AP: Coverage requirement enforced with tax

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iO0ET9fSB07VdMXAhllfBPvKNYyAD9ASBJ7G0

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR (AP) – 1 day ago

WASHINGTON — Memo to President Barack Obama: It's a tax.

Obama insisted this weekend on national television that requiring
people to carry health insurance — and fining them if they don't —
isn't the same thing as a tax increase. But the language of Democratic
bills to revamp the nation's health care system doesn't quibble. Both
the House bill and the Senate Finance Committee proposal clearly state
that the fines would be a tax.

And the reason the fines are in the legislation is to enforce the
coverage requirement.

"If you put something in the Internal Revenue Code, and you tell the
IRS to collect it, I think that's a tax," said Clint Stretch, head of
the tax policy group for Deloitte, a major accounting firm. "If you
don't pay, the person who's going to come and get it is going to be
from the IRS."

Democrats aren't the first to propose that individuals be required to
carry health insurance and fined if they refuse. The conservative
Heritage Foundation called for such a mandate in the 1990s' health
care debate, although its proposal differed from the ones pending in
Congress. Heritage has since dropped the idea and now favors using tax
credits to encourage people to buy coverage — carrots and not sticks.

During the 2008 political campaign, Obama opposed making coverage
mandatory because of the costs. His position has shifted now that it's
becoming clear such a requirement will be part of any legislation that
Congress sends him. Conservative activists are calling it a violation
of his pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class.

"This is exactly what George Bush Sr. did when he said he wouldn't
raise taxes, and it cost him the next election," said Grover Norquist,
president of Americans for Tax Reform. "Obama is doing the same thing,
but he's insulting people by telling them that if you don't call it a
big purple banana, somehow it wouldn't be a tax."

Some liberals acknowledge that Obama might be vulnerable on the
insurance requirement. But they say most people will understand as
long as the legislation provides enough of a subsidy to make the
coverage affordable. That's a central issue this week as the Senate
Finance Committee starts voting on legislation.

"I think it's a metaphysical question as to whether it's a tax or
not," said Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America's
Future. "The real question that will determine whether people are
upset is whether the insurance is affordable."

In an interview that aired Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Obama insisted
that the insurance requirement is not a tax.

"For us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health
insurance is absolutely not a tax increase," the president said. "What
it's saying is...that we're not going to have other people carrying
your burdens for you anymore.

"Right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto
insurance," Obama added. "Nobody considers that a tax increase.

"You just can't make up that language and decide that that's called a
tax increase," he added.

But a Democratic staff description of Sen. Max Baucus' bill calls the
proposed fines an "excise tax." Penalties of up to $950 for
individuals and $3,800 for families would be imposed on those who
don't get coverage. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said Monday he expects
the family penalty to be slashed in half to $1,900.

The House bill uses a complex formula to calculate the penalties,
calling them a "tax on individuals without acceptable health care
coverage."

The coverage mandate is part of a political bargain under which the
insurance industry would agree to take all applicants, regardless of
prior medical history.

"If we're going to have coverage without regard to pre-existing
conditions, it makes sense," said economist Roberton Williams of the
Tax Policy Center. "Otherwise people will come in the door the day
they get sick." He sees no distinction between the requirement to get
coverage and the fines themselves.

"The fact that it is imposed on people and they have no choice in
paying it, and the fact that it's administered through the tax system
all make it look like a tax," Williams said. The center is a joint
venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.

It wouldn't be the first asterisk added to Obama's campaign pledge on
taxes. Earlier this year, he signed a tobacco tax increase to pay for
children's health insurance. Even that can be read as a violation of
his expansive campaign promise.

"I can make a firm pledge," he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12, 2008.
"Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see
any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax,
not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

He repeatedly promised "you will not see any of your taxes increase
one single dime."

