Author Archives: Denise Simon

CBO: Gutting Obamacare Saves Half Trillion

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Bill gutting ObamaCare would save half-trillion over a decade, CBO finds

TheHill: A GOP-led effort to repeal the biggest parts of ObamaCare would cost about $42 billion less than previously expected, saving more than a half-trillion dollars over a decade, the congressional budget scorekeeper said Monday.

Legislation to gut most of ObamaCare’s mandates and taxes, known as Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act, would reduce the deficit by $516 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The bill is expected to get a vote in the House this week, followed shortly by a vote in the Senate. President Obama has said he would veto the bill.

The CBO had previously said the bill would reduce deficits by $474 billion, but the estimates have been reduced in light of the recently enacted governing spending bill. That funding bill, which has already been signed by Obama, delays three key healthcare taxes, which each would have brought billions in revenues.

As part of a congressional deal reached on the spending bill, the so-called Cadillac tax on high-cost healthcare plans is delayed for two years and the medical device tax and the health insurance “premium” tax are paused for two years and one year, respectively.

Republicans are looking to pass their latest bill targeting ObamaCare through a budget process known as reconciliation. Under the Senate’s rules, a party that controls both chambers can pass legislation with a simple majority – sending a bill gutting ObamaCare to the president’s desk for the first time.

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GOP-led Congress set for first time to vote, pass bill to replace ObamaCare
FNC: Within hours of reconvening Tuesday, the GOP-led Congress will finally act to fulfill a 2010 promise to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

The effort is set to begin Tuesday afternoon when the House Rules Committee meets on the repeal measure, with a full debate and vote as early as Tuesday. With the Republican-led Senate having already passed its version, GOP congressional leaders will send the measure to President Obama, daring him to veto it.

Obama will undoubtedly veto the measure to undo his signature health care law, and Congress has nowhere near the votes to override a presidential veto.

But Republicans hope the entire exercise might start to change the circumstance on Capitol Hill regarding the years-old argument about ObamaCare and its repeal.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is promising to unveil a bill to, in fact, replace ObamaCare.

For all of the GOP’s Sturm und Drang about ObamaCare, neither the House nor the Senate has ever debated a bill that attempts to succeed the law.

The reason is that nobody has crafted a plan that would pass in either chamber.

In 2010, House Republicans concocted the “Pledge to America.” It was a political compact created to help the GOP seize control of the House from Democrats and tell voters what they would do if in control.

One of the promises was to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare. After Republicans earned the House majority, the first major vote of 2011 was to repeal the health care law. The House and Senate have voted more than 60 times to either fully or partially repeal the Affordable Care Act, as it is more formally know. Yet they’ve never held a vote to replace ObamaCare.

But with Ryan now at the helm in the House and the GOP controlling the Senate, this may be one of the few chances the party has to come together around a bill which would replace the six-year-old law.

Ryan is, nevertheless, tempering expectations. In a recent meeting with reporters, he indicated that the House was practically obligated to pass a replacement bill. And though Ryan was confident about the House doing so this year, he underscored the unlikelihood that Obama would sign the legislation into law.

Still, the effort is part of Ryan’s attempt to contrast Republicans with the agenda of Obama and the left. Democrats have long hectored Republicans for failing to cough up a bill to succeed ObamaCare.

Such a measure is a unicorn.

If there were the votes to approve that elusive bill, Republicans would have done it. But if they finally at least draft a bill and better yet pass it, then the sides can argue about policy and not just exchange hypothetical catcalls.

Still, if Ryan is correct, the House GOP will write an ObamaCare alternative seven years after a triumvirate of House committees prepped the initial iterations of the ACA in the summer of 2009.

The House approved the first version of ObamaCare in November 2009. The Senate did so on Christmas Eve of 2009. Both bodies ushered the final health care packages to passage in March, 2010.

This enterprise won’t be easy for Republicans.

Some GOP aides defended not having a replacement bill at the ready.

They suggested the promise in the Pledge to America was to “repeal and replace” the ACA. Certainly there were votes to repeal the law (at least in the House). But the law was never repealed. Therefore, they argued, it wasn’t yet incumbent upon Republicans to make good on the second contingency and replace the statute.

