Dr. Ben Carson - Obama's Charm Offensive

"As we allow the Government to take more and more of our money, all it does is fuel their growth."
Dr. Benjamin Carson

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PJTV Trifecta - Trifecta Feels Your Pain - So Why Can't GOP Leaders?

Liberals and conservatives believe in compassion. So why do conservatives seem unable to craft a compassionate message? Have Republicans adopted esoteric policies that help the rich and forget the plight of families and the middle class? Has the GOP lost sight of basic values like liberty? Find out on this Trifecta.

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Star Parker - America Needs a New Birth of Freedom

Journalist Bill Moyers, who worked as an assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, shared memories in a column last year about how his old boss thought about our entitlement programs.

It was under Johnson, who championed the "Great Society" in the 1960s, that a good portion of the runaway government spending we are trying to get under control today originated.

Johnson signed into law Medicare, Medicaid, the War on Poverty programs, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Moyers recounted that for Johnson, Social Security and Medicare "were about a lot more than economics."

He recalls a time when the Johnson administration was supporting retroactive increases in Social Security payments. Moyers said he argued for the increases as economic stimulus. But Johnson called him and said:

"My inclination would be ... that it ought be retroactive as far back as you can get it ... because none of them ever get enough. That they are entitled to it. That's an obligation of ours. It's just like your mother writing you and saying she wants $20, and I always sent mine $100 when she did. I always did it because I thought she was entitled to it. ... We do know that it affects the economy. But that's not the basis to go to the Hill, or the justification. We've got to say that by God you can't treat grandma this way. She's entitled to it and we promised it to her."

I don't think we could have a clearer picture of Johnson's muddled thinking about his job and the role of government, which contributed so much to the problems we have today.

Johnson's words sound so wonderfully compassionate. But let's get things in perspective.

He saw no difference in his relationship and responsibilities toward his own mother, and sending her his own money, and his responsibilities as president of the United States and the relationship of government to citizens.

There is a world of difference between the appropriate responsibility of parents toward their children and children toward their parents, and politicians deciding on how to spend someone else's money for someone else's children, parents or grandparents.

Johnson didn't seem to grasp, or care, about the fact that family and government are two entirely different social institutions that serve very different purposes.

So the Johnson administration years marked not just the beginning of many huge government programs that we can't pay for today, but they also marked a major cultural change where government began displacing family and personal responsibility.

It is no accident that as the American welfare state grew, the American family collapsed.

In 1960, 72 percent of American adults were married. By 2010, this was down to 51 percent.

The change is most pronounced among two of today's largest Democratic Party constituencies: youths and blacks. In 1960, 45 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 were married compared to 9 percent today. In 1960, 61 percent of black adults were married, compared to 31 percent today.

Means testing, targeted tax increases on the wealthy, raising the retirement age -- all proposed ways to keep Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid going as they are -- all simply grow the American welfare state, increase dependence of working Americans on government and other taxpayers, and displace family and traditional values with socialism.

This is why Democratic leaders are not stressed out by the entitlements crisis facing us. More socialism in America is what they want.

They are not bothered that slow growth and high unemployment go hand in hand with this socialism.

Republicans won't succeed as an opposition party if they keep tiptoeing around the fact that facing America today is a crisis of vision and values.

They need to stop selling the alternative to welfare as unpleasantness and spending cuts. They need to start selling that restored prosperity will only come with a rebirth of American freedom and the values that go with it.

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Michelle Fields - Medicare Paid $120M for Inmates and Illegal Immigrants

Medicare paid more than $120 million from 2009 to 2011 for claims from inmates and undocumented residents, violating federal law, according to a pair of reports by HHS' Office of Inspector General, Politico reports.

According to the reports, nearly 3,000 undocumented residents filed thousands of claims resulting in $91.6 million in Medicare payments. In addition, 11,600 inmates submitted more than 75,000 claims resulting in $33.6 million in Medicare payments.

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Star Parker - On the Road to Death Panels

With the first presidential debate and the only vice-presidential debate behind us, it seems pretty clear that so-called "social issues" are not going to get much attention in this year's presidential politics.

It's unfortunate, I think. We deceive ourselves to permit the assumption that values and behavior are not the real drivers behind our economic problems.

