Talking to Empty Chairs -- Day Lee Briefing 9/04/2012
Sep 4, 2012
Today’s Agenda
Today, Senator Lee is in Utah to meet with constituents.
From the Senator’s Desk
Courtesy of the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:
Writing in the New York Times, Paul Krugman’s column hits the usual Krugman-esque notes. The column, entitled “The Medicare Killers,” is liberal. As you can tell from its title, the column is hyperbolically over-the-top. And it’s also flat-out WRONG. The most obviously false statement is his unequivocal declaration that not a shred of evidence exists that private plans can deliver Medicare benefits more efficiently than the federal government:
Wouldn’t private insurers reduce costs through the magic of the marketplace? No. All, and I mean all, the evidence says that public systems like Medicare and Medicaid, which have less bureaucracy than private insurers (if you can’t believe this, you’ve never had to deal with an insurance company) and greater bargaining power, are better than the private sector at controlling costs.
As Bill Clinton might say, the accuracy of that statement depends solely upon what the meaning of the word “all” is. Because a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association just this month found that private plans would “bid an average of 9% below traditional Medicare costs” under a premium support model. Which might explain why other liberals at the Center for American Progress are now – disingenuously – advancing the exact opposite of Krugman’s argument: that seniors would have to pay more to stay in government-run Medicare.
So either Paul Krugman doesn’t know his facts, or he doesn’t want to know his facts – because he would rather keep making claims about government-run Medicare’s “efficiency” that he knows to be wrong. Either way, it’s a sad statement that Krugman and his allies would have to stoop so low to defend the indefensible – and unsustainable – status quo.
On Twitter
Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee have been talking to empty chairs for 3 years: #eastwooding #tcot twitter.com/SenMikeLee/sta…
— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) August 31, 2012
The national #debt will hit $16 trillion this week, nearly a third of it from Obama's administration alone.
— Brian Phillips (@SenLeeComs) September 4, 2012
It was wonderful meeting one of our Fox News favs @marthamaccallum last week! Give her a follow and help her reach 50K!
— Emily Bennion (@SenLeePressSec) September 3, 2012
This week: $16 #trillion and counting.... usdebtclock.org #debt #deficit #tcot #tlot
— Joe Tauke (@SenLeeResearch) September 4, 2012
Around the Water Cooler
U.S. construction spending fell in July
U.S. construction spending fell in July from June by the largest amount in a year, weighed down by a big drop in spending on home improvement projects.
U.S. stock indexes hit by factory contraction
U.S. stocks fell sharply Tuesday, starting off a historically difficult month for equities, as European leaders readied to discuss regional debt and U.S. manufacturing data disappointed
Looking Ahead
Tomorrow, Senator Lee will attend the Uintah Energy Summit.
“Investment” as Politics
Aug 31, 2012
The really remarkable thing about President Obama’s rhetoric about the economy in this election season is just how little it has changed since 2010. Those who expected new ideas from this administration for getting the economy back on track must have been sorely disappointed, as the widely-anticipated “reset” on economic issues has really just been a “repeat.” Once again, he’s trotting out the same old strawmen and warmed over policies he has pounded relentlessly for the last three and a half years: he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, Republicans have stymied the recovery by refusing all compromise, and the only way we will remain competitive in the world economy is by “investing” in things like education, renewable “green” energy, and infrastructure development.
This “investment” angle has become so repetitive it’s easy just to ignore.
But what does it really mean?
When the president says he wants to invest in education, what, exactly does he want to invest in it?
It can’t simply be better education results, because 40 years of soaring costs for public education have already failed to do that. Since 1970, the per-pupil cost of a K – 12 education has exploded from about $55,000 to about $150,000 in real, inflation-adjusted terms. Yet math and reading scores have stagnated, and science scores have actually declined.
Surely, President Obama cannot believe that “investing more in education and training” and “recruiting an army of new teachers” in math and science constitutes new and innovative education policy. We’ve been trying it for decades, and despite hiring 3 million more teachers and spending $210 billion more per year on public education, taxpayers have nothing to show for it.