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Budget chief contradicts Obama on Medicare costs

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gJK9ly3ovzfflxGjV-dxk2sLILKgD9ASKCQG2

By ERICA WERNER (AP) – 15 hours ago

WASHINGTON — Congress' chief budget officer is contradicting President
Barack Obama's oft-stated claim that seniors wouldn't see their
Medicare benefits cut under a health care overhaul.

The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas
Elmendorf, told senators Tuesday that seniors in Medicare's managed
care plans would see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance
Committee.

The bill would cut payments to the Medicare Advantage plans by more
than $100 billion over 10 years.

Elmendorf said the changes would reduce the extra benefits that would
be made available to beneficiaries.

Critics say the plans are overpaid, while supporters say they work well.

Obama says cuts to Medicare providers won't reduce seniors' benefits.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

UN plans 'shock therapy' for world leaders on environment

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/20/united-nations-summit-climate-change

The United Nations is planning a form of diplomatic shock therapy for
world leaders this week in the hope of injecting badly needed urgency
into negotiations for a climate change treaty that, it is now widely
acknowledged, are dangerously adrift.

UN chief Ban Ki-Moon and negotiators say that unless they can convert
world leaders into committed advocates of radical action, it will be
very hard to reach a credible and enforceable agreement to avoid the
most devastating consequences of climate change.

As the digital counter ticking off the hours to the Copenhagen summit
– which had been supposed to seal the deal on climate change – hit 77
days today, progress at the UN summit in New York is seen as vital.
Nearly 100 heads of state and government are to attend the summit, for
which a pared-down format has been devised.

"We need these leaders to go outside their usual comfort zones," said
one diplomat. "Our sense is that leaders have got a little too cosy
and comfortable. They really have to hear from countries that are
vulnerable and suffering."

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, which won the Nobel peace prize with Al Gore, agreed.
Commenting on the leaders attending the G20 summit in Pittsburgh next
week, he said: "We need to remind these people about impacts of
climate change – the fact that they are inequitable and fall very
heavily on some of the poorest people in the world. We are likely to
see a large number of failed states if we don't act in time."

The heads of state attending the UN summit are to be stripped of their
entourages. Each will be allowed just one aide, generally their
country's environment minister, in the sessions.

Instead of set-piece speeches, leaders will be paired off to chair
discussion groups. Britain will be with Guyana, Tuvalu with the
Netherlands, and Mongolia with the European commission.

The leaders will also lunch with environmental activists and chief
executives of corporations who have been pressing their governments
for action. At dinner, the leaders of the biggest polluting countries
will dine with the leaders of Bangladesh, Kiribati and Costa Rica –
which are among the primary victims of climate change.

By the end of the day, the rationale goes, the leaders will be imbued
with a new sense of purpose. Leaders of rich countries will have been
galvanised to take on the big emissions cuts – 25-40% over the next
decade, 80% by 2050 – needed to keep temperatures from rising more
than two degrees above pre-industrial levels, the temperature set by
science to avoid the most calamitous effects of climate change.

The leaders will also, it is hoped, have some understanding of the
threat to poorer countries. And, at the very least, they will have
more of a common purpose in tackling the problem. "We need to gather
together. We don't want to blame or point fingers at each other," said
Yaqoub al-Sanada, counsellor at the Kuwaiti mission to the UN. Kuwait
– one of the biggest producers of oil – will co-chair a discussion
session with Finland.

The UN is hoping for help from Barack Obama. The US president will
speak at the session, and there is anticipation he will deliver a
strong signal that America is committed to action. There is growing
anxiety for those kinds of reassurances, especially as opposition to
Obama's green agenda grows in Congress. "The first question I get any
time I meet with anybody is, 'Where's the legislation? How's it
going?'," Todd Stern, the State Department's climate change envoy,
said. There are also reports that China's president, Hu Jintao, in his
first appearance at the UN, will announce new commitments to curb
pollution – the kind of signal that will be crucial to boost
negotiations in the days leading up to Copenhagen.

