Ping Scheller - Let's chat Obama

The Weekly Standard
FEB 23, 2015, VOL. 20, NO. 23
BY JEFFREY H. ANDERSON


Obamacare is an affront to American principles. It amounts to an unprecedented consolidation of money and control in the hands of the federal bureaucracy. It forces private citizens to buy a product or service of the government’s choosing for the first time in history, and it bans millions of Americans who would otherwise choose to buy or keep other products or services from doing so. It costs trillions when we already owe trillions. A nation “conceived in liberty” is now operating under a health care law predicated on coercion.

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Yet despite these high stakes, conservatives have given surprisingly little serious thought to how to repeal Obamacare. Some have put down unrealistic or unhelpful markers​—​no new spending or taxes above the pre-Obamacare baseline​—​as if the problem were merely that Obamacare costs a lot and taxes a lot. Some pretend that if they do nothing, President Obama’s signature legislation will somehow fade away. Others have made peace with Obamacare and assume that most of it is here to stay.

But we can roll back the greatest domestic threat to limited government and liberty that most of us have ever faced. It’s obvious, and has been at least since the defeat of Hillarycare in the mid-1990s, that staving off the left’s attempts to socialize American medicine will require conservative solutions and reforms. The near-absence of such offerings in the 15 years from 1994 to 2009 provided fertile ground for Obamacare and enabled it to take root. Now that Obamacare is the law of the land, it’s all the more obvious that the only way to repeal it is to advance a winning alternative.

Such an alternative should pass two tests: (1) Will it pave the way to full repeal? And (2) will it fix what the government had already broken through the tax code (with the disparate tax treatment of individual and employer-based insurance) even before Obamacare was passed? The second of these is important; the first is indispensable.

Any viable conservative or Republican alternative to Obamacare would cut costs. But it must also deal with the thorny issue​—​used to great rhetorical advantage by Obama​—​of uninsured people with expensive preexisting conditions. Obama-care solves the problem by in effect outlawing the core principle (dating back to the Renaissance) of insurance itself​—​the idea that you buy coverage before you are sick or injured (or before your car crashes or your house burns or your spouse dies) as protection against that unforeseen event. Almost every Obamacare alternative under discussion would end this heavy-handed redefinition of insurance and replace it with a combination of commonsense insurance regulations and state-run, federally funded high-risk pools. While the specifics vary, the regulations would generally guarantee continuous coverage, while the high-risk pools would offer subsidized insurance to those whose preexisting conditions would make insurance unaffordable at market prices.

Given the general consensus on how a replacement of Obamacare should deal with preexisting conditions, what differentiates the Obamacare alternatives most sharply is their treatment of the tax code. Since World War II, the federal government has had its thumb on the scale, strongly favoring employer-based insurance over individual-market insurance. Thus, millions of Americans who buy their own insurance do so without a tax break, while their neighbors with employer-based insurance enjoy a large tax break. As a result, the individual market has largely dried up. And for all of its 2,700 pages of federal largess, Obamacare didn’t fix this unfairness in the tax code. Rather than cutting anyone’s taxes, it gives a small subsection of the population large subsidies while presenting most Americans with the tab.

Senators Richard Burr and Orrin Hatch and House Energy and Commerce chairman Fred Upton have advanced the most visible Republican alternative on Capitol Hill. It would offer income-tested, age-based, refundable tax credits in the individual market to roughly the same people who get Obamacare subsidies. People could use the tax credits to help buy insurance of their choice, rather than the insurance Obamacare compels them to buy. At the same time, the proposal would cap the tax break in the employer-based market at $30,000 for a family plan and $12,000 for an individual plan. People eligible for tax credits but who “fail to make an affirmative choice”​—​that is, who don’t buy insurance—​could be automatically enrolled in a plan. The alternative would repeal most but not all of Obamacare, keeping such things as its Medicare raid and its requirement that insurers cover 25-year-olds on their parents’ policies, while repealing Obamacare’s exchanges, exchange subsidies, taxes, and almost all of its mandates.

The Republican Study Committee and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal have both advanced alternatives that would scrap the employer-based tax break altogether and offer a new standard deduction for all health insurance. The RSC proposal, supported by more than 100 House Republicans, would offer a tax deduction of $20,000 for families and $7,500 for individuals who buy health insurance, while Jindal’s proposal is less fleshed out. Under either alternative, people could use the deduction against both income and payroll taxes. Moreover, anyone who bought insurance that cost less than the value of the deduction could still take the full deduction, thereby encouraging people to shop for value. Both would repeal Obamacare in its entirety.

The 2017 Project (of which I am the executive director) has advanced an alternative that the nonpartisan Center for Health and Economy (H&E) says would cut spending by $1.13 trillion below Obamacare over 10 years, while increasing private insurance rolls by 6 million. (H&E hasn’t scored the current versions of the other proposals.) Ed Gillespie championed this proposal and almost rode it to an upset victory in Virginia. It would offer flat tax credits, with three simple age bands, to everyone in the individual market​—​$1,200 for those under 35 years of age; $2,100 for those between 35 and 49; $3,000 for those 50 and over​—​and $900 per child. People who bought insurance for less than the value of their tax credit could put the difference into a Health Savings Account, and a further onetime tax credit of $1,000 per person would be offered to anyone with an HSA. On the employer side, it would cap the tax break at $20,000 for a family plan and $8,000 for an individual plan. It would not include “auto-enrollment” and would repeal Obama-care in full. Moreover, because its tax credits would go to people of all incomes, giving most of them a tax cut, this alternative would likely provide a net tax cut even from the pre-Obamacare baseline​—​in addition to the $1 trillion tax cut that would come from repealing Obama-care.

Again, the crucial questions are whether these alternatives would (1) lead to repeal and (2) fix the longstanding tax unfairness.

Beyond dealing with preexisting conditions, to survive politically, any winning alternative must be invulnerable to two lines of attack: that it dumps millions of newly insured people off their Obamacare-compliant policies, leaving them uninsured, and that it disrupts the employer-based insurance of roughly 160 million Americans.

An Obamacare alternative need not necessarily beat Obamacare on projected coverage numbers, especially since the Congressional Budget Office now says Obamacare has put more people on Medicaid than it has added to private insurance rolls, and will continue to do so. But an alternative does need to beat the pre-Obamacare number of Americans covered, by a wide margin, and it needs to accommodate those who got covered under Obamacare, including those diverted into Medicaid. In short, a winning alternative must address costs and coverage.

The Burr-Hatch-Upton alternative successfully deals with those who became newly insured under Obamacare. They would get tax credits to help them buy insurance of their choice. And Burr-Hatch-Upton wouldn’t alter the tax treatment of the typical person’s employer-based plan. Thus, its defenses are solid against both lines of attack. It would therefore meet the first criterion: It has what it takes to lead to repeal. But it doesn’t pass the second test. Because its tax credits are income-based, it wouldn’t eliminate the unequal tax treatment of most people who buy insurance through the individual market.

The RSC and Jindal proposals both pass this second test (fixing the inequity in the tax code), but would flunk the deal-breaking first test: They wouldn’t lead to repeal. They are extremely vulnerable to both major lines of attack that Obama and his allies would like to launch. They have no real answer for the poor and near-poor who have gained coverage under Obama-care, and they would disrupt the tax treatment of every employer-based plan.

The attitude of Americans with employer-based insurance will largely decide Obamacare’s fate. During the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain advanced a proposal that would have disrupted employer-based insurance about as badly as the RSC and Jindal proposals would. Obama responded with the most frequently run political ad of the past decade. Repeating the McCain campaign’s mistakes won’t get us to repeal.

As for dealing with the near-poor, take this example. Under Obamacare, a family of five in Milwaukee, with 57-year-old parents making a total of $30,000 a year, gets a staggering $20,567 a year in Obama-care subsidies, plus further subsidies for out-of-pocket costs. Under Burr-Hatch-Upton, that family would get an $11,110 tax credit with which to shop for insurance. But under the RSC and Jindal alternatives, because the family pays no federal taxes​—​that is, their income tax refund exceeds their payroll taxes​—​they would go from a subsidy of $20,567 to a tax deduction of zero. Imagine the heyday Obama-care defenders would have with that.

Jindal claims that his alternative is “truly conservative” and that most other alternatives are really Obamacare Lite. But his alternative would give us Obamacare Forever, and there is nothing conservative about that.

The 2017 Project alternative, like the RSC and Jindal proposals, would end the inequity in the tax code. Because its tax credits would go to everyone in the individual market, a 35-year-old single woman making $35,000 a year in Fairfax County, Virginia, who gets no Obamacare subsidies and a mere $3 tax credit under Burr-Hatch-Upton, would get a $2,100 tax credit to buy insurance of her choice. If she doesn’t itemize her deductions (and likely even if she does), this tax credit would come entirely in the form of a tax cut. Advocates of repeal have generally overlooked the huge political upside of offering an overdue tax cut to millions of Main Street Americans who get nothing under Obamacare.

Unlike the RSC and Jindal alternatives, however, the 2017 Project alternative also deals effectively with the poor and near-poor, who are Obamacare’s primary focus. The Milwaukee family that gets $20,567 in Obamacare subsidies​—​and nothing under the RSC and Jindal proposals​—​would get an $8,700 tax credit ($3,000 for each adult and $900 for each of their three children) under the 2017 Project proposal to buy insurance of their choice on the open market. That would be enough to make insurance affordable even if they didn’t supplement the credit with their own money, according to the federal government’s own figures on the cost of insurance in each state for various ages and family sizes, released by the Government Accountability Office on the eve of Obamacare’s implementation.

Nor would the 2017 Project alternative blow up the employer-based market. Under it, the tax break for the typical person’s employer-based insurance wouldn’t change at all. And even a family with, say, a $25,000 employer-based plan would still get the full tax break on the first $20,000.

Thus, the 2017 Project alternative passes the first and crucial test​—​it would lead to repeal. It also passes the second test: By finally ending the unfairness in the tax code, it would revitalize an individual market that the government broke. In short, by offering a non-income-tested tax credit to every American in the individual market, the 2017 Project alternative​—​or one similar to it​—​would be a political winner.

The American people clearly want repeal, but only in the context of a superior conservative alternative​—​one that would meaningfully deal with both costs and coverage and would do so without needlessly jeopardizing employer-based insurance. A McLaughlin & Associates poll from last fall found that, if offered “a conservative alternative that aims to lower health costs and help people get insurance,” Americans favor repeal by 60 to 32 percent.

