Another major liberal newspaper editorial page has come out today to call for Senate passage of Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX) Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act.
The Los Angeles Times writes, “If ever there were a piece of legislation that should be able to sail through the fractious, politically polarized Congress, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act would seem to be it. Introduced by Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, the bill has 33 co-sponsors, 12 of them Democrats, including California’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Who could be against the bill’s hallmark feature, the creation of a fund to benefit victims of domestic trafficking, financed by assessments on the traffickers themselves?
“But no. The bill got stopped in its tracks when Senate Democrats belatedly noticed that the victims’ fund would be covered by the restrictions of the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of federal money for abortions.”
Senate Democrats then filibustered this bipartisan bill no less than five times.
In an admission that reveals quite a bit about the Los Angeles Times, the editors note, “This page has never approved of the Hyde Amendment, and we have no desire to see its restrictions imposed on this bill or any other, for that matter.” However, even they say that “the Hyde Amendment has been the law for many years. A fight over whether a fraction of the projected millions of dollars in aid to victims of trafficking and hunters of traffickers can be used on abortion services seems fruitless, and the bill should not be derailed by such a fight.”
Other editorial pages have admonished, “Democrats, swallow your pride. Vote to move forward with the human trafficking bill,” as the Chicago Tribune did. And another editorial board that apparently dislikes the Hyde Amendment, that of The Baltimore Sun, said, “Senate Democrats can’t allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.”
As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said, “It’s hard to even keep straight anymore why Democrats would filibuster this human-rights bill. The bill Democrats now oppose was introduced months ago by a Democrat and a Republican. The bill Democrats now oppose was originally cosponsored by 13 Democrats. The bill Democrats now oppose was approved by every Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. And the bill Democrats now oppose was brought to the floor . . . after Democrats agreed unanimously to do so.”
He also pointed out, “Nearly 70% of Americans support the kind of bipartisan provisions Democrats now claim they object to. And many Democrats have voted for similar bipartisan Hyde language many times before, in both appropriations and authorizing legislation. So our Democratic colleagues obviously lack a rationale for this continued filibustering of anti-slavery legislation.”
Democrats need to stop listening to left-wing lobbyists and listen to sensible voices across the ideological spectrum who say, as the LA Times does, “the bill should not be derailed.”
Apparently Mr. Roe is moving forward after the Tom Schweich tragedy…
Breitbart:
“The last thing I would say is we are building a campaign not with data as a resource, but with data as the central point of our decision making,” Roe said, noting that Team Cruz isn’t going about data the way normal campaigns do. “We’re baking data into everything we do, into how we are going to engage each individual donor and voter in the process to see how they’re going to be able to get the message of our campaign,” Roe said.
Roe noted that the campaign is taking messages of what voters want to hear about right to their doorsteps, using issue ID to figure out what it is they care about most then convincing them that Cruz has the best solution to their needs. It’s very business-like, almost like a sales pitch, aimed at engaging voters to find a way to sell them on how Cruz is the best product in the 2016 field. They are working to define the largely-undefined Cruz to primary and general election voters in a way that they expect will help them see that Cruz is the best available decision they can make. Essentially, if someone wants to discuss Obamacare instead of tax cuts, Roe said, then Cruz’s team will talk to them about Obamacare. That doesn’t mean Cruz isn’t strong on tax cuts, too, but talking to voters about what they are interested in hearing about makes convincing them to eventually vote for him when the time comes much easier. “So the engagement of those voters is how we’re approaching this—not just talking at them with what we want to say, but communicate with them about what they want to talk about,” Roe said. Read more…
With tax season in full swing, Americans are beginning to see many new frustrations thanks to Democrats’ unpopular health care law.
The AP wrote last week, “It’s not uncommon to feel some trepidation around tax-filing season. But there’s an added hassle this year for nearly a million consumers who got financial help with health insurance premiums under President Barack Obama’s law. The government sent consumers erroneous information on forms that they need to complete their 2014 tax returns. . . .
“‘It’s been a comedy of errors from the start,’ said K.C. Crafts, a freelance financial writer from South Berwick, Maine. The mistake the government made affected 800,000 customers receiving subsidized health coverage through the federal insurance market. Some states running their own insurance exchanges also have had tax-form troubles. In the federal case, 2015 premiums were substituted for what should have been 2014 numbers on new tax forms called 1095-As. Those forms are like W-2s for people who got subsidized health insurance – building blocks for filing an accurate tax return. . . .
“Crafts said her form has another error as well, potentially more serious. The coverage dates are wrong, and the result makes it appear as if she and her husband got much more in subsidies than they actually received. . . . ‘This is not just an aggravation, it’s a financial issue, because I could end up paying for a clerical error,’ she said. . . .
“Asked for an explanation at a recent House hearing, HealthCare.gov CEO Kevin Counihan put it this way: ‘It appears there was an unfavorable interaction between two pieces of software code.’ Translation: The administration still is technologically challenged by health insurance programs.”
Another way to translate that might be, “A law reordering 1/6th of the American economy to align with a massive new government program is unsurprisingly running into the bureaucratic screw-ups and snafus that are the predictable hallmarks of a large government undertaking.”