"We can get a successful outcome from Copenhagen. It is achievable,
but at the moment it's in the balance," said John Ashton, Britain's
climate change envoy. "We need to close the gaps."

Those gaps grew over the summer. There is what Ashton called the
"ambition gap" – the failure of leaders of the big polluting countries
to sign on to the deep emissions cuts needed. Then there is the
"finance gap" – the failure of industrialised states to come up with a
package on how to compensate poor countries that will suffer the most
devastating consequences.

Britain came forward last June with an estimate of £61bn a year by
2020. Negotiators are frustrated that major industrialised states have
not set clear figures on how much they are willing to commit, or how
they will provide the funding.

Some climate change experts and negotiators have already begun
planning a fallback position should the December Copenhagen summit
fail to produce a strong enough agreement.

In Washington, Obama administration officials now talk openly about
negotiating beyond Copenhagen. "Let's not make that one particular
time the be-all and end-all, and say that if it doesn't happen we are
doomed," Steven Chu, the energy secretary, told reporters.

Thinktanks are already starting to work on what is being called "Plan
B" – scenarios for how the world could come up with an action plan
before it is too late. But some are not holding their breath.

"It seems to me that Copenhagen is not the end of this," said Tim
Wirth, the president of the UN Foundation, and the man who, in the
1980s, helped to write the first cap-and-trade plan for acid rain. He
added: "We are going to have Copenhagens for the rest of our lives."

U.S. to push for new economic world order at G20

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE58G34Z20090921?sp=true

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will urge world leaders this
week to launch a new push in November to rebalance the world economy,
but there are doubts national governments will bow to external advice.

A document outlining the U.S. position ahead of the September 24-25
Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh said exporters, which include China,
Germany and Japan, should consume more, while debtors like the United
States ought to boost savings.

"The world will face anemic growth if adjustments in one part of the
global economy are not matched by offsetting adjustments in other
parts," said the document, which was obtained by Reuters on Monday.

The framework drafted by U.S. policy makers foresaw analysis of G20
members' economic policies by the International Monetary Fund to
figure out if they were consistent with better balanced growth.

"We call on our finance ministers to launch the new framework by
November," the document said, signaling a determined effort to
maintain momentum for change created by last year's global financial
crisis.

The United States envisages the IMF playing a central role in a
process of "mutual assessment" by making policy recommendations to the
G20 every six months.

Finance ministers and central bankers from the G20 countries are due
to meet November 7-8 in Scotland.

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said persuading
Europe, the United States and China to accept IMF advice on economic
policy may be difficult. In the past, many countries have ignored
suggestions the IMF dished out in regular reviews.

Trichet told French newspaper Le Monde the G20 had made progress on
reforms to make the financial system more stable after the crisis.

"The most difficult question is still open: Europe, America, China,
are they ready to modify their macroeconomic policies in the future --
by following the advice of the IMF and under pressure from their
peers, for the common good, and world economic stability?" he said in
the piece on Monday.

G7 sources told Reuters there was a renewed determination to cooperate
because the crisis had driven home the interconnected nature of the
global system. That said, governments would not allow themselves to be
told what to do.

"We can't get to a situation where any country is giving up its own
decision-making," said one source, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity.

Germany, a major exporter to the United States, was singled out on
Sunday by U.S. President Barack Obama as a country that, like China,
exports a lot but does not buy much back.

But a top European Union official said that the euro zone, where 16
countries share a common currency, had to act as a collective.

"It is difficult to think about one country without taking into
consideration what is the impact in the euro area," European
Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters in New York.

Taxpayer money to the tune of $5 trillion has been pumped into the
world economy to keep it from seizing up since the beginning of the
crisis last September.

G20 leaders will maintain that pace of stimulus while acknowledging
that at some point it will have to be wound down, the document said.

But, mindful of how a disorderly rush to raise interest rates could
roil world markets again, they will also ask finance ministers to
thrash out a "transparent and credible" exit strategy.