If taxpayers and students have not benefited from all this public largesse, who has? Teachers unions, of course, who are – not coincidentally – one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful constituencies and the single biggest obstacle to education reform in America today, continually sacrificing the interests of public school students to permanent job security and pay hikes for teachers.
When the president talks about investing in “education,” what he means is giving more money to the teachers unions in order to solidify their political efforts on his behalf.
The same goes for the other abstract nouns in which the president constantly demands more “investment.”
“Clean energy?” We’ve been “investing” in that for years. And what is the return on that investment? Solyndra, a company whose failure cost taxpayers $528 million in Department of Energy loan guarantees. A123 Systems, a recipient of $279 million in energy grants, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. First Solar, having procured $1.46 billion in loan guarantees, announced layoffs of over 2000 employees over the last several months. Dozens more “clean” energy companies are filing for bankruptcy or laying off thousands of workers after receiving federal funds. Is this “investment” producing better energy resources, or economic growth?
But, as with the teachers unions, subsidized green energy executives do produce lots of campaign contributions.
Time and again, when the president says “investment,” he doesn’t simply mean spending – he means a redistribution of wealth from successful individuals and businesses to those who support his liberal agenda.
The president compares his “investment” vision to the successes of Thomas Edison or the Wright brothers. But none of them needed a government handout to invent the light bulb or the airplane. Government “investments” invariably go not to the people with the most promising innovations, but those with the best political connections. Politicians – of both parties – use the “investment” rhetoric to paper over payoffs to their friends and benefactors. It’s both immoral and inefficient.
But for Obama, this spending is a matter of faith. “I don’t believe,” he asserted, “that a tax cut is more likely to create jobs than providing loans to new entrepreneurs or tax credits to small business owners who hire veterans. I don’t believe it’s more likely to spur economic growth than investments in clean energy technology and medical research, or in new roads and bridges and runways.”
If we are to take his rhetoric seriously, the president clearly believes that the way to get our floundering economy moving again is not to let employers keep more of the money they themselves created, but to tax them and spread the wealth around to special interests like teachers unions, labor bosses, and well-connected firms like Solyndra that embody the correct leftist policies.
Call it a boondoggle. Call it crony capitalism. Call it corporate welfare. But let’s stop calling this “investment.”
Mike Lee is a U.S. Senator from Utah and a member of the Joint Economic Committee
The Higher Costs of ObamaCare -- Day Lee Briefing 8/30/2012
Aug 30, 2012
From the Senator’s Desk
Courtesy of the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:
Two articles in the past week have demonstrated the impact of Obamacare on health care professions, and the bottom line for millions of struggling American families. First, the Washington Post profiled two recent mergers – one among insurers, another among assisted living facilities – noting that “the health care industry is increasingly turning to consolidation as a way to cope with smaller profit margins and higher compliance costs that many anticipate when the federal government’s health care reforms under [Obamacare] take effect.” One analyst noted that “the regulatory limitations on their margins mean that to drive profitability, they need to get leverage on [administrative costs]….In order to do that, they need to be bigger.”
The another article, this one in the Wall Street Journal, highlighted how bigger does NOT mean better for patients. The article began with the story of a Nevada patient whose echocardiogram bill rose from $373 to a whopping $1,605 in the space of six months. The same procedure – performed in the same office, by the same cardiologist – quadrupled in price simply because the cardiologist’s practice had been bought out by a hospital system, which used the change in ownership to extract higher prices from insurers. The Journal notes the increasingly common nature of the practice:
With private insurers, hospital systems with strong market heft can often negotiate higher rates for physician services than independent doctors get. The differential varies widely, anywhere from 5% or less to between 30% and 40%, industry officials say. The bounce can be far greater: Blue Shield of California said that after one group of physicians based in Burlingame, Calif., came under the umbrella of the powerful Sutter Health system in 2010, its rates for services increased about 140%. The insurer said it saw a jump of approximately 95% after a Santa Monica, Calif., group became part of the UCLA Health System in January 2011.
Summing up then: Thanks to Obamacare, hospitals, insurers, and physicians feel the need team up – in an attempt to gang up on patients and charge the highest possible prices, raising costs rather than lowering them. Call this many things, but do NOT call it “reform.”
