Senate Dems Stumble Over Tuition Assistance Interests Rates | WH Knew For Months Obamacare Implementation Wouldn't Work
Today in Washington, July 10, 2012
The Senate reconvened at 10 AM today. Following two hours of debate, the Senate voted on cloture on the motion to proceed to (i.e. whether to cut off debate and begin considering) S. 1238, Democrats’ latest student loan rate proposal that is even at odds with President Obama’s and that of other Democrats. The motion failed to get the needed sixty votes by a vote of 51-49. Note, there is already a House passed bill waiting for vote by the U.S. Senate that agreed with the President, or at least what he has verbalized with regard to the cost of student loans.
Yesterday, the Senate voted 54-41 to confirm Jennifer A. Dorsey to be U.S. District Judge for the District of Nevada.
The House reconvened at 10 AM today and continued debating amendments to H.R. 2609 — "Making appropriations for energy and water development and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2014, and for other purposes."
Yesterday, the House began debating amendments on H.R. 2609 and a polithera of amendments were voted down. The following were adopted by Voice Vote:
Noem (R-SD) - Page 15, Line 4 - Increases Water and Related Resources by $25 million (intended for rural water supply programs) and reduces Renewable Energy, Energy Reliability, and Efficiency and Departmental Administration by $15 million each.
Hastings (R-WA) - Page 22, Line 5 - Decreases Renewable Energy, Energy Reliability, and Efficiency by $9.5 million and Departmental Administration by $20 million and increases Defense Environmental Cleanup by $22.5 million.
Reed (R-NY) - Page 25, Line 14 - Increases Non-Defense Environmental Cleanup by $18.9 million and decreases Departmental Administration and Office of the Administrator collectively by the same amount.
Schiff (D-CA) - Page 26, Line 18 - Increases Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy by $20 million and reduces Departmental Administration by the same amount.
Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) - Page 46, Line 16 - Amends Sec. 301 to require the report required under the section be submitted to both the Appropriations and authorizing committees.
Senate Democrates Failed Tuition Assistance Legislation:
Generation Opportunity President Evan Feinberg responded to the latest Senate failed proposal to artificially set interest rates on student loans, "The White House and Congress seem to be competing with each other over who can screw over students worse and Senate Democrats are clearly winning. Not only did Harry Reid's proposal do nothing to address government's monopoly over the student loan market, which is the root cause of skyrocketing tuition, but it also would have added an additional level of uncertainty for prospective borrowers.
"We can't keep running our government on lazy one-year fixes just because our elected representatives don't have the political courage to do what's best for students - especially in areas where government involvement is to blame for the problem we're trying to solve in the first place. Young people are already suffering from the highest sustained unemployment rates since World War II and the average student debt load is roughly $30,000.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) issued the following statement after Senate Democrats again failed to approve legislation to address student loan interest rates – which have doubled because of their inaction – and prodded the White House and Senate Democratic leaders to act on behalf of students and their families: “Republicans acted to protect students from higher interest rates and make college more affordable, yet Senate Democratic leaders let student loan interest rates double without passing any legislation to address the issue. While the House-passed bill mirrors what the president has proposed, Senate Democratic leaders seem content to leave students and their families with higher borrowing costs and more student debt, which is shameful and unacceptable. It’s long past time for President Obama to lead, address the divisions within his own party, and bring everyone together to enact a permanent solution for students and their families.”
Interest rates on student loans doubled 10 days ago. So what are Senate Democrats doing about it? Fighting with each other and wasting time on a “dead-end policy” that doesn’t solve the problem.
In “Democrats Duel on Student Loans,” Roll Call tells the story of “dueling Democratic media stakeouts” yesterday – “just a few feet apart” from one another. The scene “was indicative of the split between Democrats,” with Senate leaders pushing for little more than another short-term political fix.
And in “Democrat on Democrat,” The Hill says the “dispute over student loan rates escalated divisions within the party.” They quote one Senate Democrat calling the Obama administration’s bipartisan plan for a market-based student loan rate “a nonstarter.”
The people hurt most in all of this are students, sidelined in a fight between Democrats more interested in politics and what the Washington Post calls a “pathetic non-solution.”
It isn’t every day that President Obama and House Republicans agree on a policy solution. That’s why it’s sad to see Senate Democrats fighting with eachother and rejecting a bipartisan student loan plan -- and even sadder to see the president let them get away with it.
Moving on to Delays in Obamacare:
The Obama administration wants you to know it is getting tough on waste, fraud, and abuse …. in its government cell phone program. But ObamaCare’s taxpayer-funded subsidies? Not so much. The Obama administration is “urging companies to thoroughly check a person's eligibility” in order to limit “waste and abuse” in its government cell phone program, says The Hill. Which is great, and all. But for those signing up for taxpayer-funded ObamaCare subsidies? Reuters says the president will “depend on consumers observing the honor system.”
