Kirk Scares Farmers Into Believing They’ll Lose Their Farm Because Of A Tax Almost No Farmers Pay
Kirk Scares Farmers Into Believing They’ll Lose Their Farm Because Of A Tax Almost No Farmers Pay
One of the more enduring myths regarding the estate tax is that it forces family farmers to sell their entire farm when the owner dies, thus depriving them of their sole way to make a living. And Illinois’ Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk took full advantage of this fear during an appearance before the Illinois Agricultural Legislative Roundtable this week:
We do not want it to be a catastrophic event in the economy of that family’s life, so that the kids who worked on that farm or in that business their whole life suddenly lose it because they can’t meet a 55 percent estate tax that’s just jumped back to life.
Regarding the estate tax, Kirk has said “my preferred rate is zero.”
Before we even get to the unfounded fears that Kirk is playing up to score political points, it should be noted that Kirk is suggesting the currently expired estate tax will come back next year at 55 percent, as current law stipulates. But President Obama and congressional Democrats have proposed permanently reinstating the tax at the 2009 level (45 percent with a $3.5 million exemption), only to be stymied by Republicans in the Senate. If the 55 percent rate does come back, it’ll be due to GOP obstruction.
But back to Kirk’s insistence on scaring farmers. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only 1.6 percent of all farm estates in the country would be subject to the estate tax at the 2009 level. And a Congressional Budget Office study found that “all but a handful of the farm estates that would owe any tax under the 2009 parameters would have sufficient liquid assets on hand (such as bank accounts, stocks, and bonds) to pay the tax without having to touch the farm or business.”
Those exceedingly few farms that might have a cash-crunch problem “would have other options — such as spreading their payments over a 14-year period — that would allow them to pay the tax without selling off any of the business or farm assets.” In fact, in 2001 — when the estate tax actually was at 55 percent — the American Farm Bureau “could not cite a single example of a farm lost because of estate taxes.”
Iowa State University Economist Neil Harl “said he had searched far and wide but had never found a case in which a farm was lost because of estate taxes.” “It’s a myth,” he said. But it’s a myth that persists, and Kirk is exploiting it to push repealing a tax that overwhelmingly affects the super-rich. Incidentally, repealing the estate tax would cost $784 billion over ten years.
- Comments
- 1
Kasich’s Claim That Tax Cuts Will Lead To Job Growth Contradicted By Ohio History
Kasich’s Claim That Tax Cuts Will Lead To Job Growth Contradicted By Ohio History
Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich is banking on a package of tax cuts to revive Ohio’s moribund economy. “Ohio’s high tax burden is hurting families, strangling businesses and stunting our ability to create jobs and revive our economy,” he claims.
Kasich’s plan is to entirely eliminate his state’s income and estate taxes, and he freely admits that he has no idea how much his plan is going to cost. “People want to know the details of my plan. I don’t have the revenues,” he said.
Not only will Kasich’s plan more than double Ohio’s budget deficit next year, but if history is any indication, that new budget hole will not by accompanied by any significant job creation. Policy Matters Ohio examined the effect of a 2005 cut in both the personal income tax and some of Ohio’s business taxes, finding that the result was billions of dollars of revenue loss and not very many jobs:
The premise of the tax overhaul was that it would spark Ohio’s economy. This was an unlikely claim to begin with, since taxes are not a key determinant of state economic performance…Sure enough, the tax cuts have not proven to be the magic potion for Ohio’s economy. Key measures of economic performance show the opposite: Ohio’s economy has produced relatively fewer jobs, fewer manufacturing jobs, less overall output and lower personal income growth than the country as a whole since the tax overhaul was approved in June 2005. Ohio’s share of the nation’s jobs has shrunk since then from 4.06 percent to 3.87 percent.
Plus, “Ohio’s real per capita Gross State Product stagnated when U.S. real per capita GDP rose.”
The tax cuts were not responsible for Ohio’s economic decline but, much like the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 at the federal level, they did not usher in the era of strong economic growth that their proponents suggested they would. This makes sense, as at the national level, job growth was stronger following President Clinton’s tax increase of 1993 than after either President Bush’s or President Reagan’s tax cuts.
So if history is any indication, Kasich’s job plan will be a dud, and simply bury Ohio in even more red ink, at which point Kasich will likely say that he has to cut services in order to balance the budget.
The Purpose Of Israel’s Settlements Is To Be Difficult To Remove
The Purpose Of Israel’s Settlements Is To Be Difficult To Remove
I had to read Fred Barnes’ new Weekly Standard piece “In Defense of Settlers” a few times to be sure that Fred wasn’t actually putting us on. It appears he isn’t.
Things go awry beginning with the very first paragraph, in which Barnes writes, “When direct talks begin next week between Israelis and Palestinians, the fate of Jewish settlers in the West Bank — tens of thousands of them — will be a major issue in the negotiations. But the settlers themselves won’t be part of the discussion.”
Given that Netanyahu is still in the process of choosing his negotiating team, it remains to be seen whether actual settlers will be part of the discussion. But here’s an interesting fact: Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is himself a settler, living in the settlement of Nokdim, south of Bethlehem. While it’s highly unlikely that Lieberman will himself participate in the negotiations (Netanyahu wisely does his best to keep his racist former chief of staff away from decent society as much as possible), given the extreme rightist, pro-settlement orientation of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, it’s safe to say “the settlers” will very much be at the table.
Barnes goes on to channel the usual settler claims — which mirror Hamas’ claims — of a right to all of historic Palestine, as well as the canard that the West Bank is not “occupied” but rather “disputed,” which is a neat way of saying that, having lost 75% of their homeland, the Palestinians should now have to negotiate over the “disputed” remaining 25%.
Barnes notes that “a Jewish settlement has been established in the heart of Hebron.” He does not note, however, that Palestinians in Hebron are literally forced to live in cages to avoid harassment and violence by radical settlers, who live under the protection of Israeli troops and police. Nor does he note the extent to which that violence is underwritten by American “charities” like the Hebron Fund.