On Twitter
SenMikeLee
During my Richfield town hall meeting, I explained what can be done about Sen. Reid's refusal to pass a budget: http://ow.ly/dinzW #tcot
SenLeeComs
It's a mathematical certainty that Democrats' do-nothing plan will "end Medicare as we know it".
SenLeePressSec
@mckaycoppins So nice to finally meet you!
SenLeeResearch
Feel robbed after every #grocery run? With so many #foodsdependent upon #corn, this chart explains a lot: http://bit.ly/ObAVxj #tcot#tlot
Around the Water Cooler
Chicago teachers union gives 10-day strike notice
The Chicago Teachers Union issued a 10-day strike notice Wednesday, saying teachers in the nation's third-largest school district are ready to walk off the job for the first time in 25 years.
Efficiency of Private Plans -- Day Lee Briefing 8/29/2012
Aug 29, 2012
From the Senator’s Desk
Courtesy of the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:
Last Friday the liberal Center for American Progress released a paper co-authored by Harvard professor David Cutler that amounted to a partisan – and thoroughly un-principled – attack on conservative entitlement reform proposals. When it comes to premium support proposals in Medicare, the CAP paper alleged that traditional, government-run Medicare would be cheaper for senior citizens than a choice of private plans:
Seniors will face higher costs not only because of this cost shift from the government but also because the Romney-Ryan plan increases system-wide costs by promoting private insurance that will be more costly than the existing Medicare system. The Romney-Ryan plan would cost more than the current Medicare system because, as the Congressional Budget Office has documented, private insurance companies have higher profits and administrative costs than Medicare does, and because the plan would reduce the market share, and therefore the purchasing power, of traditional Medicare….Ample evidence exists that premium support would not foster the type of competition that reduces prices.
There then followed a whole series of calculations showing how much more seniors would be forced to pay because the paper alleges the Romney-Ryan plan will drive them into private, less-efficient health plans. This position would be slightly less disingenuous had not both CAP and Cutler himself, in a paper Cutler co-authored earlier this month, taken the exact opposite position and put out similarly detailed projections about how much more seniors would pay – not because private plans would be less efficient than government-run Medicare, but because they would be more efficient:
An estimate of what such a bidding system may mean for Medicare beneficiaries, using 2006-2009 data on MA plan bids and traditional Medicare costs, is shown in the TABLE. Nationally, in 2009, the benchmark plan under the Ryan-Wyden framework (i.e., the second-lowest plan) bid an average of 9% below traditional Medicare costs (traditional Medicare was equivalent to approximately the tenth-lowest bid). Since traditional Medicare is simply another plan option under the Ryan-Wyden plan, a beneficiary in 2009 would have paid an average of $64 per month (9% of $717) in additional premiums to stay in traditional Medicare….beneficiaries must pay more for traditional Medicare or join a private plan.
The rest of the CAP paper really needs no rebuttal – its author’s lack of principles discredits it enough on its own. And as we have pointed out before, the Center for American Progress has done a thorough job disgracing itself by taking wholly illogical and inconsistent positions for no apparent reason other than political gain.
But one fundamental question is why Harvard University allows faculty members like David Cutler to use their institutional affiliation to put out such mutually contradictory and disingenuous work. Universities claim to be bastions of academic freedom. But changing one’s position in a matter of weeks, and putting out detailed estimates on both sides of an economic argument, may strike many as a perversion of academic freedom – engaging in either rank political opportunism, selling one’s “academic” conclusions to the highest bidder, or some combination thereof. In short, academic freedom does not mean the freedom not to have principles – a lesson that Cutler and Harvard apparently need to re-learn.
On Twitter
SenMikeLee
We definitely had a lot of questions about the #cutcapbalance act at my recent town hall meetings: http://ow.ly/dgQit #utpol
SenLeeComs
It's a mathematical certainty that Democrats' do-nothing plan will "end Medicare as we know it".
SenLeePressSec
@mckaycoppins So nice to finally meet you!
SenLeeResearch
Feel robbed after every #grocery run? With so many #foodsdependent upon #corn, this chart explains a lot: http://bit.ly/ObAVxj #tcot#tlot
Around the Water Cooler
Gasoline rising to holiday high as storm surge presses Obama
Hurricane Isaac and a deadly blast at Venezuela’s Amuay refinery pushed gasoline to an almost four- month high and threatened to revive a debate about energy costs in the run-up to the presidential election in November.
