With a number of polls showing a sustained level of opposition to the Democrats’ health care reform efforts more than five months after passage, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the Obama administration has “a lot of reeducation to do” heading into the midterms.
While some surveys – namely the Kaiser Family Foundation monthly tracking poll – have suggested an uptick in support for the reforms, most other surveys continue to show a steady level of opposition to the new law that remains higher than the favorable opinions of it.
“Unfortunately, there still is a great deal of confusion about what is in [the reform law] and what isn’t,” Sebelius told ABC News Radio in an interview Monday.
With several vulnerable House Democrats touting their votes against the bill, and Republicans running on repeal, Sebelius said “misinformation given on a 24/7 basis” has led to the enduring opposition nearly six months after the lengthy debate ended in Congress.
“So, we have a lot of reeducation to do,” Sebelius said.
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Sebelius: Time for ‘reeducation’ on Obamacare
Record number in government anti-poverty programs
Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand.
More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That’s up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007.
“Virtually every Medicaid director in the country would say that their current enrollment is the highest on record,” says Vernon Smith of Health Management Associates, which surveys states for Kaiser Family Foundation.
The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. “Private physicians are already indicating that they’re at their limit,” says Dan Hawkins of the National Association of Community Health Centers.
GDP revised 1.6 percent
The sputtering economy may be headed for a double-dip recession after the government revised the nation’s gross domestic product downward for the second quarter to 1.6 percent from an initial estimate of 2.4 percent.
The first quarter grew at a 3.7 percent annual rate, the second quarter 1.6 percent, and this quarter is not likely to be anything worth bragging about, with economists forecasting growth of only 1.7 percent. GDP is the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S. and it’s the key indicator of the nation’s economic health.
The numbers are numbing — not nearly strong enough to give the recovery enough stride so that employers will want to hire, consumers will have the confidence to spend, or for businesses to invest robustly in equipment.
Intel CEO: Democrats’ Keynesian experiment is not working
CNET,
Intel chief executive Paul Otellini offered a depressing set of observations about the economy and the Obama administration Monday evening, coupled with a dark commentary on the future of the technology industry if nothing changes.
Otellini’s remarks during dinner at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum here amounted to a warning to the administration officials and assorted Capitol Hill aides in the audience: Unless government policies are altered, he predicted, “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.”
Otellini singled out the political state of affairs in Democrat-dominated Washington, saying: “I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs. And I think they’re flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working.”
Ebay, Adobe, EA Games leaving California over confiscatory tax rate
Computer software giant Adobe, computer game monster EA Games, and Internet auction king ebay are abandoning California to set up shop in Utah. Why? California’s horrid business climate and high taxes.
Adobe Systems, maker of a suite of graphics programs such as Adobe PDF, Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign, have announced that they are building a $100 million facility in either Salt Lake City or in nearby Utah County, Utah. The facility will bring thousands of jobs to Utah over the next few decades.
In May the Internet auction company ebay also announced a major new facility to be built in Salt Lake City. The $287 million data center will also bring hundreds of new jobs to the Bee Hive State.
Not to be forgotten, games maker Electronic Arts opened its new facility in July in Salt Lake City where around 100 employees are already at work.
These companies fleeing California’s horrid business climate are not alone. There has been a steady flow of businesses out of California for the better part of a decade. As California’s political morass worsens, as its budget woes increase, and as her politicians are proven incapable of making the hard budgetary decisions to take power from unions and chop unnecessarily lavish social programs, the state’s jobs are bleeding out. California is an a freefall the end of which is still unseen.
Obama’s failed stimulus program cost more than Iraq war
Expect to hear a lot about how much the Iraq war cost in the days ahead from Democrats worried about voter wrath against their unprecedented spending excesses.
The meme is simple: The economy is in a shambles because of Bush’s economic policies and his war in Iraq. As American Thinker’s Randall Hoven points out, that’s the message being peddled by lefties as diverse as former Clinton political strategist James Carville, economist Joseph Stiglitz, and The Nation’s Washington editor, Christopher Hayes.
The key point in the mantra is an alleged $3 trillion cost for the war. Well, it was expensive to be sure, in both blood and treasure, but, as Hoven notes, the CBO puts the total cost at $709 billion. To put that figure in the proper context of overall spending since the war began in 2003, Hoven provides this handy CBO chart showing the portion of the annual deficit attributable to the conflict.
Dems retreat from lie that health care law will reduce costs
Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and the deficit and instead stressing a promise to “improve it.”
The messaging shift was circulated this afternoon on a conference call and PowerPoint presentation organized by FamiliesUSA — one of the central groups in the push for the initial legislation. The call was led by a staffer for the Herndon Alliance, which includes leading labor groups and other health care allies. It was based on polling from three top Democratic pollsters, John Anzalone, Celinda Lake and Stan Greenberg
The presentation concedes that groups typically supportive of Democratic causes — people under 40, non-college-educated women and Hispanic voters — have not been won over by the plan. Indeed, it stresses repeatedly, many are unaware that the legislation has passed, an astonishing shortcoming in the White House’s all-out communications effort.