As Forbes points out, the White House paired this “subsidize first, ask questions later” approach with Friday’s announcement that it’s delaying the health care law’s mandates for businesses, but not individuals and families.
“HHS now says it will no longer attempt to verify individual eligibility for insurance subsidies and instead will rely on self-reporting,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “[T]he result starting in October may be millions of people getting subsidies who don't legally qualify” – and “[t]his would mean huge increases in ObamaCare spending. … as much as $250 billion in improper payments in its first decade.”
Reuters says relying on the honor system could lead to “a ‘boatload’ of illegitimate tax credits.” On National Review, Yuval Levin agrees, saying the Obama administration is “opening the door wide open to fraud” that will “needless to say, increase the cost of the exchange subsidies.”
So for those keeping track: not only is the president’s health care law driving up costs, threatening workers’ hours and wages, and making it harder for small businesses to hire. As Speaker Boehner points out, “The president’s decision to use the ‘honor system’ to hand out subsidies” “exposes taxpayers to massive fraud and abuse.” The American people deserve better than this.
In an op-ed for Politico today, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell writes, “[W]hile the administration hasn’t publicly admitted it yet, last week’s announcement is further proof that some of the law’s biggest backers are starting to realize how unworkable Obamacare truly is. A few months after one of the law’s chief architects in the Senate predicted an implementation ‘train wreck,’ administration officials are now tacitly admitting as much by giving businesses — and Washington bureaucrats — another year to figure it all out. But the obvious problem with the band-aid approach is that without full repeal, there will never be an end to the number of problems that need to be fixed. That’s the nature of a law that runs 2,700 pages in length, has spawned more than 20,000 pages of regulations (so far) and has authorized the creation of, at last count, 159 bureaucratic agencies, boards and programs. If Obamacare’s cheerleaders were being honest, they’d admit that the cracks in its facade started to show early and will only continue to spread.”
And in the past couple of weeks, Americans have seen those cracks spread far and wide. The AP reported yesterday, “A glitch involving President Barack Obama's health care law means smokers may get at least some relief next year from tobacco-use penalties that could have made their premiums unaffordable. In yet another health care overhaul delay, the administration has quietly notified insurers that a computer system problem will limit penalties that the law says the companies may charge smokers. A fix will take at least a year. Older smokers are more likely to benefit from the glitch, experts say. But depending on how insurers respond to it, it's also possible that younger smokers could wind up facing higher penalties than they otherwise would have. . . . The underlying reason for the glitch is another provision in the health care law that says insurers can't charge older customers more than three times what they charge the youngest adults in the pool. The government's computer system has been unable to accommodate the two.
Time wrote, “[T]he Obama Administration’s recent announcement that the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) employer mandate will kick in a year late could ripple beyond the brief extension, increasing costs and complicating implementation of other vital parts of the law. . . . Whatever political benefit the Administration accrues in the delay will come at taxpayer expense, as the move will increase the cost of Obamacare. The provision was expected to generate some $10 billion in revenue in the form of penalties that employers not offering coverage would have incurred in 2014. Adding to that cost is the fact that many workers whose employers decide not to offer coverage in 2014 will now be eligible to receive federal subsidies to buy individual insurance policies through state or federal exchanges. The delay does not change the ACA’s individual mandate, which requires nearly all Americans to have insurance coverage beginning in 2014.”
Today, The Wall Street Journal reports, “When Obama administration officials delayed a central plank of the new health law—requiring that big employers offer health insurance to workers—they said it was to help businesses pleading for more time. Left unsaid was the federal government hadn't written key rules guiding employers, according to current and former administration officials, and computer systems that were supposed to run the program weren't operational. . . . An administration official said Tuesday the Treasury Department delayed the employer mandate after it became clear the agency couldn't address concerns raised by employers in time. He said the agency was having a tough time finding solutions that weren't a burden. . . . In February, the administration told officials at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the business lobby group, that draft rules detailing the reporting requirements for employers were coming out ‘any day.’ They have yet to see them, said Katie Mahoney, the executive director for health policy at the chamber. The delay made it difficult for business to develop the computer programs needed to comply, said Catherine Livingston, a former health care counsel at the IRS, who is now in private practice. ‘They were so late putting out regulations, and even as of today they have not produced proposed regulations, they knew it was not realistic to expect employers and insurers to implement their system changes,’ she said.”
