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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

The Health Bill’s Fiscal Bonus The best chance in a generation to control a runaway government.

The furor over the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the House GOP health bill is concentrated on predictions about insurance coverage, which suits Democrats fine. Lost amid the panic is that CBO shows the bill is a far-reaching advance for the market principles and limited government that conservatives usually favor.

The CBO is not omniscient, but if its projections are even close to accurate then ObamaCare repeal and replacement is the most significant government reform in perhaps three decades. Under conventional (static-revenue) scoring, the bill cuts spending on net by $1.22 trillion and eliminates a raft of new taxes worth $883 billion through 2026.

Despite this tax reform and new refundable tax credits for individual insurance purchases, the bill still reduces the deficit by $337 billion. Reducing spending, the tax burden and further debt generation is an enormous pro-growth fiscal bonus.

President Obama sought to permanently increase the government’s share of the economy to redistribute income to reduce inequality. ObamaCare was his spending wedge to force tax increases long after he had left office. The House health-care bill is the first crucial step to limit that wedge and restore the federal fisc to a more sustainable long-term path.

Absent reform, the brutal budget math is that the U.S. is headed for a debt crisis; major tax increases that subtract from GDP and living standards; or deep and immediate cuts to entitlements that Americans have planned their lives around—or maybe all three. The longer Washington waits, the more painful and politically convulsive the corrections will be.

We keep reading that President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan are on a collision course over entitlements, though when was Medicaid demoted from entitlement status? The bill transitions the program’s funding formula to block grants starting in 2020—for the first time, limiting the automatic and open-ended commitment that defines an entitlement.

GOP Senators Say House Health Bill Won’t Pass Without Changes Concerns mounted after independent report showed millions would be uninsured By Kristina Peterson, Michelle Hackman and Louise Radnofsky

WASHINGTON—Republican senators, alarmed by a nonpartisan report showing millions would lose insurance under the GOP health-care plan, warned Tuesday that the bill wouldn’t become law without fundamental changes.

At least a dozen Republican senators, including some who had previously kept a low profile in the health debate, made clear they had concerns over the bill’s policy proposals, complicating House leaders’ hopes that the bill’s momentum would overpower internal GOP infighting over legislative details.

Flashpoints included the potential loss of insurance coverage, changes to Medicaid, the trajectory of premium prices and the bill’s impact on costs paid by older, low-income and rural Americans.

Concerns mounted on Capitol Hill after the Congressional Budget Office, the independent legislative analyst, released a report on Monday that estimated the GOP health plan would reduce deficits by $337 billion over the coming decade and increase the number of uninsured by 24 million in 2026, compared with current law.

While many Republicans lauded the plan’s impact on the deficit and the high cost of premiums, the rising chorus of concerns means congressional GOP leaders and the White House will have to delicately balance modifying the bill in ways that appease one faction of Republicans without alienating another.

On Tuesday, the White House sought to discredit the report’s projections as unreliable, while Republican senators said they would push for an array of changes, including more assistance for older and low-income people to buy health insurance.

“This is difficult—it’s 18% of the economy,” said Sen. John Boozman (R., Ark.). “My concern is not with the timeline; my concern is doing it right.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Scott Pruitt’s Opening Salvo The new EPA leader takes aim at the heart of climate-change orthodoxy. By Julie Kelly

It’s hard to overstate the significance of the recent comment by EPA administrator Scott Pruitt that there is disagreement about whether carbon dioxide is the main cause of global warming. In an interview on CNBC on March 9, Pruitt said:

Measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there is tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So, no, I would not agree that it [CO2] is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. But we need to continue the review and the analysis.

This statement is truly extraordinary: A leading U.S. official is taking direct aim at the heart of the international climate-change crusade.. It represents a total reversal of the past eight years, when everyone from the president down to low-level bureaucrats warned that climate change was a bigger threat to mankind than terrorism — to the point where they forced us to endure costly, job-killing federal regulations to stop it. Now the head of our top environmental agency is questioning the whole thing. Of all the conservative pit bulls in Trump’s Cabinet, Pruitt might be the biggest badass of them all.

