The conservative budget watchdog group Concord Coalition is concerned the health care repeal efforts will be removing unpopular provisions, keeping popular ones and thereby creating more fiscal problems.
Read what they have to say:
"The law that was passed last year had the fiscally responsible goals of controlling long-term health care costs and of seeking to pay for its new benefits, particularly expanded coverage. Those goals should not be abandoned in any attempt to repeal, replace or amend the legislation.
Furthermore, simply repealing unpopular elements of the law while keeping the popular ones would likely leave fiscal policy in even worse shape.
Even if the law provides the promised amount of deficit reduction, it would hardly make a dent in total projected deficits over the coming decades. Much more work would remain to achieve a sustainable fiscal policy."
Here's the full issue brief.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Mankato event in New York Times
The "Congress on Your Corner" event held by Rep. Tim Walz, D, 1st District, at Mocol's Super Market in Mankato Friday made The New York Times.
You can read the article here.
I was alerted to this rather unusual situation as The Times, I'm sure, does not have a Mankato correspondent, by our photographer John Cross, who was at the event, with five or six television station reporters and local reporters like KTOE's Pete Steiner.
Cross said he was trying to get a good photograph in a rather cramped spice aisle at Mocol's and he asked a young lady if she could move aside. She willingly obliged, but he later determined she was The New York Times reporter.
Steiner also told me as he chuckled that he didn't recognize this new reporter as one who shows up at the typical Mankato events, and extended a friendly greeting, somewhat taken aback when she told him she was there for The New York Times.
Cross's photo was distributed on the national wire as their appeared to be great interest in these events across that country that several Members of Congress held in honor of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D, Ariz., who is recovering from last Saturday's shooting.
The times saw fit to dispatch correspondents in Las Vegas, Connecticut and Mankato.
You can read the article here.
I was alerted to this rather unusual situation as The Times, I'm sure, does not have a Mankato correspondent, by our photographer John Cross, who was at the event, with five or six television station reporters and local reporters like KTOE's Pete Steiner.
Cross said he was trying to get a good photograph in a rather cramped spice aisle at Mocol's and he asked a young lady if she could move aside. She willingly obliged, but he later determined she was The New York Times reporter.
Steiner also told me as he chuckled that he didn't recognize this new reporter as one who shows up at the typical Mankato events, and extended a friendly greeting, somewhat taken aback when she told him she was there for The New York Times.
Cross's photo was distributed on the national wire as their appeared to be great interest in these events across that country that several Members of Congress held in honor of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D, Ariz., who is recovering from last Saturday's shooting.
The times saw fit to dispatch correspondents in Las Vegas, Connecticut and Mankato.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
New House rules path to higher deficit
I don't often just republish what another group or person has written on a subject, but I'm going to make an exception.
The Concord Coalition is a longtime nonpartisan budget watchdog group with both Democrats and Republicans as its founding members. It's analysis is always right on, in my opinion, very detailed and backed up with sources they're willing to share.
Here's what that group is saying about new rules adopted by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in Washington. D.C.
Reading this stuff, I cannot imagine how this will not create, and probably should create, tremendous disagreement between the tea party and the Republican Party.
If we asked voters if this was part of their "message" in congressional elections last fall -- to implement rules like this -- I don't believe they would say "yes."
Here's what the Concord Coalition had to say on Jan. 11, 2011.
"New House Rules Will Clear Path for New Deficits"
Last week the House adopted budget enforcement rules that restrict spending but exempt tax cuts. Included are rules that weaken PAYGO by excluding revenues, allow reconciliation to be used for deficit-financed tax cuts, permit the chairman of the Budget Committee to unilaterally impose budget allocations, and establish spending reduction accounts in appropriations bills.
Spending restraint is certainly important. But the House approach of ignoring the budgetary effects of tax cuts is fiscally irresponsible and abandons the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) principles that were successful in the 1990s. Several fiscal commissions have recommended a wide range of options for reducing budget deficits, saying that everything should be on the table. The House should heed this advice and pay for any proposal that would significantly add to deficits over the long term.