To top it all off, according to National Journal, “If you've been reading all the Obamacare stories lately, you might get the impression that the administration has just realized it will not be able to implement the massive health reform as designed. It has known for months. As far back as March, a top IT official at the Department of Health and Human Services said the department's current ambition for the law's new online insurance marketplaces was that they not be ‘a Third-World experience.’ Several provisions had already been abandoned in an effort to simplify the administration's task and maximize the chances that the new systems would be ready to go live in October, when customers are supposed to start signing up for insurance. In April, several consultants focusing on the new online marketplaces, known as exchanges, told National Journal that the idealized, seamless user experience initially envisioned under the Affordable Care Act was no longer possible, as the administration axed non-essential provisions that were too complex to implement in time. That focus has intensified lately, as officials announced that they would not be requiring employers to cover their workers next year or states to verify residents' incomes before signing them up for insurance. . . . ‘It's the joyous, simultaneous, nonlinear equation from hell,’ said Kip Piper, a former top official at HHS and OMB who is now a consultant in close contact with IT vendors. Piper said it's no surprise that the administration has given up on certain functions given the technological complexity needed and the short time-frame. . . . The struggles with technology and administrative complexity have not come as a recent surprise to administration officials; they've been negotiating them for months already. By eliminating non-essential tasks, they may be violating the letter of the health reform law, with its rigorous timetables and multiple requirements . . . .”
Even NPR, in the course of trying to explain away all these problems, had a host say, “[A]t some point, does all this sort of combine to create a sense that the rollout of the law is kind of coming of the rails?” A reporter replied that “all these glitches and delays” “do create a perception, first, that things aren't going as well as the administration keeps saying. And second, that there may be other shoes yet to drop.”
As Leader McConnell writes, “In the face of escalating complaints, the Obama administration has clearly embraced a policy of quick fixes aimed at placating the loudest voices in the bunch. But this will never work as a long-term strategy. The answer isn’t to help some and ignore others. It’s to liberate all Americans from the burdens of this terrible law. What’s needed is a permanent delay — for everyone.”
He explains, “Addressing the concerns of some while ignoring those of others won’t solve the problems ordinary Americans will face as a result of this law. It will magnify them. That’s why, ultimately, the only solution to the burdens of Obamacare is a permanent delay in the form of a full repeal, which would clear the path for reforms that actually lower costs and improve the quality of care.”
Tags: Student Interest Rates, Obamacare implementation, problems, train wreck To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
The Senate reconvened at 10 AM today. Following two hours of debate, the Senate voted on cloture on the motion to proceed to (i.e. whether to cut off debate and begin considering) S. 1238, Democrats’ latest student loan rate proposal that is even at odds with President Obama’s and that of other Democrats. The motion failed to get the needed sixty votes by a vote of 51-49. Note, there is already a House passed bill waiting for vote by the U.S. Senate that agreed with the President, or at least what he has verbalized with regard to the cost of student loans.
Yesterday, the Senate voted 54-41 to confirm Jennifer A. Dorsey to be U.S. District Judge for the District of Nevada.
The House reconvened at 10 AM today and continued debating amendments to H.R. 2609 — "Making appropriations for energy and water development and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2014, and for other purposes."
Yesterday, the House began debating amendments on H.R. 2609 and a polithera of amendments were voted down. The following were adopted by Voice Vote:
Noem (R-SD) - Page 15, Line 4 - Increases Water and Related Resources by $25 million (intended for rural water supply programs) and reduces Renewable Energy, Energy Reliability, and Efficiency and Departmental Administration by $15 million each.
Hastings (R-WA) - Page 22, Line 5 - Decreases Renewable Energy, Energy Reliability, and Efficiency by $9.5 million and Departmental Administration by $20 million and increases Defense Environmental Cleanup by $22.5 million.
Reed (R-NY) - Page 25, Line 14 - Increases Non-Defense Environmental Cleanup by $18.9 million and decreases Departmental Administration and Office of the Administrator collectively by the same amount.
Schiff (D-CA) - Page 26, Line 18 - Increases Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy by $20 million and reduces Departmental Administration by the same amount.
Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) - Page 46, Line 16 - Amends Sec. 301 to require the report required under the section be submitted to both the Appropriations and authorizing committees.
Senate Democrates Failed Tuition Assistance Legislation:
Generation Opportunity President Evan Feinberg responded to the latest Senate failed proposal to artificially set interest rates on student loans, "The White House and Congress seem to be competing with each other over who can screw over students worse and Senate Democrats are clearly winning. Not only did Harry Reid's proposal do nothing to address government's monopoly over the student loan market, which is the root cause of skyrocketing tuition, but it also would have added an additional level of uncertainty for prospective borrowers.
