Posted on 05/25/2008 5:58:27 AM PDT by kellynla
The story of the Democratic Congress is this: So much to do, so little done. Issues of importance are crying out for attention. The alarms are largely ignored. The list of big issues is long and includes immigration, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, health care and health insurance in general, and energy.
It might make sense for Republicans to demand these issues be brought up this year, as President Truman did in 1948 to embarrass the "do nothing 80th Congress." But political stunts seldom work the second time. Besides, these are especially complex issues.
There's an alternative, however, that might galvanize Republicans and lift the party's spirits. Republicans could--indeed, should--insist that five simple, one-idea proposals be voted on. They're designed to bring immediate (though partial) relief to serious problems facing the country.
Here are the one-click issues, easy to deal with in a single vote:
(1) Double or triple the number of foreigners given H-1B visas to work in America. We need more highly educated and skilled workers from abroad, but only 65,000 H-1B visas are handed out annually. This causes two problems: Jobs requiring special skill or training go unfilled, and those who might fill them migrate to other countries, which become more competitive at America's expense.
The lid on H-1B visas is one of the most counterproductive parts of our immigration policy. High tech companies, for example, need to hire foreign scientists, engineers, and programmers because there aren't enough qualified Americans. But the limit on H-1B visas makes it difficult. In 2007, Microsoft was unable to hire one-third of the foreign-born workers it had jobs for, Bill Gates told Congress in March.
Gates said it would be preferable if the American education system produced workers for these skilled positions, but it doesn't. Without more foreigners, "American companies simply will not have the talent they need to innovate and compete," he said. This problem could be solved by a single vote in the House and Senate boosting the number of visas to 130,000 or 195,000. One click.
(2) Allow nationwide purchase of health insurance. Today, you can buy auto insurance in any state, but you can buy health insurance only in your home state. This leads to great disparities. A single 25-year-old in New Jersey pays five times as much for a standard policy as he'd pay if he lived in Kentucky.
A nationwide market would spur competition among insurers, driving down prices and blunting the rising cost of health care generally. Republican congressman John Shadegg of Arizona has long championed this common sense reform. "People should be able to get the health insurance that suits their needs," he says. And they'd be able to buy it on the Internet, providing further savings.
(3) Reduce the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 25 percent. The United States has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, putting American companies at a severe competitive disadvantage. The high rate also has the effect of causing companies to leave their overseas profits, well, overseas.
The average corporate rate for countries with significant economies happens to be 25 percent. Reducing the rate here can have a strikingly favorable impact. A few years ago, Ireland cut its corporate tax rate to 12.5 percent. The Irish economy boomed, and the Irish people are on their way to having the highest standard of living in Europe.
(4) Lift the moratorium on offshore oil drilling. How high does the price of gasoline have to go before America wakes up and demands we explore and then drill for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific shores? An unheard of $4 a gallon? Whoops, I forgot. We're already close to $4.
There's plenty of oil out there. Drilling wouldn't create unsightly views from beachfront homes of the wealthy. Perish the thought. Thanks to technological advances, drilling is now possible in the deep waters far offshore and is highly unlikely to produce spills. The moratorium bars drilling within 200 miles of the coast. That makes no sense. For both national security and economic reasons, tapping the offshore oil is a necessity.
(5) Let the private sector build highways. Increased use of mass transit has not alleviated the need for more highways. And there are hundreds of billions of dollars that private enterprises, some of them foreign, are eager to invest in fancy new roads all over America. Of course, these would be toll roads. That's how the companies would make a profit. But the new highways would be located mostly near clogged (free) highways, where drivers would benefit from having traffic siphoned off.
This is a no-brainer, particularly since revenues in the Highway Trust Fund are needed to repair and renovate the Interstate Highway System, once a wonder of the world but now rundown and unable to handle the traffic load.
The difficult part of pushing these five easy pieces is getting Democrats to hold votes. No doubt Democrats would balk. The media probably wouldn't give much coverage to them either. But who knows? Maybe the press would find a hook for the story, something like: Republicans aren't dead yet.
And a point could be made: Democrats have produced a do-nothing Congress, even spurning a series of potentially helpful, easy-to-understand proposals that wouldn't take much time to consider. It's a point worth making.
The morons in congress cannot and willnot make the necessary work needed because they are afraid of thier life time political career. TERM LIMITS! AMERICA FOR AMERICANS!
I’m enjoying the lower fuel prices they said we would have if they were elected in Nov 2006.
I forgot to respond to Fred Barne’s “immigration issue.” A “no brainer.” We just need a POTUS who will enforce the immigration laws, fine employers who hire illegals, deport ALL illegals and foreign muzzies and secure BOTH borders.
Either we are at war. Or we aren’t
Please keep the military in your prayers.
And on this Memorial Day weekend, please pray for those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom.
“Never Forget!”
“All paid some. Some paid all.”
Semper Fi,
Kelly
I will agree with this when we double or triple the number of H-1B visas granted to people to fill the jobs of idiot commentators who make suggestions like this. Better yet, I am sure there are people in third world countries who will write this drivel for 10 cents an hour, we should hire them to do this immediately.
