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The rumors began trickling in about a week before the scheduled vote on April 23: Republican leadership was quietly pushing senators to pull support for subpoenaing Congress’s fraudulent application to the District of Columbia’s health exchange — the document that facilitated Congress’s “exemption” from Obamacare by allowing lawmakers and staffers to keep their employer subsidies. Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/418055/how-five-republicans-let-congress-keep-its-fraudulent-obamacare-subsidies-brendan

One can’t help but be impressed by the seemingly great strides solar energy has been making of late. Bullish reports abound of added capacity, aggressive expansion, technical advances and a solar jobs boom. Industry elites engage in bold financial maneuvers that would make Gordon Gekko proud. But don dark enough shades to see through the media-generated glare, and the picture looks less sunny -- and sometimes maybe a little shady. The boom -- some might even call it a “bubble” -- America’s solar energy industry is enjoying stems neither from overwhelming competitive-market success nor from long-promised technological breakthroughs that finally...

The Michigan House recently passed House Bill 4122 which would end the state’s film incentive program. The legislation now moves on to the Senate. But Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, R-West Olive, has raised concerns about ending the subsidy. And Gov. Rick Snyder, who previously proposed eliminating the subsidies, now says he doesn’t believe ending the program abruptly is an “appropriate answer.” So those are the obstacles standing in the path of terminating payouts to Hollywood. The good news is that it is believed most Michigan Senators want to end the subsidies. There may end up being an agreement between...

IÂ’ve written many times about the shortcomings of government schools at the K-12 level. We spend more on our kids than any other nation, yet our test scores are comparatively dismal. And one of my points, based on this very sobering chart from one of my Cato colleagues, is that AmericaÂ’s educational performance took a turn in the wrong direction when the federal government became more involved starting about 40-50 years ago. Well, the same unhappy story exists in the higher-education sector. Simply stated, thereÂ’s been an explosion of spending, much of it from Washington, yet the rate of return...

A Supreme Court ruling against the Obama administration in King v. Burwell, according to conventional Beltway wisdom, will create serious political problems for governors and legislators in the 34 states that declined to set up Obamacare insurance exchanges. Most of these officials are Republicans, the thinking goes, and will thus be blamed for letting petty partisanship deprive their constituents of subsidies while plunging state insurance markets into chaos. Public wrath, we are told, will eventually force them to create PPACA exchanges. However, a new voter survey conducted in the affected states suggests that this is very unlikely to occur. According...

Big government rests upon myths, and the people who support it necessarily believe things about politics and society — and themselves — that simply aren’t true. This week, a new report from the Government Accountability Office shows just who benefits from federal crop insurance subsidies: big businesses, billionaires, and the like. It’s not primarily the “little guy” or “the small family farm” of American agrarian mythology. It’s the people for whom progressives usually seethe with hatred. Those on the left must either oppose their “progressive” programs or get over their alleged opposition to “the rich.” “Liberals,” “progressives” and other political...

The Obama administration announced Friday that 80,000 corrected tax forms for people on plans through ObamaCare have still not gone out. It's unclear how many people will be affected by the delay, but the administration said people who have not received the corrected forms do not have to wait to file their taxes and will not have to pay any additional tax due to the effort. The issues stem from the announcement last month that 800,000 people on insurance plans through ObamaCare received incorrect tax information. At the time, the administration said forms with corrected information would be sent out...

If you carefully consider the claims of Obamacare’s defenders in King v. Burwell you will discover that their worst fear, sanctimonious pretense notwithstanding, is not the loss of insurance subsidies for some Americans. The most terrifying prospect for proponents of PPACA is that the Court will let Congress clean up its own mess. They do not want our elected representatives to have another chance to consider the will of the voters while revising Obamacare ... Nothing scares Obamacarians more than the will of the people.

'Game The system’? Nonprofits, Including Farrakhan-Tied Group, Enjoy Windfall From Farm Subsidies Published March 09, 2014 FoxNews.com, Emily Boyd Walker Several nonprofits that have little to do with farming or are in poor standing with their local governments have been receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm subsidies over the past decade, federal records show. They include an Islamic charity tied to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a Midwestern group devoted to waterfowl habitat, and a major conservation group with few farms to its name. The group tied to Farrakhan, called the Three Year Economic Saving Program, has...

Nearly nine in 10 people who signed up for healthcare from the federal government this year qualify for subsidies, the Obama administration announced Tuesday. A total of 7.7 million people would receive subsidies this year in the roughly three-dozen states using HealthCare.gov – a figure that has held steady since ObamaCare's first year. The Obama administration touted the figure Tuesday to show that the vast majority of people in states using the federal exchange rely on subsidies as the Supreme Court weighs a case that could eliminate them. A total of 34 states using HealthCare.gov could lose subsidies if the...

