CBO: Obamacare individual mandate delay would save $35 billion

The House bill to delay Obamacare’s individual mandate would save $35 billion dollars, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis.

After the Obama administration revealed it would not enforce the employer mandate — a requirement that large companies provide their employees health insurance — until January 2015, the House quickly passed a measure that would not only codify that delay, but put off the individual mandate by one year as well.

The CBO found that just a one-year delay of the individual mandate would save $35 billion over ten years. But the basic cost structure of the Affordable Care Act would remain intact.

“I never thought I’d see the day when the White House, this president, came down on the side of big business, but left the American people out in the cold as far as this health care mandate is concerned,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said.

Cantor’s message carried over even to some in the President’s own party. The “Fairness for American Families Act” is one of many Republican-dominated efforts to delay certain aspects of Obamacare, but this time it received bipartisan support:  22 House Democrats bucked their own party and voted for the bill, which President Obama vowed to veto.

The White House charged that the House legislation “would raise health insurance premiums and increase the number of uninsured Americans.”

Keeping the individual mandate the law of the land is vital to the success of Obamacare exchanges. High participation in the exchanges, especially by the young and the healthy, is necessary to keep premiums low.

Not enforcing the employer mandate while still requiring individuals to purchase health insurance would have increased participation in Obamacare exchanges, piling on an additional $3 billion in subsidies, according to the CBO. Presumably this cost would be nullified by the House bill to delay the individual mandate.

Via: Daily Caller

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FISCAL CLIFF DEAL: $1 IN SPENDING CUTS FOR EVERY $41 IN TAX INCREASES

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the last-minute fiscal cliff deal reached by congressional leaders and President Barack Obama cuts only $15 billion in spending while increasing tax revenues by $620 billion—a 41:1 ratio of tax increases to spending cuts.

When Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush increased taxes in return for spending cuts—cuts that never ultimately came—they did so at ratios of 3:1 and 2:1.

“In 1982, President Reagan was promised $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes,” Americans for Tax Reform says of those two incidents. “The tax hikes went through, but the spending cuts did not materialize. President Reagan later said that signing onto this deal was the biggest mistake of his presidency.

"In 1990, President George H.W. Bush agreed to $2 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes. The tax hikes went through, and we are still paying them today. Not a single penny of the promised spending cuts actually happened.”

Via: Breitbart

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Schumer: Jobless Benefits ‘The Best Stimulus There Is’

(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that extending long-term unemployment benefits would be the “best stimulus there is” for the economy, saying it would create the most jobs for the money.

“At the end of last year, there were 5 million people receiving emergency UI [unemployment insurance]. This year, there are only 2 million. It’s working,” Schumer said at a press conference Thursday.

“We’re all talking about a stimulus. How do we get the economy moving? This is the best stimulus there is.”

Schumer and fellow Senate Democrats called for yet another extension of benefits for the long-term unemployed before the current benefit extension expires at the end of the year.

Recently, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that a full-year extension of the benefits would cost $30 billion and create approximately 300,000 full-time equivalent jobs.

CBO’s estimate is not saying that extending benefits will create 300,000 new positions or that 300,000 additional people will be hired, but that the demand created when the unemployed spend their benefit checks will in turn pay for enough work-hours to equal 300,000 full time jobs. The actual job creation figures could be far lower.

Via: CNS News

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ObamaCare Work Disincentives: 4 Cliffs Hit Employees

In the time of Caesar, all roads led to Rome. In the time of ObamaCare, seemingly every path heads straight for a cliff.

The health law is filled with cliffs where the returns for more work take a nose-dive.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated ObamaCare will "reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by roughly half a percent" — about 800,000 full-time jobs. It seems likely that four especially steep cliffs — including two where marginal tax rates can approach 100% or more — will factor into work and hiring decisions.

The 50th employee: For companies with 49 workers that do not offer its employees health coverage, the hiring of just one more worker would carry a penalty of $40,000.

A firm with at least 50 workers that doesn't offer coverage must pay a $2,000 fine per worker (minus the first 30 workers) if even one of its employees receives ObamaCare subsidies.

Likewise, even if a business with 50 employees offers coverage, it would still face up to a $3,000 charge for each worker who nevertheless claims Obama-Care subsidies.

The law gives workers this option when employer coverage is deemed unaffordable because it costs more than 9.5% of the worker's household income.

France has 2.4 times as many firms with 49 employees as with 50 due to labor regulations that take effect with the 50th hire, BusinessWeek has noted.

How many firms will institute a hiring freeze to avoid ObamaCare penalties is unclear, but the risk is that the U.S. will go down a similar path as France.

The low-income cliff: At 200% of the poverty level is a dividing line. Deductibles for married couples on one side may be $300 vs. $3,500 on the other, according to one estimate provided to the Kaiser Family Foundation by Towers Watson.

In addition, a family at 200% of poverty would pay $830 less for subsidized insurance than a family at 225% of poverty, The Kaiser Family Foundation's health subsidy calculator shows.

