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Providing Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Speaker John Boehner get thier Members in line, the next generation will have a little less debt. But, not a lot less and not a lot less anytime soon.

…The debt limit will be raised by the $2.4 trillion needed to allow the federal government to pay it’s bills through the 2012 election. But this does not mean that President Obama will be able to avoid the debt, or any of the other surrounding issues, in the election.

The deal supposedly cuts $2.4 trillion over ten years, but a quick reading shows that only $2.1 trillion of them are guaranteed to go into law, and less than 1 percent of them will actually occur before Obama’s current term is up. The plan calls for $900 billion in spending cuts from statutory caps on discretionary spending over ten years, but only $10 billion of those cuts are scheduled to occur over the next two years. The remaining $1.5 trillion in cuts is supposed to come from a “Super Congress” made up of House and Senate members pulled equally from each party.

This Super Congress will fail to come to an agreement. No Republican appointed to the committee will be able to agree to any entitlement reform that does not fundamentally repeal Obamacare. And no Democrat appointed to the committee will sign off on any reform that does. When the Super Congress fails to reach agreement, another $1.2 trillion in cuts will be triggered, at least half of which will come from defense spending. But these cuts are spread out over nine years and none of them occur before 2013. The triggered defense spending cuts are a completely empty threat.

So, America is saved from default and Washington can now concentrate on the economy, jobs and re-election. But, not in that order — of course.

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The Day By Day Archive

ObamaCare goes to court and it is running into constitutional problems.

A top Obama administration lawyer defending last year’s healthcare law ran into skeptical questions Wednesday from three federal judges here, who suggested they may be ready to declare all or part of the law unconstitutional.

Acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal K. Katyal faced off against former Bush administration Solicitor General Paul Clement in what has become the largest and broadest challenge to the healthcare law. In all, 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business joined in urging the judges to strike down the law.

And in an ominous sign for the administration, the judges opened the arguments by saying they knew of no case in American history where the courts had upheld the government’s power to force someone to buy a product.

That argument is at the heart of the constitutional challenge to the healthcare law and its mandate that nearly all Americans have health insurance by 2014.

“I can’t find any case like this,” said Chief Judge Joel Dubina of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. “If we uphold this, are there any limits” on the power of the federal government? he asked.

Judge Stanley Marcus appeared to agree. “I can’t find any case” in the past where the courts upheld “telling a private person they are compelled to purchase a product in the open market…. Is there anything that suggests Congress can do this?”

ObamaCare is obvioulsy in trouble and the political ramifications are huge if  and when the federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals declares the legislation unconstitutional.

Already, appeals courts in Richmond, Va., and Cincinnati have heard legal challenges to the healthcare law, and a fourth hearing is set for September in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The challengers hope that at least one of those appeals courts strikes down the law as unconstitutional. Such a ruling would almost certainly require the Supreme Court to take up the case and decide the issue.

The United States Supreme Court will ultimately decide the issue but it is doubtful they would take it up prior to the 2012 Presidential elections and remember – NO Republican votes in favor of passage.

Sort of like Obama’s Affordable Care Act – ObamaCare…..

The American economy has changed under the Obama Administration – unfortunately for the worst. Mounting debt, home foreclosures and high unemployment stagger Americans.

And, what has President Obama done?

A phony economic stimulus plan which is nothing but wasteful spending with its concomitant massive debt. And, pass a health care reform plan, ObamaCare, which will burden the economy to the point of bankruptcy.

Time for a change is correct, Chris.

Time for a new President and new ideas.

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The Day By Day Archive

On the one year anniversary of its signing, Americans continue to oppose President Obama’s health care reform legislation.

One year after President Barack Obama signed the health care reform bill into law, a new national poll indicates that attitudes toward the plan have not budged.

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday, on the one year anniversary of the signing of the law, a majority continue to oppose the measure, but some of the opposition is from Americans who think the law is not liberal enough.

Thirty-seven percent of Americans support the measure, with 59 percent opposed. That’s basically unchanged from last March, when 39 percent supported the law and 59 percent opposed the measure.

“It’s worth remembering that opposition to the bill came from both the left and the right last year, and that has not changed either,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “In 2010, about a quarter of the health care bill’s opponents disliked the bill because it was not liberal enough – the same as today. That works out to 13 percent of all Americans who oppose the bill because it did not go far enough. Forty-three percent oppose it because it was too liberal.”

The passage of health care reform was seen as the signature domestic achievement of the president’s first two years in office. The law was a major issue in the midterm elections and with many Republicans continuing to push to either repeal or defund the plan, health care will most likely remain a very important issue in the 2012 election.

There are two ways to look at the poll’s overall numbers. One is that 59 percent oppose the law. The second is that if you add the 13 percent who oppose the law because it’s not liberal enough to the 37 percent that support the law, you come up with 50 percent of the American people who disagree with the Republican leadership on the issue. The GOP gained control of the House and many state houses and legislatures in the November election on the basis, many experts said, of their strong opposition to what they said was “government controlled health care.”

In what was seen as a largely symbolic move, the GOP controlled House voted earlier this year to repeal the law. At the same time, a number of legal cases that aim to overturn the measure are advancing through the federal court system.

With all this in mind, the poll continues to indicate a partisan divide, but also a gender gap among people who oppose the health care law.

Just repeal this bad legislation before its taxes and Medicare cuts come into full force in 2014. Not only will ObamaCare bankrupt state governments, but will also hurt employment prospects for millions.

According to the latest Gallup poll. California and Texas have the highest rates of uninsured residents.

Close to half of adults (46.1%) living in McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas, had no healthcare coverage last year — nearly three times the national average — and the highest percentage across the 188 U.S. metropolitan areas that Gallup and Healthways surveyed. Texas and California account for 9 of the 10 metro areas with the highest rates of uninsured residents. The four metro areas with the lowest rates of uninsured were in Massachusetts, each with about 1 in 20 adults lacking coverage.

And, the uninsured rates are the highest in largely Hispanic metropolitan areas.

The 10 metro areas with the highest uninsured rates have a significantly higher Hispanic population than the 10 metro areas with the lowest percentage of uninsured adults. On average, 44.5% of residents surveyed in the 10 metro areas with the highest rates of uninsured are of Hispanic or Latino origin according to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2009. This compares with an average of 7.1% in the 10 metro areas with the lowest percent uninsured.

In McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas, where nearly half the population is uninsured, 89.8% of residents are Hispanic. The 46.1% who were uninsured in that metro area is close to the national average of 38.9% of Hispanics who were uninsured in 2010.

Here is the chart:

So, what does this mean?

One year after the ObamaCare law passed, there continues large numbers of uninsured residents. Now, whether these are illegal immigrants of Hispanic origin is unclear. But, I suspect so, since their employers would not be providing them the opportunity to have insurance, nor would they qualify for Medicaid (while their American born children would.)

The bottom line from Gallup:

As the new healthcare law reaches the one-year mark, Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index data continue to find significant differences in coverage across the United States. There has also been no change, so far, in the percentage of uninsured adults at the national level, with 16.3% lacking healthcare in February of this year. The government, however, has only implemented certain parts of the law since it passage in March 2010 – the bulk of the legislation, including the individual mandate, does not go into effect until 2014.

Although the Obama administration continues to implement the law on course, it faces ongoing legal and political challenges from the states and Republican lawmakers. And a year later, the law still lacks strong public backing. Americans remain divided in their support for the law and more people believe the new healthcare reform law will worsen rather than improve medical care in the United States.