Free Republic

The House Commerce Committee has approved legislation to extend Michigan’s film incentive subsidy program indefinitely. Senate Bill 1103 was advanced Wednesday on a 10-7 vote as four Republican committee members joined six Democrats in support of the measure. The bill now goes to the full House, where a vote is expected soon. The Republicans who voted yes were: committee chair Rep. Frank Foster, R-Pellston; Rep. Wayne Schmidt, R-Traverse City; Rep. Dale Zorn, R-Ida; and Rep. Gail Haines, R- Waterford. Rep. Foster lost his GOP primary re-election bid in August and Rep. Haines is term limited, so neither will be back...

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review whether the insurance subsidies through President Obama's healthcare law are illegal in 36 states, because the text of Obamacare limited subsidies to those states that set up their own exchanges. Here are six potential outcomes if the Supreme Court rules against the Department of Health and Human Services and declares such subsidies illegal. 1. Uncertainty keeps repeal flame alive The Supreme Court is coming at a time when there's an internal debate among Republicans about how the new Senate majority should approach the prospect of repealing Obamacare. Ever since the major...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tells Newsmax TV that a Supreme Court decision on Friday to hear another legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act is "devastating to the president." "I have no ability to judge what the Supreme Court will do," Gingrich said, noting that Chief Justice John Roberts once cast the deciding vote to uphold President Barack Obama's signature health care overhaul. But Gingrich said the new challenge is based on making the Affordable Care Act comply with the actual text of the statute that Congress passed and that Obama signed — and Gingrich said that in this...

Running out of funds and ideas, colleges want more public funding to help keep them afloat. During a recent panel discussion at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, speakers praised President Barack Obama’s higher education push for performance-based pay and incentives for colleges and universities. Ted Mitchell, , U.S. Department of Education undersecretary, complained about today’s higher education funding environment, telling the audience, “There has been systematic disinvestment by states throughout the Great Recession in higher education,” adding that it “really does disadvantage students” from low-income neighborhoods and backgrounds. He felt the state governments, by not funding state...

NEGATIVE advertising has its uses. It was ads mocking the stately Washington home of Mary Landrieu, Louisiana's Democratic junior senator, that forced her into a run-off after November's election. (SNIP) A Mexican newspaper reported that Mr Bush had agreed to allow more sugar from that country into the United States. Ms Landrieu said this policy (which the White House denied approving) would hurt Louisiana's sugar-cane farmers, and promised to fight it. Her sudden embrace of protectionism was a bit hypocritical, since she and other Louisiana Democrats have scorned Mr Bush's decision to impose tariffs on the foreign steel that moves...

Two House committees are demanding answers after learning that the Affordable Care Act makes foreign diplomats eligible for health care subsidies.Obamacare has a loophole that allows foreign diplomats to receive healthcare subsidies, the House Ways and Means and Foreign Affairs Committees revealed Wednesday as they announced a joint investigation. “According to the Department of Health and Human Services, foreign diplomats holding ‘A’ or ‘G’ visas are eligible to participate in an array of medical programs administered by the federal government, including participation in Health Insurance Marketplaces governed by the Affordable Care Act (ACA),” wrote chairmen Ed Royce and Dave Camp...

The state of Michigan granted more than $3 billion in combined tax breaks and cash subsidy deals to General Motors, Ford and Chrysler in the final years of former Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s tenure, which helped make this state among the biggest corporate welfare providers in the country, according to a recent study. Chrysler ($1.30 billion), General Motors ($1.07 billion) and Ford ($909 million) were awarded the benefits in 2009 and 2010 under the Michigan Economic Growth Authority program. The deals required the firms to “create or retain” a specified number of jobs in order to actually collect the benefits. Michigan...

A new financing offering could make home solar cheaper and more attractive to homeowners, and keep the adoption of home solar growing. The offer, announced by SolarCity this week, is a loan that allows homeowners to install their own solar system on their roof for little or no money down, and pay less for electricity. Previous plans, while popular, turned off some because the solar company owned the system. "The value proposition is becoming clearer and less complicated for consumers," says Patrick Jobin, an analyst at Credit Suisse. "Solar is going mainstream." SolarCity's new loan deal and current similar deals...

Today marks the one-year anniversary for Obamacare’s health exchanges—which have helped more than 7 million people across the country enroll in health coverage. And while Obamacare’s marketplace is settling in for its second year, serious issues are cropping up that could potentially derail the entire health care law leaving millions without affordable health coverage. The first potential problem deals with funding for the law’s crucial risk corridor program, which protects insurers from major losses. Insurers who agree to sell policies on the new exchanges are compensated for if they incur heavy losses during the first few years of Obamacare’s implementation....

Michigan Strategic Fund board members voted Tuesday to divert almost three-quarters of a million dollars in local and school taxes to a private entity so that a Redford Township car dealership can upgrade its facilities, MLive reports. The Michigan Economic Development Corp. will give the dealership $719,528 to renovate its building and install a car wash on an adjacent piece of land it owns. Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, said this type of special treatment is unfair. “It’s unfair because this dealer no doubt competes with other dealers not lucky enough to get a government handout,”...

