In The Spotlight Blog

In the News: Blog 03/28/2014
All this chaos for so few beneficiaries
In the News: Blog 03/27/2014
Potatoes and pushy government
Wisconsin potato farmers are baffled, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, that the federal government has singled out their crop as the one unacceptable fresh vegetable for low-income recipients on the WIC supplemental nutrition program. People can use WIC benefits to buy fresh vegetables – except for potatoes. The state’s brochure spells that out clearly: “ALLOWED: Any variety of whole or cut fresh fruit or vegetables except potatoes.” Canned vegetables are fine, too – as long as they’re not potatoes. Bags of frozen vegetables? Fine, unless they’re potatoes. You can buy cans of mixed vegetables, so long as it's not that mix that includes little diced-up potatoes.
In the News: Blog 03/26/2014
Obamacare puts off deadline, as if that will help
The Obama administration had said repeatedly that the deadline for signing up for Obamacare this year was March 31. Would that be delayed because the rollout was a disaster? “No, sir,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified. Families couldn’t be given the least break from the mandate to buy insurance, said Sebelius’ spokeswoman: “In fact, we don't actually have the statutory authority to extend the open enrollment period in 2014.” Oops. Enrollment is far under the administration’s goal, with far fewer young and healthy people paying the overpriced rates needed to sustain the system’s subsidies. So on Tuesday the administration delayed the deadline – to “about mid-April,” reported the Washington Post. Avik Roy in Forbes explains what’s happening: “It’s yet another improvisation by the administration, designed to get as many people under the Obamacare tent as possible, to ensure that the law is impervious to repeal. But the upshot is that people who haven’t bought insurance, and recently fallen ill, can now buy coverage at the old rate. So while the extension may increase enrollment figures by a few hundred thousand people, it will also ensure that the pool of people signing up is even sicker and older than it would have been otherwise.”
In the News: Blog 03/25/2014
One more way the economics of Obamacare aren't working
Obamacare’s massive subsidies still aren’t enough to help some patients, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: “Many of the health plans sold on the federal marketplace under the Affordable Care Act have deductibles of $200 or more, even after additional subsidies for people with limited incomes. “ ‘We are never going to collect that money,’ said John Bartkowski, president and chief executive officer of Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers.”
In the News: Blog 03/25/2014
Four years of mess and broken promises
In the News: Blog 03/20/2014
How to cramp Putin, help our allies and improve our economy
The Wall Street Journal points out that when it comes to putting a roadblock in the way of Vladimir Putin’s aggression, America’s most ready course is to export what we produce – namely, natural gas: “The U.S. oil and gas revolution has handed President Obama a powerful policy tool, and one way to wield it would be for the Energy Department to approve immediately the 25 applications for liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals.” It’s pretty simple: “Every dollar of U.S. gas that flows to the world market is one less dollar flowing to Mr. Putin's economy and his energy blackmail racket.”
In the News: Blog 03/14/2014
The ongoing hardship that is Obamacare
About 940,000 people signed up for insurance under the ridiculously misnamed Affordable Care Act in February, the government has announced. That isn’t the big momentum the administration needs for Obamacare. And young people, who subsidize older people under Obamacare, aren’t buying in as heavily as the scheme needs. The administration says it won’t hold enrollment open longer, either. Instead, all that lies ahead are higher premiums. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified Wednesday that Obamacare premiums are likely to go up next year. So a bad deal for young people will become even worse.
In the News: Blog 03/13/2014
Questions about the Keystone XL pipeline
In the News: Blog 03/11/2014
Heritage Foundation supports my lawsuit
The Heritage Foundation pointed out that Obamacare contains a number of provisions that may have been rejected, had Democrats read the bill before passing it. One particular part of the law pointed out in the paper, “Warning: Side Effects of Special Congressional Health Handout May Include Lawsuits,” is the section of the Orwellian-named Affordable Care Act that specifically reads: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law … the only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff … shall be health plans that are … created under this Act … or … offered through an Exchange established under this Act....” Under this provision, members of Congress and their staff should lose their current employer-sponsored health insurance program. According to Heritage: “Without question, OPM’s attempt to exempt Congress from the Obamacare statute cried out for legal challenge. In order to satisfy the Article III standing requirement, however, any challenge would likely have to come from Members of Congress who themselves object to having to deviate from express statutory language in order to provide health coverage for their families and themselves. Consistent with this approach, on January 3, 2014, Senator Ron Johnson (R–WI) and one of his staff members filed suit challenging the OPM rule.”
In the News: Blog 03/7/2014
Numbers are so hard
Actually, numbers aren’t that hard to understand. But sometimes they’re hard to admit to. The Senate Budget Committee heard from the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Sylvia Burwell – President Obama’s budget chief. It was Ms. Burwell’s job to defend a bad budget offered in bad faith. I asked Ms. Burwell about whether the administration is offering any reforms to control the soaring costs of entitlements (not really) and whether the administration will be honest with the American people about the value of the Social Security trust fund (no). But you really should see the effort that Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama had to put into finding out whether President Obama’s budget blows away the spending limits the president himself agreed to just 10 weeks ago.