GOP Congressmen: Most Republicans Now Think Iraq War Was a Mistake
In a Thursday panel at Cato on conservatism and war, U.S. Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) and John Duncan (R-Tenn.) revealed that the vast majority of GOP members of Congress now think it was wrong for the U.S. to invade Iraq in 2003.
The discussion was moderated by Grover Norquist, who asked the congressmen how many of their colleagues now think the war was a mistake.
Rohrabacher:
“I will say that the decision to go in, in retrospect, almost all of us think that was a horrible mistake. …Now that we know that it cost a trillion dollars, and all of these years, and all of these lives, and all of this blood… all I can say is everyone I know thinks it was a mistake to go in now.”
McClintock:
“I think everyone [in Congress] would agree that Iraq was a mistake.”
Watch the clip:
Trouble in Massachusetts
Yesterday, Cato released a new study, “The Massachusetts Health Plan: Much Pain, Little Gain,” which showed that official estimates overstate the gains in health insurance coverage resulting from a 2006 Massachusetts law by at least 45 percent. The study also finds: supporters understate the law’s cost by nearly 60 percent; government programs are crowding out private insurance; self-reported health improved for some but fell for others; and young adults are responding to the law by avoiding Massachusetts.
Given that the Massachusetts health plan bears a “remarkable resemblance” to the Obama plan, the study should serve as a warning sign to members of Congress, says Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies.
The study has received coverage in Investor’s Business Daily, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Detroit News, The Washington Times, the Reason Foundation and the Pioneer Institute.
FEHBP Plan Is No ‘Moderate Compromise’
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has announced that he has reached a super secret compromise on how to deal with the so-called public option for health reform. While Reid said the agreement was too important to actually tell anyone what is in it, most of the details have been leaked to the press.
Rather than set-up a completely government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurance, Congress would establish a program similar to the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program (FEHBP), which currently covers government workers, including Members of Congress. The FEHBP offers a variety of private insurance plans under a program managed by the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Each year OPM uses the Federal procurement process to solicit bids from insurance companies to be one of the plans offered. Premiums can vary, but participating plans operate under stringent rules. As a model, the FEHBP is apparently acceptable to moderate Democrats because the insurance plans are private rather than government entities, while liberals like it because it is government regulated and managed.
In addition, the compromise plan would expand Medicare, allowing workers ages 55 to 65 to “buy in” to the program, and may also expand Medicaid.
A few reasons to believe this is yet another truly bad idea:
- In choosing the FEHBP for a model, Democrats have actually chosen an insurance plan whose costs are rising faster than average. FEHBP premiums are expected to rise 7.9 percent this year and 8.8 percent in 2010. By comparison, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that on average, premiums will increase by 5.5 to 6.2 percent annually over the next few years. In fact, FEHBP premiums are rising so fast that nearly 100,000 federal employees have opted out of the program.
- FEHBP members are also finding their choices cut back. Next year, 32 insurance plans will either drop out of the program or reduce their participation. Some 61,000 workers will lose their current coverage.
- But former OPM director Linda Springer doubts that the agency has the “capacity, the staff, or the mission,” to be able to manage the new program. Taking on management of the new program could overburden OPM. “Ultimate, it would break the system.”
- Medicare is currently $50-100 trillion in debt, depending on which accounting measure you use. Allowing younger workers to join the program is the equivalent of crowding a few more passengers onto the Titanic.
- At the same time, Medicare under reimburses physicians, especially in rural areas. Expanding Medicare enrollment will both threaten the continued viability of rural hospitals and other providers, and also result in increased cost-shifting, driving up premiums for private insurance.
- Medicaid is equally a budget-buster. The program now costs more than $330 billion per year, a cost that grew at a rate of roughly 10.7 percent annually. The program spends money by the bushel, yet under-reimburses providers even worse than Medicare.
- Ultimately this so-called compromise would expand government health care programs and further squeeze private insurance, resulting in increased costs and higher insurance premiums, and provide a lower-quality of care.
No wonder Senator Reid wants to keep it a secret.
Tuesday Links
- Dear members of Congress: If you’re not going to read the bills you pass, at least read the Constitution. Don’t fret; it’s short and written in plain English.
- Richard Rahn: Pay members of Congress more. (Or less, depending on their performance.)
- NYC: “The city that never smokes.” A proposal to ban lighting up in New York’s parks has exposed the puritanical agenda behind the crusade against smoking.
- Tyler Cowen: With health care costs high and rising, government mandates to buy insurance would make many people worse off.
- Podcast: “Pay Czar Cuts Checks“
Congress Boosts Its Budget
Politico reports: ” Congress is on the verge of giving itself a bump in its annual budget — even as local governments, families and businesses across the country are tightening their belts in the worst recession in decades.”
Spending on the legislative branch of the federal government is set to rise 5.8 percent in fiscal 2010, and Politico details some of the dubious activities that will receive increased funding.
One statement in the story particularly caught my eye:
” ‘We have not seen a significant increase in overall legislative branch expenditures since nearly 2001,’ said Jonathan Beeton, a spokesman for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).”
Who is he trying to fool? The bill under consideration will provide $4.7 billion in funding for Congress in 2010, which is way up from the $2.7 billion spent in 2001, according to the Congressional Research Service (page 3).
