ALG - Threat of Obamacare continues to hurt job creation

May 3, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement on the latest job numbers:

"There is little that can be learned about the direction of the economy from the tepid April unemployment report.  The modest job growth combined with the lowest labor participation rate since 1981 may be the new normal under Obama policies that punish job creation.  The good news is that in spite of these government headwinds exemplified by Obamacare's costly penalties on hiring, the number of private sector jobs increased by 176,000 while economic growth sucking government jobs decreased by11,000.  The significant increase in temporary services hiring in the private sector shows that demand for labor is increasing, but employer uncertainty about the long term prospects of the economy are impinging a commitment to growth.

"With bi-partisan agreement in Congress that the upcoming Obamacare law is likely to be a 'train wreck' at a minimum, they should delay it's  implementation for a two year period to provide more certainty for job creators that will allow them to move forward with plans for additional full time hiring."

To view online: http://getliberty.org/threat-of-obamacare-continues-to-hurt-job-creation/

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Americans for Limited Government is a non-partisan, nationwide network committed to advancing free market reforms, private property rights and core American liberties. For more information on ALG please call us at 703-383-0880 or visit our website at www.GetLiberty.org.

CEI Today: New Obamacare and Windsorgate lawsuits and another go at net neutrality

OBAMACARE LAWSUIT - SAM KAZMAN

Small Business Owners Sue Over IRS Obamacare Power Grab

A group of small business owners (and individuals) in six states today are suing the federal government over an IRS regulation imposed under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which will force them to pay exorbitant fines, cut back employees’ hours, or severely burden their businesses. CEI is coordinating the lawsuit.

“Agencies are bound by the laws enacted by Congress,” said Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).  “Obamacare is already an incredibly massive program.  For the IRS to expand it even more, without congressional authorization and in a manner aimed at undercutting state choice, is flagrantly illegal.”  > Read more

> Interview Sam Kazman

> Listen to the podcast - May 2, 2013: Small Business Owners Sue Over IRS Obamacare Power Grab

See also: Obamacare Gets New Court Challenge

WINDSORGATE - CHRISTOPHER HORNER CEI Sues for EPA Official's Private-Account Email Yet again, the Environmental Protection Agency has forced the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) to file suit over a stonewalled Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for public records that political appointees, and EPA, apparently did not want the public to see. This time, CEI filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington to compel production of certain emails sent to or from Jared Blumenfeld, the Agency’s Region 9 (California and the Pacific Northwest) administrator who is the latest EPA official CEI has learned of using his personal email account to correspond on EPA-related matters.   > Read more > Interview Chris Horner

NET NEUTRALITY - FRED CAMPBELL DriveInnovation.org: Twice as Many Americans Lack Access to Public Water-Supply Systems than Fixed Broadband After abandoning the “information superhighway” analogy for the Internet, net neutrality advocates began analogizing the Internet to waterworks.  If broadband Internet infrastructure had been built to the same extent as public water-supply systems, more than twice as many Americans would lack fixed broadband Internet access. > Read more > Interview Fred Campbell

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CEI ANNUAL DINNER & GALA FEATURING THE HONORABLE RAND PAUL JUNE 20, 2013 cei.org/ceidinner

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org.  Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.

CEI - Small Business Owners Sue Over IRS Obamacare Power Grab

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 2, 2013 - A group of small business owners and individuals in six states today are suing the federal government over an IRS regulation imposed under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which will force them to pay exorbitant fines, cut back employees’ hours, or severely burden their businesses. Complaint can be viewed here.

The Affordable Care Act authorizes health insurance subsidies to qualifying individuals in states that created their own healthcare exchanges. Those subsidies trigger the employer mandate (a $2,000/employee penalty) and expose more people to the individual mandate.  But last spring, without authorization from Congress, the IRS vastly expanded those subsidies to cover states that refused to set up such exchanges.  Under the Act, businesses in these nonparticipating states should be free of the employer mandate, and the scope of the individual mandate should be reduced as well.  But because of the IRS rule, both mandates will be greatly enlarged in scope, depriving states of the power to protect their residents.

Michael Carvin, partner at Jones Day, who co-argued the Supreme Court Obamacare cases in March, 2012 and who represents the plaintiffs in this lawsuit, stated: “The IRS rule we are challenging is at war with the Act’s plain language and completely rewrites the deal that Congress made with the states on running these insurance exchanges.”

“Agencies are bound by the laws enacted by Congress,” said Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).  “Obamacare is already an incredibly massive program.  For the IRS to expand it even more, without congressional authorization and in a manner aimed at undercutting state choice, is flagrantly illegal.”  CEI is coordinating the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs are filing suit for a number of reasons.  One business can only afford to employ some full-time workers without providing health insurance, another wants to convert its employee health insurance to a completely consumer-driven health plan, and several individual plaintiffs (most of them self-employed) object to paying for costly insurance packages that they neither need nor want.

