Keyword: subsidies
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".............................Between a rock and a hard place, Roberts argued that Congress surely never meant to cut out subsidies in states without their own exchanges, because “it would destabilize the individual insurance market in any State with a Federal Exchange, and likely create the very ‘death spirals’ that Congress designed the Act to avoid.”I sympathize, but Roberts has to know he’s wrong. Jonathan Gruber,an MIT economist who advised the White House, explained during a 2012 speech that the federal law limited subsidies to enrollees of state exchanges in order to “squeeze” states to act. Quoth Gruber,“If you’re a state and you...
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The Supreme Court had an opportunity, with its ruling in King v. Burwell, to determine whether the United States is a nation of laws or of men. Today, in a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that we have devolved into the latter. Although the text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) clearly states that the government may issue subsidies only through insurance exchanges established by the states, Obama administration bureaucrats unilaterally rewrote that part of the law so that the IRS could dispense such premium assistance through “marketplaces” created by the federal government. The plaintiffs in...
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Six are the Chief, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.
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Congressional Republicans will move to temporarily continue health care subsidies for millions of people if the Supreme Court overturns the aid, according to plans discussed Wednesday in the House and Senate. In addition, the GOP proposals would dissolve many of the basic requirements of President Barack Obama’s health care law, including mandates that most people buy coverage and most companies provide it to their workers, Republicans said. Eventually, they hope, the entire law would be repealed. Should the justices annul the subsidies, which are a crucial girder of the 2010 law, GOP leaders hope their plans would let them take...
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WASHINGTON — (...) The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide whether the subsidies can continue for 6.4 million people in 34 states who use the federal insurance marketplace at HealthCare.gov. (...) More than 4.1 million people, or nearly two out of three who could lose their subsidies in the case this year, live in just 13 Southern states – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Read more here: http://www.macon.com/2015/06/16/3799971/loss-of-health-care-subsidies.html#storylink=cpy
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The federal government cannot verify nearly $3 billion in subsidies distributed through Obamacare, putting significant taxpayer funding “at risk,” according to a new audit report. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released an audit Tuesday finding that the agency did not have an internal system to ensure that subsidies went to the right enrollees, or in the correct amounts. “[The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] CMS’s internal controls did not effectively ensure the accuracy of nearly $2.8 billion in aggregate financial assistance payments made to insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act...
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Establishment Republicans, working closely with the White House, have been pushing a triad of trade agreements that, if enacted into law, are supposed to create jobs. Yet even proponents of the agreements acknowledge they will also cost many Americans their jobs. The content of the agreements — the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Trade in Service Agreement (TISA), and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) — has been kept hidden from the American people.In fact, even members of Congress have been able to view only the TPP thus far — if they go to a secret room to view...
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In 1848, the discovery of gold in California lead to one of the most dramatic population shifts in US history. People hoping to strike it rich migrated from all over the country, South America, and even as far as China. The non-native American population of California went from under 1,000 to over 100,000 in a little over one year. Today, there is another gold rush taking place in Washington D.C. as political entrepreneurs seek to strike it rich by mining the climate change mother lode. According to the 2013 Federal Climate Change Expenditures Report to Congress, the Federal Government is...
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Republicans in Congress are worried the Supreme Court will hand them a major headache this month if it rules against the federal health insurance exchanges in more than 30 states, ending subsidies for millions of people. While the Affordable Care Act remains broadly unpopular, two new polls show a majority of Americans don’t want to do away with its subsidies, a core component of the law. This poses a conundrum for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker John Boehner. They are under pressure from colleagues up for reelection in swing states and districts to extend the subsidies, at...
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But here’s another way it might play out: health insurance premiums will soar, people will be unable to afford coverage, and… the public will blame it on President Obama and the Democrats, because they passed this law in 2010 and suddenly health insurance is really expensive. Thing “A” happened, and now thing “B” happened, so Thing “A” must have been a terrible idea. Republicans will say, look at how much the IN-surance costs now! as part of their pitch for electing a Republican president who would eliminate this original sin from the federal code. Republicans always suffer in government shutdowns...