Things take a darker turn, however, when settler spokesman Dani Dayyan, commenting on the prospect of a Palestinian state, “raises the long-discarded idea that Jordan might become that state”:
Though its population is predominantly Palestinian, Jordan is a Hashemite kingdom. But if Hashemite rule were ended, “that would open a new horizon of possible solutions that don’t exist today,” Dayyan says. “That’s a thought for the future.” But not one that’s on the table in the Israeli-Palestinian talks to begin next week.
There are good reasons that this idea has been long discarded. Among them: The Palestinians don’t want it. The Jordanians don’t want it. There’s also the small detail that, in addition to being enormously difficult to carry out, involuntary population transfer is a crime against humanity. So don’t let’s think about it for the future, but let’s do let it be instructive as to how some Israelis (and Americans) think. More »
Memo To The Media: Don’t Fall For Rick Scott’s Talking Points
Memo To The Media: Don’t Fall For Rick Scott’s Talking Points
Florida gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott (R) bills himself as a political outsider, but when it comes to answering questions about his questionable stewardship of Columbia/HCA — a for-profit hospital chain that paid a record $1.7 billion in fines for massively defrauding the Medicare program during the 1990s — Scott has one of the most polished and rehearsed answers in the business.
The Wonk Room examined three different interviews with Scott on CNN’s John King Tonight (8/26), CNN’s American Morning (8/27), and FNC’s America Live (8/28), and noticed that Scott gave an identical, formulaic 5-part reply when questioned about his business record:
1. Notes that his primary opponent, Florida AG Bill McCollum, already attacked him for his record and he lost.
2. Mentions that he invested his life savings — $125,000 — in Columbia/HCA.
3. Recites the company’s achievements: high patient satisfaction, expanded company with 285,000 employees.
4. Then, when pressed on the fraud, he explains that business people make mistakes and that he’s taken responsibility for his.
5. Conversely, Politicians never take responsibility. He has and he will as governor.
Watch a compilation:
There may be ways for journalists to avoid listening to Scott’s polished recitations. For instance, Scott should be asked:
1. You’ve said that you want to do for hospitals “what McDonald’s has done in the food business” and “what Wal-Mart has done in the retail business?” Do you still believe this?
2. You’ve said, “Where do we draw the line? Is any fast-food restaurant obligated to feed everyone who shows up?” Do you believe hospitals should treat everyone who shows up?
3. After you were ousted by the HCA/Columbia board, you received “a $9.88 million severance package, along with 10 million shares of stock worth up to $300 million at the time.” Given that you’re now admitting to mistakes, do you think you deserved so much money?
4. You say you’ve taken responsibility, but then why did you invoke your Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 75 times during a 2000 deposition about your time as head of Columbia/HCA?
5. Since you’re running for governor on your admittedly less than stellar business record and asking people to trust that you’ve learned from your past mistakes, why don’t you release the deposition you gave on behalf of Solantic, a chain of urgent care clinics that have been accused of unsavory business practices?
McCain Accuses ‘Pro-Immigration Groups’ Of Being ‘Oblivious’
McCain Accuses ‘Pro-Immigration Groups’ Of Being ‘Oblivious’
Yesterday, I predicted that it was only a “matter of time” before an opportunistic lawmaker points to the tragic massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants on their way to the U.S. as yet another reason to “seal the border” and delay immigration reform. Unsurprisingly, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) stepped up to the plate on Fox News’ On the Record with Greta Van Susteren. However, McCain didn’t just use it as an opportunity to start fear-mongering about violence in Mexico hypothetically “spilling over,” he also called immigration and human rights activists “oblivious” for suggesting that “our border is more secure than ever”:
When they — this is the most cruel and brutal things that have happened in our hemisphere. And what I don’t get, Greta, is where are the immigration activists and the human rights activists and others that wouldn’t conclude that the way you stop this terrible situation — one of the ways is to secure our borders? Then this human trafficking dries up and people come to this country legally. But they don’t seem to get that. Where are the human rights activists with these terrible abuse taking place as we speak? [...]
And then [they] turn around and say, “Don’t worry, our border is more secure than ever,” is completely oblivious to what’s happening on the other side of the border and continues to happen in our own state. And the majority of the American people have it figured out. But frankly, apparently, some of these immigration groups, pro-immigration groups haven’t figured it out yet. Secure the border. Then we can address some of the other issues.
Watch it:
However, immigration activists aren’t just speculating when they suggest that the U.S. side of the border is safer than it’s been in years. The claim is actually based on hard data from the FBI and interviews with law enforcement officials. The FBI crime statistics show that as undocumented immigration has increased, crime in Arizona and other border states has gone down. Data from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) additionally shows that the violent crime rate in Arizona has been declining since 2006 and in 2008 and is at the lowest level since 1973. Even property crime has plummeted in Arizona since 2002 and in 2008 and is at its lowest point since 1966. Clarence Dupnik, the border sheriff of Arizona’s Pima County, has stated, “I hear politicians on TV saying the border has gotten worse. Well, the fact of the matter is that the border has never been more secure.”
Finally, immigration and human rights activists are very aware that human smuggling is a “human rights crisis.” Long before the bodies of 72 murdered migrants were found, Amnesty International decried “the alarming levels of abuse faced by the tens of thousands of Central American irregular migrants that every year attempt to reach the US by crossing Mexico.” On the ground, non-profit groups such as Border Angels and the Border Action Network work to provide relief to migrants and the border towns they pass through.
Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, immigration groups continue to fight for immigration reform that would have the effect of shuttering the human smuggling business by providing economic migrants with more opportunities to legally enter the U.S. when there are jobs available for them. Meanwhile, as Wonk Room noted yesterday, the enforcement-only approach that McCain pushes exacerbates the problems and hardships migrants face. The harder it is to cross the border, the more profitable the human smuggling business becomes. And as profits rise, so does violence in Latin America. McCain, however, insisted last night that he believes the border can be made airtight, citing Israel’s impeccable border security record — underestimating the persistent ingenuity of human smugglers and ignoring both the focus of Israeli border security efforts and the human rights violations associated with them.