Controlling Medicare Costs -- Day Lee Briefing 8/28/2012
Aug 28, 2012
From the Senator’s Desk
Courtesy of the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:
In a New York Times blog post last Friday, former Clinton Administration official Laura D’Andrea Tyson said that “when formulating public policy, evidence should be accorded more weight than ideology, and facts should matter more than shibboleths.” On that count, she’s right. But unfortunately for Tyson, the evidence shows that while liberal, top-down proposals to restructure Medicare – and the health care system – have failed, conservative proposals to introduce market forces into America’s failing entitlements could just succeed.
Tyson dismisses premium support proposals for Medicare, arguing that “the facts do not support” any conclusion that “competition would encourage more cost-sensitive behavior by beneficiaries, providers, and insurers.” Actually, a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association just this month found that private plans would “bid an average of 9% below traditional Medicare costs” under a premium support model. That’s a savings of tens of billions of dollars – coming directly from the positive effects of competition.
Conversely, Tyson claims that because competition won’t reduce health costs, “enforceable payment and cost-containment reforms like those in [Obamacare] are necessary.” Those are the same payment reforms that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, in a January report analyzing dozens of Medicare demonstration programs over decades, said haven’t worked to contain costs:
The evaluations show that most programs have not reduced Medicare spending: In nearly every program involving disease management and care coordination, spending was either unchanged or increased relative to the spending that would have occurred in the absence of the program, when the fees paid to the participating organizations were considered….Demonstrations aimed at reducing spending and increasing quality of care face significant challenges in overcoming the incentives inherent in Medicare’s fee-for-service payment system, which rewards providers for delivering more care but does not pay them for coordinating with other providers, and in the nation’s decentralized health care delivery system, which does not facilitate communication or coordination among providers.
While the evidence is clear that Obamacare’s focus on payment reform has NOT worked to control costs, the signs for competition as a positive force slowing costs seem promising. Which means that if Tyson wants to be bound by evidence and not ideology, she has every reason to endorse premium support as opposed to an extension of the failed status quo.
On Twitter
SenMikeLee
This article does a good job explaining my opposition to the UN's disability convention: http://ow.ly/cNANP
SenLeeComs
It's a mathematical certainty that Democrats' do-nothing plan will "end Medicare as we know it".
SenLeePressSec
@cstirewalt great seeing you today! We look forward to seeing the interview you did with @SenMikeLee!
SenLeeResearch
Feel robbed after every #grocery run? With so many #foodsdependent upon #corn, this chart explains a lot: http://bit.ly/ObAVxj #tcot#tlot
Around the Water Cooler
Solyndra investors could reap tax windfall
Two investment companies stand to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks under a bankruptcy exit plan for failed solar company Solyndra, government lawyers say.
White House Secrecy -- Day Lee Briefing 8/27/2012
Aug 27, 2012
From the Senator’s Desk
Courtesy of the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:
Two articles in today’s Wall Street Journal illustrate how President Obama is putting politics before policy – deliberately failing to lead on tough fiscal choices to score cheap political points. One news article notes that the White House has put together a secret deficit reduction plan, which it refuses to release to the American people:
President Barack Obama's most recent budget…[did not] detail how to slow the growth of spending on Medicare or Social Security. Nor has Mr. Obama made public the details of proposals he made in unsuccessful talks with House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) last summer, such as raising the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67, a notion both Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan have endorsed.
Administration officials are preparing new deficit-reduction proposals to be released if Mr. Obama is re-elected, but see no political advantage in previewing them now, people familiar with the process said.
Likewise, an excellent editorial in this morning’s Journal about the Administration’s plans for top-down government health “reform” notes that the White House has refused to name individuals to Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board “until after the election.”
So we’ve gone from a world in which candidate Obama repeatedly promised that he would hold all the negotiations on C-SPAN to one in which tough choices are deliberately being withheld from the American people for political reasons, and a world in which the President’s pledge that “we are implementing” Obamacare right now doesn’t apply to the supposed centerpiece of its attempt to control costs – because of the backlash that exposing the law’s coercive nature would generate. Hope and change indeed.