Read more with New House Rules Clear Path for New Deficits
The Concord Coalition is a longtime nonpartisan budget watchdog group with both Democrats and Republicans as its founding members. It's analysis is always right on, in my opinion, very detailed and backed up with sources they're willing to share.
Here's what that group is saying about new rules adopted by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in Washington. D.C.
Reading this stuff, I cannot imagine how this will not create, and probably should create, tremendous disagreement between the tea party and the Republican Party.
If we asked voters if this was part of their "message" in congressional elections last fall -- to implement rules like this -- I don't believe they would say "yes."
Here's what the Concord Coalition had to say on Jan. 11, 2011.
"New House Rules Will Clear Path for New Deficits"
Last week the House adopted budget enforcement rules that restrict spending but exempt tax cuts. Included are rules that weaken PAYGO by excluding revenues, allow reconciliation to be used for deficit-financed tax cuts, permit the chairman of the Budget Committee to unilaterally impose budget allocations, and establish spending reduction accounts in appropriations bills.Spending restraint is certainly important. But the House approach of ignoring the budgetary effects of tax cuts is fiscally irresponsible and abandons the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) principles that were successful in the 1990s. Several fiscal commissions have recommended a wide range of options for reducing budget deficits, saying that everything should be on the table. The House should heed this advice and pay for any proposal that would significantly add to deficits over the long term.
Read more with New House Rules Clear Path for New Deficits
Related Links
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Palin comments on crosshairs and Giffords shooting
Sarah Palin has put up a video on her Facebook page giving a 7 minute statement partly defending her use of cross hairs of a gun on Gabrielle Giffords Congressional district as one where people should "reload" on the healthcare debate.
Several stories in major news outlets are detailing the statement and going more in-depth.
The Washington Post story had some relevant links, including the video, to previous stories if you want to follow the evolution of the coverage on this, which appears to be growing, and in my opinion, in a negative way for Palin. Her polls must be showing as much as there is great risk to her political future the more she responds to this.
Typically, p.r. types will tell public officials to stay away from a controversy and avoid being implicated by involvement in the discussion, but if the polls start showing its very negative, the strategy has to be to try to combat that.
Cross hair map below. At one point, an aid to Palin said they were not intending it be cross hairs at all, but that seemed to be refuted by Palin who earlier described the markers as "bull's-eyes"
There were apparently 10,000 comments on her Facebook page, not all of them positive.
Most interesting is the risk former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty took in implicitly criticizing the Palin cross hair map, which he says wouldn't be his "style," and he wouldn't have done it. His statement is here in the New York Times political blog.
His statement to them "“It’s not a device I would have chosen to do. Everybody has got their own style or different approaches,” Mr. Pawlenty said. “But I don’t want to have anyone infer that there’s evidence in this case that it caused or was a contributing factor. We don’t know that.”
In the most Minnesota nice way possible, he took a chance at gaining some ground on Palin politically. He could have defended her to the max, and he did defend here, but in a sort of damning with faint praise sort of way.
In the end, it doesn't really matter if there is a connection or not, if there is, it's even worse for Palin, but the fact that she has been part of the debate, no matter how much she tries to distance herself will be part of the narrative that develops.
And as much as the mainstream media has been very responsible and clear in not connecting her to the killer, people will think what they want to think, and they won't always listen to the mainstream media.
Several stories in major news outlets are detailing the statement and going more in-depth.
The Washington Post story had some relevant links, including the video, to previous stories if you want to follow the evolution of the coverage on this, which appears to be growing, and in my opinion, in a negative way for Palin. Her polls must be showing as much as there is great risk to her political future the more she responds to this.
Typically, p.r. types will tell public officials to stay away from a controversy and avoid being implicated by involvement in the discussion, but if the polls start showing its very negative, the strategy has to be to try to combat that.