Ryan won’t be able to implement the replacement package either with Obama still in the White House in 2016 — if it does, in fact, get that far. But if Ryan’s successful, he’ll have come a lot further than anyone else has before.

Which brings us back to what the House is up to next week.

Though the House has approved dozens of repeal bills over the years, the Senate has not until a few weeks ago taken a direct, up-or-down vote on eliminating ObamaCare.

Democrats controlled the Senate until January 2015. That meant they could block any Republican effort to deposit a repeal bill on the floor.

However, the story changed when the GOP won the majority. Still, Senate rules often favor the minority party. Republicans would have to vault two anticipated Democratic-filibusters just to bring up a repeal bill for debate. Overcoming those filibusters would require two roll call votes of 60 yeas. That wasn’t happening.

The GOP nevertheless had one option at its disposal — something called “budget reconciliation.”

Budget reconciliation is a unique, once-a-shot piece of legislation that operates under special rules. It’s inoculated from pesky Senate filibusters. And if you can jam something into a budget reconciliation measure, you can usually get it through the Senate because it just requires a simple majority for passage.

The House recently started this process and knocked out a dual reconciliation bill that simultaneously repealed ObamaCare and defunded Planned Parenthood. It then shipped the measure to the Senate. But because of special Senate rules governing budget reconciliation, the upper chamber had to tweak the plan to pass it. That meant that the House and Senate had approved slightly different bills. So the Senate then bounced its updated version back to the House.

This is where things stand: The House is expected to debate and vote on the final, Senate-amended version of the reconciliation plan. If approved, the House and Senate are in alignment and the bill goes to Obama to sign or veto — though this is a fait accompli.

House Republicans initially planned to take up the reworked Senate bill right before Christmas. But at the last minute, they decided to delay that gambit. They had a new tactic. Wait until after the holiday to maximize exposure of the House debate and vote — as well as the President’s planned veto. Plus, it might help tee up Republican plans on health care in the new year.

The GOP hopes it can artfully message its plans to design and approve a replacement bill for ObamaCare — with something with a lot more policy teeth than the other parliamentary gymnastics of just voting to repeal parts or all of the legislation over and over again.

Republicans also are hoping the public embraces these policy ideas as a contrast to those propounded by Obama and Democrats with health care topping the list.

Puerto Rico Fake Passport, Gain U.S. Entry

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Puerto is in economic default.

Puerto Rico’s governor said the U.S. territory’s Department of Justice is trying to anticipate any lawsuits after the island said it would default on some debt due Jan. 1, according to an interview with CNBC.

Puerto Rico said last week that it would default for the second time in five months, but would pay the bulk of $1 billion due, opening the door to potential litigation from affected creditors.

“Our Department of Justice is trying to anticipate any lawsuit we will have, but to be 100 percent prepared will be very hard,” said Alejandro Garcia Padilla in an interview with CNBC.

“It will be very costly – that litigation, for the commonwealth and our creditors,” he said. “Every dollar used to pay lawyers will be a dollar … not available to pay creditors.”

Illegal Aliens Use Fake Puerto Rican Birth Certificates to Get U.S. Passports, Licenses

JudicialWatch: As if the country’s monstrous immigration crisis weren’t dire enough, an increasing number of illegal aliens are using fake Puerto Rican birth certificates to obtain authentic U.S. passports and driver’s licenses.

Located about 1,000 miles southeast of Florida, Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory about two decades after the Caribbean island was acquired from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American war. Puerto Ricans are American citizens at birth though they don’t have the right to vote in federal elections and the island has only one non-voting representative in Congress.

In recent years a record number of Puerto Ricans have left their troubled island for the U.S. and a big chunk has settled on Florida. A few months ago a study found that the island’s ongoing economic recession has led to a mass exodus not seen in more than five decades. In 2014 alone 84,000 people left Puerto Rico for the U.S. mainland, the study found. One recent news report referred to the Puerto Rican crisis as an economic exodus that could push two-thirds of its population to live in the U.S. The island has an eye-popping $73 billion debt, a collapsing healthcare system and nearly half of its population living in poverty.

