The Dark Side of the Payroll Tax Cut

The left wants to bail out Social Security with income redistribution.___________________________________________________________
In December 2010, President Obama and Congress reached an agreement whereby the Social Security payroll tax would be cut by two percentage points in 2011—from 12.4 percent to 10.4 percent—as a temporary stimulus measure. The president later proposed that the cut be extended and expanded in 2012. Before Congress went home at the end of 2011, it passed a 60-day extension of the two-point tax cut. The payroll tax cut has now been further extended to last throughout 2012 at least.

Most public discussion of the payroll tax cut has pertained to its efficacy (or lack thereof) as economic stimulus. Its greater policy significance, however, lies in another provision tucked into the same law. This provision is now transferring more than $215 billion in general tax revenues (e.g., income taxes) into the Social Security Trust Fund to make up for the reduction in payroll tax revenue.

In other words, the payroll tax cut is not really reducing the amount of tax revenues committed to Social Security. All that it actually does is to shift the Social Security financing burden from covered workers to others—most notably, to those Americans who pay income taxes. This is a transformative change to Social Security, reflecting goals for broader income redistribution now ascendant on the left end of the American political spectrum. CONTINUE READING

Freedom of Religion vs. Freedom from Religion

“I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum declared. “What kind of country do we live in that says only people of nonfaith can come into the public square and make their case?"

Whatever can the former Pennsylvania senator be talking about? How much more in the public square can one get than a closely watched campaign for the nomination as the presidential candidate of one of our two biggest political parties? Not to mention the irony that Santorum made his claim that believers like him are somehow being excluded from the public square on the national ABC News program This Week.

Santorum’s observations were provoked by the latest brouhaha over the role of religion in politics that erupted over the Obama administration’s initial insistence that its new mandatory health care regulations require companies run by the Roman Catholic Church to offer health insurance that covers women’s reproductive services including contraception. The U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops denounced this ruling as a violation of their religious beliefs and an infringement of the First Amendment’s prohibition against laws that interfere with the free exercise of religion.

The Obama administration quickly tried to control the political damage caused by this controversy by artfully claiming that so much money would be saved as a result of women using the services that health insurance companies would cover them at no additional cost. Consequently, the administration argued that the Catholic Church would not be actually paying for health insurance coverage of these reproductive services. Never mind that money saved but not rebated as a lower fee is not really distinguishable from paying for the covered service. CONTINUE READING

U.S. Must Stand Its Ground on the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty

The final Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) for the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) was held last week. The purpose of this PrepCom was to adopt rules of procedure for the U.N. Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty, which will be held in New York July 2–27. This conference is intended to complete the negotiation of the ATT and thus open the treaty for signature and ratification. The outcome of the PrepCom makes it even more vital for the U.S. to establish its red lines and stand its ground before and during the July conference.

The Conference Will Make Decisions on the Basis of Consensus

When the Obama Administration announced in 2009 that it would support the negotiation of an ATT, it did so with an important caveat: The treaty conference had to operate “under the rule of consensus decision-making,” meaning that a formal objection from any national representative to the chair on any matter of substance prevents agreement. But the U.N.’s draft rules of procedure allowed two-thirds majority voting on all matters of substance except the adoption of the final treaty text, as well as on amendments to the rules themselves. This opened the way for the July conference to amend the rules by a two-thirds majority and then to adopt the treaty by a similar majority, over any U.S. objection.

When the PrepCom considered the draft rules of procedure, the U.S. and a number of other nations urged that all matters of substance at the July conference be subject to a strict consensus requirement, while other delegations—including Mexico—supported the U.N.’s weaker proposals. In the end, the PrepCom adopted rules that require the July conference to “take its decisions, and consider the text of the Treaty, by consensus.” In other words, the U.S. will not be limited to an up-or-down vote on the final treaty text. Instead, it will have the opportunity throughout the July conference to object to and block progress on any portion of the ATT that it finds unsatisfactory. CONTINUE READING

Democracy vs. Republic What Are We?