Surely, McCain has access to all the information cited in this post — which means either he is the one who is oblivious or he is willfully deceiving the American public.
Why Health Insurers Are Backing Republicans With Campaign Donations By 8:1 Margin
Why Health Insurers Are Backing Republicans With Campaign Donations By 8:1 Margin
Insurers became the target of the White House’s attacks in the closing days of the health reform debate and so perhaps it’s no surprise that they’re “backing Republicans with campaign donations by an 8-to- 1 margin, favoring the party that’s promised to repeal President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul if it wins back Congress.” Bloomberg’s Drew Armstrong has the scoop:
WellPoint, along with Coventry Health Care Inc. and Humana Inc., gave Republican candidates $315,000 from May through July, according to U.S. Federal Election Commission records. That compares with $41,000 given to Democrats by the three companies as the parties near November elections that will determine who controls the U.S. House and Senate next year.
While Republicans aren’t likely to win the large majorities necessary to override a presidential veto and repeal the health law Obama signed in March, they may be able to slow or stall its implementation, said James Morone, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. At the same time, the turn to strongly favor Republicans may anger Democrats who had been receptive to insurers’ concerns, he said.
Recall that after initially coming to the table and supporting Obama’s efforts, insurers turned against reform, even after the public option had been taken off the table. They criticized the weak individual mandate and argued that the bill would lead to higher premiums for average Americans.
Since passage of the law, the administration and the President have reached out to insurers, inviting them to meetings with Obama and HHS Secretary Sebelius and weighing their concerns about the forthcoming regulations and the implementation process. But through it all, issuers — while nominally agreeing to assist the administration with implementation — have understood which party has its interests in mind. Issuers have watched as Democrats — led, most recently by the six Democratic Committee chairman with jurisdiction over health care — argued that insurers should have to abide by a strict interpretation of the law and spend 80 to 85% of premium dollars on health care and contrasted that approach to the likes of conservatives like Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who have gone to the mat to weaken the regulations.
Therefore, this donation imbalance shouldn’t be interpreted as an industry endorsement of the GOP’s repeal efforts or its attack on the individual mandate — which could make the industry millions. The industry is turning to the Republican party not so that it could repeal the entire law — that seems highly unlikely — but so that it can push for favorable regulations that don’t cut into industry profits. The want to ensure that Republicans hold their line, like they always have.
Koch Industries Tells Its 80,000 Employees: Global Warming Is A Hoax
Koch Industries Tells Its 80,000 Employees: Global Warming Is A Hoax
The Koch Industries scions, the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, have not only polluted American politics with global warming denial, but also barraged their employees with right-wing, anti-science propaganda for years. Koch Industries is one of the largest private companies in the world, with about $100 billion in annual revenues and 80,000 employees. The Koch brothers are virulently right-wing ideologues who have spent decades attempting to prevent regulation of their toxic pollution — including oil refining, formaldehyde, and industrial agriculture — through a network of hard-right think tanks and astroturf groups.
Exploring the Wichita-based Koch Industries in-house newsletter, “Discovery,” the Wonk Room has found that Koch Industries propagandizes its own employees — from the Flint Hills Resources refining group to the Georgia Pacific paper consumer products giant — with global warming denialism. Koch’s corporate climate denial cites the very front groups that it funds, such as the American Council on Capital Formation, Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute, and the Institute for Energy Research.
In addition to climate denial, the Koch Industries newsletter — managed by Koch’s top propagandist Rich Fink — repeatedly asserts that any rule or regulation to limit pollution will destroy the economy and American freedom. Employees concerned about this assault on prosperity are encouraged to turn to Americans for Prosperity, Koch’s Astroturf organization that works to elect hard-right Republicans and dismantle progressive policies.
Ironically, the quarterly Koch newsletter also reports on the terrible damage caused by climate disasters to the Koch community from Kansas to Texas. In 2007, tornadoes flattened Greensburg, KS. In 2008, Hurricane Ike washed away the homes of 80 Koch employees and affected 1400 others.
Below is a review of the last few years of Koch Industries “Discovery” newsletters and their dark world of climate denial: More »
Bush’s Commerce Secretary Wants ‘Serious Debate’ On Whether Bush Policies Helped Cause The Financial Crisis
Bush’s Commerce Secretary Wants ‘Serious Debate’ On Whether Bush Policies Helped Cause The Financial Crisis
Former President George W. Bush, after keeping a mostly low-profile since leaving office, “is about to step into the public arena again” ahead of the release of his memoir, which is scheduled to be published the week after the November midterm elections. The book will reportedly include discussions of Bush’s economic decision-making, including his views on the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that bear his name and the 2008 bailout of the financial system.
Bush pushed back the publication of the memoir, so that it wouldn’t impair the GOP’s performance in the midterm elections. But lately, some Republicans have been looking back on the Bush years with some nostalgia. “I think a lot of people are looking back with a little more — with more fondness on President Bush’s administration,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).
And according to one of Bush’s cabinet secretaries, the memoir will give the public a chance for “serious debate” over whether Bush’s economic policies helped push the country into an economic meltdown:
Former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, a close family friend, said the publicity would give the public a chance to reassess Mr. Bush’s record. “Did we head into a tough period in the last six months in office? Sure,” Mr. Evans said. “Was it a result of policies in his administration? I think there will be serious debate about that. We’ll be debating about it a long time.”
Calling it a “tough period” is underselling how bad the Great Recession was (and still is) for millions of Americans. And Bush’s policies most certainly contributed to the collapse.