There were no details of how to achieve this in practice, but the
document echoed the caution of G20 finance ministers at their meeting
in London earlier this month acknowledging the pace of change would
vary by country.

Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the IMF, warned there was a
risk the Pittsburgh summit would be an empty public relations
exercise.

"The point of the meetings is to try to reassure themselves and
everyone else that they're broadly on track and have a round of
applause and some back patting," he said.

But John Bruton, the EU ambassador to Washington, said it was
important not to ignore the summit's symbolic power.

"I think we're seeing the beginning of a conversation between world
leaders," he told Reuters in an interview.

(Additional reporting by Anna Willard in Paris, Sumeet Desai in
London, Leslie Wroughton and Emily Kaiser in Washington, Caren Bohan
in Troy, Walter Brandimarte in New York and Darren Ennis in Brussels;
Editing by Andrew Hay)

Strangers to Dissent, Liberals Try to Stifle It

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_michael_barone/strangers_to_dissent_liberals_try_to_stifle_it

It is an interesting phenomenon that the response of the left half of
our political spectrum to criticism and argument is often to try to
shut it down. Thus President Obama in his Sept. 9 speech to a joint
session of Congress told us to stop "bickering," as if principled
objections to major changes in public policy were just childish
obstinacy, and chastised his critics for telling "lies," employing
"scare tactics" and playing "games." Unlike his predecessor, he sought
to use the prestige of his office to shut criticism down.

Now, no one likes criticism very much, and most politicians would
prefer to have their colleagues and constituents meekly and gratefully
agree with them on pretty much everything. And yes, Rep. Joe Wilson
did seem to have broken the rules and standards of decorum of the
House (though not of the British House of Commons) when he shouted,
"You lie!" in the middle of Obama's speech.

But none of this justifies the charges, passed off as cool-headed
analysis, that Obama's critics are motivated by racism. There are
plenty of non-racist reasons to oppose (or to support) the Democrats'
health care proposals.

I would submit that the president's call for an end to "bickering" and
the charges of racism by some of his supporters are the natural reflex
of people who are not used to hearing people disagree with them and
who are determined to shut them up.

This comes naturally to liberals educated in our great colleges and
universities, so many of which have speech codes whose primary aim is
to prevent the expression of certain conservative ideas and which are
commonly deployed for that purpose. (For examples, see the Website of
the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which defends
students of all political stripes.) Once the haven of free inquiry and
expression, academia has become a swamp of stifling political
correctness.

Similarly, the "mainstream media" -- the old-line broadcast networks,
The New York Times, etc. -- present a politically correct picture of
the world. The result is that liberals can live in a cocoon, an
America in which seldom is heard a discouraging word. Conservatives,
in contrast, find themselves constantly pummeled with liberal
criticism, on campus, in news media, and in Hollywood TV and movies.
They don't like it, but they've gotten used to it. Liberals aren't
used to it and increasingly try to stamp it out.

"Mainstream media" try to help. In the past few weeks, we have seen
textbook examples of how MSM have ignored news stories that reflected
badly on the administration for which it has such warm feelings. It
ignored the videos in which the White House "green jobs czar"
proclaimed himself a "communist" and the "truther" petition he signed
charging that George W. Bush may have allowed the Sept. 11 attacks.

It ignored the videos released on Andrew Breitbart's biggovernment.com
showing ACORN employees offering to help a supposed pimp and
prostitute evade taxes and employ 13- to 15-year-old prostitutes. It
downplayed last spring's Tea Parties -- locally organized
demonstrations against big government that attracted about a million
people nationwide -- and downplayed the Tea Party throng at the
Capitol and on the Mall Sept. 12.