Cross hair map below. At one point, an aid to Palin said they were not intending it be cross hairs at all, but that seemed to be refuted by Palin who earlier described the markers as "bull's-eyes"
Most interesting is the risk former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty took in implicitly criticizing the Palin cross hair map, which he says wouldn't be his "style," and he wouldn't have done it. His statement is here in the New York Times political blog.
His statement to them "“It’s not a device I would have chosen to do. Everybody has got their own style or different approaches,” Mr. Pawlenty said. “But I don’t want to have anyone infer that there’s evidence in this case that it caused or was a contributing factor. We don’t know that.”
In the most Minnesota nice way possible, he took a chance at gaining some ground on Palin politically. He could have defended her to the max, and he did defend here, but in a sort of damning with faint praise sort of way.
In the end, it doesn't really matter if there is a connection or not, if there is, it's even worse for Palin, but the fact that she has been part of the debate, no matter how much she tries to distance herself will be part of the narrative that develops.
And as much as the mainstream media has been very responsible and clear in not connecting her to the killer, people will think what they want to think, and they won't always listen to the mainstream media.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Please, don't make me "read the bill"
The old "read the bill" catchphrase seems to be rearing its head again.
There is a movement afoot to put full copies of Congressional bills online three days before they are acted upon.
The ideas will seemingly help average citizens see what their representative are voting on. It evolved from a lot of anger aimed at the passage of the health care reform bill, that was 2,000 or 3,000 pages long, and news reports, that members of Congress hadn't read the bill.
Putting full text of a bill online might be helpful for lawyers and lobbyists who will know important phrases and subparagraphs to pay attention to, but it will not help average citizens trying to understand what their members are voting on.
I know. I've tried to read legislative bills. They're a mess of complication and confusion. You'll find yourself looking up words,and their legal meaning.
You'll find yourself going back and forth through hundreds of pages trying to find "subdivision c" of Section 4351, subsection (d) as it relates to Section 4352, subsection (f), paragraph (i).
Trust me. You don't want to read the bills these guys put together. In fact, in my view, putting the full bills on line before they are voted on, gives the lobbyists the advantage over regular people.
What Congress should require is a clear summary, written in plain English, to be posted before the bill is finalized.
That actually is available in most cases, if you go to the Library of Congress website http://thomas.loc.gov. You can search by bill number of common title or key word, and find the status and usually a nice summary written by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
Actually, the Thomas website already has full text of bills, and earlier versions and later versions, online already. A separate website would in my mind be duplicative.
It takes tons of time and expertise to get anything out of the legalese in these bills. We "hire" members of Congress and their staff to understand this stuff for us and communicate it in a way we understand.
That's there job. Not mine.
And if I'm in the dark, they'll hear about it.
But please, don't make me read the bill.
There is a movement afoot to put full copies of Congressional bills online three days before they are acted upon.
The ideas will seemingly help average citizens see what their representative are voting on. It evolved from a lot of anger aimed at the passage of the health care reform bill, that was 2,000 or 3,000 pages long, and news reports, that members of Congress hadn't read the bill.
Putting full text of a bill online might be helpful for lawyers and lobbyists who will know important phrases and subparagraphs to pay attention to, but it will not help average citizens trying to understand what their members are voting on.
I know. I've tried to read legislative bills. They're a mess of complication and confusion. You'll find yourself looking up words,and their legal meaning.
You'll find yourself going back and forth through hundreds of pages trying to find "subdivision c" of Section 4351, subsection (d) as it relates to Section 4352, subsection (f), paragraph (i).
Trust me. You don't want to read the bills these guys put together. In fact, in my view, putting the full bills on line before they are voted on, gives the lobbyists the advantage over regular people.
What Congress should require is a clear summary, written in plain English, to be posted before the bill is finalized.