Remember, it was the Bush administration that ignored “remarkably prescient warnings” regarding problems in the housing market, while actively pulling strings out of the regulatory framework and appointing regulators fundamentally disinterested in reining in Wall Street. The Bush administration actually “backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages,” even though consumer advocates were ringing alarm bells.
Financial firms thus ran wild, buildings up a huge amount of systemic risk that eventually toppled the system, putting more than 8 million Americans out of work.
But even before the financial crisis, the economy under Bush wasn’t doing well. Bush’s policies “fostered the weakest jobs and income growth in more than six decades,” along with “sluggish business investment and weak gross domestic product growth.” Poverty (including child poverty) increased under his watch, erasing some of the significant gains made by the Clinton administration, and of course, Bush turned record surpluses into record deficits.
Bush’s tax cuts also exacerbated already high income inequality, and there is new research showing that such inequality can actually increase the likelihood of a financial meltdown. So while there is plenty of blame to go around when it comes to culpability for the economic freefall, “serious debate” can’t erase the role that Bush and his economic team played.
Sarah Palin: ‘The Biggest Advance Of The Abortion Industry In America Is The Passage Of Obamacare’
Sarah Palin: ‘The Biggest Advance Of The Abortion Industry In America Is The Passage Of Obamacare’
Sarah Palin’s appearance in Jacksonville, Florida may have been bumped to a smaller venue due to slow ticket sales, but that didn’t stop the Mama Grizzly from taking her shots against the health care law and Governor Charlie Crist for vetoing a piece of anti-abortion legislation:
In a speech that only ventured into politics on abortion issues, Palin criticized Obama’s health care overhaul as a plan that will lead to more abortions.
“The biggest advance of the abortion industry in America is the passage of Obamacare,” Palin said. “Elective abortions have nothing to do with health care. It’s about ending lives, not saving lives.”
Of course, anyone even remotely attune to the actual dynamics of the health care debate knows that the so-called “abortion industry” — by which I presume Palin means pro-choice activists who advocate on behalf of doctors who perform abortions — was quite disappointed with the law and the rash of anti-abortion activity in the states that followed its passage.
To refresh, health plans may offer abortion coverage in the exchanges, but only if their customers write two checks – one for the share of their premium that’s allocated for abortion services and one for all other health care coverage – even though both checks would come from the customers’ private funds, not from government coffers. The Nelson deal also included language that encourages states to pass their own version of the Stupak Amendment, which some have, thereby completely eliminating abortion coverage from the exchanges.
Pro-choice advocates saw the Nelson firewall requirement as an “unprecedented” restriction on “private insurance coverage for abortion care, making it much more cumbersome for insurers to offer coverage and for consumers to obtain it.” In the time since the law passed, moreover, conservative state lawmakers have gone even farther, using the law’s opt-out language as an opportunity to severely restrict women’s ability to purchase abortion services with private dollars and the administration has prohibited states from covering abortion in the high risk insurance pools. If that’s the “biggest advance” for the abortion “industry,” the the Gulf spill was the biggest advance for the oil industry.
Sebelius Claims VA Attorney General Cuccinelli Sued The Wrong Person In Health Care Challenge
Sebelius Claims VA Attorney General Cuccinelli Sued The Wrong Person In Health Care Challenge
Earlier this month, a judge in Virginia ruled that the state’s lawsuit challenging the individual mandate in the new health care law should proceed partly because the state’s recently enacted ‘Virginia Health Care Freedom Act’ — which protects Virginia citizens from the individual requirement — conflicts with the federal requirement and “therefore encroaches on the sovereignty of the Commonwealth and offends the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.”
The lawsuit names HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as the defendant, but now in an interesting wrinkle, Sebelius says Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli “got the list of defendants wrong.” In her response to the Judge’s ruling:
Deny, and separately aver that while the defendant, Kathleen Sebelius, in her official capacity as the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, is responsible for administering many provisions of the ACA, the Secretary of the Treasury is primarily responsible for the administration of the minimum coverage provision that the plaintiff seeks to challenge in this action. [...]
The complaint should be dismissed for failure to join a necessary party, namely the Secretary of the Treasury, who, unlike the defendant, is charged with the implementation of Section 1501 of the ACA.
Cuccinelli may be able to amend his complaint and add the necessary party, but this could also force the judge to make a finding that the mandate is administered by the Treasury Department, which itself would undermine Cuccinelli’s claim that the mandate is not a tax.
The reply also argues that Congress has the authority to impose a minimum coverage provision — also known as the individual mandate –since it’s “essential to ensure the success of the ACA’s larger regulation of the interstate health insurance market.”
Significantly, Florida’s challenge mentions Sebelius, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis as defendants.
Toomey Proud Of Deregulating Derivatives, Says He’d Vote To Do It Again
Toomey Proud Of Deregulating Derivatives, Says He’d Vote To Do It Again
This week, Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate candidate, has experienced a bit of selective amnesia regarding his often full-throated support for privatizing Social Security. However, on the campaign trail Wednesday he was not at all coy about his support for deregulating derivatives on Wall Street, the very instruments that helped bring down the financial system.
In 2000, former Sen. Phil “mental recession” Gramm (R-TX) attached the Commodity Futures Modernization Act to an unrelated, 11,000 appropriations bill which was passed “on a Friday evening two days after the Supreme Court handed down its Bush v. Gore ruling and as Congress was rushing home for Christmas.” The bill ensured that the growing market in over-the-counter derivatives, including credit default swaps, stayed entirely unregulated, against the advice of people like former Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Brooksley Born (who accurately predicted the havoc derivatives would cause).
Toomey — then a member of the House of Representatives — voted for that bill, and said that he would do it again, as “that bill did absolutely nothing to cause the financial crisis”:
“That bill did absolutely nothing to cause the financial crisis, and no credible person has tried to make that argument,” Toomey said…Asked whether he’d vote for it again, he said: “Yes. I think all 377 (House members) would vote for it again.”