The repeal of Obamacare would be the greatest domestic policy win in the history of the conservative movement. It can happen. There is no substitute for victory. But victory is possible only if the alternative that is advanced to replace Obama-care is the right one.



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By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
FEB. 7, 2015


WHEN Karen Pineman of Manhattan received notice that her longtime health insurance policy didn’t comply with the Affordable Care Act’s requirements, she gamely set about shopping for a new policy through the public marketplace. After all, she’d supported President Obama and the act as a matter of principle.

Ms. Pineman, who is self-employed, accepted that she’d have to pay higher premiums for a plan with a narrower provider network and no out-of-network coverage. She accepted that she’d have to pay out of pocket to see her primary care physician, who didn’t participate. She even accepted having co-pays of nearly $1,800 to have a cast put on her ankle in an emergency room after she broke it while playing tennis.

But her frustration bubbled over when she tried to arrange a follow-up visit with an orthopedist in her Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield network: The nearest doctor available who treated ankle problems was in Stamford, Conn. When she called to protest, her insurer said that Stamford was 14 miles from her home and 15 was considered a reasonable travel distance. “It was ridiculous — didn’t they notice it was in another state?” said Ms. Pineman, 46, who was on crutches.

She instead paid $350 to see a nearby orthopedist and bought a boot on Amazon as he suggested. She has since forked over hundreds of dollars more for a physical therapist that insurance didn’t cover, even though that provider was in-network.

The Affordable Care Act has ushered in an era of complex new health insurance products featuring legions of out-of-pocket coinsurance fees, high deductibles and narrow provider networks. Though commercial insurers had already begun to shift toward such policies, the health care law gave them added legitimacy and has vastly accelerated the trend, experts say.

The theory behind the policies is that patients should bear more financial risk so they will be more conscious and cautious about health care spending. But some experts say the new policies have also left many Americans scrambling to track expenses from a multitude of sources — such as separate deductibles for network and non-network care, or payments for drugs on an insurer’s ever-changing list of drugs that require high co-pays or are not covered at all.

For some, like Ms. Pineman, narrow networks can necessitate footing bills privately. For others, the constant changes in policy guidelines — annual shifts in what’s covered and what’s not, monthly shifts in which doctors are in and out of network — can produce surprise bills for services they assumed would be covered. For still others, the new fees are so confusing and unsupportable that they just avoid seeing doctors.

It is true that the Affordable Care Act has erased some of the more egregious practices of the American health insurance system that left patients bankrupt or losing homes to pay bills. Insurers can no longer deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, for example. And the new policies cap out-of-pocket spending so long as the patient receives care within the plan. Most important, the act has offered health insurance to an estimated 10 million Americans who did not have any, often by expanding Medicaid or providing subsidies.

But by endorsing and expanding the complex new policies promoted by the health care industry, the law may in some ways be undermining its signature promise: health care that is accessible and affordable for all.

“I’m always curious when I read this ‘good news’ that health costs are moderating, because my health care costs go up significantly each year, and I think that’s a common experience,” said Mark Rukavina, president of Community Health Advisors in Massachusetts.

While much of the focus in the past has been on keeping premiums manageable, “premiums now tell only a part of the story,” Mr. Rukavina said, adding: “A big part of the way they’ve kept premiums down is to shift costs to patients in the form of co-pays and deductibles and other types of out-of-pocket expenses. And that can leave patients very vulnerable.”

Such policies desperately need improvement, patients and professionals like Mr. Rukavina say. But with the Republicans attacking the Affordable Care Act at all turns, even political supporters seem reluctant to acknowledge that it has some flaws. The narrative has been cast in black or white: It’s working, or it’s a failure. The reality, of course, is gray.

AT this point, we don’t have a good definition of “affordable” — or how to measure it fully and fairly. Many studies show that national health costs, while still rising, are not growing as fast as they once were. But what does that mean for individual patients? So far the research has yielded mixed results.

A study by the Commonwealth Fund this month found that the rise in health insurance premiums in employer-based plans had slowed in 31 states since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (good news, right?). But premiums were still rising faster than median incomes (hmm). More important, perhaps, the researchers found that patients were paying more in health care expenses than ever before, during a time of stagnant wages (not so great). In fact, nearly 10 percent of median household income now goes to pay premiums and deductibles, the study found. And that does not include other kinds of health payments that patients now encounter, such as co-pays and uncovered drugs or services.

A recent New York Times/CBS poll found that 46 percent of Americans said they had trouble affording health care, up 10 percentage points in just one year. Some of the cost problems may ease as patients — now known as health care consumers — learn what to expect and how to choose and navigate their plans.

But other problems may be related to the process by which the plans are created. Under the Affordable Care Act each state was asked to select a benchmark plan as its standard. It had to cover certain “essential health benefits” like maternity care and prescription drugs; it had to have a defined actuarial value depending on the level of plan. Silver plans, for example, had to cover 70 percent of charges, leaving consumers with 30 percent. But within those parameters, competing insurers had leeway to set premiums, co-payments and deductibles, and to create networks by negotiating with doctors and hospitals. Naturally, they created policies that met the core criteria while minimizing their financial risk.

Suddenly there were hundreds of new insurance products that had never been tested in real time. Their shortcomings are now playing out in various ways.