That actually is available in most cases, if you go to the Library of Congress website http://thomas.loc.gov. You can search by bill number of common title or key word, and find the status and usually a nice summary written by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
Actually, the Thomas website already has full text of bills, and earlier versions and later versions, online already. A separate website would in my mind be duplicative.
It takes tons of time and expertise to get anything out of the legalese in these bills. We "hire" members of Congress and their staff to understand this stuff for us and communicate it in a way we understand.
That's there job. Not mine.
And if I'm in the dark, they'll hear about it.
But please, don't make me read the bill.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Arizona shooting: Adding to our violent history
The politics of blame converged with the politics of hate as Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords fought for her life in an Arizona hospital bed Monday.
She surviving being shot in the head by a gunman who pretty much walked right up to her at an event quaintly described as "Congress on the Corner." The bullet passed through her brain. It's a miracle she's alive.
The gunman appears mentally ill by all accounts.
The politics of blame came calling through the thousand voices connecting the gunman's inspiration to the right wing, Sarah Palin and others who they say use violent metaphors and foment and idea that government is the enemy. The issues were raised, the connections made, maybe implicitly, as these newspeople reported, over and over again, there was no evidence the gunman even knew who Sarah Palin was.
But others, the Tuscon sheriff included, described the incident as almost an "inevitable" product of our politics of hate.
Many weighed in on that.
The New York Times conceded that there was no causal link between the politics of hate, Sarah Palin and the gunman, but described the incident as a product of an environment, possibly created by Palin and others.
The Times wrote of the gunman: "But he is very much a part of a widespread squall of fear, anger and intolerance that has produced violent threats against scores of politicians and infected the political mainstream with violent imagery. With easy and legal access to semiautomatic weapons like the one used in the parking lot, those already teetering on the edge of sanity can turn a threat into a nightmare"
The Washington Post seemed more reluctant to offer a cause and affect, but had interesting points nonetheless.
From the Post: "The temptation will be, as Arizona and the nation mourn the dead and hope for the recovery of the wounded, to infuse the terrible attack with broader political meaning - to blame the actions of the alleged 22-year-old gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, on a vitriolic political culture laced with violent metaphors and ugly attacks on opponents."
"Maybe. But metaphors don't kill people - guns kill people"
The Post went on to call for reinstating the assault weapons ban that expired under President George W. Bush that would have outlawed the weapon and clip used. Gunman still could have used a smaller clip, which the Post reasons, may have at least "reduced the carnage."
It's troubling to me that we have been reduced to seeing the bright side of an incident as "reducing the carnage."
A column by law professor Glenn Reynolds in The Wall Street Journal blasts the media for making, it seems, any reference whatsoever to Palin, and such implicit blame continues the politics of "blood libel" that the left is decrying.
Says Reynolds "When Democrats use language like this—or even harsher language like Mr. Obama's famous remark, in Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"—it's just evidence of high spirits, apparently. But if Republicans do it, it somehow creates a climate of hate."
When I was a freshman in college, I was required to read a book called "Violence in America" that detailed the many violent episodes in American history, and put forth the thesis that violence is essentially part of our history and has a lot to do with how we govern ourselves today.
It seems we write another chapter in that book with every Oklahoma City bombing, every Virginia Tech shooting and every Arizona assassination attempt.
I'm not sure there's any one person or group to blame, if not all of us, in a way.
Will political leaders think twice about how they describe their opponents or their opposition to the government after the near murder of one of their own?. I hope so.
But it's too bad these tragedies have to be the cause of that kind of reflection.
She surviving being shot in the head by a gunman who pretty much walked right up to her at an event quaintly described as "Congress on the Corner." The bullet passed through her brain. It's a miracle she's alive.
The gunman appears mentally ill by all accounts.
The politics of blame came calling through the thousand voices connecting the gunman's inspiration to the right wing, Sarah Palin and others who they say use violent metaphors and foment and idea that government is the enemy. The issues were raised, the connections made, maybe implicitly, as these newspeople reported, over and over again, there was no evidence the gunman even knew who Sarah Palin was.