Of course, plenty of credible people — including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz — have pointed to the destruction wrought by the lack of derivatives oversight. By keeping regulators away from the OTC derivatives market — which is several times the size of the entire U.S. economy — the Commodity Futures Modernization Act set the stage for the financial crisis and huge government bailouts of 2008, particularly that of the insurance giant/hedge fund American International Group, as David Min and I explained:
Lehman Brothers Inc. and insurance giant American International Group’s inability to honor their many billions of dollars in credit default swap derivative obligations caused investors to question the value of the many financial instruments tied to credit default swaps, causing a classic run on the bank situation for the unregulated parts of the financial system. It was this run on the so-called “shadow banking system” — which performs the functions of banking but outside the regulatory safeguards in place for banks — that led to the bailout of AIG.
Because of the bill that Toomey backed, this huge market grew and grew entirely out of the view of regulators, and was so opaque that even the financial institutions involved in it were unclear as to what was going on.
The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill that was signed into law this year brings the derivatives market out of the dark and sets up a mechanism for ensuring that financial firms trading derivatives have adequate collateral backing them up. So would Toomey advocate that we dismantle these common sense safeguards?
The WonkLine: August 27, 2010
The WonkLine: August 27, 2010
Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 9:30 a.m. roundup of the latest news about health care, the economy, national security, immigration and climate policy. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below. You can also follow The Wonk Room on Twitter.
Immigration
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is “struggling with festering internal divisions between political appointees and career officials over how to enforce laws and handle detainees facing deportation.”
John Morton, head of ICE, has instructed the agency’s legal office to stop the deportation proceedings of foreign nationals who may now be eligible for a green card.
Gov. Jan Brewer’s (R-AZ) lawyers have filed the first brief in their appeal of a ruling that blocked the most controversial elements of Arizona’s new immigration law.
Health Care
“A contentious all-day hearing Wednesday left many Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico customers they see little hope for relief from a controversial 21.3 percent increase in their health insurance premiums.”
“Almost all U.S. hospitals couldn’t meet the federal government’s meaningful-use standards.”
“Two of the Richmond area’s three abortion clinics do not meet the standards for an outpatient surgery center and would be at risk of closing if stiffer regulations authorized by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli are enacted, say critics of the proposed rules.”
National Security
“Former President Carter on Friday left the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, after negotiating the release of an American who had been imprisoned since January for illegally entering the secretive country.”
“Even as Pakistani and international relief officials scrambled to save people and property, they despaired that the nation’s worst natural calamity had ruined just about every physical strand that knit this country together — roads, bridges, schools, health clinics, electricity and communications.”
“President Felipe Calderon proposed sweeping new measures Thursday to crack down on the cash smuggling and money laundering that allow Mexican cartels to use billions in U.S. drug profits to enrich their criminal organizations.”
Economy
“More than a quarter of the $20 billion in Housing and Urban Development relief funds that were earmarked for Gulf Coast states after Hurricane Katrina remains unspent five years after the storm,” while post-Katrina government programs “often offered the most help to the most affluent residents.”
Treasury’s program to purge banks of their toxic assets has generated an “estimated return of about 15.5 percent for taxpayers,” which “translates into a paper profit of roughly $657 million.”
The growing U.S. trade deficit “has become a substantial drag on economic growth as the country’s exports struggle to keep pace with the swelling sums that Americans are again spending on imported goods.”
Stretched Budgets Encouraging States To Hasten Health Implementation
Stretched Budgets Encouraging States To Hasten Health Implementation
California has “passed two bills that provide the mechanisms and functions of the exchange” and separate legislation to boost adverse-event reporting among hospitals, leading the way in implementation of reform. The advances come in the midst of growing budget shortfalls and increasing number of uninsured, both of which are taxing the state’s health safety net programs.
A new report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research finds “8.4 million Californians were uninsured in 2009 — up from 6.4 million in 2007, a 31% surge in just two years.” “The sharp increase was driven by widespread job loss, as areas that reported higher unemployment figures corresponded to areas with the highest rate of uninsured residents.” A higher number of uninsured means that state funds will have to be stretched further, to cover more people. As California HealthLine points out:
However, state budget issues continue to raise red flags for health care stakeholders. The budget, which is now about two months late, currently threatens cuts to health and human services, which critics say would hamper access to Medi-Cal, reduce home health services and make other changes. The budget delay also means that community clinics are now going without Medi-Cal reimbursements, which represents 50% to 80% of their revenue, and could force clinics to scale back their hours and service.
But what’s interesting is that this ongoing economic crisis in the states may be motivating state governments to implement health care reform more quickly, apply for all of the available federal grants and pressure even reluctant politicians to comply with the law’s requirements. For instance, I’ve noted that at least 19 of the 22 states that are suing the federal government over health care reform are also applying for the law’s recently released rate review grants and some — like Utah — are actively working with HHS to ensure that the law meets their needs.
Shana Alex Lavarreda, Director of Health Insurance Studies at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research tells me that California, which is currently setting up its high risk insurance pool program, is rushing to implement reform precisely because it would lessen the stress on state safety net programs. “It’s funny, politically they were talking about, the change was happening too quickly, we need to slow it down, we need to put it off, now that it’s actually passed, I’m hearing many more complains along the lines of, why isn’t this here yet, why isn’t it fully implemented, why aren’t we getting our subsidies now?” she observed.
Lavarreda said that from the federal prospective, an increase in the uninsured would result in higher costs, but argued that “from the state budget prospective, that’s actually a really good thing.” “More people might be going into the exchange, including the people that would otherwise be eligible for Healthy Families [the CHIP program]. If the adults are going into the exchange, they might not want their kids to be on Healthy Families — the CHIP program here in the state — and they might pull out their kids from that program, which would actually reduce state expenditures. It’s possible that the exchanges would pull people out of the public programs if they prefer to be in the private programs, receiving subsidies from the federal government instead.”
