Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud the positive political shifts in Ukraine and the Obama administration’s moves to protect Ukraine from Russian intervention They are also distressed over the huge military budget cuts and sequestration and how it will affect national security and the well being of soldiers and their families. Finally, they are both delighted about the end of Piers Morgan 19s CNN talk show.
Archives for February 2014
Obamacare Nightmare for Small Firms
The same failed Obamacare promise that plunged the individual health care market into chaos last year is now hitting small group plans and could result in lost coverage for 20 million Americans.
Obamacare’s employer mandate does not apply to businesses with fewer than 50 employees, but many of those those companies are still receiving notices from their insurance providers informing them their previous plans are being canceled because they don’t contain all the provisions required under the new law.
Much like individual policy holders last year, small group plan holders are discovering that their plans don’t qualify for being grandfathered despite the famed assurance that if they liked their plans they could keep them.
“If you had your plan prior to March 2010 when Obamacare became law, it was supposed to be grandfathered in. You were supposed to keep it, but the Department of Labor came out with these grandfather regulations. It’s almost like telling a guy you can keep walking on the beach as long as you don’t get any sand on your feet. It’s almost impossible not to violate,” said National Center for Public Policy Research Health Care Analyst Dr. John Hogberg.
“If one of your co-pays goes up ten dollars over one year, your plan is no longer grandfathered. If the co-insurance you pay for a procedure was at 15 percent and they moved it up to 16 percent, it is no longer grandfathered,” he said.
Hogberg points to Labor Department statistics that admit 66 percent of small group plans will fail to be grandfathered because of those types of technicalities. With 31 million people employed by firms with less than 50 employees, some 20 million Americans are facing cancellation of their policies.
“It was obvious from the start that these regulations were going to result in loads of people losing their health insurance, but the president kept making that promise that if you like your insurance you can keep it, when he should have known better and I kind of suspect that he did know better,” said Hogberg.
The issue is not just theoretical for Hogberg, whose employer has fewer than 50 workers. In January, the National Center for Public Policy Research was informed by Kaiser Permanente that the policy the organization used since 1996 no longer met federal standards and had to be canceled. Hogberg says the plan Kaiser now recommends requires a six percent hike in premiums, which is a much better deal than other small firms are seeing.
Hogberg says his boss noted the cancellation would provide most small employers plenty of incentive to scrap insurance altogether and force employees onto health care exchanges. He says it’s hard to estimate how many businesses would actually do that.
Another concern for Hogberg is how the story seems to be slipping below the radar for a mainstream press that was all over the headaches caused by individual policies getting canceled. He says it’s probably because of how enrollment periods are defined for different groups.
“Individual policies are mostly renewed in January of each year and so these cancellation letters had to all be sent out over a period of a few months. Small group plans are renewed practically every month,” said Hogberg. “I think that’s one reason why the media might not be giving small group cancellations quite the same coverage because it’s happening over a more protracted period of time. The number of cancellations doesn’t escalate very quickly, so at this point it’s not making a huge media story.”
However, the number of Americans set to lose their small group plan coverage is much greater than those affected by the individual market, whether their employers end up finding another plan or dropping coverage and forcing employees to find insurance on the exchanges. As a result, Hogberg predicts this will be another black eye for Obamacare.
“I think this is another reason why Obamacare is in such trouble. First of all, the law shouldn’t be forcing people to lose their insurance to begin with, but if that’s going to happen, if many people are going to lose the plans that they like, I suspect most people would at least prefer to get a new plan that’s better than the old one,” said Hogberg.
“So far, I really don’t see much evidence that that’s happening and quite a bit of evidence that it’s not. People are paying higher premiums and higher out-of-pocket costs. Networks of doctors and hospitals are more restrictive,” said Hogberg. “I suspect the Obama administration and other Obamacare supporters are kind of in denial about that. Maybe that denial will end come November, but who knows?”
Shoe Bomb, Shoe Bomb
With national security officials warning of possible shoe bomb attacks on international flights, the Capitol Steps blow the dust off a song from the early days of the War on Terror. Our guest is Steps co-founder and star Elaina Newport.