Alison Chavez, 36, who is self-employed, signed up for a marketplace plan in October 2013 that she hoped would be an improvement on her previous plan. She had recently been given a diagnosis of breast cancer and was just beginning therapy, so she was careful to choose a policy on the Covered California marketplace that included her physicians.

But in March, while in the middle of treatment, she was notified that several of her doctors and the hospital were leaving the plan’s network. She was forced to postpone a surgery as she scrambled to buy a new commercial policy that included her doctors. “I’ve been through hell and back, but I came out alive and kicking (just broke),” she wrote in an email.

Dr. Alexis Gersten, a dentist in East Quogue, N.Y., switched her family and 11 employees to a new Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan for 2014, after a previous small-business group plan was canceled. She bought the plan through a broker, and says she was unaware that it was an Affordable Care Act plan. When her son needed an ear, nose and throat specialist, the nearest was in Albany, five hours away. Though her cardiologist was on the network list, he said he did not take the plan. She ended up driving an hour to see a new one. A dispute with the insurer about how to count deductibles left her with a $457 pediatrician’s bill. This year she has chosen a new policy.

“People may have a checklist when they buy insurance: First, premiums, then the deductible — and those are pretty easy to understand because they’re set dollar amounts,” said Lynn Quincy, associate director of health reform policy at Consumers Union. But new policies demand different and more difficult kinds of calculations, she said: “The terms are unfamiliar, and figuring out networks is especially murky.”

Compounding the problem is the lack of basic information to shop effectively. When Andrea Greenberg, a New York lawyer, called the help line of Health Republic to clarify the difference between two plans, she found herself speaking to someone reading off a script in the Philippines. “I was really outraged,” she said. “This is an important decision with potentially dire consequences. It’s not like you’re choosing a sweater.”

Likewise, it took many phone calls for Aviva Starkman Williams, a California computer engineer with insurance through her employer, to determine whether the pediatrician doing her son’s 2-year-old checkup was in-network for 2015. Only three of the pediatricians in her doctor’s six-person group were listed in her plan’s online directory, and since her deductible had tripled from the previous year’s, she wanted to limit her out-of-pocket payments.

The practice’s office manager couldn’t tell her for sure. The insurer’s representative said he didn’t know because doctors came in and out of network all the time, likening the situation to players’ switching teams in the National Basketball Association. “If you don’t have updated information, who does?” she asked. “Isn’t it your job to know?”

Ms. Quincy said regulators needed to do a much better job setting requirements and policing plan practices and offerings, particularly provider networks. Few states have clear standards and many rely on consumer complaints to ferret out problems.

Last month, the California insurance commissioner, Dave Jones, announced new emergency regulations concerning networks, noting: “Health insurers’ medical provider directories have been inaccurate, misleading consumers into signing up with a health insurer for access to a doctor, specialist or hospital, only to learn that these medical providers are not actually a part of the health insurer’s network.”

But for now, patients are most often left to fend for themselves. When Amy Moses, a tech entrepreneur in New York City, went online to select a plan, she paid a relatively pricey $650 per month for a United Healthcare plan to make sure her network included a longtime physician. One month into the year, the doctor’s practice was bought by a hospital, which then dropped the plan, so her doctor did as well. (A year later the doctor was still listed in the network directory.)

She discovered the change only when she contacted the physician for a referral for an urgent outpatient procedure costing thousands of dollars that had been recommended by an in-network surgeon. (Both the referring doctor and the surgeon had to be in-network for coverage.) “I literally had three days to find a new in-network internist and score an appointment to get a referral, or cancel my procedure,” she said. “I was stuck in insurance purgatory.”



For a continuing conversation about health care costs and pricing in the United States, please join our Facebook group, Paying Till It Hurts.



Elisabeth Rosenthal is a New York Times correspondent who is writing a book about the health care system.



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Obamacare program costs $50,000 in taxpayer money for every American who gets health insurance, says bombshell budget report

Stunning figure comes from Congressional Budget Office report that revised cost estimates for the next 10 years
Government will spend $1.993 TRILLION over a decade and take in $643 BILLION in new taxes, penalties and fees related to Obamacare
The $1.35 trillion net cost will result in 'between 24 million and 27 million' fewer Americans being uninsured – a $50,000 price tag per person at best
The law will still leave 'between 29 million and 31 million' nonelderly Americans without medical insurance
Numbers assume Obamacare insurance exchange enrollment will double between now and 2025

By David Martosko, Us Political Editor For Dailymail.com


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It will cost the federal government – taxpayers, that is – $50,000 for every person who gets health insurance under the Obamacare law, the Congressional Budget Office revealed on Monday.

The number comes from figures buried in a 15-page section of the nonpartisan organization's new ten-year budget outlook.

The best-case scenario described by the CBO would result in 'between 24 million and 27 million' fewer Americans being uninsured in 2025, compared to the year before the Affordable Care Act took effect.

Pulling that off will cost Uncle Sam about $1.35 trillion – or $50,000 per head.