Some lawmakers have argued that implementation itself might stress the state budget, but for now, it’s still too early to tell if states will need more funding. “For us, [the economic downturn] has pushed it to the forefront of our current legislature’s agenda,” Lavarreda stressed. “The problem is not getting better, it’s getting worse right now and we’re going to be incredibly active in getting as much federal funding as possible given our budget situation right now.”
Is Immigration Reform The Logic Behind Lindsey Graham’s 14th Amendment Madness?
Is Immigration Reform The Logic Behind Lindsey Graham’s 14th Amendment Madness?
Immigration advocates and anti-immigrant zealots alike have been scratching their heads ever since Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) went from working with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on crafting an immigration reform bill to walking away from negotiations and suggesting that the 14th amendment should be amended to deny the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants from automatically becoming citizens upon birth. In an interview with Politico on who might be the “Republican standard-bearer for immigration reform” after the fall elections, GOP political consultant Ana Navarro suggests that there could be a method to Graham’s 14th amendment madness:
While many believe McCain is a lost cause on reform, GOP strategist Ana Navarro hasn’t written off one of the senator’s closest allies, Graham, who rolled out a reform proposal with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in March that included a path to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. [...]
“There is a logic to his madness,” said Navarro, who fled Nicaragua at age 8 during the Sandinista revolution. “What he was trying to do is put something in the pot, to sweeten the pot so he could attract some of the right wing to reach a compromise on comprehensive immigration reform.”
Meanwhile, Graham’s spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied Navarro’s speculations:
Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said border security remains the senator’s No. 1 concern but that other issues — including employment verification, a guest worker program, birthright citizenship and a plan to deal with the illegal immigrants already in the country — also need to be looked at.
If Navarro is right, it would make the task of achieving effective and humane immigration reform that both sides can agree on pretty difficult. While immigration reform that includes a path to legalization together with an updated visa system would go a long way in eliminating most undocumented immigration, it’s hard to say whether the phenomena would disappear altogether. If not, changing the 14th amendment would cause a manageable problem to grow larger and larger in size every time an undocumented mother gives birth in the U.S.
It’s unclear that “sweetening the pot” by changing the Constitution would be enough to bring right-wingers to the table without causing pro-immigrant lawmakers to walk away from it. It didn’t work very well last time. In 2007 lawmakers crafted a bipartisan piece of legislation that was the last immigration reform bill that made it to the Senate floor. Though the legislation included a legalization program, it also contained a provision that replaced the green card system with a problematic “point system” that ignored labor needs and would’ve essentially changed the demographics of future immigration by prioritizing high-skilled immigrants over lower-skilled ones. Labor unions abandoned the bill when a temporary worker program was added without any path to permanent residence. At the time, The Council on Foreign Relations wrote, “the current bill will address the presence of millions of undocumented workers — no small feat. Yet without consideration of these underlying structural issues, the fundamental goals of immigration reform will remain elusive.” The bill didn’t make it past cloture.
It’s far too early to speculate as to what Graham would want in his immigration bill or if he’s even willing to work on one again. However, if his current 14th amendment politics are any indication, the compromise reached in 2007 would pale in comparison to what Graham has in mind now.
Fox News Ignores Ken Mehlman’s Coming Out, Runs Zero Segments On Story
Fox News Ignores Ken Mehlman’s Coming Out, Runs Zero Segments On Story
When Judge Vaughn Walker struck down Proposition 8, Fox News barely mentioned the story and its most prominent conservative commentators ignored it entirely. Yesterday, after the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder reported that former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman — who had orchestrated President Bush’s gay-bating 2004 re-election campaign — was coming out as gay, Fox News Channel remained similarly mum and as of this posting has yet to run a single segment on the story.
A Wonk Room review of Critical Mention reveals that CNN mentioned the name “Mehlman” 19 times, MSNBC reported on it 12 times (searches for “gay” and “Ken” produced similar results, with Fox News stuck at 0):
It’s unclear why Fox News ignored the story, since some Republicans have embraced Mehlman’s coming out. Current Republican Party chairman, Michael Steele, for instance, issued a supportive statement: “His announcement, often a very difficult decision which is only compounded when done on the public stage, reaffirms for me why we are friends and why I respect him personally and professionally.” Mehlman has also said that President Bush has been “incredibly supportive” of his coming out.
Ignoring stories which undermine conservative causes, however, is the norm at Fox. Earlier this month, Fox News refused to run a single segment on Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s racially-charged rant, after which she resigned from talk radio.
Half Of The Spending Cuts In Blunt’s Jobs Plan Aren’t Actually Spending Cuts
Half Of The Spending Cuts In Blunt’s Jobs Plan Aren’t Actually Spending Cuts
Last week, I pointed out that the “jobs plan” proposed by Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), who is running for his state’s open Senate seat, includes a provision permanently guaranteeing taxpayer giveaways to the real estate industry, which calls into question Blunt’s commitment to deficit reduction. But that’s not the only part of his plan that proves Blunt is fundamentally disinterested in addressing government spending.
Blunt included in the plan what he has claimed is $2 trillion in spending cuts, which would presumably be used to either reduce the deficit or to fund some of the massive tax cuts that he’s embraced. “In this plan, Roy identified over two trillion dollars in cuts right off the bat that can be taken out of government,” said former Missouri treasurer Sarah Steelman, who has endorsed Blunt’s campaign.
But in what he charitably calls an “accounting error,” the Kansas City Star’s Dave Helling notes that fully one half of Blunt’s spending cuts aren’t actually spending cuts at all:
A look at that plan shows half of those savings — $1 trillion — would come from Blunt’s proposal to repeal the health care reform package…Repealing health care reform would eliminate $1 trillion in spending, but it would also eliminate the $1 trillion in tax and fee increases and Medicare reductions that are in the law as well. The net effect of health care repeal on the federal deficit is, roughly, zero.
