Who Would Have Guessed It? More Obamacare Problems! Where are the Jobs?

Today in Washington, D.C. - July 28, 2014
The House just reconvened at Noon and recessed until 2 PM. This week, the House of Representatives is considering taking action on the President's request for $3.7 billion to deal with the border crisis.  With only a week left before the scheduled recess, it is expected that several bills will be pushed through.
H.R. 4156 — "To amend title 49, United States Code, to allow advertisements and solicitations for passenger air transportation to state the base airfare of the transportation, and for other purposes."
S. 1799 — "To reauthorize subtitle A of the Victims of Child Abuse Act of 1990."
H.R. 1771 — "To improve the enforcement of sanctions against the Government of North Korea, and for other purposes."
H.R. 4490 — "To enhance the missions, objectives, and effectiveness of United States international communications, and for other purposes."
H.R. 3202 — "To require the Secretary of Homeland Security to prepare a comprehensive security assessment of the transportation security card program, and for other purposes."
H.R. 3846 — "To provide for the authorization of border, maritime, and transportation security responsibilities and functions in the Department of Homeland Security and the establishment of United States Customs and Border Protection, and for other purposes."
H.R. 3696 — "To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to make certain improvements regarding cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection, and for other purposes."
H.R. 2952 — "To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to make certain improvements in the laws relating to the advancement of security technologies for critical infrastructure protection, and for other purposes."
H.R. 3107 — "To require the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish cybersecurity occupation classifications, assess the cybersecurity workforce, develop a strategy to address identified gaps in the cybersecurity workforce, and for other purposes."
H.R. 4250 — "To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to provide an alternative process for review of safety and effectiveness of nonprescription sunscreen active ingredients and for other purposes."
H.R. 594 — "To reauthorize and extend the Paul D. Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Community Assistance, Research, and Education Amendments of 2008."
H.R. 3635 — "To ensure the functionality and security of new Federal websites that collect personally identifiable information, and for other purposes."
And some bills dealing with the anming of new government buildings.

Last week, David Primo of the Mercatus Center testified in front of the House Committee on the Judiciary about the need for a constitutional amendment to combat rising debt. According to Primo, “To get on a stable fiscal path and stay there, Congress needs to act quickly and credibly. The solutions, which must include some reform to entitlements, will not be easy to implement, as short-run pain for long-run gain is a difficult sell politically. What’s worse, the longer Congress waits to act, the more difficult reform will be. Financial advisors tell us that the earlier we start saving for important goals like retirement or our children’s education, the easier it will be to achieve those goals.”

The Senate will reconvene at 2 PM today and will resume consideration of the nomination of Pamela Harris to be United States Circuit Judge for the Fourth Circuit.

At 5:30, the Senate will vote on confirmation of the Harris nomination, three nominees to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and on a nominee to be Deputy Under Secretary of Defense.

Over the weekend, in a story titled, “Plan to simplify 2015 health renewals may backfire,” the AP reported, “If you have health insurance on your job, you probably don't give much thought to each year's renewal. But make the same assumption in one of the new health law plans, and it could lead to costly surprises. Insurance exchange customers who opt for convenience by automatically renewing their coverage for 2015 are likely to receive dated and inaccurate financial aid amounts from the government, say industry officials, advocates and other experts. If those amounts are too low, consumers could get sticker shock over their new premiums. Too high, and they'll owe the tax man later. Automatic renewal was supposed to make the next open-enrollment under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul smooth for consumers. But unless the administration changes its 2015 approach, ‘they're setting people up for large and avoidable premium increases, said researcher Caroline Pearson, who follows the health law for the market analysis firm Avalere Health.”

The story explained, “Here's the issue, in a nutshell: To streamline next year's open enrollment season, the Health and Human Services Department recently proposed offering automatic renewal to 8 million consumers who are already signed up. But the fine print of the HHS announcement said consumers who auto enroll will get the ‘the exact dollar amount’ of financial aid they are receiving this year. That's likely to be a problem for a couple of reasons, not to mention inflation. First, financial aid is partly based on premiums for a current benchmark plan in the community where the consumer lives. Because more plans are joining the market and insurers are submitting entirely new bids for 2015, the benchmark in many communities will be different. Second, financial aid is also based on household income. If your income goes down, you are entitled to a bigger health insurance tax credit. If it goes up, you get less. The 2014 amounts could well be out of date and incorrect for many people. Financial assistance is also affected by age, family size and where people live. And that doesn't get into another motivation for consumers to shop around: Premiums and choices for 2015 are changing, so your current plan may no longer be a good deal.”

The AP noted, “New Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell is hoping that auto renewal will simplify things, a welcome change from this year's website problems. But the subsidy scheme created by Congress to keep premiums affordable has so many moving parts that it's turning out to be difficult for the government to administer.”

Last week, Bankrupting America's  Top 5 Things To Know featured the split ruling between the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the legality of Obamacare subsidies. If the court eventually rules the federal government cannot award subsidies to individuals who purchase health insurance on the federal exchanges, as many as five million individuals could be on the hook for higher premiums.

So once again, Obamacare is turning out to have too many moving parts that are not well-designed, with the result being chaos for Americans trying to get health insurance. As the AP pointed out, this problem could result in incorrect subsidy amounts, which would mean higher premiums if they’re too low and a big tax bill to repay them if they were too high.

While Obamacare continues in its inevitable trainwreck, the other major issue, is where are the jobs? The Hill, highlighted that in Last Weeks Republican address by  Rep. Steve Daines (R-MT), "Rep. Steve Daines (R-MT) slammed President Obama for a "war on coal" in the Republican weekly address Saturday. The GOP weekly address zoned in on Obama's energy policies, primarily his signature climate regulation, days before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launches its public hearings across the U.S. Daines, who is challenging Sen. John Walsh (D-MT) for his Senate seat this year, called the administration's carbon pollution rules "job killing regulations on the industries that hold the most hope for our economic future. . . . President Obama is waging a war on the middle class, and Harry Reid’s Senate is fully complicit and eager to carry out the President’s job-killing agenda...."

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