Three Martini Lunch 2/21/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Alec Torres of National Review cautiously welcome West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin’s vow to back repeal of Obamacare. They also shudder as a new report shows far more black babies were aborted than born alive in New York City in 2012. And they discuss how liberals are now targeting e-cigarettes.
Obama’s Tea Party Cousin Seeks Senate Seat
President Obama and Dr. Milton Wolf are second cousins, but that may be the end of the similarities as Wolf runs to the right of incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Roberts in the Kansas GOP primary.
The 42-year-old Wolf is a diagnostic radiologist. He admits he didn’t know he was related to Obama until 2008 and didn’t meet him until they were health care policy adversaries in 2010. Wolf says being related to a president would be a great experience if Obama weren’t so far left in his ideology.
“Of course, who wouldn’t be honored to have a president in your family and sit on the front row of history. We’re related, of course I remind people you cannot choose your family,” said Wolf. “Barack Obama is the worst president in our lifetimes if not in our history. He has been a disaster. It’s nothing personal but his policies have been disastrous in America.
“It’s mostly because he either doesn’t understand or has forgotten what America is all about. The American idea itself is about individual liberty, limited government and free market values. When we have embraced those we have become the most prosperous and powerful nation in history, and when we abandon those we suffer. We have suffered under Barack Obama,” he said.
Wolf is making no secret he would be a fierce opponent of President Obama in Washington. The home page of his campaign website reads, “Want to drive Barack Obama crazy? Send his very own fearless conservative cousin — ‘the next Ted Cruz’ — to the United States Senate!”
Wolf says he touts himself as the next Ted Cruz because he believes the freshman Texas senator is approaching his office the right way while Sen. Roberts is not.
“we need more senators like Ted Cruz, like Mike Lee, like Rand Paul. They stand by the Constitution fearlessly, unapologetically. They don’t need an election year conversion because they’re the real deal,” said Wolf. “Pat Roberts, in an amazing election year conversion, is following the leadership of Ted Cruz, who’s only been there for one year,” said Wolf. “That’s because Ted Cruz understand something that Pat Roberts has never quite figured out – that a United States senator should have something more powerful than just a vote. He should have a voice, and he should use that voice. He should stand up and fight for our Constitution and for that American idea itself.
“Instead, what we have in our establishment Republicans are these go along to get along Republicans. Pat Roberts voted for Barack Obama’s $600 million tax increase just a year ago. He’s voted to raise our debt ceiling 11 times. And Pat Roberts voted to put Kathleen Sebelius in charge of Obamacare. That’s not conservative, it’s not good for Kansas and it’s not good for America,” said Wolf.
Defenders of Roberts counter Wolf’s arguments by asserting Roberts spent many years of his Senate tenure in key intelligence committee positions that were not conducive to bold public statements. They also note he was one of only 18 Republicans to oppose the spending bill that ended last year’s partial government shutdown and that he was the first U.S. senator to publicly call for the resignation of Sebelius.
“He only bothered to say Kathleen Sebelius should resign three days after I announced my candidacy. The Kansas City Star reported on it and said, ‘If you think those two facts are unrelated, you probably think the Kansas Jayhawks are going to win the national championship this year in football,'” said Wolf, who says voters need to take a close look at Roberts’ voting record throughout his Senate tenure and not just leading up to elections.
“He claims to be in the top five conservatives in the Senate. That’s according to Heritage Action. What he doesn’t want you to know is his lifetime score from Heritage Action, which is a 67. Before I came along, in 2012 Pat Roberts had a 65 from Heritage Action. Before I came along, in 2012 Pat Roberts had a 55 from Club for Growth and a 54 from FreedomWorks. That is not a conservative. That is somebody who is going along to get along, and that’s been the problem with our Republican Party,” said Wolf.
So what qualifies Wolf for the Senate and what would his priorities be if elected?
“I confess I don’t have the Washington experience Pat Roberts has. I’ve never voted to raise your taxes. I’ve never spent trillions of dollars that aren’t mine and I’ve never paid $800 for a toilet seat. But what I have done is this. I have met payroll. I have balanced budgets. I have run a company and, far more importantly, I know every day what it’s like to have patients come to me and put their lives in my hands and ask me to make the humbling, sometimes gut-wrenching decisions that are the difference between life and death. That’s the kind of humility I think Washington lacks,” said Wolf.
