wreck To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
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