Actually, contrary to Helling’s assertion, repealing the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t have zero effect on the deficit: it would actively increase it. According to the Congressional Budget Office, repealing the bill would increase the deficit by $143 billion over the next ten years.
But the point remains that the only way Blunt’s push for repeal works as a deficit reduction measure is if he plans to keep all of the tax increases and Medicare savings, without actually giving anyone any additional health care.
Plenty of other spending cuts that Blunt suggests are equally ill-informed. He proposes repealing the remaining stimulus funds, including those dedicated to middle class tax cuts. He also says he’d cut an unidentified “wasteful welfare program,” which is presumably the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Fund that House Republicans like to cite all the time. But it’s actually a successful work program that is supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country, including 4,600 in Blunt’s own state.
Of course, Blunt is far from the only one who thinks that repealing the Affordable Care Act is a legitimate deficit reduction strategy. For instance, New Hampshire’s Republican Senate candidate, Kelly Ayotte, has made it the centerpiece of her deficit reduction plan.
DOJ Asks SCOTUS To Vacate Environmental Victory Against Greenhouse Gas Emitters
DOJ Asks SCOTUS To Vacate Environmental Victory Against Greenhouse Gas Emitters
Yesterday, the Solicitor General’s office filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to vacate a victory against several polluters, including a federally-owned corporation:
The Department of Justice brief, filed with the Supreme Court this week, says the Environmental Protection Agency is already on the job, and doesn’t need help from private plaintiffs.
“EPA has already begun taking actions to address carbon-dioxide emissions,” a brief filed by Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal says. “That regulatory approach is preferable to what would result if multiple district courts — acting without the benefit of even the most basic statutory guidance — could use common-law nuisance claims to sit as arbiters of scientific and technology-related disputes and de facto regulators of power plants and other sources of pollution.”
The administration’s brief was filed in connection with litigation pitting the state of Connecticut and seven other states as well as New York City against a group of large coal-burning utilities. The suit contends the utilities are creating a “public nuisance’” through their greenhouse-gas emissions and seeks to force them to cut their emissions. The utilities, including American Electric Power Corp., countered that the issue was a political, not a judicial, matter and that the states didn’t have a right to sue, among other arguments.
Unsurprisingly, environmentalists are outraged by DOJ’s brief, and their outrage in many ways harkens back to the controversy over a previous brief defending the egregious Defense of Marriage Act.
Generally speaking, DOJ has a duty to defend lawsuits filed against the federal government, and several environmental attorneys that I spoke with agreed that DOJ should not be faulted for filing a brief defending against a lawsuit where a federal entity is a defendant. As was the case with DOMA, however, DOJ should not be required to make dangerous or offensive arguments, and DOJ’s brief in the environmental litigation advances an argument that could seriously undermine environmental protection the next time a conservative president is elected.
Ever since a 1907 Supreme Court decision required Tennessee copper companies to reduce emissions that were damaging Georgia farmers’ crops, states have been empowered to sue harmful emitters under a legal theory known as “nuisance.” So the case against greenhouse gas emitters should be a slam dunk, since unchecked greenhouse emissions will cause devastating harm throughout the world.
DOJ, however, makes two claims why nuisance law should not apply here. Their less troubling argument is that, because EPA has started to regulate greenhouse emissions after President Obama took office, these EPA regulations “displace” federal nuisance law. Under this line of reasoning, if a future administration were to lift Obama-era regulations protecting against climate change, federal nuisance law would remain as a backstop to prevent emitters from being completely unchecked.
DOJ’s second argument creates a much bigger problem. Under this argument, the states lack “standing” to assert a federal nuisance claim altogether. Should this reasoning be adopted by the courts, federal nuisance law would no longer provide a backstop against emissions, and it would no longer serve as a deterrent to prevent conservatives from gutting environmental regulations.
One additional wrinkle presented by this case is the possibility it could be heard by a panel of justices who have largely pushed a knee-jerk pro-corporate agenda. Justice Sotomayor heard oral arguments in this case while she sat on the Second Circuit, although she was promoted to the Supreme Court before the final decision came down, so she is likely to recuse from further involvement in the case. Additionally, if Justice Kagan had any involvement with the case while she was Solicitor General she would recuse as well. In other words, the future of environmental law could rest in the hands of the Court’s four most conservative members: Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito.
Perhaps this is why DOJ offered the standing argument to the Court–as a way to prevent an ideological four-justice majority from doing something even more damaging while they have a chance. Even so, this standing argument has troubling implications for the future if it is ever adopted by the courts.
In Covering Ken Mehlman Story, MSNBC Anchor Acknowledges He Is Gay
In Covering Ken Mehlman Story, MSNBC Anchor Acknowledges He Is Gay
Former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman’s coming out provided the media with an opportunity to review the GOP’s record on gay rights and explore the Mehlman’s role in crafting President Bush’s 2004 re-election strategy. On MSNBC, Mehlman’s revelation engendered an even more honest discussion when, during a segment with GOProud chairman Christopher Barron, daytime anchor Thomas Roberts — who is an openly gay anchor — discussed his orientation on air:
BARRON: We know that opinion poll after opinion poll shows that the single most important factor in determining how someone feels about gay rights or about gay issues is whether or not they know someone who is gay or lesbian….
ROBERTS: I think for probably most heterosexual Americans this isn’t going to come as a big deal, but I think for millions of gay and lesbian Americans — me included — find this to be kind of a shocking admission, especially when Mehlman’s leadership, in the positions that he held, came at a time when he was part of talks that would have put discrimination into the Constitution. When they were ramping up anti gay rhetoric and now he wants to come out say, ‘hey I’m one of you.’ So how does he go about trying to get millions of gay and lesbian Americans to believe that he is not just a big hypocrite.
Watch it:
Indeed, despite Bush and Mehlman’s effort to “put discrimination into the Constitution,” support for gay rights is increasing across the country. As recently as 2004, “same-sex marriage did not have majority support in any state.” Today, according to researchers at Columbia University, “17 states are over that line.” Similarly, CBS News poll found that 77% of Americans now say they know someone who is gay or lesbian,” an increase of 35 percentage points since 1992.
