Dick Armey's FreedomWorks

In its first nine months, the ObamaCare “tanning bed tax” raised only $54.4 million, barely one-third of the roughly $150 million predicted when the controversial — and costly — health care law was being debated in Congress. 

The “Tanning Tax” is just one of the many new taxes created in ObamaCare. Its failure to meet expectations further erodes the credibility of a law that, according to polls, is opposed by a solid majority of Americans.

While some of the revenue shortfall may have been due to first-year bungling by the Internal Revenue Service bureaucracy, the more likely explanation for the overly optimistic projection is that congressional budget “experts” failed to take into account the basic laws of economics. Taxation fundamentally alters behavior because people respond to incentives. A quarter of salons surveyed have reported a drop in business since the tax began to be collected on July 1, 2010. One possible reason for the relatively meager revenue derived from the tax is that some tanning salons already on the brink of going out of business were pushed over the edge by this tax.

Of course, customers might also be switching to tanning methods that don’t fall under the new tax, such as spray-on tans and tanning lotions. This might please those who advocated the tax in order to lower the use of dangerous tanning beds, but Americans concerned about the debt and deficit have to be worried. ObamaCare will already cost $2.6 trillion over its first ten years of full operation. Overly optimistic revenue projections across the board will only further increase the deficit and drive America deeper into debt. Repealing ObamaCare and its hundreds of disastrous or problematic provisions and programs and replacing it with market-based solutions is the only realistic first step in turning the tide of federal spending and addressing the rising costs of health care. 

The farther one digs into the 2,801 page ObamaCare bill, the more problems one finds. If the Democratic congressional leaders who supported this massive law couldn’t properly estimate the effects of a simple, 10% excise tax on indoor tanning services, why should we believe their claims that ObamaCare “won’t cost taxpayers a dime” and repealing it will “increase the deficit”? 

This is yet another reason why we need to make 2012 the last year of ObamaCare. 

Dear FreedomWorks member,

As one of our million-plus FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative and ask him or her support the budget process reform package introduced by members of the House Budget Committee. The comprehensive package of ten legislative reforms will strengthen spending controls, enhance accountability and increase transparency in the federal budget process.

1. The Legally Binding Budget Act, H.R. 3575, would give the budget the force of law by converting it from a concurrent to a joint resolution, which requires the President’s signature.

2. The Spending Control Act, H.R. 3576, would establish binding limitations on federal spending and deficits within each category if the program is growing faster than inflation.

3. The Expedited Line-Item Veto and Rescissions Act, H.R. 3521, would provide for the expedited consideration by Congress of specific requests by the President to reduce discretionary spending in appropriations legislation.

4. The Biennial Budgeting and Enhanced Oversight Act, H.R. 3577, would establish a biennial budgeting cycle where Congress adopts a budget resolution in the first session of Congress (i.e., odd-numbered years) and considers authorization legislation in the second session, providing greater opportunities for review of government spending.

5. The Baseline Reform Act, H.R. 3578, would reform the budget “baseline” to remove automatic inflation increases in discretionary accounts, and to require a comparison to the previous year’s spending levels.

6. The Government Shutdown Prevention Act, H.R. 1255, would provide automatic authority to fund programs at a slightly reduced rate from the previous year’s level, if Congress fails to enact appropriation bills by the beginning of the fiscal year (Oct. 1).

7. The Review Every Dollar Act, H.R. 3579, would require periodic sunset reviews and reauthorization of all federal programs, require transfers from the general fund to the Highway Trust Fund to be offset, remove all direct spending provisions from Pell Grants and require any new rule or regulation to be explicitly funded by Congress.

8. The Balancing our Obligations for the Long Term Act, H.R. 3580, would cap total spending, require GAO and OMB to report annually on the federal government’s unfunded obligations, require CBO long-term estimates beyond the 10-year window and require Congress to review long-term budget trends every five years.

9. The Budget and Accountability Transparency Act, H.R. 3581, would reform the Credit Reform Act to incorporate Fair Value accounting principles, require all federal agencies to make public the budgetary justification materials prepared in support of their requests for taxpayer dollars and require a CBO & OMB study on offsetting receipts.

10. The Pro-Growth Budgeting Act, H.R. 3582, would require the CBO to provide an assessment of the macroeconomic impact of major legislation.

Sincerely,

Matt Kibbe
President and CEO
FreedomWorks
[Click here to see a PDF version of this letter.]