In his article titled Too Much of a Good Thing – Why We need less democracy, Economist and the former Director of the office of Budget and Management for President Obama, Peter Orszag stated, “In an 1814 letter to John Taylor, John Adams wrote that “there never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” That may read today like an overstatement, but it is certainly true that our democracy finds itself facing a deep challenge: During my recent stint in the Obama administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget, it was clear to me that the country’s political polarization was growing worse—harming Washington’s ability to do the basic, necessary work of governing. If you need confirmation of this, look no further than the recent debt-limit debacle, which clearly showed that we are becoming two nations governed by a single Congress—and that paralyzing gridlock is the result. We need less Democracy.”i Regardless of how he intended this statement to read, the words have a lot of meaning in and of themselves among the American people. Clearly there is some confusion about the word democracy and its place as it relates to American understanding of it.

We constantly hear commentaries suggesting we are a democracy, for that reason it would seem prudent to repeat it over and over again that we are not. But of equal importance is the understanding of what we are (were meant to be) and the sippery slope we are traveling on. Modern America in its haste for tolerance and understanding for all has drifted away from our core beliefs and our individual liberties as protected by the Constitution. Individual freedom and liberty were at the forfront of the founders mindset, these rights were put into place in an effort to protect our individual rights and freedoms, they did not intend to dictate rights and liberties for the masses as a whole. CONTINUE READING

The Contraception Mandate Is Illegal, Too!

The Department of Health and Human Services contraception mandate not only tramples religious liberty, it “also violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” write Ed Whelan and David Rivkin (“Birth-Control Mandate: Unconstitutional and Illegal,” Wall Street Journal, February 15, 2012):

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act states that the federal government may "substantially burden" a person's "exercise of religion" only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person "is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest" and "is the least restrictive means of furthering" that interest.
The law also provides that any later statutory override of its protections must be explicit. But there is nothing in the ObamaCare legislation that explicitly or even implicitly overrides the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The birth-control mandate proposed by Health and Human Services is thus illegal.

The refusal, for religious reasons, to provide birth-control coverage is clearly an exercise of religious freedom under the Constitution. The "exercise of religion" extends to performing, or refusing to perform, actions on religious grounds—and it is definitely not confined to religious institutions or acts of worship. Leading Supreme Court cases in this area, for example, involve a worker who refused to work on the Sabbath (Sherbert v. Verner, 1963) and parents who refused to send their teenage children to a public high school (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972) In the high-school case, the Supreme Court found that even a $5 fine on the parents substantially burdened the free exercise of their religion. Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, employers who fail to comply with the birth-control mandate will incur an annual penalty of roughly $2,000 per employee. So it is clearly a substantial burden.

Source: The Insider

Is the Constitution for Everybody?

According to The New York Times, the American Constitution is losing popularity with people around the world. "The Constitution," writes Adam Liptak, "has seen better days ... its influence is waning." Liptak points out that in 1987, over 160 of the 170 countries on Earth had cribbed from the Constitution -- but today, few countries do. Why? Liptak suggests, quoting Professor David Law of Washington University in St. Louis, that our Constitution is "Windows 3.1." It's difficult to amend, and it doesn't guarantee so-called "positive rights," such as healthcare, housing and education. Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia said that he relies more on the legal framework of India, South Africa and New Zealand than on that of the United States.

Intuitively, this sounds wrong. Why would you rely on the legal frameworks of nations that still allow disparate treatment of "untouchables" or countries that until 20 years ago still had different legal standards for blacks and whites? Why not rely on the legal framework that provided for equal rights as early as 1868 and that guaranteed freedom from government overreach almost a century earlier than that?