On Twitter
SenMikeLee
This article does a good job explaining my opposition to the UN's disability convention: http://ow.ly/cNANP
SenLeeComs
It's a mathematical certainty that Democrats' do-nothing plan will "end Medicare as we know it".
SenLeePressSec
Lee: I believe our best days as Americans are yet ahead of us#leetownhall
SenLeeResearch
How #ObamaCare creates incentives for employers to stop expanding and stop hiring: http://on.wsj.com/MSRYWa #jobs#unemployment #tcot #tlot
Around the Water Cooler
FCC eyes tax on Internet service
The Federal Communications Commission is eyeing a proposal to tax broadband Internet service.
Lower Productivity Growth -- Day Lee Briefing 8/24/2012
Aug 24, 2012
Today’s Agenda
Today, Senator Lee will meet with the Sevier County’s commission, administrator, and business leaders.
From the Senator’s Desk
Courtesy of the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:
The Congressional Budget Office released its updated economic forecasts, and the results reflect the Obama Administration’s “stewardship” of the economy. In the health care sector, CBO made some significant updates to its baseline, reflecting both economic and technical changes. With respect to the former, because economic productivity has lagged, and because most Medicare payment rates for hospitals and other providers are linked to “market-basket” updates of goods and services, CBO raised projected Medicare spending based on this economic factor. From page 52 of the report:
CBO’s current projections of productivity are lower than they were in its previous forecast, and its projected prices for goods and services (including the cost of both labor and non-labor inputs) are now higher. Consequently, CBO now anticipates higher payment rates for Medicare than it forecast in March, a change that raises projected outlays by $136 billion (or about 2 percent) over the 2013–2022 period. In the Medicaid program, higher projected prices for medical services and the cost of labor are also expected to boost spending, by $27 billion, between 2013 and 2022.
Admittedly, CBO made a larger downward adjustment ($169 billion) in projected Medicare spending, which it termed a technical adjustment to reflect the current slowdown in health spending. However, the Medicare actuary and others have said much of this slowdown is linked to the poorly recovering economy – which means spending could pick up whenever the economy fully recovers.
Either way, however, the report reflects an indictment on the Obama economy – lower productivity growth raising Medicare spending, offset only by people cutting back on health expenditures because they can’t afford to go to the doctor. That’s not evidence Obamacare is working – that’s evidence the “stimulus” didn’t.
A couple of other related points from the CBO report:
· According to the updated baseline, the federal government will in 2022 spend a total of $1.064 trillion on Medicare, and $592 billion on Medicaid (not counting the state share of Medicaid payments). The vast – and vastly increasing – amounts of money the federal government is spending on these programs makes the best case for comprehensive entitlement reform.
· The update projects the decade-long cost of a freeze in Medicare physician payments at $245 billion. If said legislation is not paid for, CBO estimates debt service payments on the $245 billion would total an additional $36 billion.
On Twitter
SenMikeLee
This article does a good job explaining my opposition to the UN's disability convention: http://ow.ly/cNANP
SenLeeComs
Finally we see @SenateDems plan for deficit reduction: Recessionhttp://ow.ly/d9usY #MakingItWorse #fiscalcliff
SenLeePressSec
Lee: I believe our best days as Americans are yet ahead of us#leetownhall
SenLeeResearch
How #ObamaCare creates incentives for employers to stop expanding and stop hiring: http://on.wsj.com/MSRYWa #jobs#unemployment #tcot #tlot
Around the Water Cooler
Republicans could soon champion the protection of Internet Freedom as an official party issue, The Daily Caller has learned. Language in the final draft of the Internet freedom proposal was obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller.
Lawmaker questions Holder on abusing FBI travel privileges
Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican and the ranking GOP member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wants answers about whether Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other senior Justice Department officials misused FBI aircraft, hindering the agency's investigations and ignoring a White House order to cut travel costs.
Richfield Town Hall -- Day Lee Briefing 8/23/2012
Aug 23, 2012
Today’s Agenda
Today, Senator Lee will meet with representatives of Washington County, Iron County, and Beaver County. He will also hold a town hall at the Sevier County Administration Building in Richfield. The meeting can be watched live online here.
