In an otherwise great piece titled Medicaid Pushes U.S. States Off ‘Cliff’ as Governors Seek Cuts, Bloomberg’s Christopher Palmeri and Pat Wechsler report:

States face the prospect of enrolling 16 million more people in Medicaid beginning in 2014 under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health-care law Obama signed in March. It expands coverage to include certain childless adults under 65, according to Foley & Lardner LLP, a law firm in Milwaukee. The federal government will pay 100 percent of the increased expense for the first three years.

This is almost true, but not quite. Obamacare does mandate Medicaid … Continue Reading

On December 10th, under the headline “DREAM Act’s evolving outline creates confusion”, Michael Doyle reported that:

Congressional Democrats are rewriting immigration policy on the fly, in a legalization effort whose long-term consequences remain unclear.
…
The bill covers roughly half a million California residents and 240,000 Texas residents who entered the U.S. illegally when they were under age 16, according to a Migration Policy Institute study.

An estimated 183,000 Florida residents, 49,000 North Carolina residents and upward of 30,000 Washington state residents would likewise be covered.

The House approved the bill Wednesday by a 216-198 margin. Even so, the bill kept evolving until the

… Continue Reading

John Collins Rudolf of the New York Times wrote on December 14th about a “peak coal” problem potentially facing China and could stunt the country’s rapid economic growth. Rudolf writes, “China’s ravenous appetite for energy puts the country at risk of reaching a point of “peak coal,” when demand for coal will outstrip domestic production capacity, a growing number of experts believe.

China now consumes approximately 47 percent of coal produced globally but by most estimates has just 14 percent of global coal reserves. Meanwhile, demand has risen by about 10 percent per year for the last decade, … Continue Reading

Brian Stelter reports in the December 20th New York Times that Democratic Federal Communications Commissioners Michael Copps will vote in favor allowing the federal government, for the first time ever, to regulate the internet. According to Stelter, Copps will vote for regulation to ensure that the Internet “doesn’t travel down the same road of special interest consolidation and gate-keeper control that other media and telecommunications industries — radio, television, film and cable — have traveled. ….What an historic tragedy it would be, to let that fate befall the dynamism of the Internet.”

Stelter allows Copps statement to be the final … Continue Reading

Reporting on the failure of the fifth version of the DREAM Act, The Washington Post’s Shankar Vedantam reported on December 19th:

Whenever Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and other immigrant-rights advocates asked President Obama how a Democratic administration could preside over the greatest number of deportations in any two-year period in the nation’s history, Obama’s answer was always the same.

Vedantam needs to read his own paper. On December 6th, The Washington Post’s Andrew Becker reported:

For much of this year, the Obama administration touted its tougher-than-ever approach to immigration enforcement, culminating in a record number of deportations.

But in reaching 392,862

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The Los Angeles Times’ Margot Roosevelt covered the California Air Resources Board adoption of a cap and trade system on December 17th, writing:

Under the state’s cap-and-trade plan, emissions from the 600 biggest industrial facilities, including cement manufacturers, electrical plants and oil refineries, would be capped in 2012, with that limit gradually decreasing over eight years in an effort to encourage energy efficiency and renewable sources of power.

Companies would be granted “allowances” for each metric ton of greenhouse gas they emit, and they could trade unused allowances among themselves to cut costs.

But what Roosevelt never explains is what “costs” allowances … Continue Reading

Reporting on the New START debate in the Senate, McClatchy’s William Douglas and Jonathan Landay wrote on December 15th:

A new inspection system agreed on in the treaty will be more intrusive than the regime that ended last year.

This is just plain false. As former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph, and former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman have detailed New START abandons on-the-ground monitoring of Russia’s missile-manufacturing facility and permits Russia to withhold telemetry of some of its missile tests, undermining our ability to know both what is being … Continue Reading

Margaret Talev and Michael Doyle filed a December 13th report for McClatchy on Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s partial victory against Obamacare’s individual mandate writing:

Some 20-odd cases have been filed overall challenging the law.

White House officials and advocates of the law emphasized that Hudson’s ruling is no more important than two recent rulings by federal judges that upheld the mandate. In October, U.S. District Judge George Steeh in Michigan ruled the insurance mandate fit within congressional power under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. On Nov. 30, U.S. District Judge Norman Moon in Lynchburg, Va. ruled the same.

But not all cases … Continue Reading

Reporting on a new Taxpayers for Common Sense and Citizens Against Government Waste rankings on per capita earmark spending by state, Stateline’s Pamela Prah writes:

Critics as varied as tea party supporters and the Obama administration say earmarks represent government waste and create opportunities for corruption.

But supporters, particularly in Congress, say a ban on earmarks would rob lawmakers of their authority to set the spending and taxing policies of the nation, relinquishing it to the executive branch. “Getting rid of earmarks does not save taxpayers any money, reduces transparency and gives more power to the Obama administration,” says Sen. James

… Continue Reading

Elizabeth Williamson, reporting on the United States-South Korea trade deal, writes that leaders of the two nations have reached an agreement in which the United States will gradually phase out a 2.5 percent tariff it imposes on cars built in Korea. Williamson writes:

The pact gives a boost to Mr. Obama’s efforts to double U.S. exports by 2015 and to build support with the nation’s biggest multinational corporations. Leaders of these companies have been concerned that Mr. Obama hasn’t been pushing hard enough to expand trade-opening deals, particularly in Asia, even as the European Union and other trading rivals

… Continue Reading

Looking forward to the future of health care policy, The Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein wrote on November 23rd:

These days, most health reformers can agree about two things.

They believe, based on pretty good evidence, that growing concentration among insurers, hospitals, pharmacy benefit managers and drug companies helps explain why health-care costs are rising faster than the cost of everything else.

Insurance companies merge to gain greater clout in negotiating with hospitals and other providers, then the providers merge to gain leverage over the insurers. At any one time, in any one market, one side or the other might have the

… Continue Reading

On December 2nd the USA Today reported that “Obama bans offshore oil drilling in Atlantic waters” with Wendy Koch writing:

In a policy reversal, President Obama’s administration announced Wednesday that it will not allow offshore oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico or off the Atlantic coast for at least seven more years. …
Environmental groups generally welcomed the news. “This decision is a wise and sensible step to protect Florida, the Atlantic coast and the Pacific coast from an inevitable disaster from expanded drilling,” said Oceana’s Andrew Sharpless said. …
The oil industry, business groups and congressional Republicans

… Continue Reading

Reporting on votes in the House and Senate to end the practice of Congressional earmarking, The New York Times‘ A.G. Sulzberger reported on November 22nd:

Earmarks, which for all their controversy account for less than half of 1 percent of total federal spending, allow lawmakers to specify how money is used in their home states. If they were eliminated, Congress would cede more authority over spending decisions to the executive branch.

This is just plain false. There is not a zero sum game between Congress and the Executive branch when it comes to who gets to how to spend transportation dollars.

… Continue Reading

Tom Raum of The Associated Press reported on President Barack Obama’s pay freeze on November 29th:

The proposal, which must be approved by Congress, would not apply to the military, but it would affect all others on the Executive Branch payroll. It would not affect members of Congress or their staffs, defense contractors, postal workers or federal court judges and workers.

But there are more limitations to President Obama’s pay freeze. It only applies to 2011 and 2012 cost of living increases. Most federal employees will still receive seniority-based pay increases over the next two years, and no one’s federal benefits … Continue Reading