“Straightforward ‘policy’ defenses fail to [move] voters’ opinions about the law,” says one slide. “Women in particular are concerned that health care law will mean less provider availability — scarcity an issue.”
The presentation also concedes that the fiscal and economic arguments that were the White House’s first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed.
Obama boasts of his ‘progressive’ triumphs
President Obama told a Hollywood fundraiser Monday night that he and congressional Democrats have passed the most progressive legislation in decades.
“We have been able to deliver the most progressive legislative agenda — one that helps working families — not just in one generation, maybe two, maybe three,” Obama said.
Obama was joined by a number of lawmakers and celebrities at an event for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) that raised $1 million.
Chamber economist: Obama tax increase would be ‘bullet in the head’ of recovery
U.S. Chamber of Commerce economist Martin Regalia on Monday said the tax increases advocated by President Obama would essentially kill any chance for an economic rebound.
“That’s what you’re suggesting, is a corporate bullet in the head,” Regalia said. “That is going to be a bullet in the head for an awful lot of people that are going to be laid off and an awful lot of people who are hoping to get their jobs back.”
Regalia made the comment at an American Petroleum Institute event on the tax increases proposed by the Obama administration. Much of the discussion focused on tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush that are slated to expire at the end of the year.
Fed president: Keeping rates too low ‘dangerous gamble’
CNBC,
The Federal Reserve is undertaking a “dangerous gamble” by keeping rates at near zero for so long, and must start raising rates or risk damaging the nascent U.S. recovery, a top Federal Reserve official said on Friday.
“To be clear, I am not advocating a tight monetary policy,” Kansas City Reserve Bank President Thomas Hoenig said in the text of a speech to the Lincoln, Nebraska, Chamber of Commerce. “I am advocating a policy that remains accommodative but slowly firms as the economy itself expands and moves toward more balance.”
Hoenig has been the lone dissenter on the Fed’s policy-setting panel, which on Tuesday repeated the U.S. central bank’s pledge to keep interest rates extraordinarily low for an “extended period.”
Facing ethics charges, Rep. Waters points finger at Bush
Embattled Rep. Maxine Waters on Friday blamed the Bush administration for her ethics problems — saying she had to intervene with the Treasury Department on behalf of minority-owned banks seeking federal bailout funds — including one tied to her husband — because the Treasury Department wouldn’t schedule its own appointments.
The California Democrat said in a Capitol Hill news conference — an event rarely held during a congressional recess — that she reached out to then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in late 2008 when his department failed to respond to the National Bank Association’s request for a meeting.
“The question at this point should not be why I called Secretary Paulson, but why I had to,” she said. “The question at this point should be why a trade association representing over 100 minority banks could not get a meeting at the height of the crisis.”
Freddie Mac requests $1.8B more
AP,
Government-controlled mortgage buyer Freddie Mac is asking for $1.8 billion in additional federal aid after posting a larger loss in the second quarter.
Freddie Mac said Monday it lost $6 billion, or $1.85 per share, in the April-to-June period. The company is required to pay a 10 percent annual dividend to the Treasury Department on money it has received from the government. That made up $1.3 billion of the company’s second-quarter losses.
The company lost $840 million, or 26 cents a share, in the same quarter last year.
McCaskill: Missouri rejected Obamacare because they don’t understand it
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) said she had received the message from her state’s voters after they approved a ballot initiative looking to exempt the state’s residents from mandates contained within the healthcare reform law.
McCaskill said she understood what Missouri voters had been trying to say about the healthcare reform law for which she had voted in the Senate. But the centrist senator downplayed the vote as a result of heavy Republican primary turnout and a lack of education about the effects of the law.
“I certainly noticed the vote on Prop C, the healthcare law, and: message received,” she said Wednesday in a conference call with state reporters.
“I think there has been … a lot of noise about the mandate that people have gotten so focused on that they don’t realize that there’s going to be more access and affordability and more choices,” she said.
Missourians vote in referendum on Obamacare
Time,
Missouri voters go to the polls Tuesday for the first-in-the-nation referendum on President Obama’s health care plan. It is likely to give Republicans a chance to brag about the unpopularity of Obamacare, but the vote will be largely symbolic. Courts will eventually decide whether Missouri and other states can legally trump federal law and exempt citizens from the mandate to buy insurance. But sending a signal to Washington will be victory enough for the Republicans and Tea Party activists pushing Proposition C.
“You don’t need to worry about the courts when the people are trying to have their say,” says Lloyd Smith, executive director of the Missouri GOP. “The people are saying this is going too far. It’s a referendum on the overreach of the Obama Administration and the liberals in Congress.” The vote is as much about “anger and frustration” at all things Washington as it is about health care, explains Representative John Diehl, a Republican from St. Louis County who was one of the chief proponents of the referendum when it passed the Missouri legislature.