A senior Democratic senator who helped write President Obama’s health care law stunned administration officials Wednesday, saying openly he thinks it’s headed for a “train wreck.”

“I just see a huge train wreck coming down,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., told Obama’s health care chief during a routine budget hearing that suddenly turned tense.

Baucus is the first top Democrat to publicly voice fears about the rollout of the new health care law, designed to bring coverage to some 30 million uninsured Americans through a mix of government programs and tax credits for private insurance that start next year.

The six-term Democrat is also expected to face a tough re-election in 2014. Baucus is still trying to recover from approval ratings that nosedived amid displeasure with the health care law in his home state.

Normally low-key and supportive, Baucus challenged Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at Wednesday’s hearing.

He said he’s “very concerned” that new health insurance marketplaces for consumers and small businesses will not open on time in every state, and that if they do, they might just flop because residents don’t have the information they need to make choices.

“The administration’s public information campaign on the benefits of the Affordable Care Act deserves a failing grade,” he told Sebelius. “You need to fix this.”

Responding to Baucus, Sebelius pointedly noted that Republicans in Congress last year blocked funding for carrying out the health care law, and she had to resort to raiding other departmental funds that were legally available to her.

The administration is asking for $1.5 billion in next year’s budget, and Republicans don’t seem willing to grant that either.

“I don’t know what he’s looking at,” Sebelius told reporters following her out of the room after Baucus adjourned the hearing. “But we are on track to fully implement marketplaces in Jan. 2014, and to be open for open enrollment.”

That open-enrollment launch is only months away, Oct. 1. It’s when millions of middle-class consumers who don’t get coverage through their jobs will be able to start shopping for a private plan in the new marketplaces, or exchanges. They’ll also be able to find out if they qualify for tax credits that will lower their premiums. At the same time, low-income people will be steered to government programs, mainly an expanded version of Medicaid.

But half the states, most of them Republican-led, have refused to cooperate in setting up the infrastructure of Obama’s law. Others, like Montana, are politically divided. The overhaul law provided that the federal government would step in and run the new markets if a state failed to do so. Envisioned as a fallback, federal control now looks like it will be the norm in about half the country, straining the resources of the department Sebelius leads.

Published April 18, 2013 / Associated Press

MEMPHIS, Tenn. –  Twenty-four current and former Internal Revenue Service employees have been charged with stealing government benefits, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The IRS employees were indicted on charges that they illegally received more than $250,000 in benefits including unemployment insurance payments, food stamps, welfare, and housing vouchers, the U.S. attorney’s office in Memphis said in a news release.

Prosecutors say 13 of the IRS employees face federal charges of lying about being unemployed while applying for or recertifying their government benefits. They each face up to five years in prison if convicted of making false statements to receive the benefits.

Eleven others face state charges of theft of property over $1,000, a felony that can carry a sentence of probation up to 12 years in prison if they are convicted.

“While these IRS employees were supposed to be serving the public, they were instead brazenly stealing from law-abiding American taxpayers,” U.S. Attorney Edward Stanton said in a statement

Those charged range in ages from 28 to 64. They include residents of Memphis, Jackson, Tenn., and Southaven, Miss.

“The taxes that we pay are supposed to support our nation and assist individuals in need, not free-loaders who are gaming the system,” said Amy Weirich, the district attorney for Shelby County.

Prosecutors scheduled, then canceled, a news conference to announce the indictments. U.S. attorney’s office spokesman Rodney King said the cancellation was due to “unforeseen events,” without elaborating.

King would not say whether the cancellation was related to the investigation into two letters sent to President Barack Obama and a Mississippi senator that indicated they contained poisonous ricin.

The FBI says the letters were postmarked Memphis.

Published April 18, 2013 / Associated Press

President Obama will propose modest changes to Social Security and other benefit programs in his 2014 budget — a gesture that is meant to soften Republicans to the idea of tax hikes, but has already drawn the ire of liberal Democrats who want the entitlement shielded.

The president plans to unveil his budget Wednesday, but a senior administration official confirmed the key details in advance. Included in the plan, which would aim to reduce the deficit by $1.8 trillion over 10 years, is a provision to lower cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security, the benefit program for retirees. This would curb the growth in benefits.

“While this is not the president’s ideal deficit reduction plan, and there are particular proposals in this plan like the (Social Security change) that were key Republican requests,” the official said. “The president felt it was important to make it clear that the offer still stands.”