Nearly 8 million people could lose up to $24 billion a year in health insurance subsidies in a Supreme Court case threatening President Barack Obama’s law, according to a government report released Tuesday. The estimates by The Associated Press show what’s at stake in the case. Health overhaul opponents argue that subsidies are illegal in some three dozen states where the federal government took charge of running the health insurance marketplaces, or exchanges. The justices heard arguments last week, and the court’s decision is expected in late June. Tuesday’s report from the Department of Health and Human Services shows that...

King v. Burwell: We are all following the Supreme Court case challenging the Administration's ignoring of the ObamaCare requirement that individuals can only get Federal subsidies for their health insurance if the state in which they reside forms a state exchange. Only sixteen states organized state exchanges, yet the Obama administration determined to pay Federal subsidies to individuals in every state if they purchased health insurance under ObamaCare. There are some eight million individuals who will lose their subsidies if the Supreme Court determines to enforce the law as written by Congress. (One wonders what good it is to have...

This week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, one of four legal challenges to an IRS regulation that purports to implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but in fact vastly expands the IRS’s powers beyond the limits imposed by the Act. Just in time for oral arguments before the Court, Vox’s Sarah Kliff has produced what I think may be the best history of King v. Burwell and related cases I’ve seen. Still, there are a few important errors and omissions.... Kliff reports that all congressional staff involved with the drafting of the...

On March 4 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear King v. Burwell, the case challenging health insurance-premium subsidies for those who buy their insurance on the 37 federal exchanges. (...) First, Congress could extend the subsidies until the end of 2015, and allow people to keep those subsidies that they have already received. This would avoid disruption in health care and in insurance markets, whose terms are set months ahead. Second, Congress could create a new temporary state-based option for continued health insurance coverage beginning in 2016 until it could craft a long-term solution. (...)

Despite billions spent in investments over decades, solar energy will only make up 0.6 percent of total electricity generation in the United States, according to a report released by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA). “In spite of government’s best efforts to encourage innovation by solar energy companies and encourage Americans to rely more heavily on solar electricity, solar power continues to be a losing proposition,” the report said. “American taxpayers spent an average of $39 billion a year over the past 5 years financing grants, subsidizing tax credits, guaranteeing loans, bailing out failed solar energy boondoggles and otherwise underwriting every idea...

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., wants to know why members of Congress and their staff are exempted from Obamacare. “Washington insiders should be forced to live under Obamacare just like the rest of America without a special taxpayer funded subsidy,” says @DavidVitter Vitter, who launched an investigation this week, said in a statement that “false information may have been filed with the D.C. Health Benefits Exchange to allow Congress to be exempt from [the] Obamacare exchange.” The chairman of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee cited a court filing obtained by Judicial Watch that admits Congress—with more than 16,000 employees—doesn’t fit...

Remember the issue in Halbig? There’s a section in the ObamaCare statute that says federal subsidies to pay premiums are available to anyone who buys their insurance through “an Exchange established by the State.” But that phrase is vaguely worded. Is the federal ObamaCare exchange, Healthcare.gov, an exchange established by the state? Or was the idea that subsidies should apply only to exchanges created by the individual states, as an economic incentive to encourage state governments to create their own insurance marketplaces? You know what Jonathan Gruber thinks, or thought, about that. By this summer, we’ll know what John...

If the Republican Congress fails to take swift and deliberate action on ObamaCare between now and the 2016 elections, they will have defeated themselves Can anyone remember how awful the U.S. healthcare free market system was that it needed to be replaced by the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare? Can’t remember? That’s because it was ranked one of the best of the world and represented 17.9% of the nation’s economy in 2014. That’s down from the 20% it represented in 2009 when ObamaCare was foisted on Americans. One of the best ways to follow the ObamaCare story is...

In a recent interview with Michigan Capitol Confidential, Brandeis University economist Bob Tannenwald remarked that film incentives were a bad deal for taxpayers. "Another way to look at that would be that a state might be getting only 50 cents or 75 cents value for each dollar per dollar of personal income created by the program for the state’s residents. A state might be better off just sending the checks out directly to its residents rather than creating the program." With roughly $500 million offered in incentives from the start of the program to present, the state could have sent...

Solar panels are being installed on the roofs of homes and businesses all across America at a record pace. The fad is the latest way for families to "go green" — the energy equivalent of blue recycling bins. The Solar Energy Industries Association likes to tout the industry's "amazing success" — but it's holding a "Shout Out For Solar" social media event Friday as it sees an "uncertain future." That's because its continued success depends on a cascade of government subsidies, including a 30% federal investment credit that expires at the end of 2016. Guess what? Taxpayers are paying for...