Right on cue, the climate tribe went ballistic, trotting out the usual platitudes about a 97 percent consensus, settled science, climate deniers, blah blah blah. Obama’s EPA chief Gina McCarthy slammed Pruitt without (of course) refuting his claim head-on: “When it comes to climate change, the evidence is robust and overwhelmingly clear that the cost of inaction is unacceptably high.” Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) — who weirdly asked Mike Pompeo about his position on climate change during his Senate confirmation hearing for the post of CIA director — subtweeted Pruitt’s comments and said: “This is absurd. Denying causes of global warming will hurt our nation and our planet in the long-run.”

Pruitt is setting the stage for a long-overdue and critical debate about how much of an impact CO2 has on global warming. He is not the only one speaking out. In her recent report, “Climate Models for the Layman,” Judith Curry says that global climate models (GCM) are “running hot” and “predict too much warming from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.” Curry, a climate scientist and co-founder of the Climate Forecast Applications Network, says scientists frequently make ad hoc adjustments to climate models that often overestimate carbon dioxide’s impact on warming.

By tying rising carbon dioxide levels to a projected rise in temperatures, the models predict that temperatures will be much higher than they really are. Curry says in her report that current models for this century projected warming at about twice the rate of observed temperatures: “The reason for the discrepancy between observations and model simulations in the early 21st century appears to be caused by a combination of inadequate simulations of natural internal variability and oversensitivity of the models to increasing carbon dioxide.”

Schumer Threatens Government Shutdown Over Border Wall Democrats flip sides on legislative tactics. Matthew Vadum

After Democratic lawmakers’ years of shrieking and televised temper tantrums over how shutting down the federal government somehow approximates treason, Democrats have suddenly embraced the tactic in their quest to keep the nation’s borders wide open for Muslim terrorists and illegal aliens.

Democrats are threatening to force a shut-down of the government after it runs out of operating funds after April 28.

Outnumbered in both houses of Congress, and facing a Republican in the White House for the first time in eight years, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats say they will oppose efforts to finance President Trump’s planned border wall in spending legislation needed to keep the government open for business. Adding favored projects to must-pass spending bills, instead of dealing with the projects as freestanding legislation outside the budget process, is a time-honored way of getting things done in Congress. Both parties do it when in the majority.

But Schumer is now a professional obstructionist committed to undermining the Trump administration so at long last he sees things differently.

“The border wall is impractical and unpopular,” said Schumer on Sunday, “a pointless burden that this administration is trying to pay for by taking money away from the programs that actually keep Americans safe.”‎

Democrats wrote to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Senate leaders warning that they will throw a wrench into efforts to appropriate funds for wall construction if the request is wrapped inside in a spending measure needed to keep the government’s doors open beyond April 28.

“Given these and other concerns, we believe it would be inappropriate to insist on the inclusion of such funding in a must-pass appropriations bill that is needed for the Republican majority in control of the Congress to avert a government shutdown so early in President Trump’s Administration,” the Democrats wrote.

The Obamacare IED Republicans won’t be able to please everyone. So what will they choose? Bruce Thornton

The Republicans have started fixing the Obamacare disaster. For Trump, doing something about this failed program is critical, since it was a central issue he campaigned on. As his consigliere Kellyanne Conway says, there is a “binary choice … you’re either making good on the promise to repeal and replace Obamacare or you’re not.” Failing to deliver on this promise will have serious repercussions for the 2018 midterm elections and Trump’s own reelection

But right now, the Congressional bomb-squad trying to defuse this political IED are squabbling among themselves. Some claim that the changes proposed so far are a good start, for a complex and flawed entitlement like Obamacare will take time to fix. Others say what Paul Ryan et al. have proposed is merely “Obamacare lite,” Republican lipstick on that budget-busting entitlement pig. Dems on the sidelines are piling on, desperate to preserve Obama’s “legacy,” which also happens to be a big step toward the Holy Grail of progressives–– government-run, single-payer health care on the European model.

But the real problem continues to be ignored––the success of the progressive movement in addicting Americans to getting something for nothing because that “something” is defined as a “right.” And voters don’t like their rights messed with.

That’s the political conundrum facing the Republicans. Those in the Paul Ryan camp defend their adjustments to Obamacare by pointing out the greater participation of the market in their reforms. Here’s Ryan making the case:

It’s something that we as conservatives have always said if you really want to get free market principles injected into the health care system, you need to have an individual market where people care about what things cost, where people have real freedom, where those providers of health care services, be they insurers, doctors, or hospitals and everybody in between, compete against each other for our business based on value, based on price, based on quality, based on outcome. You don’t get that if you don’t have a viable individual free market.