SCROLL DOWN TO READ THE REPORT
THE $2 TRILLION DOLLAR MAN: President Barack Obama was in India on Monday when the Congressional Budget Office reported the federal government's gross costs for a decade of Obamacare will be $1.993 trillion
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THE $2 TRILLION DOLLAR MAN: President Barack Obama was in India on Monday when the Congressional Budget Office reported the federal government's gross costs for a decade of Obamacare will be $1.993 trillion
PROMISES: Obama pledged in 2009 during a speech before a joint session of Congress that his health insurance proposal would cost $900 billion over ten years – a far cry short of current numbers
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PROMISES: Obama pledged in 2009 during a speech before a joint session of Congress that his health insurance proposal would cost $900 billion over ten years – a far cry short of current numbers

The numbers are daunting: It will take $1.993 trillion, a number that looks like $1,993,000,000,000, to provide insurance subsidies to poor and middle-class Americans, and to pay for a massive expansion of Medicaid and CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) costs.

Offsetting that massive outlay will be $643 billion in new taxes, penalties and fees related to the Obamacare law.

That revenue includes quickly escalating penalties – or 'taxes,' as the U.S. Supreme Court described them – on people who resist Washington's command to buy medical insurance.

It also includes income from a controversial medical device tax, which some Republicans predict will be eliminated in the next two years.

If they're right, Obamacare's per-person cost would be even higher.

President Barack Obama pledged to members of Congress in 2009, as his signature insurance overhaul law was being hotly debated, that 'the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.'

It would be a significant discount if the White House could return to that number today.
Obama in '09: Obamacare won't add one dime to deficit
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27 Facts That Show How The Middle Class Has Fared Under 6 Years Of Barack Obama

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/19/2015

During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday evening, Barack Obama is going to promise to make life better for middle class families. Of course he has also promised to do this during all of his other State of the Union addresses, but apparently he still believes that there are people out there that are buying what he is selling. Each January, he gets up there and tells us how the economy is “turning around” and to believe that much brighter days are right around the corner. And yet things just continue to get even worse for the middle class.

The numbers that you are about to see will not be included in Obama’s State of the Union speech. They don’t fit the “narrative” that Obama is trying to sell to the American people. But all of these statistics are accurate. They paint a picture of a middle class that is dying. Yes, the decline of the U.S. middle class is a phenomenon that has been playing out for decades. But without a doubt, our troubles have accelerated during the Obama years. When it comes to economics, he is completely and utterly clueless, and the policies that he has implemented are eating away at the foundations of our economy like a cancer.

The following are 27 facts that show how the middle class has fared under 6 years of Barack Obama…

#1 American families in the middle 20 percent of the income scale now earn less money than they did on the day when Barack Obama first entered the White House.

#2 American families in the middle 20 percent of the income scale have a lower net worth than they did on the day when Barack Obama first entered the White House.

#3 According to a Washington Post article published just a few days ago, more than 50 percent of the children in U.S. public schools now come from low income homes. This is the first time that this has happened in at least 50 years.

#4 According to a Census Bureau report that was recently released, 65 percent of all children in the United States are living in a home that receives some form of aid from the federal government.

#5 In 2008, the total number of business closures exceeded the total number of businesses being created for the first time ever, and that has continued to happen every single year since then.

#6 In 2008, 53 percent of all Americans considered themselves to be “middle class”. But by 2014, only 44 percent of all Americans still considered themselves to be “middle class”.

#7 In 2008, 25 percent of all Americans in the 18 to 29-year-old age bracket considered themselves to be “lower class”. But in 2014, an astounding 49 percent of all Americans in that age range considered themselves to be “lower class”.

#8 Traditionally, owning a home has been one of the key indicators that you belong to the middle class. So what does the fact that the rate of homeownership in America has been falling for seven years in a row say about the Obama years?

#9 According to a survey that was conducted last year, 52 percent of all Americans cannot even afford the house that they are living in right now.

#10 After accounting for inflation, median household income in the United States is 8 percent lower than it was when the last recession started in 2007.

#11 According to one recent survey, 62 percent of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck.

#12 At this point, one out of every three adults in the United States has an unpaid debt that is “in collections“.

#13 When Barack Obama first set foot in the Oval Office, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Today, that number is sitting at only 59.2 percent…

#14 While Barack Obama has been in the White House, the average duration of unemployment in the United States has risen from 19.8 weeks to 32.8 weeks.

#15 It is hard to believe, but an astounding 53 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

#16 At the end of Barack Obama’s first year in office, our yearly trade deficit with China was 226 billion dollars. Last year, it was more than 314 billion dollars.

#17 When Barack Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent. Today, it is over 101 percent.

#18 The U.S. national debt is on pace to approximately double during the eight years of the Obama administration. In other words, under Barack Obama the U.S. government will accumulate about as much debt as it did under all of the other presidents in U.S. history combined.

#19 According to the New York Times, the “typical American household” is now worth 36 percent less than it was worth a decade ago.

#20 The poverty rate in the United States has been at 15 percent or above for 3 consecutive years. This is the first time that has happened since 1965.

#21 From 2009 through 2013, the U.S. government spent a whopping 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs.

#22 While Barack Obama has been in the White House, the number of Americans on food stamps has gone from 32 million to 46 million.

#23 Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had full-time jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin. But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have full-time jobs.

#24 One recent survey discovered that about 22 percent of all Americans have had to turn to a church food panty for assistance.

#25 An astounding 45 percent of all African-American children in the United States live in areas of “concentrated poverty”.

#26 40.9 percent of all children in the United States that are living with only one parent are living in poverty.

