House Leadership Makes Another End-Run Around Conservatives

Once again, House GOP leaders have shown why it is important for us to elect enough stalwarts to replace the entire leadership team.

Every Republican complains about spending.  One establishment Republican is even running an ad promising to “castrate” D.C. spending.   Yet few of them are committed to blocking a new spending increase, much less roll back existing programs.  Today, House leaders brought a bill to the floor that will increase spending.  They didn’t have enough votes to pass it, so they decided to ram it through by voice vote.

Every year, due to the lack of free-market healthcare for seniors, Congress must supplement payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients.  Government intervention into the healthcare market has precipitated such inflationary pressure in the healthcare sector that the government reimbursement rate, known as the SGR formula, is insufficient to cover the costs of Medicare payments.  In order to rectify the situation, instead of passing free-market Medicare reform, Congress passes a temporary fix (doc fix) every year to reimburse doctors for the underpayments, which are roughly 24 percent of their payments.

After failing to adopt the annual temporary “doc fix” last December, the House passed a bill two weeks ago that will permanently boost payments and pay for the increased spending by tying it to a long-term delay of the individual mandate in Obamacare.  H.R. 4015, the SGR Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act, passed the House with 12 Democrats joining every Republican in the chamber.  This bill actually used a legitimate offset to end this charade of temporary fixes until we can finally impose free market structural reforms on the single-payer Medicare system.

After Senate Democrats balked at the proposal, Republicans decided to give in and pass a temporary extension.  They used a hodgepodge of tenuous offsets spread out mainly over the next 5-10 years to compensate for an immediate expense that will undoubtedly reoccur every year under the 10-year budget frame.  When they sensed that they lacked the votes to pass the bill, House leaders made an end-run around Congress:


More at:

What Comes After The Welfare State?

Today the welfare state is omnipresent in every part of the United States. The federal budget is dominated by entitlement spending, with 45 percent of federal spending in 2012 going to Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare (among other health care entitlements). Simultaneously, the states are struggling under the fiscal burdens imposed on them by mandatory entitlement programs: spending by the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (primarily on Medicaid) has averaged $1.21 billion over the last three budget years. Yet the federal appetite for entitlement spending is far from sated – consider Obamacare – and if history is any guide, we can expect more entitlement programs in the future.

The historical increase in spending has of course been accompanied by a rising portion of Americans who use these entitlement benefits; the Wall Street Journal reported that as of early 2011, 49.1 percent of the population lived in a household where at least one member received government benefits, up from 44.4 percent in late 2008. Further, the size of these programs perpetuates a cycle of dependency as the total benefits package of the average welfare family is actually larger than the average salary of jobs that pay higher than the minimum wage.


More at:

Do Americans Prefer Deception?

There’s more to the deceit and dishonesty about Social Security and Medicare discussed in my recent columns. Congress tells us that one-half (6.2 percent) of the Social Security tax is paid by employees and that the other half is paid by employers, for a total of 12.4 percent. Similarly, we are told that a Medicare tax of 1.45 percent is levied on employees and that another 1.45 percent is levied on employers. The truth of the matter is that the burden of both taxes is borne by employees. In other words, we pay both the employee and the so-called employer share. You say, “Williams, that’s nonsense! Just look at what it says on my pay stub.” OK, let’s look at it.

Pretend you are my employer and agree to pay me $50,000 a year, out of which you’re going to send $3,100 to Washington as my share of Social Security tax (6.2 percent of $50,000), as well as $725 for my share of Medicare (1.45 percent of $50,000), a total of $3,825 for the year. To this you must add your half of Social Security and Medicare taxes, which is also

$3,825 for the year. Your cost to hire me is $53,825.

If it costs you $53,825 a year to hire me, how much value must I produce for it to be profitable for you to keep me? Is it our agreed salary of

$50,000 or $53,825? If you said $53,825, you’d be absolutely right. Then who pays all of the Social Security and Medicare taxes? If you said that I do, you’re right again. The Social Security and Medicare fiction was created because Americans would not be so passive if they knew that the tax they are paying is double what is on their pay stubs — not to mention federal income taxes.


More at: