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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: joseffy who wrote (50776)	4/18/2012 11:36:40 PM
From: greatplains_guy	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

ObamaCare: Embodiment of Fiscal Disaster Grace-Marie Turner, Forbes 4/11/2012 The American people figured out very early in the health reform debate that you can’t create a new entitlement that finances health insurance for 30 million people and still claim the scheme will magically reduce the federal budget deficit. But the White House and Democratic leaders in Congress kept insisting we were wrong – that, like the subjects in “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” we were just hopelessly stupid if we didn’t see that the health law’s new garments were indeed dazzling to behold. Now we have an independent study that exposes the naked truth about ObamaCare. The law is a fiscal disaster. Charles Blahous, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, has produced a meticulous 52-page study, The Fiscal Consequences of the Affordable Care Act, which details the health law’s spending and revenue projections point by point. The inescapable conclusion: “Taken as a whole, the enactment of the [Affordable Care Act] has substantially worsened a dire federal fiscal outlook,” Blahous writes. The health law “should be expected to increase federal spending obligations by more than $1.15 trillion over the upcoming decade and to worsen cumulative federal deficits by somewhere between $340 and $530 billion over the same period,” he writes. The Obama administration had claimed the health law would lead to deficit savings of $124 billion over the first decade. Blahous is an expert in entitlement programs, having served as executive director of the bipartisan President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security and later on the National Economic Council in the Bush White House. He currently is one of the two public trustees for the Social Security and Medicare Programs. His study looks at each of the major spending provisions in the health law – including huge new spending for private health insurance subsidies through the Exchanges and the vast expansion of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program – as well as the projected revenues and savings — including new and higher taxes and cuts to Medicare through deep cuts in provider payments. Blahous concludes that the spending is likely to be very real and will dramatically swell the deficit while taxes and spending cuts are much less likely to materialize. “The ACA both increases a federal commitment to health care spending that was already unsustainable under prior law and would exacerbate projected federal deficits relative to prior law,” he writes. The health law will increase federal health spending “by well over $1 trillion over the next decade alone. It thus does not constitute effective health care reform.” The White House predictably has blasted Blahous with a firestorm of accusations to obscure the very solid conclusions in his study. The Obama campaign called it “a false, partisan report,” while the president’s advisors still insist that “the health care law reduces the deficit.” But we commoners know the truth. Blahous’ scholarship is extraordinary. And it provides important and objective data underscoring one of the law’s many fundamental flaws: It double counts the fictional savings from Medicare. Health Secretary Sebelius got backed into a corner on this very point during congressional testimony last March. Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) asked Sebelius whether more than $500 billion in Medicare cuts were being used to sustain the program or pay for new entitlement spending. “There is an issue here on the budget because your own actuary has said you can’t double-count” the savings, said Shimkus. “What’s the $500 billion in cuts for? Preserving Medicare or funding the health-care law?” Sebelius’ reply? “Both.” The Congressional Budget Office released a memo showing Sebelius’ math was more than a little off. The Medicare money “cannot be set aside to pay for future Medicare spending and, at the same time, pay for current spending on other parts of the legislation or on other programs,” CBO said. “To describe the full amount of [Medicare] trust fund savings as both improving the government’s ability to pay future Medicare benefits and financing new spending outside of Medicare would essentially double-count a large share of those savings,” said the CBO memo. The chief actuary for Medicare has said the same thing. And now it has been validated by the Blahous study, providing three objective findings which show that a big part of ObamaCare’s (fictional) deficit reduction is based upon double-counting of Medicare savings. The health law’s deficit reduction was a major selling point in its passage. But Blahous concludes that “the government’s fiscal predicament is now significantly worse than before the law was enacted.” Now that this cloak has been stripped away, the U.S. Supreme Court has one more reason to conclude it would do the country and the taxpayer a huge favor by striking ObamaCare off the books and sending Congress back to work to stitch together a real health reform law. forbes.com

To: joseffy who wrote (50776)	4/19/2012 3:06:53 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Exclusive: Obama to renominate Republican to nuclear panel By Jeff Mason and Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON \| Thu Apr 19, 2012 12:06pm EDT reuters.com (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will renominate Republican Kristine Svinicki to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, defying opposition from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a White House official told Reuters on Thursday. Republicans want Svinicki, whose term as a commissioner expires in June, to stay on the panel and believe the process is being held up because she, along with three other commission members, accused the current NRC chairman, a Democrat, of bullying women. "The president will renominate her," a White House official said. "Expect the official nomination to happen in the coming days." Reid, a Democrat, vehemently opposes Svinicki, saying she is too close to the nuclear industry she regulates and does not deserve the job. Svinicki is speaking in Africa about nuclear safety and could not be reached for comment. A vacancy could cause gridlock along party lines at the commission and delay safety reforms at U.S. nuclear plants that the NRC ordered after last year's disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant. ACCUSATIONS FLY Republicans are rallying behind Svinicki as they try to improve their ratings among female voters in the run-up to the November 6 presidential election. The move by the Democratic president may be seen as a rare gesture of bipartisanship in an election year. Relations between the White House and congressional Republicans are tense after months of bruising standoffs over budget and deficit issues. The move is also a sign of the importance the White House places on the work of the NRC. Last year, Svinicki and the three other commissioners at the commission - two Democrats, two Republicans - took the unprecedented step of complaining to the White House about the management style of Gregory Jaczko, the NRC chairman. Their concerns were made public in December during hearings on Capitol Hill, where the commissioners accused Jaczko - a former Reid staffer - of berating senior women NRC staff members, bringing them to tears in front of others. Jaczko has denied the accusations. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a second speech in two days about Svinicki on Thursday. "The only reason we're even talking about Kristine Svinicki right now is because she had the courage to stand up to a hostile work environment, and to the bully who was responsible for it," he said. Other Democrats are expected to join Reid in raising complaints about Svinicki. "Senator Reid opposes Commissioner Svinicki's renomination because she lied to Congress about her past work on Yucca Mountain," Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Reid, said in a statement. Senator Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, believes Svinicki should be replaced and has accused her of being misleading during a 2007 confirmation hearing about the extent of her work on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. "Senator Boxer believes that in this post-Fukushima-era, Ms. Svinicki should be replaced by someone who has demonstrated a clear commitment to safety first," a statement provided by the committee said. Svinicki maintains she did not mischaracterize the extent of her work on Yucca during her time at the Energy Department, but Boxer has said technical reports authored by Svinicki seem to show she was deeply involved with the project. The nuclear waste dump had been proposed for Nevada but was opposed by Reid and killed by the Obama administration. Reid has portrayed Jaczko as a target of criticism because he sought industry safety reforms following the Fukushima disaster. (Editing by David Brunnstrom)