It’s fair to say that for years Uncle Sam has welcomed Puerto Ricans with open arms and that has created lots of opportunities for fraud. There has been a rise in the number of cases involving the use of false Puerto Rican birth certificates by illegal immigrants, according to a south Florida newspaper report that focuses on the specifics of a recent case. It involves an illegal alien from Colombia arrested in Florida after trying to get a U.S. passport by claiming to be an American citizen born in Puerto Rico. The 35-year-old man, Edinson Canaveral Sánchez, used a fake Puerto Rican birth certificate to get a valid Florida driver’s license more than three years ago.

The newspaper article points out that this case is the latest in a series involving the use of fake Puerto Rican birth certificates by illegal immigrants in south Florida. In the last year alone more than 12 cases have surfaced in Miami federal court, the story reveals. The defendants, all Spanish-speaking illegal aliens, have all illegally obtained Puerto Rican birth certificates to get American passports or driver’s licenses. Sánchez has been criminally charged and is scheduled to be tried this month in a Broward County federal court.

It turns out that fraud involving Puerto Rican birth certificates has been pervasive for many years, yet the U.S. government and its various agencies accept the documents blindly. The problem got so out of control that back in 2010 Puerto Rico’s government invalidated every birth certificate and issued new ones considered to be safer. One mainstream news report called it a “radical solution to what many say has been a serious and growing crisis involving Puerto Rican birth certificates, which are used to apply for everything from U.S. passports to Medicaid.”

The same report, published in April, 2010, revealed that the U.S. State Department was well aware of the problem. In fact, the agency estimated back then that a mind-boggling 40% of all U.S. passport fraud cases involved Puerto Rican birth certificates. Four years later, a separate news report confirmed that little had changed, that the fraud is still rampant. Here’s an excerpt of the story published in the summer of 2014 by a Florida-based nonprofit investigative journalism outlet: “Counterfeit, altered or stolen birth certificates coming from Puerto Rico are the Holy Grail to Florida’s undocumented. With a phony birth certificate you can live the American dream. You can also enroll in school, land a job and get a driver’s license.”

Gitmo: Soon to be at 90 Detainees, Then What?

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Control of the released detainees after transfer? Hardly.

Former Guantanamo detainee travels to Argentina, calls for asylum for remaining detainees

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina –  A former Guantanamo detainee who was resettled in Uruguay is asking Argentina to grant asylum for detainees still at the U.S. detention facility.

Abu Wa’el Dhiab wore a Guantanamo-style orange jumpsuit as he told Barricada TV that he believes “the Argentine government could receive the prisoners at Guantanamo here in a humanitarian way.” Calls to the Foreign Ministry seeking comment were not returned.

From the Director of National Intelligence:

Section 307 (a) (2) An assessment of the likelihood that such detainees will engage in terrorism.

Based on trends identified during the past eleven years, we assess that some detainees currently at GTMO will seek to reengage in terrorist or insurgent activities after they are transferred. Transfers to countries with ongoing conflicts and internal instability as well as active recruitment by insurgent and terrorist organizations pose particular problems. While enforcement of transfer conditions may deter reengagement by many former detainees and delay reengagement by others, some detainees who are determined to reengage will do so regardless of any transfer conditions, albeit probably at a lower rate than if they were transferred without conditions.

Section 307 (a) (2) An assessment of the likelihood that such detainees will communicate with persons in terrorist organizations.

Former GTMO detainees routinely communicate with each other, families of other former detainees, and previous associates who are members of terrorist organizations. The reasons for communication span from the mundane (reminiscing about shared experiences) to the nefarious (planning terrorist operations). We assess that some GTMO detainees transferred in the future also will communicate with other former GTMO detainees and persons in terrorist organizations. We do not consider mere communication with individuals or organizations— including other former GTMO detainees—an indicator of reengagement. Rather, the motives, intentions, and purposes of each communication are taken into account when assessing whether the individual has reengaged.

Source: ‘Al Qaeda followers’ among 17 being transferred from Gitmo

FNC: The group of 17 detainees expected to be transferred out of Guantanamo Bay as early as this week includes “multiple bad guys” and “Al Qaeda followers,” a source who has reviewed the list told Fox News.