The administration is clear that it is offering changes to Social Security and Medicare — the two benefit programs most important to seniors — in order to convince Republicans to accept increased revenues. The official said the plan to be unveiled next week “isn’t a menu of options for them to choose from — it’s a cohesive package.”

The proposal, though, is sure to get hit from both sides. Republicans want the Social Security change but for years have resisted new tax revenue — Obama’s plan calls for additional tax revenue, including a proposal to place limits on tax-preferred retirement accounts for top earners. Obama has also called for limits on tax deductions by top earners, a proposal that could generate about $580 billion in revenue over 10 years.

But the president could face an even tougher time selling the Social Security change to liberal members of Congress.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., fired off a statement Thursday responding to what was then the rumor that Obama’s budget could include the change.

“Millions of working people, seniors, disabled veterans, those who have lost a loved one in combat, and women will be extremely disappointed if President Obama caves into the long standing Republican effort to cut Social Security and benefits for disabled veterans and their survivors through a so-called chained CPI,” Sanders said. “In 2008, candidate Barack Obama told the American people that he would not cut Social Security.  Having him go back on his word will only add to the rampant political cynicism that our country is experiencing today.”

Chained CPI is the Washington term for the revised inflation adjustment that would effectively curb annual increases in a broad swath of government programs, but would have its biggest impact on Social Security.

The inflation adjustment would reduce federal spending over 10 years by about $130 billion, according to past White House estimates. Because it also affects how tax brackets are adjusted, it would also generate about $100 in higher taxes and affect even middle income taxpayers.

Obama’s budget, to be released next week, comes after the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-run Senate passed separate and markedly different budget proposals. House Republicans achieved long-term deficit reductions by targeting safety net programs; Democrats instead protected those programs and called for $1 trillion in tax increases.

Obama’s budget proposal includes features from an offer he made to House Speaker John Boehner during fiscal negotiations last year. Those talks ultimately failed but Congress did agree to increase tax rates on top earners.

The reductions in growth of benefit programs, which would affect veterans, the poor and the older Americans, is sure to anger many Democrats.

Labor groups and liberals have long been critical of Obama’s offer to Boehner for including such a plan.

Obama’s new plan would also replace the sequester with other spending cuts. But it will steer clear of major cuts to Medicaid, including tens of billions in reductions to the health care plan for the poor that the administration had proposed only last year.

Published April 05, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

“It’s about jobs. In its life, [President Obama’s health law] will create 4 million jobs — 400,000 jobs almost immediately.”

— Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking at a Feb. 25, 2010 summit on Obama’s pending health-insurance legislation.

One of the key selling points in President Obama’s 2010 health law was that small business owners would be able to offer more insurance options to their employees.

But according to a New York Times report today, that benefit, set to kick in at the beginning of 2014, will be delayed for at least a year as federal regulators and insurance companies struggle to offer the expanded options.

This is partly a consequence of Obama relying on private insurance companies to implement his legacy law. With premiums already rising as a result of the law and set to increase by nearly a third on average with the full imposition of the new rules, insurance companies are in a strong position to demand a slowdown of the law.

With Midterm Elections just ahead and Obama still unable to rally much public support for the law, the administration is not keen to push costs even higher, especially as middle-class families are feeling the squeeze of higher taxes and higher fuel costs.

The stumbling start for Obama’s law ahead of the beginning of enrollment in its new health-insurance entitlement program is proving to be a major headache for the president. Enrollment in the federally subsidized insurance program – the centerpiece of the law – is set to begin on Oct. 1. But despite delaying the start of the program for nearly four years from the signing of the law, the federally funded insurance system does not look ready for liftoff.

With Democrats voting to cut out a key tax funding the program and the Department of Health and Human Services up to its eyeballs in delays, waivers and the difficulties of stitching together a patchwork system, the fate of what the president called “Obamacare” is looking uncertain.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are preparing to drag the controversial law into the budgeting process this summer. Obama is looking for a full-year fiscal plan that would provide enough borrowing authority to get to the next elections when voters might break the deadlock in Washington. The uncertainty about the law and its growing number of missed expectations enhances the ability of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others to make the still-pending Obama entitlement part of the discussion.

Dissatisfaction with the law and the bureaucratic botch of its implementation makes Obama’s legacy program a much riper target for changes and legislative delays.

Dissatisfied Democrats may be willing to sacrifice parts of the law or slow its imposition before they are willing to meddle with popular programs like Medicare. It was politically helpful for Obama to shove the difficult or unpopular laws beyond his re-election bid. Some Senate Democrats may find it appropriate to return the favor.

