Obama '08?

What a mature and well considered response!

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19323&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
A RECOVERY ONLY WASHINGTON COULD LOVE

The White House may tout Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports showing their $862 billion stimulus created jobs, but the CBO has also admitted their computer simulation did not take any actual new real world data into account, says Conn Carroll, the assistant director for the Heritage Foundation's Strategic Communications.

To the contrary, an independent study of real world stimulus facts found:
• No statistical correlation between unemployment and how the $862 billion was spent.
• That Democratic districts received one-and-a-half times as many awards as Republican ones.
• An average cost of $286,000 was awarded per job created.

And what kind of jobs were created, asks Carroll. According to Gallup the federal government is hiring at a significantly faster pace than the private sector. And data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) confirms that governments are increasing public sector pay at far faster rates than the private sector. None of this should be a surprise. President Obama specifically designed his stimulus to preserve government union jobs.

What happens when big government and the big businesses best capitalized to influence it are the main drivers of economic recovery?

The recovery is slower and smaller than it otherwise would have been, says Carroll:
• A recent study by the Kaufman Foundation found that small businesses have led America out of its last seven recessions, generating about two of every three new jobs during a recovery.
• But under this Obama recovery, not only are government jobs growing faster than private sector jobs, but jobs are rebounding faster at large employers than small businesses.

There are far more types of small businesses engaged in more kinds of economic activity than Congress can devise special policy to help. This sort of one-off, micro managing, tinkering policy may gain a headline and support, but it will not help small businesses broadly. The more Washington taxes and regulates, the harder it is for small businesses to innovate and force big businesses to be more productive and create new jobs. The more the Obama agenda is implemented, the slower our recovery will be, says Carroll.

Source: Conn Carroll, "A Recovery Only Washington Could Love," Heritage Foundation, May 7, 2010.

What a mature and well considered response!

The Obama administration threatened to veto parts of its own health care bill after budget scorekeepers found that the package would add at least $115 billion more to government health care spending.

President Obama's budget office charged Congress with finding $115 billion in spending cuts or tax increases to offset the price tag hike. The figure approached the amount of money the Congressional Budget Office previously estimated the law would save, and pushed the total 10-year cost of the package past $1 trillion. It comes after a separate Medicare office report found the bill would raise spending by about 1 percent over the next decade.

NEW YORK " Two private investigators working independently are asking why President Obama is using a Social Security number set aside for applicants in Connecticut while there is no record he ever had a mailing address in the state.

In addition, the records indicate the number was issued between 1977 and 1979, yet Obama's earliest employment reportedly was in 1975 at a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream shop in Oahu, Hawaii.

WND has copies of affidavits filed separately in a presidential eligibility lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia by Ohio licensed private investigator Susan Daniels and Colorado private investigator John N. Sampson.

The investigators believe Obama needs to explain why he is using a Social Security number reserved for Connecticut applicants that was issued at a date later than he is known to have held employment.

The Social Security website confirms the first three numbers in his ID are reserved for applicants with Connecticut addresses, 040-049.

While I am not one of those idiots that doubt Obama's citizenship, the following article does raise some interesting questions, and these will have to be answered.
He wont, IMHO, be able to duck these.

The Area Number is assigned by the geographical region. Prior to 1972, cards were issued in local Social Security offices around the country and the Area Number represented the State in which the card was issued. This did not necessarily have to be the State where the applicant lived, since a person could apply for their card in any Social Security office. Since 1972, when SSA began assigning SSNs and issuing cards centrally from Baltimore, the area number assigned has been based on the ZIP code in the mailing address provided on the application for the original Social Security card. The applicant's mailing address does not have to be the same as their place of residence. Thus, the Area Number does not necessarily represent the State of residence of the applicant, either prior to 1972 or since

Are you sure that President Obama's SS number begins with numbers associated with CT? That is the premise of the article cited. Do we know that, or is that just a jumping off point for a bunch of BS?

http://blog.heritage.org
The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.