#27 According to a report that was released late last year by the National Center on Family Homelessness, the number of homeless children in the United States has reached a new all-time record high of 2.5 million.

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The Real Obama Economy: A Subpar Recovery Drags On

01/20/2015 06:41 PM ET- Investor's Business Daily

Obamanomics: It's fair to say humility isn't one of the president's virtues, and so it's no shock he took a bow for his self-declared status as savior of the American economy in his State of the Union address. He shouldn't have.

Mission accomplished: that was President Obama's message. Too bad so few Americans agree with him. If things are going so magnificently, maybe the White House can explain why its party took a historic whipping from angry and anxious voters in November.

Is the economy improving? Surely, it is. The dreadful 2% growth rut the U.S. experienced in Obama's first five years of "recovery" appears to have finally ratcheted up to closer to 3% — which should be the average for 2014. Employment has picked up to a clip of about 250,000 jobs a month — a good but unspectacular pace of hiring. The official unemployment rate has dipped to 5.6%. Inflation and interest rates are low.

Meanwhile, mortgage rates have fallen below 3.5% in some markets, and gas prices are low. Obama's slight rise in popularity is almost certainly a function of falling gas prices, and to quote him, "you didn't build that."

How much credit Obama deserves for this modest improvement over the last year or so is debatable at best.

The major — and even in some years the sole — driver of growth in employment and output since 2009 has been the shale oil and gas boom. Those most responsible for America's energy revival have been Floyd Farris, inventor of hydraulic fracturing, and Harold Hamm, the driller who put the technology into action in North Dakota, creating tens of thousands of jobs. Funny, but neither were showcased guests at the State of the Union.

Obama, who has made no secret of his abhorrence of the oil, gas and coal industries, has done almost everything imaginable to stop domestic oil production by regulation, by a virtual drilling moratorium on federal lands and by not building pipelines. He simply can't take credit for the fossil fuels revolution.

More important, there is still so much wrong in this economy that Obama chooses to ignore. And by glossing over the real-life hardships facing the middle class, he insults Americans who are feeling the financial squeeze of this subpar recovery. Let's count the ways the economy is underperforming:

• Wages — they're flat at best. In a typical recovery, wage growth after five years is about 9%. Under Obama, it's closer to 1%, Bloomberg reports.

• We're still nearly 6 million jobs short of where we would be at this point in an average recovery.

• Labor force participation has declined for every age group except for those 60 plus. This is the first time in the modern era that during a recovery younger Americans left the workforce. This is why the real unemployment rate is not 5.6%. When including the broader measure, which includes people who stopped looking for a job and people who can't find a full-time job, the unemployment rate is closer to 10%.

• The national debt is more than $7 trillion larger today than when Obama took office, and the Congressional Budget Office says that the deficit will head back up in a few years. Obama might go down in history as our most fiscally irresponsible president.

Obama's only economic idea is to redistribute wealth via ever-rising taxes from the productive class and the job creators to everyone else. He bashes success and believes government activism is the engine of growth.

The enduring lesson of Obama's slow-motion recovery is you can't redistribute wealth until someone steps up and creates it in the first place.


Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editor...#ixzz3PUIcv3o3

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Under President Obama, $7.5 trillion has been added to the national debt. The number is being highlighted by the Republican National Committee ahead of President Obama's State of the Union address, which will be delivered tonight from Washington.

As Obama Prepares To Paint A Rosy Picture Of His Presidency, A Look At The Numbers He Won't Mention

$18.1 Trillion: Total Debt Under Obama As Of January 14, 2014. (U.S. Treasury Department, Accessed 1/14/15)

$10.6 Trillion: Total Debt When Obama Became President On January 20, 2009. (U.S. Treasury Department, Accessed 1/9/15)

$7.5 Trillion: Amount Added To The National Debt Despite Obama's 2010 State Of The Union Declaration That He Would Not Leave "A Mountain Of Debt." (U.S. Treasury Department, Accessed 1/14/15; President Barack Obama, Remarks On The State Of The Union, Washington, D.C., 1/27/10)

$4 Trillion: Amount Of Debt That Obama Once Called "Irresponsible" And "Unpatriotic." (Sen. Barack Obama, Remarks At A Campaign Event, Fargo, ND, 7/3/08)

$1.8 Trillion: Cost Of ObamaCare's Coverage Provisions Through 2024. (CBO, 4/14/14)

$1.3 Trillion: Total Student Debt Held By Americans. (Federal Reserve Board Of Governors, Accessed 1/14/15)

$869.3 Billion: Total Taxes In ObamaCare. (JCT, 6/15/12; CBO, 4/14/14)

$95 Billion: Cost Of New Regulations Added Since Obama Became President. (American Action Forum, 1/6/15)

$60 Billion: Cost Of Obama's Community College Tuition Plan Over Ten Years. ( TheAssociated Press , 1/9/15)

$3.4 Billion: Average Amount Of Debt Added Daily Since Obama Became President. (U.S. Treasury Department, Accessed 1/14/15)

$3.4 Billion: How Much The Construction Of The Keystone Pipeline Would Contribute To GDP According To A State Department Review. (United States Department Of State, 1/14)

46.5 Million: Average Number Of Americans Receiving Food Stamps In FY 2014. (Department Of Agriculture, Accessed 1/14/15)