His top legislative priority is PatientCare, his plan to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a system based on conservative principles.
“We need to fully repeal Obamacare, and we need to replace it with patient-centered, free market health care reform that’s being described as, by far, the best alternative to Obamacare,” said Wolf.
Wolf is not only running against a three-term incumbent, but the state’s other senator, Jerry Moran, runs the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). That’s the group tasked with re-electing Republican senators and recruit candidates to run for Democratically-held seats. Wolf says Kansas is in no danger of falling to the Democrats, so the NRSC should stay out of the primary. He says if it doesn’t, it will show the group is not about electing conservatives but simply protecting incumbents.
Three Martini Lunch 2/20/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are encouraged by research showing low popularity ratings for a president usually means terrible results for his party in midterm Senate races. They also rip President Obama for not aligning the U.S. on the side of Ukrainian freedom fighters and for issuing another hollow warning to both sides about not crossing the line in the current standoff. And they pound a GOP lawmaker in Missouri for appropriating money to fund tin foil hats for the opponents of the Common Core educational standards.
‘It’s Hard Not to Do It’
The debate over whether to raise the minimum wage is front and center this week as a Congressional Budget Office report gives political ammunition to both sides, and a former Clinton administration budget official says the benefits of the hike so easily outweigh the downside that “it’s hard not to do it.”
In his State of the Union message, President Obama urged Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, saying it is simply wrong for any Americans to be working hard and still living in poverty.
On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a report showing that following Obama’s plan would result in 900,000 people rising out of poverty and 16.5 million people benefiting from the wage hike. The CBO also projected the move would cost the economy between 500,000 and one million jobs.
Larry Haas served as spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration. He says the CBO report should make the question of raising the minimum wage a no-brainer.
“What’s really startling about this report is that while it acknowledges some job loss, the corresponding benefits so greatly outweigh the costs that it almost looks like it’s hard not to do it,” said Haas.
Haas admits the job losses could negatively impact the same amount of people that would supposedly escape from poverty following a minimum wage increase, but he says other factors would still make such a move a net positive.
“We are talking about costs versus benefits, and just in raw number terms, even if we talk about closer to a million (jobs eliminated) as offset by the close to a million who would rise above the poverty level and you consider that to be somewhat of a wash. I’m not minimizing the job loss, but if you consider just the raw dollars, you look and just go to the second level of this and see all the other low-wage workers who would get a benefit out of this as employers naturally raised their wages, 16.5 million people,” said Haas.
“At the end of the day, you look at any proposal and you say, ‘OK, where’s the good? Where’s the bad, and where does this come out? While I don’t minimize the job loss, I look at these raw numbers and I have to say, you know what, this would be a net benefit to society and to working people writ large,” he said.
Republicans and other conservatives are largely opposed to Obama’s call for a minimum wage increase and are loudly highlighting the CBO’s projected job losses if the plan were to become law. Instead of raising wages for the lowest skilled jobs, they argue for reduced corporate taxes, deregulation and rolling back employer obligations on programs like Obamacare.
Haas embraces some of those ideas while dismissing others but says a hike in the minimum wage can be done alongside some of the GOP’s ideas.
“I don’t necessarily disagree with all their approaches. I do think that the corporate tax is too high by way of international competitiveness. I do think that there are always opportunities to reduce regulation. On Obamacare, I think their concerns are, frankly, overstated and in many ways misconstrue what’s happening,” said Haas. “Just because we have other possible ways of promoting economic growth and spurring jobs doesn’t mean we should dismiss this one.”
And Haas believes a bump in the minimum wage is the only politically realistic move in the near future.
“The fact of the matter is that Obamacare is not going to be repealed. The fact of the matter is we’re not going to see tax reform anytime soon, just because of the politics on the Hill. The administration will either reduce regulations or they won’t. This is the issue before us at the moment. Congress can act. The president can sign it into law. I think that the case is very compelling. Whether we do any of the other things that would spur growth and create jobs, we should do this,” said Haas.