Actually, "mainstream media" are doing their friends in the Obama
administration and the Democratic Party no favors, at least in the
long run. Obama comes from one-party Chicago, and the House Democrats'
nine top leadership members and committee chairmen come from districts
that voted on average 73 percent for Obama last fall. They need help
in understanding the larger country they are seeking to govern, where
nearly half voted the other way. Instead, they get the impression they
can dismiss critics as racist or "Nazis" or as indulging in (as Sen.
Harry Reid said) "evil-mongering."

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has warned us that there's a danger that intense
rhetoric can provoke violence, and no decent person wants to see harm
come to our president or other leaders. But it's interesting that the
two most violent incidents at this summer's town hall meetings came
when a union thug beat up a 65-year-old black conservative in Missouri
and when a liberal protester bit off part of a man's finger in
California.

These incidents don't justify a conclusion that all liberals are
violent. But they are more evidence that American liberals, unused to
hearing dissent, have an impulse to shut it down.

COPYRIGHT 2009 THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

Obama's promise from last fall to cut taxes

http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2009/09/obamas-promise-from-last-fall-to-cut.html

Welcome! Please e-mail me with any questions at johnrlott@aol.com.
9/20/2009
Obama's promise from last fall to cut taxes
The entire speech is available here.

My plan - all together - is a net tax cut. My plan will cut taxes
to a smaller share of the economy than they were under President
Reagan. Under my plan, income taxes for typical American families will
be the lowest that they've been in more than a half century. Everyone
in America - everyone - will pay lower taxes than they would under the
rates Bill Clinton had in the 1990s. And under my plan, middle class
families will get three times as much relief as Senator McCain is
offering. In fact, his plan gives absolutely nothing to over 100
million American households.

And I can make a firm pledge: under my plan, no family making less
than $250,000 will see their taxes increase - not your income taxes,
not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your
taxes. My opponent can't make that pledge, and here's why: for the
first time in American history, he wants to tax your health benefits
Apparently, Senator McCain doesn't think it's enough that your health
premiums have doubled, he thinks you should have to pay taxes on them
too. That's a $3.6 trillion tax increase on middle class families.
That will eventually leave tens of millions of you paying higher
taxes. That's his idea of change. . . . .

Politico notes this today:

President Barack Obama blitzed the Sunday morning airwaves to
pitch health reform but found himself on the defensive — denying the
plan breaks his campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle
class and insisting the public insurance option isn't dead. . . .

"For us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get
health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase," Obama said on
ABC's "This Week." "What it's saying is that we're not going to have
other people carrying your burdens for you any more than the fact that
right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance.
Nobody considers that a tax increase."

Critics of Obama's proposals say that taxes and higher fees on
insurance companies, drug makers and other industries would simply be
passed on to consumers – also amounting to a hidden cost in the plan.

After he was pressed on it some more, in a testy exchange where
Stephanopoulos at one point read the definition of "tax" from Merriam
Webster's Dictionary, Obama held firm.

"My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that
I'm taking over every sector of the economy. You know that," Obama
said.

"But you reject that it's a tax increase?" the host said.

"I absolutely reject that notion," Obama said. . . .

Here is the problem. This tax isn't just limited to those without
health insurance. People making less than $250,000 will also pay this
tax even if they have health insurance.

As an aside, I should also point to this related promise is available here.

When Bob Schieffer asked Obama what he was going to do about the
deficit Obama promised to cut the it: "But there is no doubt that
we've been living beyond our means and we're going to have to make
some adjustments. Now, what I've done throughout this campaign is to
propose a net spending cut." . . .

One third of people registered by ACORN were rejected by election officials?

http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2009/09/one-third-of-people-registered-by-acorn.html

In an article generally defending ACORN against the recent five films
released on biggovernment.com, there was this interesting fact
(http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_debra_j_saunders/inside_the_glorious_nation_of_acorn).

Last year, ACORN was forced to acknowledge that election officials
rejected 400,000 of the 1.3 million people the group had tried to
register. . . .

The article does have some other interesting facts about problems with
the ACORN sting.