Today, you can buy auto insurance in any state, but you can buy health insurance only in your home state.
While I agree with the conclusion of buying health insurance from other states, it is not entirely correct that "you can buy auto insurance in any state." While the same car insurance companies operate in different states, those states still impose state-specific rules that can drive up costs. Case in point, when I moved from Penna. to MD in 2006, I kept my same car insurer and roughly the same coverage, but my premiums in MD were far cheaper than they ever were in Penna.
Reduce the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 25 percent.
Reduce it to 0. Corporate income tax is something that only we peons pay in the form of higher prices for everything we buy.
Lift the moratorium on offshore oil drilling.
Agreed.
Let the private sector build highways.
Letting them build them from scratch is fine. But letting private companies take over existing publicly owned roads has been nothing but a disaster. Tolls have gone up, expansions haven't happened because it is simply easier to raise tolls to keep traffic volume low, and we are now not only paying foreigners a ton of money for gas to drive on these roads, but we are paying for the privilege of driving on roads that were already paid for by US citizens.
Bush administration bars drilling in Arctic wetland
http://www.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUSN1644783920080516
So much for Bush's “America needs to get off our foreign oil dependency” rhetoric...
“TERM LIMITS!”
I couldn’t agree with you more.
But the chances of Congress passing term limits are “slim & none.”
And Slim just left the building. LOL
I agree that there is plenty of blame in all of DC. The Republicans should have passed drilling in the Gulf, other US coasts and ANWAR when they had the majority.
Looks like they are talking a little different now.
Oil Industry, Lawmakers Aim To Lift Bans on Drilling
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2020966/posts
Of course, this is a political problem.
OUR PROBLEM is that President W will ONLY fight enemies who live overseas. He will never fight back at his domestic enemies and thus loses every battle—and the confidence of his (remaining) supporters.
There. Much better.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Who will afford a $160,000 engineering education in the USA when competing with folks trained at the much lower costs in the rest of the world. We'll end up with no native engineers (or doctors, etc.) at all.
This is economic suicide.
That article is like some Grade “B” 1950’s horror film:
“It came from the Beltway”
Oh yeah baby, H-1b visas are on my front burner issues list, the only passable ideas are the Health Insurance and Drilling, “maybe” the Corporate Tax Rate, normally Companies have deductions that offset the Tax Rate, so like in 1986 when Credit Card interest deductions went away for lower tax rates, that deduction could go away only to see rates raised down the road.
First priority upon being elected = re-election..
There are 2 causes of THIS problem:
1) Our public schools, where they choose to educate most to only be able to do menial labor (like running a cash register).
2) The number of grad student slots at our public Universities that are filled with foreign grad students, locking our own able students out of the opportunity for higher education.
There was just an article posted on FR in the last few days about a new analysis of foreign students, questioning the long-standing figures on how much revenue they generate. As usual, that older analysis was designed to show what it wanted to show - a net positive for the US. Turns out that when you look at who actually pays the tuition, who actually pays the living expenses for all these foreign grad students, it turns out not to be mostly from money flowing in from overseas - rather it's us paying the tuition, us paying the graduate stipends, and us providing our latest research to the rest of the world for free by paying them to come learn. Classic 'level-the-playing-field', social justice, communist approach to the problem of American inventiveness and ingenuity.
(1) Double or triple the number of foreigners given H-1B visas to work in America.
I used to respect Fred, no more. His open border, more foreign workers at any cost, baloney proves he needs to retire (and take Mort with him).
You have to work very closely with offshore help. They do only “exactly” what you ask. So we have Americans doing their work and also checking every detail of what offshore does. So the American has to work much unpaid overtime so his work does not fall behind schedule.
“His open border, more foreign workers at any cost, baloney proves he needs to retire (and take Mort with him).”
I couldn’t agree more... but the clowns in D.C. are only interested in keeping their cheap illegal alien domestics around so they have someone to clean out the toilets, change their babies’ diapers and scrub the floors. And why Kondrake is even on Faux News is a mystery to me...the guy can’t put a sentence together without stammering and stuttering through it...
I too work in this industry, so I know exactly how you feel.
Like I said, in jest, if we are gonna knock down US salaries with H-1B visas, why not apply it to those people who advocate such policies first? Since they are all for cheap labor, let them take the first step.
This is congruous with my views on radical environmentalists who believe that humanity is bad for the Earth... they should lead by example and commit suicide.
I used to be a Tech Sector employee, but thanks to the H-1B visa program I now work for the US Air Force again as a civilian. My brother works for a corporation that is required to hire many of these H-1B visa holders as contract employees they have a real racket going with the companies that front these people. He stated that are required to do a phone interview and normally talks with someone very knowledgeable with the industry and once the employee is approved another bozo shows up for the job can barely speak English. Classic bait and switch and the sad thing is they are getting away with it while keeping wages of the average American depressed. Keep lying to us Fred the Weekly Standard has embraced the dark side along with the RINOs.
So why it is a good idea for Kentucky to susidize New Jersey residents, or use the national debt as a way to defer liability?
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