The fiscal crisis of our entitlement programs is the direct result of these values and behavior.

The fiscal soundness of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is rooted in the assumption that those who work can fund the needs of our elderly through payroll taxes. In the case of Social Security, we're talking about retirement income; in the case of Medicare, health costs of the aged; and Medicaid, long-term care of low-income elderly.

When these programs were founded, using payroll taxes to fund care for our elderly seemed like a viable idea.

The bottom has fallen out, however, because of changes in our behavior. There are fewer and fewer workers per retiree as result of longer life spans and a shrinking workforce.

In 1950, there were 16 working Americans for every retiree. Today, there are fewer than three. By 2030, it's projected there will be fewer than two.

It doesn't take a supercomputer to realize that if we don't reduce the retirement and health care resources available to our elderly, the burden on each working American to provide those resources increases substantially.

Yet the discussion about this crisis is 100 percent focused on how to cut the spending and zero attention is spent on restoration of values that could rebuild families, produce more children and stop destroying the unborn.

According to a new report just out from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the overall fertility rate of American women -- defined by the number of births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 -- is the lowest ever recorded since the government started gathering this information. After years of hovering slightly above 2.1, it has now dropped below to 1.9.

According to demographers, a fertility rate of 2.1 -- in which each adult woman produces 2.1 children on average over her lifetime -- is necessary to keep the overall population steady.

Which means the overall U.S. population is shrinking.

We generally look to Europe to see low fertility rates and shrinking populations. However, according to the Economist magazine, the U.S., at 1.9, now has a fertility rate lower than France, whose fertility rate stands at 2.0.

A change in prevailing values could reverse this trend. But the opposite is happening.

According to a new Gallup poll, for the first time the majority of Americans feel that government should not promote any particular set of values.

In 1993, the first year that Gallup did this annual survey, 53 percent said that government should promote traditional values and 42 percent said that no particular set of values should be promoted. Now, in this latest survey, it is the opposite: 52 percent say no particular set of values should be promoted and 44 percent say government should promote traditional values.

With no rebirth of traditional values that could lead to more babies, caring for our elderly will become an increasingly onerous burden. Where can this soulless materialism lead?

In a Sept. 16 New York Times op-ed, Steven Rattner -- a New York investment banker and former counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration -- provided a shockingly candid answer.

The op-ed began by saying, "We need death panels."

Rattner then qualified this by saying, well, maybe not "exactly."

But, he concluded: "We may shrink from ... stomach-wrenching choices, but they are inescapable."

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Betsy McCaughey - Scientific Evidence Proves Obamacare Will Harm Seniors

Betsy McCaughey is the Chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, the former Lt. Governor of New York, and author of the book, "Obama Health Law." On September 21st she gave a speech at Accuracy in Media's "ObamaNation: A Day of Truth" conference proving with hard facts how the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) will inevitably harm America's seniors.

"In just a few days, October 2012, the Obama administration will start awarding “bonus points” to the hospitals that spend the least per senior. Oh, yes! Section 3001 of this law, for the first time, creates a new “quality measure for Medicare.” It measures spending per Medicare beneficiary, and awards the bonus points to the hospitals that spend the least per senior! And it whacks the higher spending hospitals with demerits, not only for what they spend on a patient while the patient is in the hospital, but also what is spent on that patient for the three months after hospitalization.

So hospitals also get hit with demerits for recommending physical therapy after the patient leaves the hospital, or even recommending a doctor’s visit; it’s all counted. These regulations are not going to wring out the fraud, waste, and abuse. No, they are going to force these hospitals to provide a lower standard of care: Nurses spread thinner, less cleaning of rooms, waits for MRIs, less physical therapy, and most significantly, higher death rates.

History proves it’s true: In 1997, when the Balanced Budget Act cut Medicare payments to hospitals, the hospitals that were clobbered with the biggest cuts eventually saw that the death rates for their heart attack patients were 6% to 8% higher than at the hospitals that weren’t hit with the big cuts. Research published in March of 2011—certainly available to the Obama administration—research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a preeminent group, shows why the death rates were higher: The hospitals that were hit with the payment cuts laid off nurses."
Betsy McCaughhey

Click HERE to read full transcript.

