What should Congress do? #7 Defund ObamaCare

Posted on June 27, 2013 by Jim

Given President Obama’s abdication in presenting select priorities to the Congress, Selfish Citizenship took the initiative to spell out the top seven legislative priorities for 2013 at the beginning of the year.

With a Democratic Senate and President, ObamaCare will not be repealed soon, see repeated and ineffective votes in the House to repeal.  Unfortunately, its taxes will start hurts the pockets of Americans in 2013, which has resulted in remorse from lazy Democratic legislators who failed to be attentive to the negative consequences of that disastrous legislation.  In addition, members of Congress and legislative aides now fear a brain drain as the law gets applied to the legislative branch.  Meanwhile, individual states are refusing to participate in the law.

An alternative strategy to repeal is defunding.  Congress has a history of passing laws that it refuses to fund after the fact.  Through the haggling over FY 2014 appropriations, the House should be able to single-handedly block funding for executive efforts to implement the legislation.

House Budget Committee chairman has promised to use the budget to kill ObamaCare, but will Speaker Boehner have the backbone to hold the line against the Senate and our President?

This does not solve the destructive influence that ObamaCare will have over our private medical system.  Given that the current Congress will not repeal as it should, this at least is a half measure that follows the congressional history of hiding from the consequences it has created with bad legislation.

In summary of the seven legislative priorities, Congress needs to take the lead in fixing the problems created by prior Congresses.  All of these man-made problems were the predictable consequence of choices made in the Congress.  Now is the time for Congress to choose differently and these seven New Year’s Resolutions for Congress are a solid start.

Links to all the priorities that Congress should set:

#1 Reduce Regulations
#2 Block Grant Funds to States
#3 Eliminate Small Programs
#4 Sell Federal Assets
#5 Tax Reform
#6 Oversight
#7 Defund ObamaCare

Extra Point:  From cartoonist Bosh Fawstin

 

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What should Congress do? #6 Oversight

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Jim

Given President Obama’s abdication in presenting select priorities to the Congress, Selfish Citizenship took the initiative to spell out the top seven legislative priorities for 2013 at the beginning of the year.

Congress has utterly failed in its oversight of the executive branch.  Yes Rep. Darrell Issa, I am pointing at you too.

Often this is because of partisan blindness to the maladministration of a President from the majority’s party.

However, to a substantial degree, legislators have been co-opted into becoming blind cheerleaders for the federal programs they are charged with overseeing.  This is not a particularly new phenomenon; see discussions of the Iron Triangle in Hedrick Smith’s The Power Game.

The result is failed programs that do not get eliminated.

Perhaps, Senators with presidential ambitions should take note of the role legislative oversight played in the political rise of Truman and LBJ.

As I noted, in Top 4 Lessons from Election Day 2012:

Second terms are notoriously harmful to the reputation and legacy of our presidents as past malfeasance in office is pushed beyond the election and comes back to harm presidents who evaded the consequences of bad actions within their Administration.  By electing a House from the party in opposition to the President, the American electorate is inviting aggressive oversight and investigation into executive branch abuses of power; however, a Senate controlled by the President’s party is a direction from the electorate to not pursue impeachment.

In summary of the seven legislative priorities, Congress needs to take the lead in fixing the problems created by prior Congresses.  All of these man-made problems were the predictable consequence of choices made in the Congress.  Now is the time for Congress to choose differently and these seven New Year’s Resolutions for Congress are a solid start.

Links to all the priorities that Congress should set:

#1 Reduce Regulations
#2 Block Grant Funds to States
#3 Eliminate Small Programs
#4 Sell Federal Assets
#5 Tax Reform
#6 Oversight
#7 Defund ObamaCare

 

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What should Congress do? #5 Tax Reform

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Jim

Given President Obama’s abdication in presenting select priorities to the Congress, Selfish Citizenship took the initiative to spell out the top seven legislative priorities for 2013 at the beginning of the year.

I recall Rep. Frank Wolf tell us at a town hall meeting during Q&A that tax reform is an issue that requires presidential leadership.  While the zero in the White House lacks the gravitas, there are two principles that the Congress can follow to start reform of our current tax system.

First, taxes should not be punitive.  Under Obamacare, the Supreme Court approved of using the tax code to punish citizens; Congress should reject that power.  When Laffer’s curve is discussed related to the diminish revenue from higher tax rates, the cause is missed…those higher rates were punitive, punishing the successful for the crime of being successful.  Related to the power of this principle, see how the lowering of punitive capital gains tax rates led to eliminating the budget deficit in the 1990s.