All true, except the one thing Ryan doesn’t mention, and that’s the individual’s responsibility for his free choice. Whenever we talk about freedom of choice in the free market, we have to be clear that making the wrong choice, or a bad choice, will have consequences. Freedom without responsibility and accountability for how we use our freedom is a recipe for disaster. We all know, for example, that a lot of health-care money is spent on ailments related to lifestyle choices. About 28 million Americans have type-two diabetes. Obesity, poor diet, and lack of exercise are mostly responsible for this rising epidemic. In 2013 we spent $250 billion treating this disease, including the cost of lost productivity. The government paid 62 percent of this tab, and one in three Medicaid dollars was spent on diabetes. These costs will increase significantly as an aging, longer-living population becomes more vulnerable to the disease. And everyone expects the government to foot the bill.

The Trouble With Barry By David Solway

Alfred Hitchcock’s black comedy The Trouble with Harry bombed at the box office when it was first released in 1955; it has now achieved the status of a classic. Today, a bizarre melodrama playing in all the major political theaters, which might be called The Trouble with Barry, has become an overnight smash hit. Starring Barack Obama, a prodigy of the art of surveillance and Teflon-like resilience, it will eventually run its course. However the plot may develop, one thing is certain: it will not be regarded as a classic.

The trouble with Barry, like Hitchcock’s moribund Harry, is that he never seems to go away, constantly emerging at the most inopportune moments. Unlike every other president in American history, Obama has dedicated himself to the practice of what the Washington Examiner has described as “post-presidential meddling.”

He has thrown himself fully into Alinsky-style “community organizing,” stirring up resistance to the Trump administration in every way conceivable: installing, according to the New York Post, a “shadow government,” dubbed Organizing for Action, comprising more than 30,000 agitators and 250 chapters across the U.S., in order “to sabotage the incoming administration”; renting a dwelling and setting up command headquarters around the corner from the White House; cooking up the Russian hacking fable; and most recently, allegedly wiretapping Trump Tower, which seems disturbingly probable following the salient remarks of Ret. Army Intelligence Officer Tony Shaffer on Fox and the revelations from Breitbart News. Mark Levin’s accusation that Obama is orchestrating a “silent coup” against Trump rings true. As Daniel Greenfield points out:

There is now a President and an Anti-President. A government and a shadow government. The anti-President controls more of the government through his shadow government than the real President.

Obama and his Deep State have engaged in “a criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scope.”

And yet, even today, few media outlets are willing to investigate the innumerable instances of lying, lawbreaking, corruption, broken promises and cronyism for which Obama is clearly answerable. That he is likely involved in a wiretapping operation against a political opponent should not come as a surprise to anyone who has observed or researched the man. As Matthew Vadum comments in FrontPage Magazine, “It might be said that every day of his presidency he committed at least one impeachable offense” — whether abusing executive powers, bypassing Congress, leaking classified information, misrepresenting Obamacare, being ultimately responsible for the Fast and Furious and Benghazi infamies, and more.
Hugh Hewitt Presses Trump to Fire Obama Holdovers

The wiretapping affair is only the latest in a vast and ongoing sequence of misdemeanors, scandals and illegalities — a list compiled by Doug Ross runs into hundreds of such instances of impropriety and malpractice. No matter. The list will only grow. The editor of a prestigious conservative site wrote me calling this latest outrage a “game changer.” That remains to be seen. I would have thought, for example, that Obama’s first Executive Order (13489) on January 21, 2009, sealing his vital records would have been the game changer we were waiting for, but Barry sailed on unscathed.

There have been weak presidents, deluded presidents, and harmful presidents before him, but never has there been anyone as sinister or questionable as Obama, not excluding even the malefic Jimmy Carter or the sleazy Bill Clinton. What J. R. Dunn writing in American Thinker has said of Hillary, “the most repellent and corrupt American presidential candidate since Aaron Burr,” is equally true, in my estimation, of Barack Obama. Meanwhile, it is Trump who faces a barrage of threats, calls for impeachment and acts of disobedience that would have been more explicable if levied against Obama for his historic deceptions and malfeasances. Under the pestilential reign of Obama, and indeed years of Democratic incumbency, the shining city on the hill has become a murky city in the swamp.