13 Million: Average Number Of Americans Who Have Joined The Food Stamp Program Since FY 2009. (Department Of Agriculture, Accessed 1/14/15)

7 Million: Number Of Americans Who Will No Longer Have Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Due To ObamaCare. (Congressional Budget Office, 4/14/14)

5.5 Million: Americans Who Have Fallen Into Poverty Since Obama Became President. (U.S. Census Bureau, Accessed 1/14/15)

2.3 Million: Americans Who Are Only Marginally Attached To The Labor Force. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 1/14/15)

401,000: Construction Jobs Lost Since Obama Became President. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 1/14/15)

321,000: Manufacturing Jobs Lost Since Obama Became President. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 1/14/15)

273,000: Number Of People Who Left The Labor Force Between November AndDecember Of 2014. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 1/14/15)

$56,492: Current Debt Per Capita Under Obama. (U.S. Census Bureau, Accessed 1/14/15; U.S. Treasury Department, Accessed 1/14/15)

42,100: Number Of Jobs The Construction Of The Keystone Pipeline Would Support Over Two Years According To A State Department Review. (United States Department Of State, 1/14)

$21,724: Increase In Debt Per Capita For Americans Since Obama Took Office. (U.S. Census Bureau, Accessed 1/14/15; U.S. Treasury Department, Accessed 1/14/15)

$4,154: Increase In Family Health Care Premiums Under Obama. (The Kaiser Family Foundation, 9/10/14)

$2,484: Decline In Median Household Income Since Obama Became President. (U.S. Census Bureau, Accessed 1/14/15)

1978: The Last Time The Labor Force Participation Rate Was At Its Current level.(BLS, 1/24/14)

677: Individuals Who Have Been Through Obama's Revolving Door. (Center For Responsive Politics, Accessed 1/12/15)

215: Rounds Of Golf Obama Has Played Since He Has Taken Office. (Mark Knoller, Twitter Feed, 12/31/14; Mark Knoller, Twitter Feed, 1/4/15)

174: Number Of Days Obama Has Spent All Or Part On Vacation. (CBS News, 12/22/14; Mark Knoller, Twitter Feed, 1/4/15)

100%: Total Debt As A Percentage Of GDP Under Obama. (OMB, Accessed 1/14/15)

65.7%: Labor Force Participation Rate When Obama Became President. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 1/14/15)

62.7%: Labor Force Participation Rate In December. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 1/14/15)

65: Number Of Fundraisers Obama Attended In 2014. (Mark Knoller, Twitter Feed, 12/2/14)

32.8: Average Number Of Weeks Someone Will Be Unemployed. (BLS, 1/14/15)

14.5%: Poverty Rate In 2013. (U.S. Census, Accessed 1/23/14)

13.2%: Poverty Rate Before Obama Became President. (U.S. Census, Accessed 1/23/14)

6: Veto Threats Issued By Obama In The New Year. (The White House Website, Accessed 1/19/15; ABC News, 1/16/15)

0: Attempts To Actually Work With Congress

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Schneller said:

Barack Obama - The debt grew the most dollar-wise during President Obama's term. He added $6.167 trillion, a 53% increase, in six years. Obama's budgets included the economic stimulus package, which added $787 billion by cutting taxes, extending unemployment benefits, and funding job-creating public works projects. The Obama tax cuts added $858 billion to the debt over two years. Obama's budget included increased defense spending to around $800 billion a year. Federal income was down, thanks to lower tax receipts from the 2008 financial crisis. He also sponsored the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was designed to reduce the debt by $143 billion over 10 years. However, these savings didn't show up until the later years. For more, see National Debt Under Obama.


George W. Bush - President Bush added the second greatest amount to the debt, at $5.849 trillion. This more than doubled the debt, which was $5.8 trillion on September 30, 2001 -- the end of FY 2001, which was President Clinton's last budget. Bush responded to the 9/11 attacks by launching the War on Terror. This drove military spending to record levels, $600-$800 billion a year. This included the Iraq War, which cost $807.5 billion. President Bush also responded to the 2001 recession by passing EGTRRA and JGTRRA, otherwise known as the Bush tax cuts, which reduced revenue. He approved a $700 billion bailout package for banks to combat the 2008 global financial crisis. Both Presidents Bush and Obama had to contend with higher mandatory spending for Social Security and Medicare. For more, see President Obama Compared to President Bush Policies.

cut and pasted from: http://useconomy.about.com/od/usdebtanddeficit/p/US-Debt-by-President.htm

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Here are the facts:

The US economy has now added more than a million net new jobs over the last three months. This was the best 90 days’ worth of hiring since 1997.

More jobs were created in 2014 than during any year since 1999.

759,000 people just joined the labor force and there was no post-holiday seasonal decline – it may be that temporary workers are sticking.

Average hourly wages rose .5% in January.

The cost of living has only risen .8% over the last year while wage growth has outstripped it, rising by 2.2%.

21 of 50 states put through minimum wage hikes, including populous ones like NY, FL and NJ.

US energy consumers have received a cumulative $14 billion tax cut (and counting) as a result of the oil price decline since June.

Consumer confidence just smashed through the highest level since August 2007. Consumers are saying their “present condition” is the best it’s been since January 2008.

