Obama Needs to Act Big, Do Deal With GOP on Offshore Profits

With a budget showdown looming in September, perhaps this is the moment for President Obama to act big and get a deal done with Congress.

Everyone's talking about the paralysis in Washington. Feeding this view is that, admittedly, both sides are thinking about scoring political points ahead of next year's congressional elections. 

Meanwhile, the country founders. Economic growth has been stalled. The latest numbers show the GDP rose a paltry 1.7 percent in the second quarter, and the first quarter's GDP growth has been revised downward from 1.8 percent to just 1.1 percent.

We need 4 percent GDP growth to cure unemployment!

Worse, a flurry of retail sales reports show the economy is in deep trouble. JCPenny reported a second quarter loss of $568 million, Sears lost $194 million, and Macy's revenue slipped 0.8 percent in the quarter. Even Wal-Mart reported disappointing U.S. sales, down 0.3 percent in the quarter for stores open at least one year.

The economy was supposed to be at full throttle, with the recovery well underway. It should have been, with mortgage rates having hit historic lows in the past year.

But Obamacare and new fiscal cliff taxes, including an increase in the payroll tax this year, has added close to $275 billion in new taxes this year alone. And then there’s dramatically increasing private health insurance premiums, and oil is surging over $100 a barrel.

Cash is being sucked out of the economy to plug a digital deficit, with consumers having less money to spend. Less money in consumers' pockets yields less spending. This isn't rocket science, folks.

Via: Newsmax

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Russians Inspect Missile Defense Base in California

Single review of five silos a 

controversial New START 

provision

Russian officials this week carried out a secret inspection of the U.S. strategic missile defense base in California as part of the New START arms treaty, according to Obama administration officials

.

The inspection of five missile defense interceptors is the only one allowed under the 2010 arms accord. The treaty requires cuts of U.S. and Russian deployed strategic warheads to 1,550.

A defense official said the visit was a treaty verification visit hosted by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

A State Department official declined to comment on the inspection but confirmed it was related to New START. “Implementation activities under New START are confidential,” the official said.

However, Thomas Moore, a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee professional staff member, said the inspection of the base was a controversial part of U.S. and Russian arms talks leading up to New START that was ratified by the Senate in December 2010.

The United States had opposed including the five Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) silos in the treaty inspection terms, said Moore, a specialist on arms control issues.

The Russians refused, and because the five silos had been converted from offensive intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos, negotiators settled on a single inspection, Moore said, adding that he believed this week’s Russian review was that inspection.

Russia had demanded including the five silos in New START inspection provisions to monitor the conversion of long-range launch tubes into missile defense shooters.

Via: WFB

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U.S. Taxpayers Still Down $19.1B From Obama's General Motors Bailout

(CNSNews.com) – Only 65 percent of the nearly $80 billion that President Obama unilaterally diverted from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to bail out the auto industry over the strong objections of Congress has been recovered, according to the U.S. Treasury Department’s July 2013 (TARP) report to Congress, which was released on Aug. 12th.

When Congress passed legislation creating TARP in October 2008 to stabilize the nation's financial institutions and prevent an economic meltdown, lawmakers intentionally excluded the auto industry from the TARP program.

Even former House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) admitted to CNSNews.com in March 2009 that he had no idea where Obama got the legal authority to use TARP funds to oversee a restructuring of Chrysler and General Motors, since Congress also voted down a separate plan to bail out the auto industry.

Since 2008, the federal government has recovered more than 95 percent of the $420.6 billion in TARP loans. However, of the $79.7 billion in TARP funds Obama took to bail out Chrysler and General Motors, $21.6 billion is still outstanding. Approximately $19.1 billion of that amount is attributed to GM.

GM received more than $50 billion in TARP money after December 2008, when it began its Chapter 11 restructuring. About 80 percent of the TARP funds, or $40.7 billion, “was effectively converted into an initial 60.8% equity stake,” according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

As private investment in GM increased and the government sold off stock, the government’s equity stake gradually decreased to 17.7 percent, CRS noted. But the stock market is not cooperating with the pledge the Treasury Department made last December to fully divest itself of 500.1 million shares of GM stock within the next 12 to 15 months.

Via: CNS News

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IS DELTA BRACING EMPLOYEES FOR AN OBAMACARE SHOCK?

Erick Erickson of RedState has a radio show in Atlanta, which is also the hub for Delta Airlines.  Erick says he’s been getting calls from Delta employees about a memo, originally sent from Delta management to the Obama Administration in June, which the company is now beginning to circulate among employees.  Coupled with warnings that “their healthcare will be radically changed because of ObamaCare,” this might be the first step in dropping the kind of Affordable Care Act bomb that so many other companies have been forced to detonate on their employees, most recently United Parcel Service.

Erickson calls the letter “stunning:”

According to Delta, in 2014 Obamacare will cost the company at least $38 million in direct costs and that is only the beginning. With added medical inflation, Delta claims “the cost of providing health care to our employees will increase by nearly $100,000,000 next year.” A $100 million increase thanks in large part to Obamacare and ancillary cost increases derived therefrom.

He included an excerpt from the letter:

The ACA requires large employers to pay an annual fee of $63 per covered participant in 2014. For Delta’s roughly 160,000 enrolled active and retired employees and their family members, this represents more than $10 million added to the cost of providing health care next year. As we discussed, this fee, which is meant to help stabilize the state exchanges as they get started, provides absolutely zero direct benefit to our participants. It is, essentially, a direct subsidy from us and our employees to those who participate in the exchanges.

Via: Human Events

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Food Safety Rules: Rushed Deadlines Will Lead to Disaster

In 2011, President Barack Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) into law,[1] giving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unprecedented power to regulate the country’s food supply.[2]  

This new power includes the first time that the FDA has the authority to establish standards for the production and harvesting of produce and to identify preventive controls for food facilities.  The FDA will also be able to place much greater restrictions on imported goods, establish programs for food testing, and conduct inspections of both domestic and foreign food facilities.  These regulations will have a major impact across the food system, and the potential to drive up food costs and place unnecessary and intrusive restrictions on safe and proven practices.[3]    

Unrealistic Deadlines

By setting up artificial and unrealistic deadlines in FSMA, Congress has effectively ensured that the regulations will be rushed and poorly considered. According to the FDA, it is required to “prepare more than 50 rules, guidance documents, reports and studies within strict timeframes.”[4]  Some of the rules had to be finalized in as little as 18 months, which was not enough time given the complex issues involved.

As should have been expected, the FDA was unable to meet several deadlines. In August 2012, two activist groups sued the FDA in the United States District Court of the Northern District of California to compel the agency to issue seven rules that were past deadline.[5] In April 2013, the court agreed that the FDA should issue the seven rules promptly.[6] On August 13, 2013, the court rejected another FDA attempt to delay two of the seven rules.[7] As of now, four proposed rules have been published with comment periods ending in November 2013.[8]

Via: Heritage Foundation

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