Flap’s Links and Comments for July 20th on 13:30

These are my links for July 20th from 13:30 to 17:39:

• Economic Recovery Stalled After Obamacare Passed – Private-sector job creation initially recovered from the recession at a normal rate, leading to predictions last year of a “Recovery Summer.” Since April 2010, however, net private-sector job creation has stalled. Within two months of the passage of Obamacare, the job market stopped improving. This suggests that businesses are not exaggerating when they tell pollsters that the new health care law is holding back hiring. The law significantly raises business costs and creates considerable uncertainty about the future. To encourage hiring, Congress should repeal Obamacare.

  n March 2010, Congress passed President Obama’s health care reform legislation. The bill had appeared in serious jeopardy, and after the upset special election victory of Senator Scott Brown (R–MA), many analysts expected the bill to fail. Instead, it became law.

  The law discourages employers from hiring in several ways:

  Businesses with fewer than 50 workers have a strong incentive to maintain this size, which allows them to avoid the mandate to provide government-approved health coverage or face a penalty;
  Businesses with more than 50 workers will see their costs for health coverage rise—they must purchase more expensive government-approved insurance or pay a penalty; and
  Employers face considerable uncertainty about what constitutes qualifying health coverage and what it will cost. They also do not know what the health care market or their health care costs will look like in four years. This makes planning for the future difficult.

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• The Gang of Six Disaster: The Worst Plan So Far – Confusion among congressional Republicans about their objectives in the debt-limit endgame has increased the possibility that they will stumble into a policy and political disaster over the next two weeks.

  Only ten days ago, Republicans appeared to regain their footing when House Speaker John Boehner torpedoed the disastrous “grand bargain” that President Obama was offering. That deal would have forced Republicans to accept a massive $1 trillion tax hike and left Obamacare in place. In return, the president offered more centrally planned cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and other minor entitlement adjustments. Some deal.

  But now, along comes the Gang of Six plan, and some Republicans are apparently intrigued by it. They shouldn’t be. It’s a terrible, terrible plan. It will hand the president a huge strategic victory and deliver nothing that the GOP should be seeking in this fight. It’s far, far worse than anything we have seen thus far, and certainly much worse than the McConnell plan.

  In a nutshell, the Gang of Six plan would have three parts. Let’s look at each part in turn.

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