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What’s Happening in Congress – The Top 10 Things You Need to Know this Week, 2/6/2012

1. This Week’s Legislative Highlight: The House is expected to call for a conference report on the differing House and Senate versions of the extension of the payroll tax cut.  While the House and Senate remain deeply divided over details of the extension, an innovative alternative proposal to keep the tax cut on the table without draining revenue from Social Security has emerged in the Social Security Preservation through Individual Choice Enhancement (SSPICE) Act.  Sponsored by Rep. Jeff Landry (LA-3), this bill, HR 3551, gives taxpayers the option to keep their 2 percent payroll tax cut in exchange for delaying their eligibility for benefits by one month, which the Chief Actuary for Social Security says is enough to pay for the cut, reducing Social Security’s unfunded liabilities by $2.1 trillion over its 75-year budget window.
2. House & Senate Schedule: The House and Senate both remain in session, and both chambers will remain so until the week of President’s Day (February 20-24), when they will return home to meet with constituents.
3. Senate/FAA: The Senate will vote on the conference report on the bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration.  The House has already passed its end of the report, and the Senate is expected to follow suit without much delay.
4. House/Spending: The House should vote Tuesday on H.R. 1734, the Civilian Property Realignment Act, which would create a commission to identify obsolete or unused Federal properties and lands which could be sold in order to both raise money and save on maintenance costs.  The commission would work similarly to the old BRAC commission which closed many redundant military facilities after the end of the Cold War.
5. House/Budget: The House will consider the next two out of the ten budget process reform bills being introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan over the next several weeks.  On Tuesday, the first of these bills to reach the floor should be H.R. 3521, the line Item Veto and Rescissions Act.  Introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan (WI-1), this would give the president the opportunity to recommend specific cuts to the year’s budget. Unlike a true line-item veto, the recommendations would be subject to a vote by Congress before taking effect.
6. House/Budget: The second budget reform bill this week is H.R. 3581, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act.  Since the housing crisis of 2008, the government now explicitly runs the Government-Sponsored Entities (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and this bill, introduced by Rep. Scott Garrett (NJ-5), seeks to force the government to recognize the costs of administering Fannie and Freddie, by including their operating costs in the federal budget.  The bill would also change the way that the CBO calculates the costs of these loan-granting institutions by holding them to the same accounting practices as similar private institutions.  This bill should reach the floor by Wednesday.
7. House/Spending: A major bill which is on the horizon is highway and transit funding.  Congress has just been extending transportation funding instead of actually passing a new highway budget. This is similar to how the Senate has treated the budget for the past 1000-plus days, except that the transportation funding has been extended since 2005, and each time the extension has contained budget increases and/or massive amounts of earmark spending projects.  Transportation spending now exceeds its funding source (the federal gas tax), and the Highway Trust Fund is being depleted by the excess spending. 
8. House/Financial Regulation: Later in the week, the House is expected to take up S. 2038, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, which was passed by the Senate last week.  This is the bill to prevent insider trading by regulating the investments of members of Congress and their staff.  However, some major concerns have been raised about the open-endedness of this bill and the possibilities for abuse, as theoretically any information that is passed onto any company or investor, even accidentally, could be a cause for legal action against the member or staffer involved.  The House is expected the amend the Senate version of the bill in order to prevent it from being overly broad, but the details of these amendments are not yet available.
9. Call your Congressman!
10. Call your Senator!

The trouble with legislation today is that the devil is in the details, and those details are usually created by the federal bureaucracy. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as ObamaCare, was signed into law on March 23rd, 2010. So, why is it a surprise that some religious institutions, particularly Catholic hospitals and universities, will be required by law to provide contraceptives in their employee health care plans? Surely the outcry over this mandate would have come out nearly two years ago when the bill became a law, right?

Well, no. Modern legislators specialize in writing vague, pleasant-sounding laws that in effect delegate their lawmaking power to the federal bureaucracy. In other words, Congress writes a law demanding an “end” and tells the bureaucracy to decide what “means” will be necessary in order to achieve that end. In itself, this process is entirely unconstitutional due to its breach of the separation of powers doctrine. The federal bureaucracy is at least nominally a part of the executive branch, so when Congress allows an agency such as Health and Human Services to decide exactly how crucial components of bills such as ObamaCare will function, the power to make law shifts from the legislative to the executive branch. 

This is a win-win for Congressmen. They get to claim the credit for passing a health care reform bill while passing off the blame for unpopular details like this contraception decision to the bureaucracy. Better yet, once the provisions of the bill are finally enacted, a new bureaucracy will be created or an existing one will expand dramatically. Citizens will undoubtedly get caught in the web of regulations spun by this bureaucracy, and they will then go to their Congressman for help cutting through the red tape. As a result, the Congressman not only receives credit for passing a pleasant-sounding law, but also gets to look like a hero to his constituents after confronting the bureaucracy on their behalf.  He garners votes both ways.

Let’s examine the contraception controversy a little more carefully. It began soon after the January 20th decision from Health and Human Services that only churches and other houses of worship would be exempted from the new ObamaCare requirement that employee health care plans include contraceptives. The Secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, has defended the mandate by arguing that because Catholic hospitals and universities usually aren’t primarily staffed by Catholics, that they ought to be treated like any other employer. Frankly, this argument completely misses the point.

At its heart, this is a debate over principles and the First Amendment to the Constitution. The relevant portion of the amendment is, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In other words, people have the right to follow their conscience when it comes to religious matters. For the Catholic Church, contraceptives and other forms of birth control such as sterilization are very much so a moral matter and Catholic doctrine opposes their use. The “free exercise” of religion is not limited to worshipping in a church. Following a doctrine or set of beliefs is integral to every faith and clearly falls under the “free exercise” of religion.

