Tag Archives: social security

Congress: When Success Is Still Failure

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | OCT 5, 2018

The movement to reform the U.S. Congress is like a G-rated flick that would make Walt Disney yawn. There’s no sex, no violence, no scandal, no crime, comparatively little political intrigue, and no big-time stars, just a lot of risqué talk about filibustering the motion to proceed.

It is doubtful the subject will come up in campaigns, either, beyond the patronizing and often hypocritical blather about running against Washington.

Several weeks ago the House Rules Committee held a hearing on about 40 reforms that members wanted to see brought up on the opening day of the next Congress in January 2019. The attention to it was, as you would expect, silence.

There wasn’t any news coverage, except from Paul Krawzak at Congressional Quarterly, who understands the subject matter.

The need for reform couldn’t be clearer, or more critical, or more timely.

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Underlying Problems in Medicare

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

One of the problems about dealing with and debating an issue as big and as complicated as Medicare is that most people simply don’t care what it costs to take care of senior citizens.

Certainly not the senior citizens currently on Medicare. It is the best deal in the nation they are ever going to get in terms of buying health insurance for around $310-$360/month. Many self-employed people now paying close to $1000/month would give their eyes and teeth and other certain parts of their body to be able to find ANY comprehensive health care insurance for anything near $350/month. Continue reading →

Throwing In the Towel on Obama

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Barack Obama’s second term is off to a very bad start. Even liberal commentators – at least those with any credibility – are suggesting it may be time for him to lead more and campaign less.

Obama brought a plane load (Air Force One) of relatives of victims of the horror in Newtown to lobby Senators on the eve of a procedural vote, now scheduled for tomorrow, on a gun control bill.

Politico.com reporter Reid Epstein wrote: President Barack Obama’s gone from ambitious arguments for sweeping gun control to trying to stop a filibuster. Continue reading →

US Issues: Iran, Nigeria, Global Energy, Security

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Like most people I have gotten so caught up in the rising and falling of GOP Presidential candidates’ fortunes that I more-or-less forgot about President Obama and what else is going on in the world.

What else is going on is that gasoline prices are on the rise.

Some people are following the so-called “Doc Fix” issue – that is to forestall a 27 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements to physicians. More people understand an extension of unemployment benefits. A lot of people would recognize whether or not payroll taxes (to pay for Social Security and Medicare) were being withheld from their paycheck. Continue reading →

Taxes Paid, Benefits Gained

BY FRANK HILL

Reprinted from telemachus.com

Have you ever sat down and really thought about the amount of money you pay in taxes versus the direct benefits you receive from the government?

Alan Simpson’s rather salty but descriptive comment about Social Security could be politely amended to read: ‘The US federal government has 310 million teats on it to milk!’.

Depending on how many programs a person derives benefits from or tax preferences he or she uses, the number could be 1 billion for all we know.

Do this little exercise right now. Add up all the taxes you pay on one side of the ledger on a piece of paper or Excel spreadsheet. And then add up all the taxes that you saved from any tax deductions you use each year on your tax form and grants you received from the federal government in any form and put them in the other column. Continue reading →

Take Budget Medicine Now

Obama Reality: Conventional President

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the feeherytheory.com

President Obama emailed his supporters that he is running for re-election. I guess he did that as a way to tell young voters (who largely powered his initial election campaign) that he is still with them.

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Cleaning Up a Gusher of Debt

BY GARY ANDRES

When tiny globs of gooey brown oil began washing up on Gulf shores, it foreshadowed a more ominous environmental calamity lurking just over the horizon. These first signs were troubling enough. But they also revealed a more daunting threat riding incoming tides that might prove impossible to fix.

The Gulf disaster is a metaphor for our federal spending and debt crisis. Globs of budgetary red ink have been washing up in Washington for some time now. Cleaning up the immediate problem is hard enough. But the difficulty policymakers face addressing the current fiscal mess only underscores a larger challenge.

The Senate’s efforts over the past month, trying to enact a state aid/unemployment/tax extender bill are illustrative. The Democrats’ original plan exemplified politics as usual. These initiatives all cost the federal government money. But instead of making the tough choices necessary to pay for these benefits, they proposed just adding more to the deficit.

But with an election looming and nervous voters increasingly cranky about unsustainable debt, the original Senate plan, which increased the federal debt because it offset less than a third of the $190 billion in spending, ran into a buzz saw of opposition. Democratic leaders continue to ameliorate concerns by scaling back the package or finding other offsets.

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Government Is No Business

BY MICKEY EDWARDS

Reprinted from Atlantic.com

In California, two women who have risen to the top ranks of the business world have positioned themselves for entry into the top ranks of government as well, as California’s governor and one of its two United States Senators. Another has positioned herself to become a United States Senator from Connecticut.

All three — Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman in California and Linda McMahon in Connecticut — still face large hurdles in November’s general elections, but they are serious candidates with reasonable prospects. And all three have based their campaigns on a common attribute. No, not the fact that they are women — after all, Connecticut has a woman governor and both of California’s current U.S. Senators are women. What Fiorina, Whitman, and McMahon all tout as the credential that proves their superior qualification for high office is the fact that all three are highly successful in … business.

I have no serious problem with any of the three: in California, in particular, the women, Fiorina and Whitman, face Democratic candidates (Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown) whose loss would do no great harm to the nation. I do have a problem, however, with the continued promotion of business success as a qualifier for public office.

Success in the market is not an automatic disqualifier for public service, but it is a far different undertaking with different purposes and different values. And to suggest that government needs people experienced in business reminds me of the old feminist saw that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. In fact, business and government — while there may be skills involved that are translatable and useful as one moves from one sphere to another — are in some ways polar opposite undertakings.

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The Black Swan Looms Over Budget

BY STEVE BELL

As I write this, cable and broadcast television, radio, and bloggers, and government officials, are giddy with the news released 90 minutes ago that the economy created almost 300,000 jobs last month.

“We’ve turned the economic corner.”

“The recovery has become self-sustaining.”

“That 1,000 point drop in the Dow was merely because of a human being putting erroneous sell information into a computer,”

Yet, the official unemployment rate increased to 9.9 per cent and the broadest measure of unemployment continues to rise. How can this be? Are good times here again?

In short, “no.”

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Is Government Really Broken?

BY TONY BLANKLEY

If you want to see broken government, consider the fall of the constitutional Roman Republic and the rise of Julius Caesar: “Fortune turned against us and brought confusion to all we did. Greed destroyed honor, honesty and every other virtue, and taught men to be arrogant and cruel, to neglect the gods. Ambition made men false. Rome changed: A government which had once surpassed all others in justice and excellence now became cruel and unbearable.” So said the historian Sallust at the time.

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