Congressional Republicans keep saying they oppose Obamacare. Yet they’re refusing to take the simplest and easiest action against it. The way the law is designed, insurance companies get taxpayer subsidies if they incur big losses on the exchanges. That guarantee has encouraged them to participate in the exchanges. It has also enabled them to charge lower premiums, since they do not have to cover their risks. Republicans could force supporters of Obamacare to defend these taxpayer subsidies by advancing legislation to stop them, as Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Representative Tim Griffin (R., Ark.) have proposed. But their colleagues...

In a victory for the Obama administration, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. Thursday threw out an earlier ruling that said financial subsidies are not available for people who bought health insurance on the federal exchange. A three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals reached that conclusion in late July. On the same day, a federal appeals court in Richmond reached the opposite conclusion and said the subsidies are available. But Thursday, the full D.C. Court of Appeals said it will re-hear the case, which erases the lower court ruling that went against the subsidies. This greatly diminishes...

Government dependency is on the rise, with more than half of all Americans relying on the government for survival. While the Obama administration is broadening eligibility, US citizens increasingly also say they prefer it this way. Americans’ self-reliability has been decreasing as eligibility for Medicaid, food stamps, earned income tax credit, work pay tax credit and unemployment benefits have broadened since 2009 to allow more US citizens to enjoy them. More than half of the US population – 165 million of 308 million Americans – is now dependent on the state in some form. Of these, 107 million Americans rely...

Taxpayers accustomed to filing a simplified 1040EZ will not be able to do so if they received health insurance tax credits this year. Some highlights: -- You may have heard that the IRS cannot use liens and levies to collect the law's penalty on people who remain uninsured. But there is no limitation on collection efforts in cases where consumers got too big a tax credit. If your refund isn't large enough to cover the repayment, you will have to write the IRS a check. "They are not messing around," Brandes said. For families, the cap is double the amount...

KISS rock band front man Gene Simmons has earned a national reputation for his blunt talk regarding socialism and the government's role in the lives of citizens. Simmons told Forbes in 2012, “I don’t believe the government should stick their noses into the rise and fall of the economy. I don’t believe in the welfare system, I believe in the job system. … I don’t borrow money, and I fund myself and I create jobs and I hate anybody that’s looking for a free ride.” Which raises the question: Would the KISS front man approve of the $8.2 million in...

The language of the Obamacare legislation is unambiguous: the monthly premiums for such month for 1 or more qualified health plans offered in the individual market within a State which cover the taxpayer, the taxpayer’s spouse, or any dependent (as defined in section 152) of the taxpayer and which were enrolled in through an Exchange established by the State under 1311 [1] of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act This language clearly and concisely provides that the Obama administration did not and does not have the right to provide subsidies to individuals enrolled in states that did not organize...

Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rand Paul (Ky.) are trying to avoid an ethanol landmine in Iowa. Both Republican senators have criticized federal subsidies for ethanol, which are popular in Iowa, the state hosting the first Republican contest in the 2016 race for the White House. Iowa kingmakers in the party such as Sen. Chuck Grassley want the Republican presidential nominee in 2016 to champion ethanol. That’s a problem for Cruz and to a lesser extent for Paul, who are both crisscrossing the state this week in advance of possible campaigns for the presidency. Cruz has introduced legislation that would...

Obamacare has proven again to be the biggest legislative failure in history, with last week's ruling that its subsidies are illegal. These subsidies induced some 5 million Americans to sign up for Obamacare but are prohibited by law as held by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Halbig v. Burwell. This humiliation to the Obama administration was a devastating setback to legislation already disfavored by a 59-40 percent margin among the public, according to the latest CNN poll. Twice as many Americans say they are being hurt rather than helped by Obamacare. Officially known as the...

This past week’s D.C. Court of Appeals panel ruling that customers in the 36 states that didn’t establish their own exchange and use HealthCare.gov instead cannot be given premium tax credits was assailed by the program’s backers as “flagrant judicial activism.” Presidential Press Secretary Josh Earnest promised that “this insupportable ruling will be ignored. For the Court to insist upon a literal reading of the statute at this late date would unduly hamper the President’s scope of action. He cannot and will not abide having his hands tied by this judicial interference.” At issue is explicit statutory language in the...

Jonathan Gruber, a professor at MIT, is widely is regarded as the architect of both Romneycare and Obamacare. Following the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Halbig, he asserted that the provision of Obamacare limiting subsidies to the state exchanges was a “typo.” Indeed, he found it “criminal” to suggest that Obamacare was intended to work this way. But William Jacobson (via one of his readers) has unearthed video from 2012 in which Gruber explains why Obamacare limits subsidies to participants in state exchanges — the view of the statute he now finds “criminal.” Gruber stated: “I think what’s important to remember...