America will be in a constant health-care war if ObamaCare is enacted. Passage wouldn’t end the health-care debate. Rather, it would perpetuate ObamaCare as the dominant issue for decades to come, reshape politics, create an annual funding crisis in Congress, and generate a spate of angry lawsuits. Yet few in Washington seem aware of what lies ahead. |
We only have to look at Great Britain to get a glimpse of the future. The National Health Service—socialized medicine—was created in 1946 and touted as the envy of the world. It’s been a contentious issue ever since. Its cost and coverage are perennial subjects of debate. The press, especially England’s most popular newspaper, The Daily Mail, feasts on reports of long waiting periods, dirty hospitals, botched care and denied access to treatments. |
| House Speaker Nancy Pelosi believes ObamaCare would have a more congenial fate—that it will become as popular as Social Security and Medicare with voters. She’s kidding herself.Read more at online.wsj.com |
Idaho first to sign law aimed at health care plan |
BOISE, Idaho — Idaho took the lead in a growing, nationwide fight against health care overhaul Wednesday when its governor became the first to sign a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if residents are forced to buy health insurance. |
Let’s stimulate job growth the right way by reducing government regulation and interference, lowering government spending and our national debt, and cutting taxes. March 16 (Bloomberg) — U.S. employers won’t hire enough
workers this year to lower the jobless rate much below the level
of 9.7 percent reached in February, three Obama administration
economic officials said today. |
The proportion of Americans who can’t find work is likely
to “remain elevated for an extended period,” Treasury
Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, White House budget director Peter
Orszag and Christina Romer, chairman of the Council of Economic
Advisers, said in a joint statement. The officials said
unemployment may even rise “slightly” over the next few months
as discouraged workers start job-hunting again. Read more at www.bloomberg.com |
We must find the right balance to restore the credit market to its proper equilibrium otherwise we risk a prolonged stagnant economy. Small businesses are the life blood of our economy and I and my staff are working tirelessly to ensure that small businesses have an economic environment that is conducive to job growth and profitability. Loan Squeeze Thwarts Small-Business Revival
|
For a recovery to take hold, hundreds of thousands of small businesses must find the confidence to expand and create jobs. But when they get to that point, the local banks they depend on—worried about borrowers’ financial strength, scrutinized by regulators and slammed by souring real-estate loans—might not be willing or able to provide the credit they need. |
| While big companies have been able to borrow in bond markets, smaller companies rely mainly on bank credit, which has been shrinking. In 2009, total lending by U.S. banks fell 7.4%, the steepest drop since 1942 |
The dearth of credit for small businesses could have a big effect on prospects for restoring the 8.4 million jobs lost since the recession began. From 1992 through the beginning of the latest recession, companies with fewer than 100 employees accounted for about 45% of net job growth, according to Labor Department data. Read more at online.wsj.com |
National debt to be higher than White House forecast, CBO says |
The 10-year outlook released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is somewhat gloomier than White House projections, which found that Obama’s budget request would produce deficits that would add about $8.5 trillion to the national debt by 2020.
|
Deficits of that magnitude would force the Treasury to continue borrowing at prodigious rates, sending the national debt soaring to 90 percent of the economy by 2020, the CBO said. Interest payments on the debt would also skyrocket by $800 billion over the same period.
Read more at www.washingtonpost.com |
DEMINT: White House land grab |
| Proposal to seize land would favor animals over Americans |
You’d think the Obama administration is busy enough controlling the banks, insurance companies and automakers, but thanks to whistleblowers at the Department of the Interior, we now learn they’re planning to increase their control over energy-rich land in the West.
|
A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, halting job- creating activities like ranching, forestry, mining and energy development. Worse, this land grab would dry up tax revenue that’s essential for funding schools, firehouses and community centers.
|
At a time when our national unemployment rate is 9.7 percent, it is unbelievable anyone would be looking to stop job-creating energy enterprises, yet that’s exactly what’s happening.
Read more at www.washingtontimes.com |
A string of electoral defeats and the great unpopularity of ObamaCare can’t stop Democrats from their self-appointed rendezvous with liberal destiny—ramming a bill through Congress on a narrow partisan vote. What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a bill merely because they think it’s good for the rest of us, and because they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again. |
The vehicle is “reconciliation,” a parliamentary process that fast-tracks budget measures and was created in 1974 as a deficit-reduction tool. Limited to 20 hours of debate, reconciliation bills need a mere 50 votes in the Senate, with the Vice President as tie-breaker, thus circumventing the filibuster. Both Democrats and Republicans have frequently used reconciliation on budget bills, so Democrats are now claiming that using it to pass ObamaCare is no big deal. Read more at online.wsj.com |
UPDATE 1-Winter storms to distort US jobless figures-Summers |
WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) - White House economic
adviser Larry Summers said on Monday winter blizzards were
likely to distort U.S. February jobless figures, which are due
to be released on Friday. |
“The blizzards that affected much of the country during the
last month are likely to distort the statistics. So it’s going
to be very important … to look past whatever the next figures
are to gauge the underlying trends,” Summers said in an
interview with CNBC, according to a transcript. |
Construction activity was hit particularly hard by the
storms, but many restaurants and stores also had to close,
putting the brakes on hiring plans and temporarily throwing
some employees out of work. Read more at www.reuters.com |
EPA Admits It Will Regulate Small Businesses |
Last fall the EPA announced that they would indeed be moving forward with regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, but they also proposed an exemption for smaller emitters, lest advocates for a sound American economy be validated in their concerns about unfairly regulating small businesses.
|
| Not to worry, the EPA essentially told us, we have a proposed a “tailoring rule” to exempt small businesses from our reach as we seek to control the entire American economy. Supporters of the EPA’s bureaucratic takeover argued vociferously that because of the tailoring rule, arguments about carbon regulation heavily impacting small businesses were unfounded. |
| It turns out that message was nothing more than a ruse on American taxpayers. As the Washington Post reports today: |
|
