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CATO Responds to Obama’s State of the Union 2011
Cato experts Gene Healy, Ben Friedman, Michael F. Cannon, Dan Mitchell, Sallie James, John Samples, Justin Logan, Jagadeesh Gokhale, Neal McCluskey, and David Rittgers deconstruct the president’s speech and correct some of his errors—including the “American family” metaphor, calls for more federal education spending, zero-sum thinking in trade and globalization policy, ObamaCare fixes, TSA pat down jokes, soaking the rich, and much more. I’d like to encourage you to share these incisive analyses with your friends, colleagues, and readers.
For more, here is CATO’s blog coverage of the SOTU speech.
Jaw, Jaw and Bromides: Obama’s State of His Next Campaign for President Address
-By Warner Todd Huston
I sat through President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union Address last night. During the event I live Tweeted the whole thing (You can read that all at http://twitter.com/#!/warnerthuston) and ended up with an empty feeling and a headache. Obama’s address was long on calls for spending, filled with bromides, and weighted with jaw, jaw but pretty short on substance. In fact, it seemed like his 12 new spending ideas and his patriotic vagaries was simply his first step onto the 2012 campaign trail as opposed to a serious address to the nation.
Obama fittingly began his address citing John Boehner, the new Speaker of the House, and memorializing the wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. He then said that we had a “robust” debate in our politics and averred that it was one thing for the parties to sit together that night but it depended on what they all do “tomorrow” and he used that point to plead for moving forward with more bi-partisanship.
Tellingly, even as Obama has paid lip service to bipartisanship for three years, when he became president neither he nor his party made any moves to implement any bipartisanship. In fact, when Democrat Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House she never met with any Republicans on anything. This whole claim or bipartisanship is simply a farce on Obama’s part and Obama continued that farce in the SOTU speech.
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Jaw, Jaw and Bromides: Obama’s State of His Next Campaign for President Address”
President Gets Around Annoying Voters, Instills Death Panels By Regulation
-By Warner Todd Huston
Some of you may have missed this story since it was published on the day after Christmas (and a Sunday at that), but Obama’s death panels are back, this time via the president’s fiat regulatory powers. Since it was easy to have missed, I’ve decided to post the story today (Monday) so that more people might see it now that Christmas and the weekend both are over.
You might recall the end of life care policies that were once in Obamacare. You might also remember the political firestorm these death panels whipped up. The pressure was heavy enough that the Democrats removed the policy from the final Obamacare bill.
Well, now that Obamacare is passed, Obama is slipping these death panels right back into existence by ordering Medicare to just make the policy a new rule under updated Medicare regulations.
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President Gets Around Annoying Voters, Instills Death Panels By Regulation”
Unions ‘Christmas Carol’ Harassment, Media Ignores Hateful Unionistas
-By Warner Todd Huston
A bus load of 80 union thugs descended upon a sleepy — and private — suburb in Keokuk, Iowa disturbing the peace with loud singing, foul language and trespassing. And the media? Well, the Old Media thought this criminal behavior was just amusing “caroling.”
Locked out workers of Roquette America in Keokuk, Iowa (right across the river from Quincy, Ill.) invaded the property and homes of the company’s executives singing their foul songs and disrupting the peace in the quiet suburb.
Not only did the news media report this as but inoffensive “caroling” — which it decidedly was not — the media didn’t even report the illicit and immature behavior of these union thugs. The media whitewashed the whole incident.
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Unions ‘Christmas Carol’ Harassment, Media Ignores Hateful Unionistas”
FDA: Dec. 17, Countdown to a Death Panel for Breast Cancer Drug Avastin
-By Warner Todd Huston
In a few days the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to release its final decision on whether or not 17,000 women across the country will have the same access to the breast cancer drug Avastin that they now have. Several congressmen, thousands of doctors and patients, and many small government activists stand against this perceived example of Obamacare-like rationing.
As I reported last week, with this Avastin situation five Congressmen have become alerted to the threat that government is instituting cost-based rationing of healthcare and have become alarmed at the effects that will have on the sick. It seems that this FDA decision will set the table for the rationing war to come under Obamacare unless that legislation is repealed or inhibited.
Avastin is, admittedly, an expensive drug. But are we ready for government to decide if your lifesaving medicines are “too expensive” to be allowed for use? Is that the cost-based road down which we wish to travel? And how far down that road do we go? How much cost-cutting do we want government to indulge where it concerns our health? And should government even have that role in the first place?
These are questions that the Avastin decision evokes.
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FDA: Dec. 17, Countdown to a Death Panel for Breast Cancer Drug Avastin”
FDA Set To Cut Off 17,000 Women Annually From Lifesaving Drug
-By Warner Todd Huston
Obama’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is due to take up the case of Avastin, a cancer drug that successfully treats some 17,000 women annually. With a coming December 17 decision, the FDA seems poised to take this drug away from these patients quite despite the fact that their doctors find the drug effective.
The most dangerous period of time in Washington D.C. is that time we call the lame duck session (I call it the zombie congress; dead men walking). It is that time when those elected officials that are about to be ingloriously shipped off home for the last time due to losing election results make a mad scramble to grab for as much as they can get.
