Budget. The Democratic leadership is jettisoning the five-year federal budget projections required by law, in favor of a one-year process. Calling this a "dereliction of duty" David Broder, dean of Washington columnists, writes:
On June 30, the Congressional Budget Office issued its long-term outlook, predicting that deficits would come down for the next few years as the need for counter-recession spending eased and revenue improved. But then, it warned, "unsustainable" red ink would flow again, creating debts not seen since World War II.
The next day the House of Representatives passed a one-year budget resolution rather than the normal blueprint committing the government to a fiscal plan of at least five years.
For all the publicity that goes to earmarks and other spending gimmicks, this was a far worse dereliction of duty. And the cynicism of the maneuver just made it worse.
Immigration. NRO's Andy McCarthy notes that Team Obama cracks down on Arizona for enacting a law identical to one on the books in Rhode Island. Although as the Boston Globe details, Rhode Island authorities already are enforcing their law, the state has not been sued by the feds. Arizona's law does not go into effect until July 29, yet the feds are suing. Massachusetts, a "sanctuary jurisdiction" like several other liberal states, declines to enforce the immigration laws, asserting that illegals are potential crime informants.
Financial Regulation. The new financial "reform" bill includes minority & gender hiring quotas. Requiring "fair inclusion" of such groups, the law goes on, as Hudson scholar Diana Furchtgott-Roth details:
Lest there be any narrow interpretation of Congress's intent, either by agencies or eventually by the courts, the bill specifies that the "fair" employment test shall apply to "financial institutions, investment banking firms, mortgage banking firms, asset management firms, brokers, dealers, financial services entities, underwriters, accountants, investment consultants and providers of legal services." That last would appear to rope in law firms working for financial entities.
Contracts are defined expansively as "all contracts for business and activities of an agency, at all levels, including contracts for the issuance or guarantee of any debt, equity, or security, the sale of assets, the management of the assets of the agency, the making of equity investments by the agency, and the implementation by the agency of programs to address economic recovery."
This latest attempt by Congress to dictate what "fair" employment means is likely to encourage administrators and managers, in government and in the private sector, to hire women and minorities for the sake of appearances, even if some new hires are less qualified than other applicants. The result is likely to be redundant hiring and a wasteful expansion of payroll overhead.
If the director decides that a contractor has not made a good-faith effort to include women and minorities in its workforce, he is required to contact the agency administrator and recommend that the contractor be terminated.
Health Care. Janet Daley writes in the Daily Telegraph UK that admiration of Britain's National Health Service is misplaced. Copying NHS is, she writes, "the last thing the US should do." She says of the US:
The US government, meanwhile, is galloping doggedly in the opposite direction, bizarrely determined to occupy precisely the ideological ground which Britain is abandoning. Barack Obama has, indeed, appointed a man as head of the American public health care programmes who professes a passion (no other word will do) for some of the most discredited features of our NHS. Dr Donald Berwick is to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which effectively means that he will be in charge of Obamacare – the new universal health care system on which the President has staked his political credibility.
The appointment has created an extraordinary kerfuffle, partly because it was made under highly contentious circumstances – as a “recess” appointment which allowed it to bypass Congressional approval – but primarily on account of Dr Berwick’s widely disseminated statements extolling the virtues of the most disliked aspects of state-funded medical care as we know it.
Daley writes of the UK's NHS:
In Britain, we have maintained a perverse ideological insistence on the principle that it is better to have rationed, centrally controlled, uniformly dispensed health care even if it is poorer in every sense – in terms of resources, productivity, and medical outcomes – than that in which individuals routinely contribute to the cost of their own care. The ban on what is called co-payment, or top-ups, is intended to ensure that no NHS patient will have access to better – or more – treatment than anyone else simply because he is wealthier. We prefer a uniformly mediocre standard of care to an “unfair” one in which the better-off may get different service.
This dogmatic self-denying ordinance against the supplementing of NHS provision by patients able and willing to pay has meant that no thought has been given to the role such a mechanism could play in raising revenue for the NHS as a whole. In Britain, we would be inclined to agree with Dr Berwick’s view (hugely inflammatory in America) that a civilised, humane health care plan must “redistribute wealth” from the richer to the poorer and less fortunate.
But we have failed to notice that such redistribution is not just a feature of taxpayer funding. All insurance is based on the principle of redistribution: the more fortunate, who have paid their premiums but not made a claim, are helping to pay for the less fortunate, who needed help. Medical care top-ups paid for by individuals, or by insurance policies designed for “top-up only” provision, could provide an extra stream of revenue for the NHS, and thereby help to fund better care for those not affluent enough to pay anything extra themselves.
She closes by saying that a public/private mix is needed for the best health care system. A WSJ editorial details how ObamaCare will be used to redistribute income. Of NHS admirer Dr. Donald Berwick, now Medicaid/Medicare director, the WSJ notes that Berwick champions government control of health care to avoid what he calls "the darkness of private enterprise."
Free Political Speech. George Will, scourge of the political class's efforts to restrict inconvenient political speech, details two recent attempts by incumbents to protect themselves from speech that might help challengers: Arizona's law restricting privately-funded challenger speech to the level publicly given incumbents; a Democratic bill aiming to restrict corporate but not union speech before the fall federal elections. Re the federal proposal, Will begins:
In Congress, Democrats have not yet put the final blemishes on their proposal for restricting political advocacy, the Disclose Act (a clunky acronym -- Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections), but already it is so awful it is excellent. Its nakedly partisan provisions, and the squalid process of trying to ram them into law, illuminate the corruption that inevitably infects what is supposed to be a crusade to purify politics: When constitutional rights are treated as negotiable, the negotiations corrupt the negotiators.
Will details the squalid bargain the NRA made, winning an exemption from limits, noting that the NRA promotes Second Amendment absolutism but First Amendment speech limits, despite the "no law" language therein. He then details what the Democrats propose to do:
The campaign-reform community's self-inflicted disgrace with Disclose is not just in continuing to treat the First Amendment as a turkey to be carved. It also extends the blackout periods in which certain kinds of political advocacy are banned. The increasingly opaque apparatus of political speech regulation that Democrats favor is beginning to resemble the rococo tax code. The contrast with the First Amendment's limpid simplicity would cause reformers to blush, if they were capable of embarrassment.
For all its faults, some of which the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation was at least evenhanded: It favored incumbents but did not contain provisions overtly intended to secure partisan advantage. Democrats are rushing to enact Disclose to control this November's elections and before the Supreme Court can adjudicate its dubious constitutionality. They are betting that Republicans will be unable to get quick injunctive relief.
Will notes that there is not even the pretense of evidence to support such passage. He acidly nails the phony rationale of the political class, and offers an opponent's substitute translation of DISCLOSE:
Beware when the political class preens about protecting us from "special interests." The most powerful, persistent and anti-constitutional interest is the political class. Bradley Smith, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, says that Disclose should stand for Democratic Incumbents Seeking to Contain Losses by Outlawing Speech in Elections. It is a reason for voters to multiply those losses.
Getting a federal judge to stop this will depend upon which judge hears a GOP lawsuit. If the judge is a Kagan type, look for the injunction to be denied.
Bottom Line. What ever happened to The One's idealism? ALWAYS look for the fine print.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Terrorism, Homeland Security, Foreign Policy, Economy, Conservative Politics
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