Little is known publicly about which prisoners are being prepared for transfer, but the Obama administration has notified Congress it plans to ship out 17 detainees – some of whom could be transferred within days.

While the identities of the men are closely held, the source who spoke with Fox News said it includes “multiple bad guys … not taxi drivers and cooks.”

This is a reference to the administration’s transfer of Ibrahim al Qosi to Sudan in 2012. Despite entering a “re-integration program,” the one-time cook for Usama bin Laden has now fled to Yemen, where he is among the leadership of Al Qaeda in Yemen. That transfer is now said to be a source of considerable heartburn for the Obama administration.

As for those on the docket for immediate transfer, the source told Fox News the administration will not identify the detainees until they are relocated in their new home countries — because knowing who they are in advance would create further roadblocks and increase the controversy.

Multiple countries have agreed to take the men, in small groups, and the source said some of the countries were so-called first timers — a reference to the fact those countries had not taken Guantanamo detainees in the past.

The move to clear out 17 detainees is seen as part of the administration’s long-term plan to ultimately shutter the detention camp.

The transfer of 17 prisoners would bring the number of detainees left down to 90 – the bulk of whom cannot be transferred to another country.

Many in Congress, though, fiercely oppose any plan to bring those detainees to the U.S.

President Obama in his year-end news conference justified the closure of the detention camp, claiming “Guantanamo continues to be one of the key magnets for jihadi recruitment.” But the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, which tracks jihadist propaganda, said that terrorist groups have moved on from using Guantanamo in their recruitment efforts.

“The topic of Guantanamo prisoners appeared rather frequently in Al-Qaeda’s propaganda in past years,” MEMRI’s Eliot Zweig said. “However, the topic has received little to no attention in the last year or two … Gitmo hasn’t received much attention in official ISIS releases.”

 

U.S. Arms Exports to Mexico Mostly to Blame for Violence

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US arms, exported legally, are behind many violent crimes in Mexico (CHARTS)

 

Mexican military and police authorities are still at war with the country’s drug trafficking organizations. And the fight still isn’t going well. Since 2006, the conflict has generated as many as 164,345 civilian deaths. Experts are still unable to agree if murders are going up or down.

More Mexicans have died violently over the past decade than Afghan or Iraqi civilians over the same period, combined. High-powered weaponry, along with handguns, is playing a key role in driving the violence.

Many commentators assume that arms and ammunition are flooding into the arsenals of drug cartels from illegal dealers spanning the US-Mexican border. There are empirical studies substantiating this claim. Other analysts contend that some military-grade firepower consists of stolen and leftover kit from Central American conflicts of the 1970s and ’80s. They are also partly right.

But the full picture is more complex.

In fact, at least 50 countries have exported military-grade weapons and associated materiel to Mexico over the past five decades —with well over half of them exceeding $1 million in sales over the period. There has been a steady uptick in sales since 2006, and especially since former President Felipe Calderon ratcheted up the drug war.

According to UN customs data compiled by NISAT, a research group, the United States is by far the largest exporter of military arms to Mexico. The sums are not trivial. The US has exported more than $300 million worth of “military style” weapons to Mexican authorities since the 1960s; more than half of those sales have been since the year 2000. Top exporters following the US are Italy, Belgium, France and Israel, some of the world’s largest manufacturers.

These firearms include crew-serviced machine guns, assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, heavy explosives and related munitions, parts and accessories. However, the US and others also sell vast quantities of “civilian-style” weapons, including shotguns, handguns, and related ammunition.

An arms mapping visualization developed by the Igarapé Institute with partners including Google Ideas shows that Mexican imports of all types of weaponry increased steadily from 2006 onward. Moreover, the share of all imports that included military-style weapons shot up from around 10-25 percent a year to 30-50 percent each year during this timeframe.

While many of these weapons are officially destined for the Mexican armed forces and the country’s more than 1,600 federal, state and local police agencies, some of them fall into the hands of cartels and militia. In Mexico, military-style arms are frequently diverted and leaked from official arsenals. In some cases weapons are sent to the wrong customers altogether. For example, a recent high-profile case involved 9,000 firearms shipped illegally to Mexico by a German firm.

