Research

Throughout the debate of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi government-run health care experiment, we’ve shown that comparative effectiveness research leads to rationing. In an attempt to hide from this, the Obama Administration decided to call it something else in their recently released budget. Kaiser Health News has the story.

The administration, releasing its 2011 budget request to Congress on Monday, proposed spending $286 million on comparative effectiveness research overseen by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality… In the fiscal 2011 budget document for the Department of Health and Human Services, officials used the term “patient-centered health research” rather than “comparative effectiveness,” a shift some analysts said was done to distance the issue from its somewhat painful past on Capitol Hill.

Of course, there’s nothing about Democrat plans that’s “patient-centered.” It’s all top-down control from Washington. For real patient-centered, bottom-up health care reform ideas, ... more

The President’s budget is hot off the presses, and Obama is trying to sell himself as a fiscal hawk by highlighting his so-called “freeze” on non-security discretionary spending. The president claims that this freeze will save $250 billion over the next decade. What he doesn’t want to tell you is that those $250 billion in savings will be entirely wiped out by one line item in the budget.

What is that one line item? Obama’s budget includes a provision that prevents reductions in Medicare payments to doctors, otherwise known as the “doc fix,” which Obama and Congressional Democrats have been refusing to include in their government-run health care plan, to maintain the illusion that his bill would be deficit-neutral. And it’s easy to see why they didn’t want to attach it to their health care bills: the “doc fix” costs $371 billion over the next decade, $121 billion more that what Obama claims to save through his “spending freeze.” This money is not offset in Obama’s budget, and ... more

Last week, we showed you that only in Obama’s Washington can a binge spending increase be called a “freeze.” Today, we want to show you that when Obama says “reining in the deficit” he really means “exploding the deficit.”

In his weekly address to the nation this past Saturday, President Obama noted that “it is critical that we rein in the budget deficits we’ve been accumulating for too long.” But our friends at the House Republican Budget Committee have a series of graphs showing that President Obama will be doing the exact opposite:

• Obama will own the three largest deficits in American history: $1.4 trillion in FY 2009, $1.6 trillion in FY 2010 and $1.3 trillion in FY 2011;
• Obama will more than double the national debt over the next decade;
• Obama will raise the national debt as a percentage of GDP from 50 percent today to nearly 80 percent by 2020.

For more on what Obama’s budget rhetoric and what it really means, click here to see our research briefing from yesterday afternoon ... more

That’s what Americans are probably asking themselves after Senate Democrats just voted to raise America’s debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion, the largest one-time increase in American history. This comes after Obama already raised it twice before, for a grand total of $3 trillion in total increases to America’s credit card limit.

Last night, President Obama declared that “like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t … that’s how budgeting works.” But RNC Chairman Michael Steele says today’s vote to increase America’s credit card limit to pay for Obama’s binge spending habit is a slap in the face to cash-strapped families across America:

Today’s vote to increase America’s debt ceiling is just another example, in a year full of examples, that the president has failed to live up to his promise of responsibility. At a time when millions of Americans are desperately struggling to live within their means and survive this ... more

In an interview with The Washington Post, Obama said that in his first year in office he “rescued the economy and placed it on a path of long-term growth.”  Looking back at the job losses each month leaves us wondering when exactly he rescued the economy: Since Obama’s Stimulus plan passed in February over 2.8 Million Americans have lost their jobs and unemployment is currently at 10 percent.

To make matters worse, more job losses are expected in the coming months. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said recently that we will see more job losses in December and we won’t see any growth until spring.  The Federal Reserve has also said that unemployment will remain high through 2012.  Mike Allen of Politico reports today in the “Playbook” that the White House:

[I]s going to make a very hard pivot to jobs in the run-up to the State of the Union.  You'll see an intense focus on the economy and jobs from this White House in the beginning of 2010.

If the above job losses are any indication ... more

Recently, Christina Romer wrote an op-ed in The Seattle Times, discussing the administration’s plans for Stimulus II.  She promotes the “cash for caulkers” program as well as more infrastructure spending.  We’ve pointed out before the many problems with “cash for caulkers,” which is based on the failed weatherization programs in Stimulus I and the disastrous “cash for clunkers.” 

In her op-ed, Romer says that the President is “calling for new investments in a wide range of infrastructure, designed to get out the door as quickly as possible…”  We’ve seen this movie before.  Stimulus I contained “shovel-ready” projects that were supposed to put people to work right away. That, of course, turned out not to be the case. What we did see, however, were projects which were slow to get started and money being wasted on projects without merit. 

It is sad to hear that despite the fact that the stimulus failed to create jobs, it has not stopped the Obama administration and Congressional ... more

Recognizing the American public’s growing frustration with Washington Democrats’ out-of-control spending, President Obama today tried to show concern over government spending by saying:

But as I've said, in the long run, we can't continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences; as if waste doesn't matter; as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money.

The only question is, exactly when does the President plan to stop treating taxpayer dollars like Monopoly money?  Last week he signed a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill that increases discretionary spending by 12 percent! With Congressional Democrats he is also rushing to pass a massive government-run health care plan, and a $154 billion Stimulus II spending bill. Last week the House voted to raise the debt ceiling by $290 billion and the Senate is expected to follow suit next week.  Once again, Obama is saying one thing while doing the opposite: continuing his out-of-control ... more

The Washington Examiner reports Thursday on the latest installment of Stimulus outrage: Recovery Act funds have been going overwhelmingly to Democratic districts over Republican ones. 

The Examiner highlights an analysis of Recovery.gov job statistics done by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Their study showed that along with being heavily slanted toward Democratic districts, there was no sign that the stimulus particularly helped low-income Americans. This in spite of the President’s claims back in February that low-income Americans would benefit the most from the program.

…  Mercatus found that stimulus funds were not disbursed geographically with any special regard for low-income Americans. “We find no correlation between economic indicators and stimulus funding. Preliminary results find no statistically significant effect of unemployment, median income or mean income on stimulus funds allocation,” said the report.

The Mercatus Center analysis also found that ... more

Last night, while American families were sitting down to eat dinner, Nancy Pelosi and the Congressional Democrats were in Washington ramming the $154 billion Stimulus II through the House. This in spite of the fact that Americans overwhelmingly believe Stimulus I was a dismal failure, and continue to worry about Democrats' reckless binge spending.

With 10 percent unemployment and a $1.42 trillion deficit last year, the American people have a right to be concerned and this bill will only make matters worse.  Stimulus II, with its emphasis on government-knows-best spending programs, is a carbon copy of Stimulus I.

And if the news about Stimulus II isn’t bad enough, Democrats also spent last night raising the limit on America’s credit card by voting to increase the debt ceiling by $290 billion to allow for more binge spending. 

Vulnerable Democrats realize that reckless spending by Pelosi and Obama are not winning them any friends back home, and as a result Pelosi has had a tough time ... more

That was the question Democrats asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier today as the Democrat-led House passed a $210 billion bill—the “doc fix”—to adjust payment rates under Medicare to doctors.  Democrats passing a budget-busting bill is par for the course, but this was especially ironic, as The Associated Press noted:

“As a salve to Democratic fiscal hawks upset that the bill adds so much to the deficit, party leaders added a so-called pay-as-you-go provision aimed at making sure future tax cuts or increases in benefit programs are ‘paid for’ with spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere.”

By voting “yea,” these so-called Democrat fiscal hawks promised not to pass any more bills that aren’t paid for while passing a huge bill that adds to the deficit. In other words, Nancy Pelosi waited until her caucus had stolen all but one of the cookies out of the cookie jar before telling them to stop—once they take the last one.

Republicans had an alternative proposal which would have ... more