In the case of regulatory agencies like the FDA the lame duck session is not treated in exactly the same manner, but it is sure that when congress is about to have its majority party change over with the president’s party on the losing side of the switch, regulatory agencies often try to push through favored policies before the new congress is seated and before that new congress is in a position to put any pressure on those agencies to prevent them from pushing the president’s agenda.
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FDA Set To Cut Off 17,000 Women Annually From Lifesaving Drug”
Obamacare Forces Union to Drop Insurance for 6,000 Children
-By Warner Todd Huston
Remember how Obama said that if you liked your healthcare plan you could keep it? Apparently someone forgot to tell the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in New York because they’ve announced that Obamacare is forcing them to drop coverage for the children of its 30,000 low-wage members.
The union will be dropping coverage for 6,000 children starting in the new year because new state and federal rules will drive up its costs 60% causing it to face a “dramatic shortfall” between what employers contribute and the premiums charged by the insurance provider.
The union is blaming both state and federal rules but had this to say about the new rules Obamacare is forcing upon it.
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Obamacare Forces Union to Drop Insurance for 6,000 Children”
Obama’s Socialist-Admiring Medicaid/Medicare Chief Gets Hearing
-By Warner Todd Huston
Donald Berwick, Obama’s nominee to head up the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, made himself infamous earlier this year when video came to light showing him telling a British audience how much he admired their socialist healthcare system because it “redistributes” the Brit’s wealth.
Berwick went all warm and fuzzy over the socialist features of the British National Health Service saying,“Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.” The Heartland Institute had an extensive report on Berwick’s British address back when the video first surfaced.
Recently Senator Jim Bunning (R, KY) challenged Berwick, who accepted a recess appointment after his initial nomination never came to a vote in the Senate. Republicans are concerned that a man so taken by socialist policies would be in a position to attempt to implement similar left-wing policies here.
Berwick was brought before the Senate on Wednesday and The Heartland Institute covered the hearing in a live blog. It makes for interesting reading.
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Obama’s Socialist-Admiring Medicaid/Medicare Chief Gets Hearing”
Obamacare Waivers Prove Policy is a Jobs Killer, Unions Benefit Most
-By Warner Todd Huston
111 companies and organizations were granted waivers by Obama’s Dept. of Health and Human Services so that they could get out of having to comply with Obamacare and unions were particularly well rewarded by the HHS with these waivers.
Interestingly, there was no great announcement of these waivers issued to the press. The HHS buried the waiver announcement six layers deep on its webpage and posted them on Friday when they imagined no one would notice. It’s a typical Friday evening document dump so common when an administration wants to avoid the prying eyes of the people. So much for the “most transparent administration in history,” eh?
One thing is sure about these waivers. Obama rewarded his union pals quite well. Some 15 unions and union healthcare or financial fund and insurance providers fill the list of companies and groups that will not have to operate under Obamacare’s destructive rules.
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Obamacare Waivers Prove Policy is a Jobs Killer, Unions Benefit Most”
During Breast Cancer Month Obama’s FDA Ponders Delisting Cancer Drug
-By Warner Todd Huston
So you have Avastin, a drug used to treat breast cancer that has a record of extending the lives of sufferers for at least five and a half months, and it’s October, the month declared Breast Cancer Awareness Month. If you are the Obama Federal Drug Administration, what do you do? Apparently you look to delist the drug.
This October the FDA is trying to decide to delist Avastin because in keeping with its new Obamacare rationing impulses it has decided Avastin costs too much.
In September the FDA announced that it was going to delay its final decision perhaps until December on whether or not to take Avastin off the market for breast cancer patients. There was no clear indication of just when the decision would be made, but conveniently the decision certainly will be delayed until after the coming elections. As a result President Obama won’t have to worry about taking a drug away from breast cancer patients in the midst of an election cycle.
The calculation of skipping past the elections is hard to ignore.
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During Breast Cancer Month Obama’s FDA Ponders Delisting Cancer Drug”
Feds Deciding When Healthcare Science Costs Too Much To Save Lives
-By Warner Todd Huston
If anyone wants a current example of what is looming ahead for medical science at the hands of Obamacare, the Avastin controversy is a perfect one. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wants to de-list the cancer drug Avastin one reason being that it is a drug too expensive for government to fund. It is scary to think that the federal government can summarily dismiss cancer drugs merely because of expense, but that is what happens when government starts counting the beans. It becomes an issue of cost instead of effectiveness.
There were other reasons that the FDA wants to dump Avastin, but cost was one of them. One of those that sat in judgment of Avastin admitted that cost was a factor in the decision to delegitimize the treatment. Natalie Compagni Portis, a member of one of the panels that the FDA convened to investigate the drug, said, “We aren’t supposed to talk about cost, but that’s another issue.”
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Feds Deciding When Healthcare Science Costs Too Much To Save Lives”
Video: Ind. Gov. Mitch Daniels Says Obamacare Has Devastating Consequences
Governor Daniels also offered an op ed to go with his video…
We’ve been through a global recession. Now we’re fighting through a stalled recovery. Revenues are the lowest they’ve been in half a century. Their finances a wreck, many states have effectively sunk into bankruptcy.
Indiana is still afloat. In fact, we’ve fared better than most. We continue to meet our obligations without raising taxes, and the reserves we carefully built and protected will get us through the downturn.
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Video: Ind. Gov. Mitch Daniels Says Obamacare Has Devastating Consequences”