Second, tax provisions should be exclusively for revenue and not an end around to exceed limits on congressional powers.  Over time, Congress has elected to use tax breaks and deductions to control citizens’ behavior in ways that are not permitted otherwise.  Imagine a law that ordered you to have a new child; yet the government actually punishes you with higher taxes for not creating that child.

If you see a person or company doing something stupid or wasteful, the likely cause is a federal tax incentive.

The elimination of punitive taxes and taxation as regulation is known by the euphemism tax simplification.

In summary of the seven legislative priorities, Congress needs to take the lead in fixing the problems created by prior Congresses.  All of these man-made problems were the predictable consequence of choices made in the Congress.  Now is the time for Congress to choose differently and these seven New Year’s Resolutions for Congress are a solid start.

Links to all the priorities that Congress should set:

#1 Reduce Regulations
#2 Block Grant Funds to States
#3 Eliminate Small Programs
#4 Sell Federal Assets
#5 Tax Reform
#6 Oversight
#7 Defund ObamaCare

Extra Point:  From visual artist John Cox:

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What should Congress do? #4 Sell Federal Assets

Posted on June 24, 2013 by Jim

Given President Obama’s abdication in presenting select priorities to the Congress, Selfish Citizenship took the initiative to spell out the top seven legislative priorities for 2013 at the beginning of the year.

The federal government should increase its sale of federal assets, such as land.  Such revenue should be directed to paying federal bonds held in the Social Security Trust fund, which will reduce the size of the federal debt by paying off old bonds without borrowing new funds for those obligations.

To get fair value for these assets, the federal government will need to repeal statutes and regulations that diminish the value of such assets.  For example, consider the sale of Amtrak and the train car full of government interventions that devalue that asset.

In summary of the seven legislative priorities, Congress needs to take the lead in fixing the problems created by prior Congresses.  All of these man-made problems were the predictable consequence of choices made in the Congress.  Now is the time for Congress to choose differently and these seven New Year’s Resolutions for Congress are a solid start.

Links to all the priorities that Congress should set:

#1 Reduce Regulations
#2 Block Grant Funds to States
#3 Eliminate Small Programs
#4 Sell Federal Assets
#5 Tax Reform
#6 Oversight
#7 Defund ObamaCare

Extra Point: The privatization of federal land as suggested by Nobel Prize economist Vernon Smith, and two coauthors, in a 1999 policy analysis titled, “How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands”, which begins:

Fully a third of the land area of the United States is owned by the federal government. Although many Americans support the preservation of those lands, analysts on the left and the right agree that the federal government has done an exceedingly poor job of stewarding those resources. Indeed, the failure of socialism is as evident in the realm of resource economics as it is in other areas of the economy.

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What should Congress do? #3 Eliminate Small Programs

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Jim

Given President Obama’s abdication in presenting select priorities to the Congress, Selfish Citizenship took the initiative to spell out the top seven legislative priorities for 2013 at the beginning of the year.

The federal government funds many small programs unrelated to its core function as a federal government.  While it has been argued such programs are too small to worry about, candidate Romney had a good point, “Should the government be borrowing money to fund these programs?”

These programs should be eliminated, not just cut.  It is essential that, as a means to establish the principle, the federal government eliminate such programs.  Further, these should be examined for opportunities to transition such efforts to private entities in civil society as a proof of concept for larger programs that should no longer be within the domain of the federal government.

Such small programs would include funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, and funding to support racial segregation in higher education (a.k.a. HBCUs through the Higher Education Act).

In summary of the seven legislative priorities, Congress needs to take the lead in fixing the problems created by prior Congresses.  All of these man-made problems were the predictable consequence of choices made in the Congress.  Now is the time for Congress to choose differently and these seven New Year’s Resolutions for Congress are a solid start.

Extra Point: In “The Four Habits that Form Habits”, Leo Babauta cites the #1 habit building habit as “Start Exceedingly Small”.

Links to all the priorities that Congress should set:

#1 Reduce Regulations
#2 Block Grant Funds to States
#3 Eliminate Small Programs
#4 Sell Federal Assets
#5 Tax Reform
#6 Oversight
#7 Defund ObamaCare

 

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