From the Senator’s Desk
Courtesy of the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:
Former Obama Administration Budget Director Peter Orszag published a Bloomberg op-ed this morning in which he criticized conservative proposals to introduce premium support in Medicare. He claims that the “private market tooth fairy” can’t cut costs – arguing that the Congressional Budget Office doubted this premise, and that any cost differentials between government-run Medicare and private plans would be based on private plans treating healthier patients than traditional Medicare.
Orszag claims that CBO said that the private plans in the House Republican premium support proposal would be more expensive for beneficiaries than traditional Medicare. But that’s only a quarter-truth, at best. First, Orszag admitted that he used an out-of-date 2011 CBO report to characterize the 2012 House Republican proposal; he claimed he did so because the 2011 CBO analysis “was the only one that CBO has evaluated in terms of total, not just federal, cost.”
That sleight-of-hand was bad enough – but there’s absolutely no excuse for Orszag’s other key omission, which is that CBO currently has no technical capacity to determine whether or not competition can help reduce health costs. A recent Health Matters column in CongressDaily (subscription required) pointed out this key flaw in CBO’s estimating models:
[CBO] Director Douglas Elmendorf told the House Budget Committee in 2011, his office doesn’t have the ability to account for any cost decreases (or increases, for that matter) that could come from competition between private plans. “We are not applying any additional effects of competition on this growth rate over time in our analysis of your proposal. And, again, we don’t have the tools, the analysis, we would need to do a quantitative evaluation of the importance of those factors,” Elmendorf said….
CBO’s current estimate puts the effects of competition at zero, which Gail Wilensky, a former head of Medicare and Medicaid in the George H.W. Bush administration, says is an even worse assumption than making some sort of educated guess. “You know it’s not zero, that’s the complete cop-out,” Wilensky said in an interview. “Their assumption is zero; it’s a very specific assumption, and it’s the one thing that’s definitely not accurate.”
Before joining the Obama Administration, Orszag served as Elmendorf’s predecessor as CBO Director. He knows that this lack of capacity on the effects of competition is a MAJOR hole in the organization’s technical capacities – in fact, one could assign him at least some responsibility for failing to develop those models during his time as CBO Director. Yet he mentioned none of this in the op-ed.
Instead, Orszag spent time criticizing the process of risk adjustment – in which plans with sicker-than-average beneficiaries receive higher payments than plans with healthier-than-average patients, to compensate the former for their higher costs and discourage plans from attempting to game the system. Orszag alleges that risk adjustment is imperfect – which is true – but goes on to say that risk adjustment is so imperfect that private plans could still undermine traditional Medicare by soliciting healthier patients, despite the risk adjustment methods in place. Orszag’s argument would sound slightly more genuine were it not for this paragraph included in Section 1343(b) of Obamacare:
(b) CRITERIA AND METHODS.—The Secretary, in consultation with States, shall establish criteria and methods to be used in carrying out the risk adjustment activities under this section. The Secretary may utilize criteria and methods similar to the criteria and methods utilized under part C or D of title XVIII of the Social Security Act. Such criteria and methods shall be included in the standards and requirements the Secretary prescribes under section 1321.
In other words, Obamacare explicitly grants HHS the authority to impose the risk adjustment methods currently being used in Medicare Advantage – the exact same methods that Orszag claims will undermine traditional Medicare. If those Medicare Advantage risk adjustment methods are so flawed, as Orszag claims, then why did the Obama Administration – of which Orszag himself was a member – permit them to be used in Obamacare Exchanges as well?
Orszag’s column got this much right – there is a “fairy” tale regarding premium support proposals. But the real fairy tale lies in the inconvenient truths Orszag himself was unable or unwilling to mention in his supposed critique.
On Twitter
SenMikeLee
If you live near Richfield, you are invited to my town hall meeting tonight: http://ow.ly/d7MZs #utpol #leetownhall
SenLeeComs
In July, Dems said they'd be willing to cause a recession over something as measly as $80bn/yr in #tax increases http://ow.ly/d9w4T
SenLeePressSec
Lee in Washington City, UT: It's a lot more fun to be in this Washington than the other Washington #leetownhall #utpol
SenLeeResearch
.@SenMikeLee will host a town hall meeting tonight in Richfield. Watch live online here: http://on.fb.me/HLcq50 #LeeTownHall #tcot#tlot
Around the Water Cooler
Utah ranks as top pro-business state, report says
Another accolade for the Beehive State.