Via: IBD

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OBAMACARE'S HEAVY TOLL ON MIDDLE CLASS AMERICANS

President Obama likes to say his campaign is about building up the middle class, but his signature initiative in office — ObamaCare — will pile thousands of dollars in new taxes and higher health costs on top of America’s middle class.

How so? Through redistribution, of course. The president has made no secret of his fondness for using the government’s tax and spending powers to spread our diminished wealth around from one group of Americans to another. And ObamaCare is nothing if not a massive redistribution machine. It places huge new financial burdens on some Americans — primarily those who already have health insurance, including the vast majority of middle-class families — in order to extend new federal entitlement commitments to other households, primarily the uninsured.

In broad terms, the amount of redistribution is easily ascertained form the aggregate expenditures and taxes contained in ObamaCare. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in 2020, ObamaCare will spend $229 billion on a Medicaid expansion and a new subsidy program for health insurance. These expenditures will primarily benefit 29 million people newly enrolled in Medicaid and the insurance subsidy program. That works out to nearly $8,000 for every newly insured American, or about $21,000 per newly insured household.

Much of the rest of the legislation is devoted to extracting these resources from everyone else in the country — about 290 million people — who won’t benefit from the new spending programs, and doing so in way that obscures what’s taking place. For these Americans who already have insurance, the law contains nothing but new financial burdens, in the form of higher taxes, higher premiums for their existing plans, and lower benefits, particularly for those on Medicare.

The sum total of the new taxes and Medicare and Medicaid cuts is about $278 billion in 2020. That’s nearly $1,000 in costs on average for most of the country, or $2,500 per household.

ObamaCare’s apologists say that these costs will primarily affect the rich, but that is not true. ObamaCare’s taxes and benefit cuts will directly increase burdens on middle class families. Among the most burdensome provisions are the following.

• The “Mandate” Tax. The Supreme Court officially designated ObamaCare’s individual mandate as a new “tax” on persons who don’t enroll in government-sanctioned insurance. CBO recently indicated that about 11 or 12 million uninsured people will have to pay this tax, but only about 6 million will do so (the others will successfully evade it). The total tax payment for these individuals will reach $8 billion in 2020, or an average of about $1,400 per person. Almost all of these taxpayers will be middle-class Americans, as the poor are exempt and there are very few rich people who are uninsured. According to CBO, 80 percent of those paying the tax will have incomes below five times the poverty rate, or about $115,000 in income for a family of four in 2012.\

Via: E21

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CBO: Bailout Will Lose $24 Billion

Obama: ‘We Got Back Every Dime’ of Bailout; CBO: Bailout Will Lose $24 Billion. Who to Believe!!!!

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama said on Thursday that “we got back every dime we used to rescue the financial system."

According to the Congressional Budget Office, however, the government will lose about $24 billion on the bailout.

“We got back every dime we used to rescue the financial system, but we also passed a historic law to end taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailouts for good,” Obama said in Miami Thursday.

The Congressional Budget Office--based on figures from Obama’s own Office of Management and Budget---gives a different assessment.

“The cost to the federal government of the TARP’s transactions (also referred to as the subsidy cost), including grants for mortgage programs that have not yet been made, will amount to $24 billion,” said the CBO report, which was released on the same day Obama spoke.

Via: CNS News

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1,035,000: Construction Jobs Lost Under Obama

(CNSNews.com) - When President Barack Obama signed his economic stimulus legislation on Feb. 17, 2009, he said that one impact of the act would be to create jobs for 400,000 people building and rebuilding the nation's infrastructure.

But despite a price tag that the Congressional Budget Office now says was $833 billion, the economic stimulus of February 2009 did not create 400,000 new construction jobs.

In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics there are now 1,035,000 fewer construction jobs in the United States than there were in January 2009, when Obama was inaugurated, and 925,000 less than in February 2009 when Obama signed his stimulus act.

The decline in construction jobs in the United States did not start when President Obama took office, but the $833 billion stimulus act he pushed through Congress and signed did not stop or reverse that decline.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research--on which Obama's former top economic adviser Christina Romer serves--says that the last recession ended in June 2009. Since then, according to BLS, America has lost 484,000 construction jobs.

In September 2012, according to BLS, 5,523,000 Americans had jobs in the construction industry. That is down from 6,558,000 in January 2009, when Obama took office; it is down from6,448,000 in February 2009, when Obama signed the $833 billion stimulus; it is down from 6,007,000 when the recession ended in June 2009; and it is down from 5,564,000 from January of this year, when Obama started the fourth year of his presidential term.\

Via: CNS News

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Congressional Budget Office Confirms FY 2012 Deficit Exceeds $1 Trillion

Fiscal year 2012 concluded with a $1.1 trillion deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s monthly budget review released today. It marks the fourth year of trillion-dollar-plus deficits.

Anyone can see that these massive, continued deficits are hardly sustainable. Despite claims that tax hikes are the solution to reduce the deficit, the fact remains that too much spending is the root cause of federal budget deficits.