That’s a 74 percent increase in nine years, representing a very robust 6.4 percent annual average growth rate.
And consider that the “customer base” for this spending has not increased–the number of members of Congress has remained fixed at 535. So while supporters of, say, an education program may say that spending needs to rise because the number of students is rising, much of the increased spending on the legislative branch would seem to go directly into fattening the paychecks of politicians and their staffers.
Tuesday Links
- Twenty inaccurate claims in Obama’s speech to Congress on health care. “If [members of Congress] yelled out every time President Obama said something untrue about health care, they would quickly find themselves growing hoarse.”
- Political tensions decreasing between Taiwan and China.
- How Americans misunderstand war: “America’s biggest mistake in Afghanistan and Iraq was to think its modern military would make winning easy.”
- Always read the fine print: There is a dangerous provision in the Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill that could deny crucial health treatments for Medicare patients.
- Will the FDIC start borrowing from healthy banks to continue to provide relief to banks teetering on the edge?
- Podcast: Justin Logan explains why even the best policy toward Iran’s nuclear ambitions may not yield a positive outcome.
NYT Nonsense on SAFRA
With the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) likely to be voted on by the full House or Representatives today, the media is finally giving some space to debate over the bill. Unfortunately, the New York Times only pays attention to the parts it likes, writing in an editorial today that:
The private lenders and those who do their bidding in Congress have recently taken issue with a Congressional Budget Office analysis that showed that the bill would save about $87 billion over the next 10 years.
They argue, absurdly, for example, that the savings would be smaller if the system were analyzed under accounting rules other than the ones that the federal government is required to use. The aim is to mislead taxpayers and members of Congress into believing that the C.B.O. estimate is dishonest.
Um, excuse me New York Times, but the CBO has never said the bill — not just going from subsidized to direct lending, but the whole bill — would save $87 billion over ten years. Moreover, it has been a series of analyses from the CBO — albeit driven by requests from members of Congress – that have continually increased the cost estimates for SAFRA. (I have linked to all the CBO analyses here.) CBO’s very first estimate of the bill’s likely net cost put it at around $6 billion over ten years, and it only went up from there after incorporating such things as lending risk and potentially higher Pell grant costs.
Of course, the Times isn’t alone in its refusal to talk honestly about SAFRA. Despite all of the CBO estimates, yesterday U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said SAFRA would give college students and numerous other interests the world without costing taxpayers a dime. “We’re not asking the taxpayers for one single dollar,” he said. And SAFRA’s sponsor, Rep. George Miller (D-CA), has been touting his bill as a revolutionary money saver since day one.
The truth on this thing is out there, but it’s definitely not in the New York Times.
Senate Votes to End Production of F-22 Raptor
As I have written previously, President Obama and the members of Congress who voted to kill funding for the F-22 did the right thing.
The Washington Post reports:
The Senate voted Tuesday to kill the nation’s premier fighter-jet program, embracing by a 58 to 40 margin the argument of President Obama and his top military advisers that more F-22s are not needed for the nation’s defense and would be a costly drag on the Pentagon’s budget in an era of small wars and counterinsurgency efforts.
While this vote marks a step in the right direction, the fight isn’t over. The F-22′s supporters in the House inserted additional monies in the defense authorization bill, and the differences will need to be reconciled in conference. But the vote for the Levin-McCain amendment signals that Congress will take seriously President Obama and Secretary Gates’ intent to bring some measure of rationality to defense budgeting.
The Raptor’s whopping price tag— nearly $350 million per aircraft counting costs over the life of the program— and its poor air-to-ground capabilities always undermined the case for building more than the 187 already programmed.
In the past week, Congress has learned more about the F-22′s poor maintenance record, which has driven the operating costs well above those of any comparable fighter. And, of course, the plane hasn’t seen action over either Iraq or Afghanistan, and likely never will.
Beyond the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter, we need a renewed emphasis in military procurement on cost containment. This can only occur within an environment of shrinking defense budgets. Defense contractors who are best able to meet stringent cost and quality standards will win the privilege of providing our military with the necessary tools, but at far less expense to the taxpayers. And those who cannot will have to find other business.
The Politics of Stimulus Spending
USA Today investigates how members of Congress are “working behind the scenes to try to influence how the [stimulus] money is spent.”
Congress and President Obama proudly noted that there were no earmarks in the $787 stimulus bill. But…
Ten of 27 departments and agencies receiving stimulus money have released records of contacts by lawmakers under Freedom of Information Act requests USA TODAY filed in April. Those records detailed 53 letters, phone calls and e-mails recommending projects from 60 members from February through the end of May. Thirteen of those lawmakers voted against the stimulus package.
Critics of the stimulus bill pointed out that government money is always politically directed. It’s little consolation to be proven right.
Members with Undisclosed Earmarks Will Still Get Their Goodies
The Hill reports that Members of Congress who failed to disclose their earmark requests as required by new rules in the House will still get their goodies.
Members who failed to disclose their earmarks as required by the April 4 deadline should have them rejected out of hand. But Congress makes the rules, and Congress can break the rules.
WashingtonWatch.com compiled a state-by-state list of links to earmark requests recently. Because Members of Congress published their requests in different formats, information about all the earmarks that have been requested is still rather obscure.
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