MarketWatch at the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday named Utah the “brightest star” on the American flag. Why? Pollina Corporate Real Estate ranked Utah at the top of its list of Ten Pro-Business States for 2012.
Jobless claims in U.S. climb for second week to one-month high
The number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits climbed last week to a one-month high, showing little progress in the labor market.
Looking Ahead
Tomorrow, Senator Lee will meet with the Sevier County’s commission, administrator, and business leaders.
Washington City Town Hall -- Day Lee Briefing 8/22/2012
Aug 22, 2012
Today’s Agenda
Today, Senator Lee will meet with Wayne County’s commissioners and mayors, Piute County’s commissioners and mayors, Garfield County’s commissioners, and Kane County’s commissioners. He will also hold a town hall meeting at the Washington City Community Center at 7:00 PM MDT (9:00 PM EDT). The meeting can be watched live online here.
From the Senator’s Desk
Courtesy of the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:
The Congressional Budget Office released its updated economic forecasts this morning and, today as before, the results reflect the Obama Administration’s “stewardship” of the economy. In the health care sector, CBO made some significant updates to its baseline, reflecting both economic and technical changes. With respect to the former, because economic productivity has lagged, and because most Medicare payment rates for hospitals and other providers are linked to “market-basket” updates of goods and services, CBO raised projected Medicare spending based on this economic factor. From page 52 of the report:
CBO’s current projections of productivity are lower than they were in its previous forecast, and its projected prices for goods and services (including the cost of both labor and non-labor inputs) are now higher. Consequently, CBO now anticipates higher payment rates for Medicare than it forecast in March, a change that raises projected outlays by $136 billion (or about 2 percent) over the 2013–2022 period. In the Medicaid program, higher projected prices for medical services and the cost of labor are also expected to boost spending, by $27 billion, between 2013 and 2022.
Admittedly, CBO made a larger downward adjustment ($169 billion) in projected Medicare spending, which it termed a technical adjustment to reflect the current slowdown in health spending. However, the Medicare actuary and others have said much of this slowdown is linked to the poorly recovering economy – which means spending could pick up whenever the economy fully recovers.
Either way, however, the report reflects an indictment on the Obama economy – lower productivity growth raising Medicare spending, offset only by people cutting back on health expenditures because they can’t afford to go to the doctor. That’s not evidence Obamacare is working – that’s evidence the “stimulus” didn’t.
A couple of other related points from the CBO report:
· According to the updated baseline, the federal government will in 2022 spend a total of $1.064 trillion on Medicare, and $592 billion on Medicaid (not counting the state share of Medicaid payments). The vast – and vastly increasing – amounts of money the federal government is spending on these programs makes the best case for comprehensive entitlement reform.
· The update projects the decade-long cost of a freeze in Medicare physician payments at $245 billion. If said legislation is not paid for, CBO estimates debt service payments on the $245 billion would total an additional $36 billion.
On Twitter
SenMikeLee
If you live in the Washington County area, you are invited to my town hall meeting tonight in Washington City: http://ow.ly/d7MQ8 #utpol
SenLeeComs
It's a mathematical certainty that Democrats' do-nothing plan will "end Medicare as we know it".
SenLeePressSec
RELEASE: @SenMikeLee pleased Verizon-Spectrum Co will be approved http://bit.ly/MCuUdi #utpol #judiciary
SenLeeResearch
How #ObamaCare creates incentives for employers to stop expanding and stop hiring: http://on.wsj.com/MSRYWa #jobs#unemployment #tcot #tlot
Around the Water Cooler
Europe’s leaders face post-holiday blues
After their holidays spent soaking up the August sun, Europe’s political leaders are bracing themselves for storm clouds this fall.
The latest economic figures show that Europe is edging closer to recession, dragged down by the crippling debt problems of the 17 countries that use the euro.