Forcing Catholic employers to offer contraceptives as part of their employee health care plans fundamentally violates their First Amendment right to follow their conscience with regard to contraception. The popular liberal refrain to this argument is that many American Catholic women have used or at least condone the use of contraceptives, but is that really the point? First, the issue at hand is a mandate on employers to provide contraceptives, not a mandate on women to use them. Second, regardless of disagreements within the Church over contraception, Church doctrine still prohibits its use.  Those who stray from doctrine on this issue can just go out and purchase contraceptives without a government mandate forcing their employers to violate their beliefs on the matter. This mandate is just another case of our intrusive federal government completely disregarding Constitutional restrictions on its power.

The blowback from this decision is powerful and coming from all over the country. Senator Marco Rubio from Florida wrote that, “As Americans, we should all be appalled by an activist government so overbearing and so obsessed with forcing mandates on the American people that it forces such a choice on religious institutions.”  Monsignor Robert McClory, the vicar-general of the Archdiocese of Detroit, is quoted in the Detroit Free Press as saying, “It’s dangerous and threatening… We're being told to violate our conscience or be in violation of the law.”

Catholics understand that a dangerous precedent will be set if this decision goes by unchallenged. Even Sister Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association and an important supporter of ObamaCare, called the decision a “jolt”. Catholic doctrine teaches that life begins at conception, so for Catholics this ruling is no different than one that would require Catholic employers to provide for abortions in their employee health care plans. If those of us who believe in the free exercise of religion from federal government interference don’t protest this decision, regardless of whether or not we’re Catholic, then where do we draw the line?

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney argues, "We need to make sure that those employees of all different faiths have access to contraception… That's why we sought what we believe is an appropriate balance." Given the choice between how to balance our right to the free exercise of religion against our “right” to contraceptives, the Obama administration came down in favor of contraception. Contraceptives can be bought almost anywhere in the country at an affordable price. Our religious freedom is priceless and must be safeguarded. 

The Obama admini...
Publ.Date: Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:34:23 +0000


FreedomWorks Grassroots Training in Round Rock, Tx on Feb. 18th

FreedomWorks is looking forward to being back in the Austin, Tx area in a couple of weeks! Join us in Round Rock on Saturday, Feb. 18th at the Wingate Conference Center located at 1209 North Interstate Highway 35, off exit 359. The event starts at 5:00pm and is free and open to the public.

RSVP on FreedomConnector by clicking here!

Scrap Minimum Wage Laws

For far too long, we have witnessed government intervene in the market place in the name of helping those who are less fortunate. This involvement has become so heavily politicized that if one were to speak against such intervention they would be blamed for not caring about the less fortunate, regardless of their correct economic knowledge.  Government intervention includes price fixing, whether it is artificially maximizing or minimizing a price for a commodity or simply setting minimum wages for hourly wage earners. All of these policies do the exact opposite of what they are intended to do. Bureaucrats do not understand that a wage is in fact a price; therefore the same harmful effects of arbitrarily setting prices of goods will have the same negative impact as setting a minimum wage.

For example, when the government arbitrarily maximizes the price of a commodity, two major problems come about. Let’s say that the government set the price of a gallon of milk was selling at $4 a gallon, government bureaucrats believe the price is too high and set a maximum price of $3 a gallon. The first problem is that now that the price of milk is $3 more people can afford to buy the milk, creating a higher demand and a higher scarcity of milk which will cause the price to increase. The second major problem is that it puts producers out of business. Let’s say that it costs a farmer $3.50 to produce the milk, when it was selling at $4 a gallon they made a .50 cent profit on each gallon. Now that the maximum price is $3, they will now be losing money on each gallon they sell. It will not be long until the producer stops producing milk and will be less prosperous. There will be less milk available in the market.  

San Francisco recently joined the club in believing that setting a high minimum wage law creates more prosperity for everybody. The brilliant legislators set the minimum wage to $10.24 an hour, starting in early of 2012. David Frias, a minimum wage earner at a local movie theatre said "I know I'm going to have a little extra money in my wallet. San Francisco is a model for low-wage workers - it's full respect, I guess." Little does he understand that now that all employers in San Francisco must pay such a high wage, the only way to compensate for the high wage is to sell their goods at a higher price. So the wage earner is not any better off now than when he earned a lower wage. This burden is shifted too all consumers, even those who do not earn a “minimum wage.” Now that all prices are higher, the consumer will buy less, hurting almost all businesses.

The proper way to raise wages without government intervention is to allow the free market to operate completely. Allowing businesses to compete with one another is the most pure and productive way of creating the highest wages without effecting prices and forcing producers to pay a wage they can’t afford. Unemployment would drop significantly as those who are unemployed to do unfair minimum wage laws would then voluntarily work for a lesser wage than what was set as the minimum by the government. The key to employment and prosperity is production; therefore it is impossible to create more wealth than what is created by the market. In the same sense that we can’t pay an individual more than their worth of productivity.