Of course, military-issue firearms and ammunition are routinely trafficked across international borders, including from the US. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has traced high-powered rifles and handguns shipped by land, air and sea. One especially controversial operation dubbed Fast and Furious allowed weapons from the US to be smuggled to Mexican cartels for tracking purposes —hundreds were lost en route and linked to subsequent crimes.

Igarapé Institute and University of San Diego research has determined that a considerable proportion of illegally acquired firearms in Mexico were originally sold by federally licensed dealers in the US. Meanwhile, older issue US and Soviet-style weaponry is also trafficked from post-conflict Central American countries, including via El Salvador, Honduras and of course Guatemala.

Military and police stocks in some of these Central American countries were singled out by the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala as the largest source of illegal firearms in the region. Twentieth-century M16s and AK-47s have surfaced in the arsenals of the Juarez, Sinaloa, Zeta and Gulf cartels, though the quantities are comparatively modest.

Making matters more complicated, the Mexican authorities lack a robust marking and tracing system. They have traditionally relied on their US counterparts for background checks on seized weapons. Getting a handle on leaked and trafficked weapons has simply not been a priority of successive governments.

In the past, samples of seized weapons were submitted to the ATF (using eTrace). Extrapolations generated from these assessments suggest that up to 70 percent of recovered firearms were from the US, though these numbers are disputed on both sides of the border.

While internationally supportive of more gun regulation, Mexico is not especially transparent when it comes to reporting on weapons exports, imports or recovery, as the Small Arms Survey arms barometer makes clear. It is also unable to comprehensively get to grips with where illegal guns are coming from.

At least part of the problem is that under Mexican law, all firearms seized by the government must be surrendered to the armed forces within 48 hours. The military is charged with “safeguarding” these arms and is under no compulsion to assist in related law enforcement investigations. The fact that the armed forces may well be one of the key sources of illicit arms is problematic, to say the least.

In the case of the US, ATF officials are required to submit a formal request to the Mexican Attorney General for each and every weapon (with accompanying data on the firearm type/caliber). As a result, most weapons are simply not traced and abusers go unpunished.

The development of a more effective system for tracing the origins of illicit firearms is a priority for both the US and Mexican governments. The current approach is deeply inefficient. If Mexico wants to do more to stop the shooting, it cannot afford to keep asking questions later.

 

Oregon: BLM and the Hammonds

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All is not what it seems much less what both the right and left are reporting with regard to the Hammond family and the stand-off in Burn, Oregon with respect to grazing permits and the Bureau of Land Management.

Click here for an article on the Hammonds in 1994.

The Hammonds agreed to the re-sentencing in court. AGREED! Click here for the court testimony.

Further, the Hammonds have been challenging government for decades and even threatened them with death as well as volunteer firefighters. Click here for an interactive map of the land designations in Oregon.

The full .pdf document is here.

Nearly half of the western United States is owned by the federal government. In recent years, several western states have considered resolutions demanding that the federal government transfer much of this land to state ownership. These efforts are motivated by concerns over federal land management, including restrictions on natural resource development, poor land stewardship, limitations on access, and low financial returns.

This study compares state and federal land management in the West. It examines the revenues and expenditures associated with federal land management and compares them with state trust land management in four western states: Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, and Arizona. The report explains why revenues and expenditures differ between state and federal land agencies and discusses several possible implications of transferring federal lands to the states.



Key Points:

  • The federal government loses money managing valuable natural resources on federal lands, while states generate significant financial returns from state trust lands.
  • The states examined in this study earn an average of $14.51 for every dollar spent on state trust land management. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management generate only 73 cents in return for every dollar spent on federal land management.
  • On average, states generate more revenue per dollar spent than the federal government on a variety of land management activities, including timber, grazing, minerals, and recreation.
  • These outcomes are the result of the different statutory, regulatory, and administrative frameworks that govern state and federal lands. States have a fiduciary responsibility to generate revenues from state trust lands, while federal land agencies face overlapping and conflicting regulations and often lack a clear mandate.
  • If federal lands were transferred, states could likely earn much greater revenues than the federal government. However, transfer proponents must consider how land management would have to change in order to generate those revenues under state control.