Reject All ‘Stab in the Back’ Arguments
Reject All ‘Stab in the Back’ Arguments
On Sunday, Frank Rich posted a column on the Park 51 controversy in which he argued “The prime movers in the campaign against the ground zero mosque’ just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan”:
The wrecking ball they’re wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America’s already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.
So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right — abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats — that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?
While I think Rich is correct to note the bigotry and cynicism that underlies the most virulent opposition to Park 51, and the cowardice that underlies most of the rest of it, I think we should be careful not suggest that, by engaging in free speech, however ugly and false that speech may be, critics of Park 51 are undermining the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan, or national security more broadly.
We saw similar arguments leveled against critics of the Iraq war — first that, by questioning the case for war, they were “objectively pro-Saddam,” and later that, by continuing to criticize the war as it went worse and worse, they were emboldening insurgents.
But the idea that success or failure in Afghanistan will be determined by whatever stupid things Newt Gingrich or Glenn Beck say about Muslims is just daft, just as was the idea that those who criticized the Iraq war bear responsibility for the Bush administration’s disastrous incompetence.
None of this is to say that the controversy over Park 51 has no bearing on U.S. national security, I think it clearly does. Just as apartheid in the American South provided our Cold War adversaries with fodder for their anti-American propaganda, so it’s becoming clear that the anti-Muslim hysteria emanating from the anti-Park 51 protests is, as the New York Times reported, “playing into the hands of extremists by bolstering their claims that the United States is hostile to Islam.”
Does the Park 51 controversy make achieving the U.S.’s goals vis a vis the “Muslim world” more difficult? It may. The appropriate response to this, however, is not to attempt to chill speech by claiming it helps our enemies, but to engage in the debate more vigorously and honestly in order to ensure that American values of tolerance and religious freedom aren’t cast aside, either as a sop to bigotry or to political expediency, and let that be the rejoinder to our enemies’ propaganda.
How Immigration Reform Could’ve Helped Prevent The ‘Massacre’ Of 72 Migrants
How Immigration Reform Could’ve Helped Prevent The ‘Massacre’ Of 72 Migrants
Over the past year, amidst the heated immigration debate, immigration hawks have pointed to the violence taking place on the Mexican side of the border to argue that the U.S. isn’t ready for comprehensive immigration reform and should instead pursue a single-minded focus on border security. It’s probably only a matter of time before anti-immigrant lawmakers start pointing at the recent “massacre” of 72 Central and South American suspected migrants who were brutally tortured and killed by human smugglers in Mexico on their way to the U.S. as yet another reason to pour billions of dollars into immigration enforcement.
However, it’s actually the absence of immigration reform that contributed to their deaths and has helped propel the violence on the other side of the border. Just as the “insatiable demand” for illicit drugs in the U.S. fuels the bloody drug war in Latin America, heavy demand for and a steady supply of immigrant workers together with an outdated visa system that shuts most migrants out of the U.S. has fueled the profitable and violent human smuggling business.
Despite the poor state of the economy, the Global Consortium on Security Transformation wrote in May 2010 that “[t]he U.S. labor market has seen chronic shortages in some sectors for decades. As a result, “[i]t is no secret that much of the U.S. food processing and agricultural industries depend heavily on foreign-born (often illegal) workers for harvesting fruits and vegetables.” An aging population, low fertility rates, and rising education attainments and employment aspirations are amongst the factors that the study cites as contributing to the labor shortage in those sectors.
Meanwhile, few economic opportunities across Latin America creates an ample supply of workers who are more than willing to fill many of those jobs. However, irrespective of “good” or “bad” economic conditions, they can’t. The decades-old U.S. visa system that allows immigrants to enter and work in the country legally consists of static quotas that don’t respond to economic fluctuations.
Meanwhile, a focus on border security has made it increasingly difficult for migrants to enter the U.S. illegally. Yet it hasn’t stopped them from coming. Instead, it has increased the profitability of the human smuggling business and strengthened its ties with organized crime. In 2008, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “[a]s U.S. border security has tightened, Mexican drug cartels have moved in on coyotes…the traffickers now use their expertise in gathering intelligence on border patrols, logistics and communication devices to get around ever tighter controls.”
Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez, chair of the department of transborder Chicana/o and Latina/o studies at Arizona State University, explains, “[n]ow, because of the so-called security needs of the border, what’s been created is this structure of smuggling in the hands of really nasty people who only treat the migrant as a commodity.” Along the way, migrants face rape, theft, physical and emotional abuse, and even kidnapping, torture, and death. Their own smugglers view them as exploitable cargo. If they make it to the U.S., they are cheap labor or trespassing “criminals,” depending on who you ask. Migrants like the 72 who were brutally killed in Mexico risk everything to attain the American Dream, but, somewhere along the line the humanity of their journey is lost.
Watch Amnesty International’s video on the risks migrants to the U.S. face:
Some well-meaning, free market thinkers would argue that an open border that allows for the free flow of labor is the answer. However, besides running the risk of being an economic and national security nightmare, it’s also politically impossible. Fixing the broken immigration system by creating a flexible number of opportunities for economic migrants to work in the U.S. without sacrificing border security is a much more practical and realistic solution. Replacing old visa quotas with a system that responds to economic supply and demand would devastate the lucrative human smuggling business by allowing more economic migrants to enter the U.S. legally, rather than paying someone to smuggle them through. It might even significantly dent the illegal drug trade by freeing up resources that are currently being indiscriminately used to pursue non-violent economic migrants and dangerous drug cartel operatives alike. In the meantime, more border security means more human smuggling profits, more violence, more exploitation, and more migrant deaths on both sides of the border.
Register
RSSLogin
Wonk Room Tweets
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Wonk RoomContact Us
Donate