Morning Bell: The Road to Repeal is Well Under Way
Posted By Conn Carroll On May 12, 2010 @ 9:34 am In Health Care[1]

“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told us [2] just weeks before Congress passed President Barack Obama’s health care plan.

Well, the nation’s post-passage Obamacare education continued yesterday when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed that the federal government will have to spend an additional $115 billion [3] implementing the law, bringing the total estimated cost to over $1 trillion. The estimate had been requested before passage of the bill by Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), but the CBO was too overwhelmed with the Democrats’ other constant revisions to the law to get back to Lewis before the final vote.

This is by far not the only nasty little surprise that has come back to bite Obamacare after passage. Shortly after it became law, U.S. employers began reporting hundreds of millions if dollars in losses thanks to tax changes in the bill. AT&T and Verizon alone pegged their Obamacare tax losses at around $1 billion [4] each. At first, Democrats in Congress were outraged by the announcements and threatened to hold hearings persecuting these companies. But then the Democrats not only found out the companies were obligated by law to report their Obamacare related losses, but that the losses were a signal these companies might have to dump their employees’ and retirees’ health care coverage all together.[5]

Then the Obama administration’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released its final cost projections [6] for Obamacare, finding that, contrary to White House claims, the legislation will increase national health care spending by $311 billion over the next decade. The CMS report also revealed that [7]: 1) 18 million Americans will pay $33 billion in penalties for failing to comply with Obamacare’s individual mandate and still receive no health care; 2) U.S. employers will pay $87 billion in employer mandate penalties; 3) 14 million Americans will lose their current employer-based health coverage; 4) 7.4 million seniors will lose their current Medicare Advantage benefits; 5) 15% of all Medicare providers will be made unprofitable, thus “jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries.”

Facing this onslaught of reality, the Obama administration has swooped into full spin mode, devoting the Weekly Presidential Address [8] to explaining the “real benefits” Obamacare is “already delivering” to Americans. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius then sent letters to House and Senate leaders touting her “progress” in implementing the law. And then last night White House aides Nancy-Ann DeParle and Stephanie Cutter briefed the House Democratic Caucus on the “tangible benefits” of the law. The sales pitch for all three events were the same: 1) “adults” age 26 and younger can be added to their parents’ plan (never mind that this drives up their parents’ health care costs [9]); 2) new high-risk pools for Americans with pre-existing conditions (never mind that 19 states [10] have rejected working with HHS since Obamacare massively underfunded the pools [11]); 3) supplementing insurance for early retirees (never mind that the Medicare Advantage cuts and tax changes mentioned above are a big reason why seniors will need supplemental coverage).

Democrats know that Americans simply are not buying what they are selling. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) tells Politico [12]: “It’s just like trying to explain the Encyclopedia Britannica.” And John Spratt (D-SC) adds [12]: “You need to know what you’re talking about and this is extremely complex. It’s really difficult to remember, ‘was this in this bill, or was this in the bill Senate side.’” Maybe Spratt should have figured out what was and wasn’t in the bill before he voted for it.

Since the left can’t even figure out what is in the bill they are trying to defend, the latest Rasmussen Reports [13] shows that 63% of likely voters now believe it will increase the federal deficit, and 56% now favor repeal. Not waiting for this November’s elections to change the leadership in Congress, states are leading the way [14] on the road to repeal. According to The Washington Post 33 states have mounted legal and legislative challenges to the new law. Clint Bolick, litigation director of the Goldwater Institute, tells the Post: “This is going to be a long, protracted war of attrition and we haven’t even seen the first wave of regulations yet. … The initial challenges to McCain-Feingold were rejected. But since then, litigators found the vulnerabilities. Likewise, here I think you’re going to see a thousand flowers bloom in terms of lawsuits. I’m hoping that this will die a death of a thousand cuts.”