Meanwhile, The Hill reports, “A majority of ObamaCare customers, 52 percent, are being forced to pay back some of their subsidies during this year’s tax season, according to new data from H&R Block. Customers are paying back an average of $530, which has caused a 17 percent drop in the average return so far this spring, according to the analysis by the tax services giant. The Obama administration had warned that people could end up paying back some of their subsidies because many were relying on previous years’ income when applying for the tax breaks. H&R Block has predicted that ‘most filers’ would owe some of their subsidies back to the federal government because they were relying on 2012 income.”
And then there are the frequently troubled state health care exchanges, the worst of which have come from states dominated by Democrats who rushed to embrace Obamacare. According to a report in last week’s Seattle Times, “About 13,000 people with accounts in the Washington Healthplanfinder insurance exchange were sent emails . . . that indicated a payment of their monthly health insurance premium had been made automatically. There was one problem. In many cases, many of them saw three times the correct amount deducted from their bank accounts. To make matters worse, some consumers who tried to log in to their Healthplanfinder accounts to check on the payment could not get in. And those who tried to call the exchange’s call center had to endure hold times as long as 79 minutes. . . . According to Bethany Frey, spokeswoman for the exchange, this latest glitch was caused by a coding error that affected accounts in which a change or correction had been made in the amount to be invoiced.”
When it comes to problems with the state health care exchanges, though, one can reliably find the bottom of the barrel in Oregon’s latest struggles.The AP writes, “A bill dissolving the independent corporation that runs Cover Oregon is on its way to the Gov. Kate Brown. But even when it is gone, Cover Oregon will leave a legacy of hundreds of millions of dollars spent on a health exchange that failed — with even more millions in legal fees and other expenses still to come. Cover Oregon spent $300 million in federal funds, much of it to have Oracle America Inc. build an exchange for Oregonians to buy health insurance. The health exchange web portal failed to launch in October 2013.The state spent at least $26 million of its own money on Cover Oregon-related projects. Last spring, Oregon scrapped the web portal and switched to HealthCare.Gov, a federally run website.”
The AP then tallies all the money that the failure of Cover Orgeon cost both federal taxpayers and Oregonians from Bend to Eugene to Portland:
“$240 million — amount Oregon paid to Oracle for developing both the exchange for individuals and small businesses and for public assistance modernization projects. This was funded in part by a $300 million federal grant. The remainder of the federal grant went for salaries, marketing, communications, community grants and other administrative costs.
$23 million — additional state money spent on the failed modernization technology project.
$9.1 million — spent through the end of 2014 to hire hundreds of temporary workers to manually process paper applications.
$6.6 million — amount Cover Oregon paid Deloitte to assess glitch-filled exchange and provide future options for the state, as well as to transition the state to HealthCare.gov.
$1 million — amount paid for independent assessment of Cover Oregon project by First Data, and for services of turnaround expert Clyde Hamstreet and his team who took over Cover Oregon’s reigns at the height of its failure last spring.
$1.9 million — attorney’s fees for legal fight against Oracle and federal criminal investigation into exchange failure.”
But that’s not all, the AP notes, because Oregon will still have to pay $30 million to adapt another state’s Medicaid system, though “[t]he federal government has promised to pay 90 percent of it,” which translates to taxpayers in other states picking up the tab. And then there are all the yet to be determined costs, such as the “amount Oregon will pay Oracle to host the Medicaid system until December 2015,” the “amount it will cost Oregon to build a website for small businesses to obtain health coverage for employees, the “amount it will cost Oregon to modernize the state’s legacy social services computer systems,” and of course, the “additional legal fees for Oregon-Oracle lawsuits and criminal investigation.”
When Democrats insist in the face of all this evidence that “the law is working,” it’s clear they haven’t paid attention to any of the news reports about people losing coverage, unable to see doctors, struggling with higher premiums and skyrocketing deductibles, and it’s obvious they haven’t talked to anyone tussling with tax forms or Oregonians paying for that state’s disastrous health care exchange.
While Democrats talk endlessly of tax increases, two key editorials today remind President Obama and Democrats that entitlement reform is critical to solving the nation’s fiscal crisis.
The Washington Post editors write today, “Democrats . . . are sounding more and more maximalist in resisting spending cuts. Many insist that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and education — pretty much everything except the Pentagon — are untouchable. Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) . . . said Tuesday that, while he favors reform of entitlement programs, it shouldn’t be part of the negotiations on the fiscal cliff. The Post’s Greg Sargent reported that union leaders and other liberals came away from a White House meeting encouraged that administration officials agree. ‘They expect taxes to go up on the wealthy and to protect Medicare and Medicaid benefits,’ one attendee said. ‘They feel confident that they don’t have to compromise.’ Don’t have to compromise?”
They point out, “Since 60 percent of the federal budget goes to entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, there’s no way to achieve balance without slowing the rate of increase of those programs. This could be accomplished in a progressive manner, shielding the poorest beneficiaries from cuts. But that seems less likely to be achieved if progressives boycott serious negotiations by pretending that Social Security and Medicare are sustainable with no reform at all. Mr. Obama has understood this since at least 2009, when he told The Post’s editorial board that he would tackle entitlement reform.”