Another major point of contention in this debate is who actually earns the minimum wage. Is it largely moms and dads who cannot find other work and rely on those wages to support families or is it mostly teenagers and other young people who will later find higher-skilled and better paying jobs? Haas strongly believes it’s the former.
“Those who oppose a minimum wage increase tend to overstate the number of so-called teenagers who are just working side jobs and this really isn’t their livelihood and we really don’t need to give them a boost. I can’t break it down in percentage terms, but the fact of the matter is that a very large share of minimum wage workers is the single mom with the kid or two or three, who’s trying to scrape by and who may have more than one job and having trouble making ends meet with the child care expenses that she needs to pay,” said Haas.
“Those are really the people we’ve got to worry about in this kind of an economy where we see such long-term unemployment and such lingering unemployment from the Great Recession. Anyone who really thinks this is about teenagers is just missing the boat,” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 2/19/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are excited about Russia’s Olympic hockey defeat. They also discuss the new Congressional Budget Office report and how a minimum wage hike impacts jobs. Finally, they praise James O’Keefe and Project Veritas for their latest investigation into the allegedly illegal actions of Battleground Texas.
Where’s the U.S. as Ukraine Burns?
Recent Ukrainian unrest reached its deadliest levels yet on Tuesday, as protesters and police officers were killed, fires raged in Kiev and a nation divided moved closer to a national tipping point.
Ukraine is closely divided between Russian-speaking residents largely loyal to Moscow and native-speaking western Ukraine, which identified with Europe and largely despises Russia for its decades of control during the days of the USSR.
The latest volatility stems from Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych rejecting an opportunity to establish closer economic ties with the European Union and subsequently accepting bailout assistance from Russia. Protests that followed were met with new laws restricting protest rights and even a ban on citizens wearing helmets.
Former Reagan administration Pentagon official Frank Gaffney says the people have very good reasons to be in the streets.
“There’s obvious frustration on the part of the people of Ukraine with their government, with the policies it’s been pursuing, particularly to the degree to which it is acceding to what can only be described as domination by Russia. I think there’s also a growing restiveness about the growing repression at home and the corruption of their government,” said Gaffney.
Now that the protests have evolved into violent clashes between protesters and police, Gaffney says violent repression of the protesters is possible but he believes the more likely scenario is for Ukraine to reach a tipping point towards freedom.
The United States is currently taking a hands-off approach, urging both sides to resolve their differences peacefully. Gaffney says neutrality has no place in this dispute. He says the U.S. policy should be obviously and boldly stated.
“We need to be unquestioningly and unmistakably aligned with those who aspire to freedom from the tyranny that they’ve been subjected to, the arbitrary, the corrupt and the increasingly repressive tyranny of Yanukovych,” said Gaffney.
“I think it is important to take sides and straddling the fence as the Obama administration is wont to do, or worse aligning with the oppressors either out of some misplaced belief that this will buy us some benefit the Russians in this reset policy of the president’s or that it will enable us to have some sort of dialogue with the government of the state, in this case Ukraine, that is engaging in such repression. I think this is a mistake, both strategically and certainly morally,” said Gaffney.
What is at stake in terms of U.S. national security interests? What would be the result of the protesters being defeated, with or without physical assistance of the Russians?
“It is probably a step in the direction of Vladimir Putin’s longstanding goal of reconstituting, effectively if not technically, the old Soviet Union. He has been beavering away at this for several years, using his kleptocracy to cultivate the old power structures and relationships of the previous regime. Incrementally, he has made headway in bringing people to heel who have sought their independence, who have gained their independence in places like Georgia, to the point where that independence is increasingly a thing of the past,” said Gaffney.
“This is not good for the people most immediately involved. I’m afraid it will be detrimental to the free world more broadly and to us as well,” said Gaffney.
Three Martini Lunch 2/18/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are happy about the Democratic campaign strategy of trying to spin Obamacare as a good thing. They also rip into the Obama administration’s attempt to present the stimulus as a success. Finally, they react to conservative attempts to defeat Sen. Lindsey Graham in the primary.