Quick Hits:
• The U.S. Senate defeated an amendment to end the federal bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac [15], with only two Democrats joining all 41 Republicans to support the measure.
• In the next three weeks, Congress is looking to enact more than $200 billion [16] in new deficit spending.
• Proving why he is the perfect man for President Obama’s Debt Commission [17], records reveal that former SEIU President Andy Stern left the union with a failing pension system and over $84 million in debt.
• Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will introduce their new energy tax bill [18] today, which will allow states to ban oil drilling within 75 miles off their coast, allow states to keep only 40% of energy development revenues, and force states to spend 13% of that revenue on environmental projects.
...

Dispelling Confusion About New CBO Letter on Health Reform Law
May 12, 2010 at 4:05 pm

Has the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just upped its cost estimate for the new health care law by $115 billion, as several media outlets are reporting? Not at all.

In March, when CBO estimated health reform’s effects on the deficit, it appropriately included all of the legislation’s impact on mandatory spending. (Mandatory spending, like Medicare and Medicaid, continues from year to year unless Congress passes new legislation to reduce it.)

CBO’s March estimate did not include the legislation’s impact on discretionary spending " the spending Congress provides each year in appropriation bills " because the legislation did not directly affect discretionary spending. Moreover, there’s no way CBO can estimate how the legislation might affect the future discretionary funding Congress will actually appropriate for any specific program or how that appropriation will affect total discretionary spending. (For an explanation of why CBO’s treatment of discretionary spending is necessary and appropriate, see this paper Jim Horney and I wrote on March 25.)

Instead, CBO in March provided a separate table showing the possible discretionary spending that could " contingent on future appropriations legislation " result from enactment of health reform. Yesterday’s letter from CBO simply updated those figures.

While the new figures are indeed larger than the March ones, the biggest single reason is that they include the cost of renewing the Indian Health Service (IHS), totaling $39 billion over ten years. (Many of the health reform law’s provisions continue existing discretionary programs rather than create new ones.) As CBO’s letter points out, that $39 billion is simply a projection of what the federal government is currently spending for the IHS; not a single dollar represents additional real spending.

In short, yesterday’s CBO letter didn’t provide much new information about the health reform law, which, as CBO has found, will reduce the deficit over the next decade and beyond.

The problem with your posts on this subject, Ican, are that you have such a poor understanding of how our budgetary system works that you are not properly equipped to vet stories like this for their accuracy. Either that, or you just don't give a **** whether you post truth or lies

In reality, if you strip out all the gimmicks and budgetary games and rework the calculus, a wholly different picture emerges: The health care reform legislation would raise, not lower, federal deficits, by $562 billion.

Gimmick No. 1 is the way the bill front-loads revenues and backloads spending. That is, the taxes and fees it calls for are set to begin immediately, but its new subsidies would be deferred so that the first 10 years of revenue would be used to pay for only 6 years of spending.

Even worse, some costs are left out entirely. To operate the new programs over the first 10 years, future Congresses would need to vote for $114 billion in additional annual spending. But this so-called discretionary spending is excluded from the Congressional Budget Office’s tabulation.

Consider, too, the fate of the $70 billion in premiums expected to be raised in the first 10 years for the legislation’s new long-term health care insurance program. This money is counted as deficit reduction, but the benefits it is intended to finance are assumed not to materialize in the first 10 years, so they appear nowhere in the cost of the legislation.

Another vivid example of how the legislation manipulates revenues is the provision to have corporations deposit $8 billion in higher estimated tax payments in 2014, thereby meeting fiscal targets for the first five years. But since the corporations’ actual taxes would be unchanged, the money would need to be refunded the next year. The net effect is simply to shift dollars from 2015 to 2014.

In addition to this accounting sleight of hand, the legislation would blithely rob Peter to pay Paul. For example, it would use $53 billion in anticipated higher Social Security taxes to offset health care spending. Social Security revenues are expected to rise as employers shift from paying for health insurance to paying higher wages. But if workers have higher wages, they will also qualify for increased Social Security benefits when they retire. So the extra money raised from payroll taxes is already spoken for. (Indeed, it is unlikely to be enough to keep Social Security solvent.) It cannot be used for lowering the deficit.