Labor Department spends stimulus funds for ads during Olbermann, Maddow shows
The Labor Department paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal stimulus funds to a public relations firm to run more than 100 commercials touting the Obama administration’s “green training” job efforts on two MSNBC cable shows, records show.
Looking Ahead
Tomorrow, Senator Lee will meet with representatives of Washington County, Iron County, and Beaver County. He will also hold a town hall at the Sevier County Administration Building in Richfield.
Handouts for Insurance Companies -- Day Lee Briefing 8/21/2012
Aug 21, 2012
Today’s Agenda
Today, Senator Lee is meeting with representatives of the Utah Defense Alliance, South Jordan, and the Bureau of Land Management.
From the Senator’s Desk
Courtesy of the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:
Speaking on Face the Nation yesterday, Center for American Progress CEO Neera Tanden claimed that Obamacare “is a massive tax cut for – in health care. It's a six-hundred-billion-dollar tax cut for health care. It's a tax cut to middle-class families.” Tanden’s claims to the contrary, the law and record are very clear about the fact that this massive new entitlement will go straight into the pockets of the insurance industry:
· Section 1412(c)(2)(A) of the law provides that “The Secretary of the Treasury shall make the advance payment under this section of any premium tax credit allowed under section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to the issuer of a qualified health plan on a monthly basis.”
· Page 37 of the report on the Finance Committee bill states: “The Committee Bill provides a refundable tax credit for eligible individuals and families who purchase health insurance through the state exchanges. The premium tax credit, which is refundable and payable in advance directly to the insurer, subsidizes the purchase of certain health insurance plans through the state exchanges.”
Even liberal professor Jonathan Gruber – a paid Obamacare consultant – admitted in an interview that “Most households will never actually get their hands on the credits, so their existing tax liabilities won’t actually change. In most cases, credits will go straight to insurance companies, to pay for health benefits.” And according to CBO’s updated estimates, Obamacare will now provide over $1 trillion in spending on subsidies, which will go directly into the pockets of insurance companies.
Of course, candidate Obama opposed sending subsidies straight to insurance companies when he ran for President. An Obama campaign ad derided Senator McCain’s proposal to subsidize insurance through tax credits: “That tax credit? McCain’s own Web site said it goes straight to the insurance companies, not to you, leaving you on your own...” Likewise, in a campaign speech, candidate Obama vilified Senator McCain for this policy: “But the new tax credit [McCain’s] proposing? That wouldn’t go to you. It would go directly to your insurance company – not your bank account.”
In making her false claims that middle class families – as opposed to insurance companies – would actually receive these tax cuts, Tanden contradicted both the words of candidate Obama – on whose 2008 campaign she worked – and someone who has written multiple papers for the organization she leads. It’s unfortunate that Obamacare supporters feel the need to twist the facts in such a blatantly obvious manner to try to gin up support for their unpopular health care law.
On Twitter
SenMikeLee
This article does a good job explaining my opposition to the UN's disability convention: http://ow.ly/cNANP
SenLeeComs
.@robportman: The Regulatory Cliff Is Nearly as Steep as the Fiscal One - @WSJ http://ow.ly/d2MAr
SenLeePressSec
RELEASE: @SenMikeLee pleased Verizon-Spectrum Co will be approved http://bit.ly/MCuUdi #utpol #judiciary
SenLeeResearch
@kc135guy Thanks, that's some great info. We keep a close eye on the #Fed and support significant monetary reform: http://bit.ly/I2ytVG
Around the Water Cooler
The price of oil resumed its upward climb Tuesday, spurred by gains on Wall Street and speculation that the U.S. Federal Reserve might take action to spark the sluggish recovery.
White House sets ground rules for local interviews
The White House is doing something with its local TV interviews that it could not easily get away with in encounters with the White House press corps, which President Obama has been studiously ignoring: choosing the topic about which President Obama and the reporter will talk.
Looking Ahead
Tomorrow, Senator Lee will meet with Wayne County’s commissioners and mayors, Piute County’s commissioners and mayors, Garfield County’s commissioners, and Kane County’s commissioners. He will also hold a town hall meeting at the Washington City Community Center at 7:00 PM MDT (9:00 PM EDT).