Auto sales rose 14% in January 2015 versus 2014, with 1.15 million vehicles sold in the US. Auto sales are now on an annualized pace of 16.6 million vehicles, the highest rate since 2006.

In December, commercial loan demand grew for the first time since June. Consumer loan applications and approvals are also expanding with dirt-cheap borrowing costs at levels that were previously unimaginable.

Single-family housing starts jumped 7.2% in December to an annual pace of 728,000. This is the best level for new home groundbreaking since March 2008. There’s more on the way – single-family home building permits rose 4.5% to their highest level since January 2008.

20% of consumers report that “jobs are plentiful” versus just 25% who say that jobs are hard to find. The differential between the two was cut in half between December and January, from -10 to -5, and shrinking.

96% of Americans with 401(k) accounts are actively participating and the average savings rate is 12% of salary (Fidelity). Among employees contributing to a 401(k) for ten years or more, the average balance is $248,000, up 11% from the end of 2013. The average balance across all 401(k) accounts is now over $100,000 and it has doubled since the end of 2008 (Vanguard).
US household net worth hit $81.5 trillion. This includes all stocks, bonds, properties and business values, minus any debts or liabilities. This is a new all-time record.

You’re welcome to attach any caveats to this data that you’d like to. You can qualify some or all of it. You can speculate on when any of these trends may end or whether the data comes from trustworthy sources. You can point out the various ways in which any or all of these data points are “not telling the real story” or you can dismiss the meaning of the numbers themselves when compared with A, B or C.

That’s up to you. But these are the facts.

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fastar1 said:

I can cut and paste as good as anyone, so what the hell...

http://thereformedbroker.com/2015/02/08/here-are-the-facts/

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The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment


Here's something that many Americans -- including some of the smartest and most educated among us -- don't know: The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading.

Right now, we're hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is "down" to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.

None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job -- if you are so hopelessly out of work that you've stopped looking over the past four weeks -- the Department of Labor doesn't count you as unemployed. That's right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news -- currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren't throwing parties to toast "falling" unemployment.

There's another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you're an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 -- maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn -- you're not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

Yet another figure of importance that doesn't get much press: those working part time but wanting full-time work. If you have a degree in chemistry or math and are working 10 hours part time because it is all you can find -- in other words, you are severely underemployed -- the government doesn't count you in the 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

There's no other way to say this. The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.

And it's a lie that has consequences, because the great American dream is to have a good job, and in recent years, America has failed to deliver that dream more than it has at any time in recent memory. A good job is an individual's primary identity, their very self-worth, their dignity -- it establishes the relationship they have with their friends, community and country. When we fail to deliver a good job that fits a citizen's talents, training and experience, we are failing the great American dream.

Gallup defines a good job as 30+ hours per week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck. Right now, the U.S. is delivering at a staggeringly low rate of 44%, which is the number of full-time jobs as a percent of the adult population, 18 years and older. We need that to be 50% and a bare minimum of 10 million new, good jobs to replenish America's middle class.

I hear all the time that "unemployment is greatly reduced, but the people aren't feeling it." When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth -- the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs that are full time and real -- then we will quit wondering why Americans aren't "feeling" something that doesn't remotely reflect the reality in their lives. And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class.

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Net U.S. Job Gains Since The Recession Have Gone To Foreign-Born Workers
by Caroline May

In the months and years since the recession began in December 2007, foreign-born workers have experienced a net increase in employment, while native-born Americans have experienced a net loss.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released updated employment data Friday.

The new BLS figures reveal that since the start of the recession in 2007 — which is said to have ended in June 2009 — the number of foreign workers employed in the United States rose by 1.7 million.

In December 2007 the number of foreign-born workers was 22,810,000 by January 2009 the number has increased to 24,553,000.

Meanwhile the number of American-born workers employed decreased by 1.5 million, from 123,524,000 to 121,999,000.

While the foreign-born and American-born population experienced different statistical employment fates, both categories of adults experienced net growth.

The numbers come as Congress continues to debate a Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill that would defund President Obama’s executive amnesty, which has opened the door for millions of illegal immigrants to legally work in the United States.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Immigration Subcommittee Chairman, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the president’s actions and the administration’s immigration policies, which he argues harms American workers.

Friday, his office highlighted the employment discrepancies between native- and foreign- born employment.

“There are two jobs narratives: the one from the Administration, and the one lived and experienced by American workers. Fewer American workers are employed today than when the recession began. The President’s policies have profited the corporate immigration lobby and no-borders contingent, but have been only deleterious for wage-earners,” Session’s spokesman Stephen Miller emailed Breitbart News.

Miller highlighted that in addition to the annual flow of over 1.7 million permanent legal immigrants and nonimmigrant workers, as the Center for Immigration Studies recently exposed, since 2009 the administration has also provided another 5.5 million immigrants with employment authorization documents (EAD).

“What we are seeing in the BLS stats is the human fallout from the President’s actions,” Miller continued. “Figures such as these should be leading the nightly news. One of the first questions posited ought to be: will Minority Leader [Harry] Reid’s (D-NV) caucus continue to shield the issuance of 5 million more EADs for those illegally here?”

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Schneller said:

Hey, I'm a foreign born worker, and if not you, I'll bet many of our parents or grandparents were foreign born workers.

But that's xenophobia for you.

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