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Alt-energy/transport-tech CEO Elon Musk and his trio of companies (Tesla,SolarCity andSpaceX) didn’t cooperate with the Los Angeles Times on its article that tabulated his businesses’ whopping sum of corporate welfare ($4.9 billion) , and he was predictably miffed by the (accurate) portrayal. So he went about trying to fix things on CNBC and with the Times on Monday, but not by denying the conclusions reached by reporter Jerry Hirsch, but instead by essentially pointing at fossil fuel industries and saying “they do it more.” “If I cared about subsidies,” Musk told Hirsch in a follow-up to his Sunday expose’,...
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House conservatives are hinting at support for a temporary extension of Obama-Care subsidies if the Supreme Court cripples the law, even as they set up a working group to develop their own plan. The high court is set to rule later this month in the case of King v. Burwell, which could invalidate subsidies for millions of people in at least 34 states using the federally run marketplace. Republicans say they need to be ready to address people losing their coverage, but have yet to coalesce around a plan.
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Well, somebody did it, and it was the mainstream media. Congratulations to the Los Angeles Times for taking the time to research and estimate the total amount of U.S. public (local, state, and federal) subsidies for companies owned or run by South African-born Canadian-American Elon Musk. The total amount calculated by reporter Jerry Hirsch for taxpayer-backed incentives – of many different forms, including tax credits and rebates provided to customers – was $4.9 billion. The corporate beneficiaries have been Tesla Motors and SpaceX, where Musk is CEO, and SolarCity Corp., where he is chairman. The sum does not include SpaceX’s...
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Opposition to the U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) is now at the point where the bank’s reauthorization is genuinely in doubt. Spurred by accusations of corporate welfare, crony capitalism and outright corruption, opponents believe the Ex-Im Bank’s palpable violation of free-market principles fully warrants its early demise. The Ex-Im Bank’s critics have their economics entirely correct, but they have their geopolitics wrong. Their solution — simply terminating the bank — is appealing but counterproductive. What America should do, under a president with the wit to do it, is negotiate the global elimination of “export credits” (as these subsidies are generically known)....
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29:00 [click on picture then click on red dot to listen]
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Last month, the Michigan House Tax Policy committee heard testimony about the state’s economic incentive programs. The usual justification for giving selective favors to particular firms was trotted out: Other states will capture these projects if this state does not distribute taxpayer cash to companies and developers. Without special incentives, proponents argue, Michigan is doomed to fall behind. Yet this rationale reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how the economy works. Monthly job reports suggest that Michigan’s economy grows or shrinks very slightly from month to month, but this data hides the massive amount of job creation and job loss that...
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Fossil fuel companies are benefiting from a global subsidy of £3.4 trillion a year, the International Monetary Fund has declared. The figure dwarfs that of government handouts for renewable energies, which amount to £77 billion a year. But closer inspection reveals the fossil fuel related sum not to be a subsidy, as it amounts to nothing more than the alleged costs to governments of dealing with fossil fuel pollution. The IMF have insisted that their figure is “shocking,” but “extremely robust”, and are using it to lobby for an end to “subsidies” for fossil fuel companies on both health and...
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Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m every minute of every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF calls the revelation “shocking” and says the figure is an “extremely robust” estimate of the true cost of fossil fuels. The $5.3tn subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments. The vast sum is largely due to polluters not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. These include the harm caused...
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The whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” — Henry Hazlitt, “Economics in One Lesson” One of the greatest fallacies of recent generations is the argument that free market capitalism has failed and that said failure is responsible for America’s moribund economy, the ongoing destruction of the middle...
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Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) estimated Saturday that Amtrak would require $117 billion for improvements to its Northeast Corridor following a fatal crash on that line earlier this week. “If we’re going to have passenger rail, we’re going to need to make it safe and make it efficient,” he told The Billy Penn. “It’s going to require investment,” he added, predicting Amtrak would need $117 “billion with a B” for reaching optimal safety and speed along its Northwest Corridor. Fattah, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, criticized Republicans for opposing additional funding measures for Amtrak. “One party thinks...
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