“Contrary to the clear language in the Affordable Care act, government is directly impeding my ability to design a quality affordable health plan for my employees,” said Chuck Willey, M.D., one of the plaintiffs and head of Innovare Health Advocates in St. Louis, Missouri.  “The IRS will extra-legislatively extend this onerous benefit requirement (which will increase premiums and costs of care) and impose the employer penalty in states with federally-run exchanges. I maintain the right to choose my own employees' health plan without government intervention into its benefit design and without penalty.”

Thirty-three states have exercised their congressionally-created option to not create an exchange in order to spare their businesses from the employer mandate. The IRS rule, however, deprives them of this choice.

“The IRS cannot rewrite the law that Congress passed,” said Tom Miller, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “Its regulation expressly flouts the statutory text of the ACA, the intent of Congress, and the reasoned choices of 33 states.”

“The Obama administration plans to tax, borrow, and spend more than half a trillion dollars in clear violation of Obamacare, yet still says Obamacare is ‘the law of the land,’ said Michael Cannon, director of health policy at the CATO Institute. “The courts should stop the administration before it starts imposing these illegal taxes on millions of individuals and employers in January.”

This legal complaint, available here in pdf, seeks to strike the illegal IRS rule, arguing that the agency has no power to rewrite an essential part of the law. The suit is being filed in federal court in the District of Columbia.


> View the complaint

NRSC - Democratic Candidates Running From ObamaCare

From "Extremely Problematic" to "Train Wreck" - Democrats on Defense

Washington, D.C. - Last night during the South Carolina 1st Congressional District debate, Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch joined the chorus of Democrats who are running for office and running from ObamaCare.

As BuzzFeed notes Colbert Busch “was troubled by [ObamaCare's] cost and the burden it could put on employers”: "Obamacare is extremely problematic, it is expensive, it is a $500 billion cost than we originally anticipated, it's cutting into Medicare benefits and it's having companies lay off their employees because they are worried about the cost of it. That is extremely problematic, it needs an enormous fix," she said during a debate Monday night.

Colbert Busch's concerns echo fellow Democrats' disdain for the health care overhaul including Democrat Senator Max Baucus, the architect of ObamaCare, who recently called it a "train wreck" as well as Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller who said the Affordable Care Act is "beyond comprehension."

Democratic pollster Mark Mellman reinforced the internal uneasiness among Democrats over ObamaCare: “We already know that, left to its own devices, this doesn’t end up in a good place,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. “Anyone who thinks this issue is done is fooling themselves.”

"Few issues are as personal and as tangible as health care," said NRSC Communications Director Brad Dayspring. "As costs continue to increase,  ObamaCare's taxes, mandates, and red tape will shock millions of Americans as the painful parts of the law are implemented over the next year. President Obama can rest easy after 2012, but  voters will remember that every incumbent Senate Democrat has their fingerprints all over this train wreck.  They're not alone. Members of Congress interested in being promoted to the Senate like Bruce Braley and Gary Peters have a $1 Trillion weight holding them down, and that's ObamaCare."

ObamaCare has gone from being an “abstract” discussion to a real life pain for families and businesses which has Democrats who supported this costly agenda like Bruce Braley, Mark Pryor, Mark Begich, Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu, Jeanne Shaheen, John Barrow, Mark Udall, Gary Peters, Al Franken, Mark Warner, Tom Udall, Dick Durbin and Jeff Merkley in a tailspin. Vulnerable Democrats will be forced to face voters just as ObamaCare's tax hikes, mandates, fees, penalties, and red tape bureaucracy take shape over the next eight months.

NH GOP - NYT: SHAHEEN "GETTING NERVOUS" ABOUT PAYING A POLITICAL PRICE FOR OBAMACARE

Concord – The New York Times (4/26/13) today reports that Democrats in both houses of Congress are “getting nervous that they could pay a political price” for the implementation of Obama Care.  The Times specifically mentioned concerns raised by New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen in a closed-door meeting on Thursday with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough.

“We are hearing from a lot of small businesses in New Hampshire that do not know how to comply with the law,” Shaheen told the Times. “Restaurants that employ people for about 30 hours a week are trying to figure out whether it would be in their interest to reduce the hours” of those workers, so the restaurants could avoid the law’s requirement to offer health coverage to full-time employees.

“Jeanne Shaheen, Carol Shea-Porter and Annie Kuster should all be nervous about the price they will pay for supporting President Obama’s disastrous health care law. As ObamaCare begins to take effect, New Hampshire small businesses will be devastated by onerous new regulations and working families will be burdened with higher health care costs,” said NHGOP Chairman Jennifer Horn. “These issues were brought to Senator Shaheen’s attention before she decided to blindly support her party’s efforts to ram ObamaCare through Congress. But Shaheen ignored her constituents, and now she is responsible for the alarming consequences of this law that will be imposed on New Hampshire.”

A poll released by the University of New Hampshire this month shows that the Democrats’ health care legislation is extremely unpopular in the Granite State. The survey found that 49% of New Hampshire residents opposed ObamaCare while only 34% supported it.

The Times also reported that Democrat Senator Max Baucus, also said that the Obama Administration deserved “a failing grade” for its efforts to explain the law to the public.

“I just see a huge train wreck coming down,” said Mr. Baucus.