The Obama administration’s decision to delay the expanded options for small business employees makes that prospect more appealing.

One of the main claims the president made in selling the law, aside from the promise of helping small businesses, was that individuals happy with their insurance and doctors would not have to make changes. Obama later clarified that he meant the government would not force citizens to change, but allowed that government regulations would cause employers, doctors and insurers to drop individuals, stop offering services or raise prices.

Obama modified his initial promise to a hope tinged with high-minded regret: “If you are happy with your plan, and if you are happy with your doctor, we don’t want you to have to change.”

But the changes are coming fast as employers prepare to jettison workers from health care plans, doctors retire or stop accepting government insurance and insurers jack up rates to cover new costs.

The delay of the expanded menu of insurance offerings will almost certainly accelerate the process.

Currently, small businesses are weighing whether to drop health insurance altogether. Obama’s law requires businesses to offer coverage of a certain caliber, above the above the basic catastrophic coverage offered by many companies. For many of them, it will be cheaper to pay the fines imposed for employers who offer no coverage at all or drop full-time workers down to part-time status to avoid the requirements.

The Congressional Budget Office already foresees some 8 million insurance customers getting dropped by employers. That’s more than before and the number will go up with this change and others still to come.

During the debate of the law, a key promise was that new regulation would require insurance companies to offer a broader menu of insurance choices to small businesses across a range of price points.

But if insurers are only offering one, more expensive health plan to small shops there will be even more employers who decide to get out of the game altogether and dump their workers onto taxpayer-subsidized insurance programs. Given the choice between that and being made part-time employees or seeing their paychecks shrink with higher premiums, many workers may prefer being dumped.

(Power Play will leave for another time the consideration of how much payroll tax fraud the new law will engender as small businesses pay “part-time” workers full-time wages. Woof.)

All of this will raise costs and dissatisfy consumers, yes. But the members of Team Obama also know that as long as implementation is lurching forward it becomes harder to uproot the system, no matter how expensive or unwieldy. That’s why Republicans are hoping to use these myriad problems and cost overruns to delay the system. Repeal or alteration remains possible as long as the system isn’t in place.

Obama’s decision to ram through the health law when it was still a jumble, especially using a procedural trick, was predicated on the belief that after he was re-elected he could put the law into place.

But the jumble persists and now threatens his legacy project.

And Now, A Word From Charles

“The Episcopal Church, it used to be said of it a generation ago it was the establishment at prayer. And now, it’s the American left at prayer. And I think that’s one of the reasons why it and the other mainline denominations are in such decline. Because if you want a message like what Reverend Leon delivered you go to a Democratic Party meeting or a pro-choice rally, you don’t go to church.”

— Charles Krauthammer on “Special Report with Bret Baier.”

Senate Democrats recently removed bans on semi-automatic weapons from pending gun-control legislation in apparent hopes of passing the more politically acceptable universal background checks — even referring to the checks as the “sweet spot” of the proposal.

But the issue has turned into the new sticking point in Congress with a top Republican saying Sunday the plan is “going nowhere” and Democrats and other gun-control advocates pressing the issue.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham repeated the argument among gun-rights advocates that the federal government should not add new checks when existing ones are not enforced.

“The current system is broken,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Why in the world would you expand that system if you’re not enforcing the law that exists today. … So I think that legislation is going nowhere.”

Leading gun-control advocate Mark Kelly warned Republican senators that trying to block a vote on new firearms legislation that includes universal background checks could hurt their re-election efforts.

Kelly, a former astronaut and Navy captain, directed his remarks to Sens. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, among five Republican senators who have suggested they will filibuster a debate and full floor vote.

“They should listen to their constituents” and not get in the way of the debate, Kelly told “Fox News Sunday.”

Kelly, who with wife and retired Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords leads the gun-control advocacy group Americans for Responsible solutions, said at least 80 percent of voters in Paul and Rubio’s districts favor the checks for potential gun buyers.

Giffords was shot in the head by Jared Lee Loughner, a mentally ill young man, in January 2011 during a town hall-style meeting outside Tucson, Ariz.

New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he once called background checks the sweet spot “because it would do a whole lot of good and have a good chance of passing.”

“I’m working very hard with both Democrats and Republicans, pro-(National Rifle Association) and anti-NRA people, to come up with a background check that will be acceptable to 60 senators and be very strong and get the job done,” he said. “It’s very hard and we’re working hard and I’m very hopeful that we can get this passed.”