On ‘Right to Try,’ the FDA Should Proceed With Caution More access to unapproved drugs could be good policy, but there are risks even to terminal patients. By Henry I. Miller See note please

Again, unless there is real tort reform the FDA will have a permanent problem, and so will the pharmaceutical companies…..rsk
The Food and Drug Administration is the nation’s most ubiquitous regulatory agency, overseeing everything from syringes and CT scanners to drugs, vaccines and most foods. These products account for more than $1 trillion annually, or about a quarter of U.S. consumer spending. This slow, dysfunctional agency needs drastic reform of its requirements, procedures and attitudes.

One reform Scott Gottlieb, President Trump’s nominee to lead the agency, will likely embrace is “right to try”—that is, giving terminally ill patients access to unapproved medicines. He could remove the FDA from judgments about “compassionate use” of unapproved drugs. There is already a trend in this direction: Thirty-three states have passed laws aimed at providing easier access to experimental treatments that are still in the earliest stages of human testing.

The right to try unapproved drugs has the potential to be compassionate and sound public policy—but there are dangers. The concept must be implemented in a way that takes into consideration the realities of drug testing.

According to the libertarian Goldwater Institute, right-to-try legislation would allow “terminally ill Americans to try medicines that have passed Phase I of the FDA approval process and remain in clinical trials but are not yet on pharmacy shelves.” It would also expand usage of “potentially life-saving treatments years before patients would normally be able to access them.”

But here’s the rub: About three-quarters of drugs that pass Phase I will never be accessible. They ultimately won’t be approved, because of either safety concerns or lack of efficacy. Most legislative proposals, including the one recently introduced by Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), would enable patients to request the drugs after only the most meager safety testing.

Phase I testing, often the first time a new drug has been administered to humans, provides extremely limited information. These trials are performed on between 20 and 100 patients and last only a short time. They’re usually administered to paid, healthy volunteers, who may not provide a good representation of how the drug will affect terminal patients. Such trials essentially exist to determine what doses of the drug are tolerated without causing gross safety problems such as seizures, organ failure or death.

The determination of efficacy starts in Phase II, when the drug is administered to volunteers who suffer from the disease or symptom for which the drug is intended. If the results of Phase II are promising, the drug moves into still larger Phase III trials—the most extensive and expensive part of drug development.

A physician at a large health insurer, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, recently raised concerns about right to try. He wonders “where liability will ultimately lie when and if something goes wrong.” Even trickier: “Who is the deep pocket if and when the treatment fails and the patient’s family is looking for someone to blame?” He warns that the right to try could become an “unfunded mandate” and raises questions about who will pay for the drugs and how their prices will be determined. Medical insurance as we know it was never designed or intended to cover unproven treatments of last resort. CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump Should Be Appalled by Police Asset Forfeiture Cops can seize cash, cars and real estate without its owner ever being charged or convicted of a crime. By Lee McGrath and Nick Sibilla

America’s sheriffs have given President Trump a woefully inaccurate view of civil asset forfeiture—the process through which police seize, and prosecutors literally sue, cash, cars and real estate that they suspect may be connected to a crime. “People want to say we’re taking money and without due process. That’s not true,” a Kentucky sheriff told the president last month at a White House meeting. Critics of forfeiture, the sheriff added, simply “make up stories.”

In fact, thousands of Americans have had their assets taken without ever being charged with a crime, let alone convicted. Russ Caswell almost lost his Massachusetts motel, which had been run by his family for more than 50 years, because of 15 “drug-related incidents” there from 1994-2008, a period through which he rented out nearly 200,000 rooms.

Maryland dairy farmer Randy Sowers had his entire bank account—roughly $60,000—seized by the IRS, which accused him of running afoul of reporting requirements for cash deposits. Mandrel Stuart had $17,550 in receipts from his Virginia barbecue restaurant confiscated during a routine traffic stop. A manager of a Christian rock band had $53,000 in cash—profits from concerts and donations intended for an orphanage in Thailand—seized in Oklahoma after being stopped for a broken taillight. All of the property in these outrageous cases was eventually returned, but only after an arduous process.

Photo: istock getty

This kind of abuse has united reformers on all sides of the political debate: progressives, conservatives, independents, even a few former drug warriors. Since 2014 nearly 20 states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws limiting asset forfeiture or increasing transparency. Nearly 20 other states are considering similar legislation. Last week a reform bill passed the Indiana Senate 40-10. It would require a criminal conviction before a court can declare a person’s assets forfeited.