The answer is simple: More countries today want governments that provide for them rather than governments that keep them free. That is why tyranny is on the move across the globe. The choice to reject the principles underlying the U.S. Constitution isn't a mere choice of one legal form over another -- it's a choice in favor of a philosophy of slavery over a philosophy of freedom. The same countries that provide their citizens with "free healthcare" force their citizens into relative poverty and undercut their citizens' access to high-level healthcare; the same countries that provide "free housing" breed slums and crime. CONTINUE READING

Getting Nowhere, Very Fast

California has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt. But that does not discourage either Governor Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail system.

Most of us might be a little skittish about spending money if we were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. But the beauty of politics is that it is all other people's money, including among those other people generations yet unborn.

The high-speed rail system proposed for California has been envisioned as a model for similar systems elsewhere in the United States. A recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle used the high-speed rail system in Spain as an analogy for California.

Spain is about the same size as California, and has a similar population density -- and population density is the key to the economic viability of mass transportation, from subways to high-speed rail. CONTINUE READING

The Death of Pragmatism

It’s the “Politics of Envy” versus the “Politics of Resentment” in the 2012 election. President Obama has adopted the cover story of “fairness” to mask his drive to convince middle-class Americans that the real reason some people are better off than they are is not because they’re smarter, or work harder, or have a better idea to sell in the American marketplace, but because they cheat — climbing to the top on the backs of overworked, overtaxed, and underpaid Americans. The solution: Re-elect me and I’ll make the rich squeal like stuck pigs, rule by executive fiat, turn the EPA into an avenging Angel of Death for carbon emitters, and embrace the Muslim Brotherhood as, well, brothers.

It won’t solve anything but it will make a lot of people feel better in their misery.

The GOP counters by telling the middle class that the real problem is that there are a sizable number of citizens — including some of your neighbors — who are leeching off your tax dollars and getting a free ride through life. Health care, college tuition, food stamps, housing assistance, unemployment insurance — almost anything that Washington subsidizes is a waste of tax dollars and goes to undeserving reprobates (or illegal aliens) who are the cause of the gigantic growth in the size and scope of the federal government. CONTINUE READING

1,000 Days Without a Budget: Facts on the Senate’s Failure

Tuesday, January 24, marked the 1,000th day since the U.S. Senate has passed a budget—an egregious dereliction of duty on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D–NV) watch. By enacting continuing resolution upon continuing resolution (short-term measures to keep the government running, spending money at the current rate), the Senate has taken a pass on leading, all to the detriment of the poor and middle class.
The budget process forces Congress to set priorities to protect the people’s money and put it to its appropriate use. Instead, the Democrat-controlled Senate has abdicated its responsibility. The result? The deficit is soaring, causing a looming tax burden and injecting uncertainty into the economy, leaving jobs and economic growth on the table. It’s no wonder the U.S. economy’s growth is so tepid.
As the 1,000th day passed, here are some facts about America’s budget and why the Senate must take action to be stewards of the people’s money as the Constitution requires: CONTINUE READING

In Praise of Homeschools

The most admirable group of entrepreneurs is perhaps the least appreciated. Homeschool parents, or parentrepreneurs, are not waiting for politicians and technocrats to fix broken systems of education. Rather, they are eschewing the status quo and finding innovative ways to advance the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual growth of their children. Unlike their counterparts in the public sector, parentrepreneurs have achieved astounding results with humble budgets.

Curiously, parentrepreneurs are seldom the object of praise. They are instead showered with ridicule and demands for intrusive regulations that erode their effectiveness as educators. Self-interested unionists are often at the forefront of this mudslinging. A National Education Association resolution is exemplary of such demagoguery:
Clearly, the NEA perpetuates the myth that parents are too ignorant to be educators. Even worse, they obnoxiously imply that government schools, in fact, provide a comprehensive education experience for all students. Of course, the NEA is hardly a beacon of objectivity. Between 1999 and 2007, the number of homeschooled students increased almost twofold, from 850,000 to 1,500,000 — a trend that threatens its wealth and political clout. CONTINUE READING