Obamacare delay and the shape of things to come

Yuval Levin discusses the major implications of the decision to delay the implementation of Obamacare’s employer responsibility provision. First, there are the implications for the individual mandate:

From “that’s not going to cut it” to mush from the wimp

The New York Times claims that, for the Obama administration, the current crisis in Egypt is “a replay” of the crisis of early 2011 when protesters demanded the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. According to the Times:

Is the U.S. becoming a sham democracy?

Eliana Johnson reports that four Republican members of the Senate Judiciary — Jeff Sessions, Chuck Grassley, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz — are calling for transparency from their GOP colleagues in the “Gang of Eight” that is drafting immigration reform legislation. In a letter to John McCain, Lindsey

Obama’s arrogance is no substitute for competent leadership

Four years ago, when Barack Obama stood in front of fake Greek columns before a massive outdoor crowd in Denver to accept his party’s nomination for the office of president, millions of Americans expected him to deliver hope, change, and a brilliant presidency that would solve the nation’s ills. Tonight, when he speaks to a much smaller indoor gathering in Charlotte, most of these people would settle for a competent presidency.

They haven’t received that presidency so far, a point that Bob Woodward reportedly drives home in his new book “The Price of Politics.” The book describes the 2011 showdown over the federal debt ceiling that nearly led to a default by the United States on its debt.
According to Woodward, Obama vastly overestimated his ability to out-bargain John Boehner, the new Speaker of the House. He told top aides that Boehner was “just like a Republican state Senator,” the type he had successfully dealt with in Illinois. “He’s a golf-playing, cigar smoking, country club Republican, who’s there to make deals,” Obama arrogantly assured his staff.

Due, perhaps, to this overconfidence, Obama tried to roll Boehner. After negotiating $800 billion in revenue-raising concessions from the Speaker, Obama called for $400 billion more, late in the day. In response to Obama’s bad faith, Boehner stopped taking the president’s calls and then pulled out of the negotiations. When Boehner notified Obama of this, the president was furious. Apparently, only

Democrats played hardball in Obama’s Illinois.
Joe Biden, who if nothing else at least has some idea of how things operate in Washington, took a dim view of Obama’s approach to the debt ceiling negotiations. He told Eric Cantor, “You know, if I were doing this, I’d do it totally different.”
Different doesn’t mean better, especially in Biden’s case. Yet, according to Woodward, it was Biden’s work with Sen. McConnell that brought about the legislation deal that, though it only kicks the can down the road in an odd and dangerous way, staved off default. Maybe Clint Eastwood had it right: Joe Biden is “the intellect of the Democratic Party.”

Obama’s lack of leadership wasn’t confined to dealing with Republicans. According to Woodward, Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Chris Van Hollen all found fault with Obama during the process of enacting the 2009 stimulus legislation. He recounts an episode early in his presidency when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were hammering out final details of the stimulus bill. Obama phoned in to deliver a “high-minded message,” but Obama went on so long that Pelosi “reached over and pressed the mute button on her phone,” so they could continue to work without the president hearing that they weren’t paying attention.

As debt negotiations progressed, Democrats complained of not knowing where the White House stood on major points. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, is described as having a “growing feeling of incredulity” as negotiations meandered.
“The administration didn’t seem to have a strategy. It was unbelievable. There didn’t seem to be any core principles,” Woodward writes in describing Van Hollen’s opinion. Actually, Obama doesn’t lack core principles. But they are too radical and ambitious to guide him on workaday questions about stimulus legislation.
Boehner’s assessment of the president lines up well with Van Hollen’s:

They never had their act together. The president, I think, was ill-served by his team. Nobody in charge, no process. I just don’t know how the place works. To this day, I can’t tell you how the place works. There’s no process for making a decision in this White House. There’s nobody in charge.

Nobody except the man who considers himself a better speechwriter than his speechwriters, more knowledgeable about policy than his policy directors, and a better political director than his political director.

By Paul Mirengoff

Mitt Romney’s economic plan

Mitt Romney’s economic plan

Paul Mirengoff


Some critics of Mitt Romney complain that he has no plan to turn around our faltering economy. Others, like President Obama, claim that Romney’s economic policies have been tried and found wanting. Neither contention withstands scrutiny.

Glenn Hubbard, the Romney campaign’s economic adviser, explained the basic contours of Romney’s economic plan in today’s Wall Street Journal. The program, which will not come as a surprise to those who have been paying attention, has four main components:

• Stop runaway federal spending and debt. The governor’s plan would reduce federal spending as a share of GDP to 20%—its pre-crisis average—by 2016. This would dramatically reduce policy uncertainty over the need for future tax increases, thus increasing business and consumer confidence.
• Reform the nation’s tax code to increase growth and job creation. The Romney plan would reduce individual marginal income tax rates across the board by 20%, while keeping current low tax rates on dividends and capital gains. The governor would also reduce the corporate income tax rate—the highest in the world—to 25%. In addition, he would broaden the tax base to ensure that tax reform is revenue-neutral.
• Reform entitlement programs to ensure their viability. The Romney plan would gradually reduce growth in Social Security and Medicare benefits for more affluent seniors and give more choice in Medicare programs and benefits to improve value in health-care spending. It would also block grant the Medicaid program to states to enable experimentation that might better serve recipients.
• Make growth and cost-benefit analysis important features of regulation. The governor’s plan would remove regulatory impediments to energy production and innovation that raise costs to consumers and limit new job creation. He would also work with Congress toward repealing and replacing the costly and burdensome Dodd–Frank legislation and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Romney alternatives will emphasize better financial regulation and market-oriented, patient-centered health-care reform.

Contrary to Obama’s assertion, this program has not been tried and found wanting. President Bush did not reduce federal spending as a portion of GDP. On the tax side, he did not reform the tax code to broaden the tax base. He did lower rates, and this stimulated the economy, just as occurred when Presidents Kennedy and Reagan did the same thing.

Bush wanted to reform social security, but was unable to do so. On the Medicare side, he attempted no reform.

Finally, until Obama, there was no Dodd-Frank or Obamacare legislation to repeal. Nor, to my knowledge, did previous presidents remove the regulatory impediments to energy production and innovation that Romney has mind.

Hubbard concludes:

In contrast to the sclerosis and joblessness of the past three years, the Romney plan offers an economic U-turn in ideas and choices. When bolstered by sound trade, education, energy and monetary policy, the Romney reform program is expected by the governor’s economic advisers to increase GDP growth by between 0.5% and 1% per year over the next decade. It should also speed up the current recovery, enabling the private sector to create 200,000 to 300,000 jobs per month, or about 12 million new jobs in a Romney first term, and millions more after that due to the plan’s long-run growth effects.
But these gains aren’t just about numbers, as important as those numbers are. The Romney approach will restore confidence in America’s economic future and make America once again a place to invest and grow.