Another good step for state and federal legislators would be to bar agencies from keeping the money they seize. Today more than 40 states and the federal government permit law-enforcement agencies to retain anywhere from 45% to 100% of forfeiture proceeds. As a result, forfeiture has practically become an industry.

The Institute for Justice, where we work, has obtained data on asset forfeiture across 14 states, including California, Texas and New York. Between 2002 and 2013, the revenue from forfeiture more than doubled, from $107 million to $250 million. Federal confiscations have risen even faster. In 1986 the Justice Department’s Assets Forfeiture Fund collected $93.7 million. In 2014 the number was $4.5 billion.

Allowing police and prosecutors to keep part of what they confiscate gives them an incentive to target cash instead of criminals. In 2011 a Nashville TV news station investigated seizures on nearby interstate highways. Drugs usually came in on the eastbound lanes, while the money would flow out on the westbound lanes. The reporters found that police made “10 times as many stops on the money side.” They were less focused on stopping the drugs than on grabbing the cash.

Where Does FISAgate End Up? Probably Nowhere. Our political passions and partisanship overwhelm our ability to uncover the truth. By Andrew C. McCarthy

On Capitol Hill last week, lawmakers began rolling up their sleeves to investigate the two components of the controversy that has embroiled Washington since Donald Trump was elected president on November 8: Russian interference in the election and what is now called FISAgate. The two components are interwoven . . . and antagonistic.

If, as Democrats suggest, the Russian interference was significant and there was evidence of Trump-campaign collusion in it, it would have been irresponsible for the Justice Department and the FBI not to investigate, including by monitoring communications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). But if, as Republicans counter, Russian interference was immaterial (some say nonexistent), and there was no real proof of Trump-campaign collusion in anything nefarious, then the “hacking conspiracy” was just a pretext for the incumbent administration to investigate the opposition party’s political campaign, a stunning abuse of power.

Where does this all end up? I suspect it goes nowhere.

There is simply too much gray area of disagreement about what happened and what would have been an appropriate response to it. And our thinking is clouded by politics and its inevitable hypocrisy.

For example, during a campaign debate, Donald Trump vowed that if he were to win, he would have Hillary Clinton investigated. At the time, I thought (and said at NRO) that the torrent of condemnation — from the right as well as the left — was ridiculous. This was not, as overwrought critics said, tin-pot dictator stuff; nothing Trump said signaled an intention to use the executive’s awesome police powers to persecute political opponents. The critical fact was that there was patent evidence of felony misconduct on Clinton’s part — criminality that materially damaged national security and that had nothing to do with opposing Trump politically.

Now comes FISAgate, with its indications that while Trump was merely (and apparently emptily) threatening to investigate his Democratic rival, the incumbent Democratic president was actually investigating Trump, the Republican nominee.

Since some are now backpeddling from the assertions — matter-of-factly made over the last four months — that there really was an investigation, let’s be clear. This is not speculation. We know an investigation happened (and may still be ongoing). The only real questions concern the scope and the investigative tactics that have been used: Was there FISA wiretapping or, significantly, its functional equivalent in other forms of monitoring?

Marine Deputy Commandant: Half Our Aircraft Not Ready to Fly By Rick Moran

The deputy commandant for programs and resources of the Marine Corps, Lt. Gen. Gary Thomas, says that budget sequestration has cut into the Corps’ readiness for combat, with less than half of their aircraft ready to fly. General Thomas said that number should be 75 percent, meaning the Marines’ ability to meet challenges is severely restricted.

Washington Examiner:

The service’s goal is to have 75 percent of its aircraft on the flight line ready to go, a number he called “reasonable” since routine maintenance will always take some aircraft out of commission.

But the actual number now is just 45 percent, mostly due to aircraft exceeding their planned service life, Thomas said. The statistic seemed to shock Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Subcommittee.

“I’m sorry, can we go back for a second,” Turner said. “That’s pretty abysmal. To have that be closing the gap, we must have been in dire straits.”

Thomas also said the service has identified a capability gap when it comes to keeping forces safe in vehicles.

“If you look at some of our current vehicles, they no longer are adequate for the types of threats that they face in terms of protecting our Marines,” Thomas said.

Oshkosh Defense is building a new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle for the Marines that Thomas said will help better protect troops from current threats.

Other capability gaps include counting an emerging threat from drones, and coping with a fleet of amphibious vehicles that is 40 years old, Thomas said. CONTINUE AT SITE