The federal government is currently spending about 23 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), well above the historical average level of 20.2 percent of GDP. Current spending levels follow even greater spending excesses recorded during years saturated with stimulus spending. Conversely, revenues are temporarily low due to the recession, but they will rise and even surpass their historical level of 18.1 percent of GDP as the economy recovers and more Americans return to work. (continues below chart)

Prompted by presidential debate moderator Jim Lehrer about deficit-reduction proposals, President Obama chimed in with an all-too-familiar refrain: “There has to be revenue in addition to cuts.” When Washington’s spending addiction is the problem, why hike taxes on Americans? Doing so would hurt a fledgling economy trying to recover.

Via: The Foundry

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Poll: 86 percent of Americans say government spending has not helped them

President Obama’s solutions to economic problems invariably involve more spending, but 86 percent of likely  say that government spending has not helped them, according to a new poll.

“On the question of whether federal government spending has improved the overall economy, 74 percent say it has not helped, with 52 percent responding that it has actually hurt the economy,” The Public Notice announced yesterday after questioning 1,005 likely voters.  “When asked how federal government spending has impacted personal financial situations, 86 percent of those surveyed say it has not helped, with 35 percent responding that it hurt.”

The Tarrance Group, the Republican-leaning firm that conducted the poll, added in its memo that “this pessimism over the impact of government spending is consistent throughout many key demographic groups that are frequently mentioned as ‘target’ voters in the upcoming Presidential election.”

Federal debt hit $16 trillion this year. Obama blames George W. Bush for the deficit, but The Washington Examiner’s Phil Klein argued last week that this reflects a “responsibility deficit” on the part of the president.

“[When Obama was inaugurated], the CBO projected deficits of $1.2 trillion in 2009 and $703 billion in 2010, for a total two-year deficit of about $1.9 trillion,” Klein explained. “The Obama administration went on to run deficits of $1.55 trillion in 2009 and $1.37 trillion in 2010, for a total of more than $2.9 trillion. In other words, in just his first two years, when Obama had a Democratic Congress that gave him virtually everything he wanted, deficits were $1 trillion higher than what the CBO was projecting when he was inaugurated.”

Via: Washington Examniner

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CBO: Under Current Law, Unemployment Will Rise Next Year to 9.1%

(CNSNews.com) – The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is projecting that if changes in federal taxing-and-spending policies already enacted and set to take effect at the beginning of next year do in fact take place, the unemployment rate will climb to 9.1 percent.

In a report released on Aug. 22, An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022,CBO’s baseline projections show that by the fourth quarter of 2013 the national unemployment rate will be 9.1 percent.

The estimate is based on the assumptions that the automatic caps on federal spending mandated under the Budget Control Act will take effect and that the extensions of the Bush-era tax rates enacted in 2010 will also be allowed to expires as they are set to do after Dec. 31.

 CBO also provides projections for an “alternative fiscal scenario,” in which the Bush tax rates are extended indefinitely, automatic spending cuts are averted and either the Medicare “doc fix” is reinstated or the current Medicare payment rates are extended.

Even in this scenario, which CBO calls “unsustainable,” the unemployment rate would still be about 8 percent by the end of 2013.

Deficits would be much higher under the alternative scenario as well, averaging about 5 percent of GDP rather than the projected 1 percent if the laws stay the same.

“The persistence of large budget deficits and rapidly escalating federal debt” would “hinder national saving and investment,” CBO said.

Via: CNS News

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Budget analysts project $1.1T federal deficit

 Fourth Straight Year Exceeding $1 Trillion…

Prepare for another year of $1 trillion-plus deficits. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected Wednesday that the deficit for 2012 will run $1.1 trillion, the fourth year in a row the shortfall will exceed $1 trillion. 

The projection is down a bit from an earlier estimate pegging the deficit this year at $1.2 trillion. 

The report also warned that a new recession is likely if an ongoing stalemate over tax and spending cuts continues between Democrats and Republicans. 

In its annual summertime report, the budget office said Wednesday that letting decade-old tax Bush tax rates expire and sweeping spending cuts occur in January -- which will happen without congressional action -- "would lead to economic conditions in 2013 that will probably be considered a recession."

If that happened, the economy would contract by 0.5 percent -- a gloomier projection than the budget office made earlier this year when it envisioned slight growth under that scenario. Unemployment would rise to around 9 percent by late next year if the standoff persists, the analysts said. 

The budget office's latest warning came amid a presidential and congressional election year in which neither President Obama nor congressional Republicans have shown any signs of giving ground in their protracted battle over taxes, spending and the budget. The lethargic economy and massive federal deficits are top-flight issues in this year's campaigns. 

Via: Fox News

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Obamacare’s 18 New Tax Hikes

Not only did the President and his partners in Congress take $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for Obamacare, but they also raise taxes by $836.3 billion to pay for it, with $36.3 billion hitting Americans in 2013 alone. Here’s the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation‘s (JCT) updated cost of the Obamacare tax hikes and penalties.

To read about more of Obamacare’s negative effects, click here.