But others, the Tuscon sheriff included, described the incident as almost an "inevitable" product of our politics of hate.
Many weighed in on that.
The New York Times conceded that there was no causal link between the politics of hate, Sarah Palin and the gunman, but described the incident as a product of an environment, possibly created by Palin and others.
The Times wrote of the gunman: "But he is very much a part of a widespread squall of fear, anger and intolerance that has produced violent threats against scores of politicians and infected the political mainstream with violent imagery. With easy and legal access to semiautomatic weapons like the one used in the parking lot, those already teetering on the edge of sanity can turn a threat into a nightmare"
The Washington Post seemed more reluctant to offer a cause and affect, but had interesting points nonetheless.
From the Post: "The temptation will be, as Arizona and the nation mourn the dead and hope for the recovery of the wounded, to infuse the terrible attack with broader political meaning - to blame the actions of the alleged 22-year-old gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, on a vitriolic political culture laced with violent metaphors and ugly attacks on opponents."
"Maybe. But metaphors don't kill people - guns kill people"
The Post went on to call for reinstating the assault weapons ban that expired under President George W. Bush that would have outlawed the weapon and clip used. Gunman still could have used a smaller clip, which the Post reasons, may have at least "reduced the carnage."
It's troubling to me that we have been reduced to seeing the bright side of an incident as "reducing the carnage."
A column by law professor Glenn Reynolds in The Wall Street Journal blasts the media for making, it seems, any reference whatsoever to Palin, and such implicit blame continues the politics of "blood libel" that the left is decrying.
Says Reynolds "When Democrats use language like this—or even harsher language like Mr. Obama's famous remark, in Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"—it's just evidence of high spirits, apparently. But if Republicans do it, it somehow creates a climate of hate."
When I was a freshman in college, I was required to read a book called "Violence in America" that detailed the many violent episodes in American history, and put forth the thesis that violence is essentially part of our history and has a lot to do with how we govern ourselves today.
It seems we write another chapter in that book with every Oklahoma City bombing, every Virginia Tech shooting and every Arizona assassination attempt.
I'm not sure there's any one person or group to blame, if not all of us, in a way.
Will political leaders think twice about how they describe their opponents or their opposition to the government after the near murder of one of their own?. I hope so.
But it's too bad these tragedies have to be the cause of that kind of reflection.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Cut tax "earmark" deal in Minnesota
A preview of Sunday's editorial takes a common sense approach to cutting the special tax breaks for businesses out of the Minnesota budget for savings of $2.1 billion.
Some preview excerpts. (there's a reward at the end if you take your spinach and read through this stuff!)
Some preview excerpts. (there's a reward at the end if you take your spinach and read through this stuff!)
Over the years, Minnesota
These so called “tax expenditures” represent unfair tax breaks for one business over its competitors. If your business is dog grooming, you pay a sales tax. If your business is grooming one’s legal issues as a lawyer, you pay no sales tax. If you sell someone a computer, you pay sales tax. If you provide computer “services” you pay none.
These kind of inequities go on and on when one considers the latest “tax expenditure” budget report from the state of Minnesota
Add another $400 million to state coffers if these tax deals were removed for consumer purchases of business services.
From day one of the sales tax in Minnesota, it's been unfair.
Some services were taxed with the establishment of the Minnesota
Yet, apparently those businesses with good lobbyists kept their tax exemptions.
It’s a system that started out as unfair and remains today as unfair as ever. Removing these exemptions cannot be described as raising taxes. It’s more like collecting debts owed from taxes that should have been paid years ago.
Officials say these deals are “for public policy goals, such as funding or encouraging specified activities or providing financial assistance to persons, businesses, or groups in particular situations.”
Sounds like government intrusion into the marketplace to us.
Send lawyers, guns and money (OK, that's not in there, but I couldn't resist).Here's a great youtube version of the song by Hank Williams.
Have a good weekend.
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