"We can't keep running our government on lazy one-year fixes just because our elected representatives don't have the political courage to do what's best for students - especially in areas where government involvement is to blame for the problem we're trying to solve in the first place. Young people are already suffering from the highest sustained unemployment rates since World War II and the average student debt load is roughly $30,000.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) issued the following statement after Senate Democrats again failed to approve legislation to address student loan interest rates – which have doubled because of their inaction – and prodded the White House and Senate Democratic leaders to act on behalf of students and their families: “Republicans acted to protect students from higher interest rates and make college more affordable, yet Senate Democratic leaders let student loan interest rates double without passing any legislation to address the issue. While the House-passed bill mirrors what the president has proposed, Senate Democratic leaders seem content to leave students and their families with higher borrowing costs and more student debt, which is shameful and unacceptable. It’s long past time for President Obama to lead, address the divisions within his own party, and bring everyone together to enact a permanent solution for students and their families.”
Interest rates on student loans doubled 10 days ago. So what are Senate Democrats doing about it? Fighting with each other and wasting time on a “dead-end policy” that doesn’t solve the problem.
In “Democrats Duel on Student Loans,” Roll Call tells the story of “dueling Democratic media stakeouts” yesterday – “just a few feet apart” from one another. The scene “was indicative of the split between Democrats,” with Senate leaders pushing for little more than another short-term political fix.
And in “Democrat on Democrat,” The Hill says the “dispute over student loan rates escalated divisions within the party.” They quote one Senate Democrat calling the Obama administration’s bipartisan plan for a market-based student loan rate “a nonstarter.”
The people hurt most in all of this are students, sidelined in a fight between Democrats more interested in politics and what the Washington Post calls a “pathetic non-solution.”
It isn’t every day that President Obama and House Republicans agree on a policy solution. That’s why it’s sad to see Senate Democrats fighting with eachother and rejecting a bipartisan student loan plan -- and even sadder to see the president let them get away with it.
Moving on to Delays in Obamacare:
The Obama administration wants you to know it is getting tough on waste, fraud, and abuse …. in its government cell phone program. But ObamaCare’s taxpayer-funded subsidies? Not so much. The Obama administration is “urging companies to thoroughly check a person's eligibility” in order to limit “waste and abuse” in its government cell phone program, says The Hill. Which is great, and all. But for those signing up for taxpayer-funded ObamaCare subsidies? Reuters says the president will “depend on consumers observing the honor system.”
As Forbes points out, the White House paired this “subsidize first, ask questions later” approach with Friday’s announcement that it’s delaying the health care law’s mandates for businesses, but not individuals and families.
“HHS now says it will no longer attempt to verify individual eligibility for insurance subsidies and instead will rely on self-reporting,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “[T]he result starting in October may be millions of people getting subsidies who don't legally qualify” – and “[t]his would mean huge increases in ObamaCare spending. … as much as $250 billion in improper payments in its first decade.”
Reuters says relying on the honor system could lead to “a ‘boatload’ of illegitimate tax credits.” On National Review, Yuval Levin agrees, saying the Obama administration is “opening the door wide open to fraud” that will “needless to say, increase the cost of the exchange subsidies.”
So for those keeping track: not only is the president’s health care law driving up costs, threatening workers’ hours and wages, and making it harder for small businesses to hire. As Speaker Boehner points out, “The president’s decision to use the ‘honor system’ to hand out subsidies” “exposes taxpayers to massive fraud and abuse.” The American people deserve better than this.
In an op-ed for Politico today, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell writes, “[W]hile the administration hasn’t publicly admitted it yet, last week’s announcement is further proof that some of the law’s biggest backers are starting to realize how unworkable Obamacare truly is. A few months after one of the law’s chief architects in the Senate predicted an implementation ‘train wreck,’ administration officials are now tacitly admitting as much by giving businesses — and Washington bureaucrats — another year to figure it all out. But the obvious problem with the band-aid approach is that without full repeal, there will never be an end to the number of problems that need to be fixed. That’s the nature of a law that runs 2,700 pages in length, has spawned more than 20,000 pages of regulations (so far) and has authorized the creation of, at last count, 159 bureaucratic agencies, boards and programs. If Obamacare’s cheerleaders were being honest, they’d admit that the cracks in its facade started to show early and will only continue to spread.”