Congress returns April 8 from spring break. No vote on the legislation has been scheduled. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is expected to bring legislation to the floor next month that is likely to include the background check but no bans on semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity gun magazines.

Sens. Ted Cruz, Texas; Mike Lee, Utah; and James Inhofe, Oklahoma, are the three others who have vowed to join in the filibuster.

“We, the undersigned, intend to oppose any legislation that would infringe on the American people’s constitutional right to bear arms, or on their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to government surveillance,” they said in a March 22 letter to Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

Graham said he will not join the filibuster, unless Reid blocks alternative amendments in the floor vote.

Meanwhile, Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley is crafting a Republican alternative to the one recently passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, his office said Thursday.

No details have been released, but the bill is expected to include tougher laws on straw purchases and illegal gun trafficking, efforts to increase school safety and keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

A new CBS News poll shows 47 percent of Americans now support tougher gun laws, compared to 57 percent after the December 2012 shooting massacre at a Connecticut elementary school in which 20 first-graders and six adults were killed.

President Obama, who said the day of the shootings was the worst so far of his two-term presidency, push back last week on criticism that Washington has missed its opportunity to pass reform legislation by allowing momentum to fade.

“Let me tell you, people here don’t forget,” said Obama, who will travel Wednesday to Denver to talk with community leaders and local law enforcement officials about new state gun laws. “I haven’t forgotten those kids. Shame on us if we’ve forgotten.”

Kelly also called the potential Grassley bill a “mistake” because it doesn’t include the background check and disagreed with the argument it will lead to a federal registry and possible gun confiscation.

However, he agreed with the argument that states a need to pass along to the federal government information about mentally ill people.

“They absolutely have a point,” Kelly told Fox.

There’s no doubt that Barack Hussein Obama is a populist politician. In many ways he is the every man . . . proving to the masses that indeed, anyone can become the president of the United States of America.

It is a fanciful dream of every American, that each little citizen child can grow up to become the most powerful leader in the world. It is part of our heritage, that no matter how humble the beginnings, or how disadvantaged due to some quirk of life, in this country it is possible to overcome the hurdles and rise to the very top; and in fact, it is true.

In the case of Barack Obama, he was born a minority baby in Hawaii (although he claimed to be born in Kenya when promoting the first of multiple autobiographies) to mixed-race parents (raised by his grandparents), and was saddled with a Muslim name. Although most of his records have been sealed and whisked away to vaults where the vetting process has been declared DOA, he appears to have done well in school at times, and have finished well at ivy league institutions.

Barack Obama appears to have been a fairly common intercity youth, and describes himself as abusing alcohol, marijuana and cocaine, and leaves room to believe there were additional drugs and related activities in the mix.

Obama was a player as a young adult, and describes his out-of-marriage affairs with women of multiple races, although the fact has been recently reported that the identities of these women were mere creations, composites generated for purposes of the books about himself.

Politically, Barack Obama is a Chicago minority street fighter, fitting well into the Democratic machine — “Vote early, vote often!” He describes himself as a “community organizer,” which in retrospect appears to have included an armband of some sort and included duties like registering the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders to vote. His politics are those of the ’60s campus radical, as are those of his mentors and appointees. He has exchanged treasury dollars for support and votes in the tradition of his party and as promised, has siphoned trillions of them off to promote his social welfare utopian ideals — most of those dollars ending up in the hands of his cronies. Although this “tax, spend, elect” cycle is short-lived per force, concluding when the treasury is emptied, the tactic often plays well to the electorate, in the short term. That run is about over judging from the 60 percent increase in the national debt in just the first 4 years of Obama’s presidency.

The President has often been seen making the television show circuit, demonstrating to his base that he is indeed the man they were told he was just 4 years ago — before he demonstrated a deaf ear to the citizens of the nation, and turned his tenure into a non-stop vacation cruise around the world.

The President’s White House is reported to be a boy’s club, hostile to working women and focused on sports television programming and drinking beer with other cool guys. The proletariat eats this stuff up.

So is Barack Hussein Obama the coolest president we’ve had in the White House? He’s not the player that Kennedy and Clinton were, and he hasn’t put away as much booze as some of the record holders . . . but all in all, it appears safe to say that he is indeed the most common man that has graced the hallowed sanctum of the people’s house.

Publius