“Four years later,” The Post editors write, “has the moment arrived? Since his reelection, Mr. Obama has fueled a campaign-style effort to pressure Republicans to give ground on taxes. . . . . At some point, he has to prepare the American people — and his own supporters most of all — for the ‘hard decisions’ required to put the country on a sound financial footing. That means spending cuts, it means entitlement reform, it means compromise . . . . Only one person is in a position to make it happen.”
Meanwhile, USA Today editorializes, “Do Democrats really believe Social Security doesn’t contribute to federal deficits and the national debt? They’re certainly saying it a lot: ‘Social Security does not add one penny to our debt, not a penny,’ Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, insisted Sunday on ABC’sThis Week. During Monday’s briefing at the White House, press secretary Jay Carney repeated the theme: ‘We should address the drivers of the deficit, and Social Security is not currently a driver of the deficit — that’s an economic fact.’ Well, saying it’s a fact doesn’t make it so.
“Durbin, Carney and others making that claim should take a look at the president’s own budget to see what’s really going on. On page 465 of the budget’s ‘Analytical Perspectives,’ they’ll find a chart showing that Social Security ran a deficit of $48 billion last year. This year, Social Security will come up $50.7 billion short. In 2015, as more Baby Boomers retire, the gap between cash in and cash out is expected to reach $86.6 billion. Need a second source? In a report released last month, the Congressional Budget Office said Social Security benefits began exceeding payroll tax revenue in 2010, and without changes, the program will never get back into balance. Denying this harsh reality requires playing accounting shell games and believing (or pretending to believe) that Social Security can be bailed out by its trust fund. And if you believe that, we have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.”
USA Today concludes, “Social Security represents more than one-fifth of federal spending, much too big to ignore. The likeliest fixes are well known. These include raising the cap on income subject to the payroll tax, tying cost-of-living adjustments more closely to actual inflation, and bumping up the retirement age for able-bodied future retirees. The sooner these changes are made, the less painful they will be. But shoring up the program starts with politicians telling the truth about how Social Security works. That’s something the White House and congressional Democrats apparently think the public can’t handle.”
And yet according to Politico today, “Congressional Democrats are starting to draw a much tougher line on entitlements in the increasingly messy fiscal cliff talks, warning Republicans to keep their hands off Social Security and Medicare benefits. Democrats also say they’ll refuse to look at GOP calls to dramatically slash Medicaid. . . . On Tuesday, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) went even further with a fresh push for negotiators to keep all entitlement discussions out of the fiscal cliff talks, and instead keep the focus solely on taxes and automatic spending cuts.”
Ticketmaster is proposing paperless ticketing technology that would limit the freedom of fans to buy, sell, and give away tickets to concerts and other events. Show-Me Institute Research Assistant Kacie Galbraith stopped by the recent Justin Bieber concert in Saint Louis to ask fans what they think of the change.
Politico writes today, “Call them the cliff jumpers. A growing bloc of emboldened liberals say they’re not afraid to watch defense spending get gouged and taxes go up on every American if a budget deal doesn’t satisfy their priorities. . . . If tax rates snap back to the higher levels from the 1990s and painful budget cuts start to hit the Pentagon, these Democrats — led by Washington Sen. Patty Murray — believe they would wield more leverage over the GOP to enact a budget compromise on their terms.”
Politico notes, “Murray declared in a speech this summer that she would push budget negotiations into 2013 if Republicans don’t cave on taxes for the rich. The fourth-ranking Senate Democrat repeated the threat in a Nov. 11 interview on ‘This Week.’ ‘If the Republicans will not agree with that, we will reach a point at the end of this year where all the tax cuts expire, and we’ll start over next year,’ Murray said.”
Now some House Democrats are echoing Murray. If he doesn’t get the tax increases he wants, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) told Politico, “then we’re better off going over the cliff and readdressing this with a better Congress in January.” Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) said, “If it’s necessary to wait [past January 1st] to get a good deal, let’s do that.”
“But that tough stance has led Republicans to claim Democrats are all too eager to trigger a recession,” Politico points out. “With a poster of a scene from the 1991 film ‘Thelma and Louise’ behind him, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said in a floor speech this summer that — much like the movie’s title characters — Democrats were planning to drive the economy straight over the edge to get tax increases. ‘Rather than stop the country from going over the fiscal cliff and preventing the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief, they are prepared to Thelma and Louise the American economy right over the cliff,’ said Hatch, the top Republican on the Finance Committee. ‘That is an astonishing admission.’”
I hope you all have a good Thanksgiving tomorrow. If all of you could say a prayer for me as I preach the next two Sundays, Nov. 25th and Dec. 2nd, that would be much appreciated. Please pray as I prepare my sermons, that God guides me to say what he wants me to say, and that those words I preach that God leads me to preach helps bring the lost to Jesus, and that those who are already Christians become closer to Christ. Here’s where I’ll be preaching:
First Baptist Church of Elston
1204 Route T
Jefferson City, MO 65109
Sunday School starts at 9:30 AM, and services start at 10:40 AM