And in the past couple of weeks, Americans have seen those cracks spread far and wide. The AP reported yesterday, “A glitch involving President Barack Obama's health care law means smokers may get at least some relief next year from tobacco-use penalties that could have made their premiums unaffordable. In yet another health care overhaul delay, the administration has quietly notified insurers that a computer system problem will limit penalties that the law says the companies may charge smokers. A fix will take at least a year. Older smokers are more likely to benefit from the glitch, experts say. But depending on how insurers respond to it, it's also possible that younger smokers could wind up facing higher penalties than they otherwise would have. . . . The underlying reason for the glitch is another provision in the health care law that says insurers can't charge older customers more than three times what they charge the youngest adults in the pool. The government's computer system has been unable to accommodate the two.
Time wrote, “[T]he Obama Administration’s recent announcement that the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) employer mandate will kick in a year late could ripple beyond the brief extension, increasing costs and complicating implementation of other vital parts of the law. . . . Whatever political benefit the Administration accrues in the delay will come at taxpayer expense, as the move will increase the cost of Obamacare. The provision was expected to generate some $10 billion in revenue in the form of penalties that employers not offering coverage would have incurred in 2014. Adding to that cost is the fact that many workers whose employers decide not to offer coverage in 2014 will now be eligible to receive federal subsidies to buy individual insurance policies through state or federal exchanges. The delay does not change the ACA’s individual mandate, which requires nearly all Americans to have insurance coverage beginning in 2014.”
Today, The Wall Street Journal reports, “When Obama administration officials delayed a central plank of the new health law—requiring that big employers offer health insurance to workers—they said it was to help businesses pleading for more time. Left unsaid was the federal government hadn't written key rules guiding employers, according to current and former administration officials, and computer systems that were supposed to run the program weren't operational. . . . An administration official said Tuesday the Treasury Department delayed the employer mandate after it became clear the agency couldn't address concerns raised by employers in time. He said the agency was having a tough time finding solutions that weren't a burden. . . . In February, the administration told officials at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the business lobby group, that draft rules detailing the reporting requirements for employers were coming out ‘any day.’ They have yet to see them, said Katie Mahoney, the executive director for health policy at the chamber. The delay made it difficult for business to develop the computer programs needed to comply, said Catherine Livingston, a former health care counsel at the IRS, who is now in private practice. ‘They were so late putting out regulations, and even as of today they have not produced proposed regulations, they knew it was not realistic to expect employers and insurers to implement their system changes,’ she said.”
To top it all off, according to National Journal, “If you've been reading all the Obamacare stories lately, you might get the impression that the administration has just realized it will not be able to implement the massive health reform as designed. It has known for months. As far back as March, a top IT official at the Department of Health and Human Services said the department's current ambition for the law's new online insurance marketplaces was that they not be ‘a Third-World experience.’ Several provisions had already been abandoned in an effort to simplify the administration's task and maximize the chances that the new systems would be ready to go live in October, when customers are supposed to start signing up for insurance. In April, several consultants focusing on the new online marketplaces, known as exchanges, told National Journal that the idealized, seamless user experience initially envisioned under the Affordable Care Act was no longer possible, as the administration axed non-essential provisions that were too complex to implement in time. That focus has intensified lately, as officials announced that they would not be requiring employers to cover their workers next year or states to verify residents' incomes before signing them up for insurance. . . . ‘It's the joyous, simultaneous, nonlinear equation from hell,’ said Kip Piper, a former top official at HHS and OMB who is now a consultant in close contact with IT vendors. Piper said it's no surprise that the administration has given up on certain functions given the technological complexity needed and the short time-frame. . . . The struggles with technology and administrative complexity have not come as a recent surprise to administration officials; they've been negotiating them for months already. By eliminating non-essential tasks, they may be violating the letter of the health reform law, with its rigorous timetables and multiple requirements . . . .”
Even NPR, in the course of trying to explain away all these problems, had a host say, “[A]t some point, does all this sort of combine to create a sense that the rollout of the law is kind of coming of the rails?” A reporter replied that “all these glitches and delays” “do create a perception, first, that things aren't going as well as the administration keeps saying. And second, that there may be other shoes yet to drop.”
As Leader McConnell writes, “In the face of escalating complaints, the Obama administration has clearly embraced a policy of quick fixes aimed at placating the loudest voices in the bunch. But this will never work as a long-term strategy. The answer isn’t to help some and ignore others. It’s to liberate all Americans from the burdens of this terrible law. What’s needed is a permanent delay — for everyone.”
He explains, “Addressing the concerns of some while ignoring those of others won’t solve the problems ordinary Americans will face as a result of this law. It will magnify them. That’s why, ultimately, the only solution to the burdens of Obamacare is a permanent delay in the form of a full repeal, which would clear the path for reforms that actually lower costs and improve the quality of care.”
Tags: Student Interest Rates, Obamacare implementation, problems, 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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