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Betsy McCaughey - ObamacareWill Harm Seniors

Betsy McCaughey is the Chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and the former Lt. Governor of New York. McCaughey is the author of two books on Obamacare: Obama Health Law: What It Says and How to Overturn It and Decoding the Obama Health Law: What You Need To Know. In this interview at the "ObamaNation: A Day of Truth" conference she explains how the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is dangerous for America's seniors:

"When you hear the President tell seniors ...don't worry I'm not cutting benefits I'm only cutting payments to providers; use your head. If hospitals have less money to spend on seniors then seniors will suffer"

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Allen Barton - Obama Cuts Medicare but Plays 'Mediscare' All the Same

President Obama has abandoned hope and change, opting instead for a campaign of terrifying senior citizens. Can Obama accuse GOP candidates MItt Romney and Paul Ryan of wanting to cut Medicare given that Obama has cut hundreds of billions out of the health care program for the elderly? Find out on this Front Page as Allen Barton talks to Doug Altner of the Ayn Rand Institute and Terry Jones of IBD about health care and presidential politics.

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Star Parker - America Ready for Paul Ryan’s Adult Conversation

There’s a line of thinking on the political left that Mitt Romney served them up a great softball in picking Paul Ryan as his running mate.

According to Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, “Ryan brings to the Romney campaign the tea party’s style of magical thinking, a blissfully simplistic, ideologically driven world view that seems to think candidates can win votes by promising to reduce popular government services.”

Republican candidates, they say, are ducking for cover to avoid being branded with budget reforms that Ryan, as Chairman of House Budget Committee, has proposed, particularly for Medicare and Medicaid.

Vice President Biden, eloquent as always, told a mostly black audience in Virginia that Republicans want to put “y’all back in chains.”

Although Biden has taken flak for this nauseating remark, he should get credit for summing up how Democrats really think. That government running your life makes you free and that anyone who proposes freedom and choice wants to put “y’all back in chains.”

Earlier this year, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, sent a report on the nation’s budget to House budget committee chairman Ryan.

Here’s what he said:

“The explosive path of the federal debt that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects under what many observers would view as current policies underscores the need for policy changes to put the nation on a sustainable course.”

“The aging of the population and rising costs for health care will push spending for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs considerably higher as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP).”

Elmendorf concludes that without major increases in revenues and/or substantial cuts in spending “the resulting budget deficits will increase federal debt to unsupportable levels.”

So Paul Ryan’s high crime is being courageous, honest and leveling with the American people about the tough realities facing us.

He, like most Republicans, believes that raising taxes, when our economy is growing at half its historical average, and with the unemployment rate 40% higher than its historical average, is economic suicide.

So Ryan takes on the major culprits in driving our long term fiscal crisis – entitlements spending.

Is this “magical thinking?” No, it’s guts.

And what courageous measures do Democrat critics take on? No major spending reform proposals and no across the board tax hikes, which Elmendorf suggests as the alternative.

Just the usual class warfare rhetoric. Tax the top 1 percent, who already pay 39 percent of income taxes, and who alone could never cover the huge deficits that CBO is projecting.

In 1975 10% of the population was on Medicaid. Now it is double that.

Ryan’s idea of block granting federal funds for Medicaid to states would give local latitude and responsibility to promote innovation to make more productive use of limited resources.

A new study published in the journal Health Affairs reports that 31 percent of physicians refuse patients on Medicaid. Yet, when innovative business models emerge to deliver care in underserved poor communities, they are attacked by the left.

The Center for Public Integrity, funded by George Soros, has posted on its website that Ryan’s budget plan is a “Path to the Poorhouse.” Yet it also attacks Dental Health Maintenance Organizations, a recent business concept to organize dental practices, making it feasible to accept Medicaid reimbursements and provide dental care in poor neighborhoods.

There is a saying that you can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

Paul Ryan is courageously delivering truth to the American people, boldly and clearly.

He can’t make anyone drink the water. But if honesty and courage is no longer what sells in America, we can be sure that the future is not pretty.

Romney’s bet, and I think it is a good one, is that the American people are ready for Paul Ryan and an adult conversation.

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Rep. Paul Ryan On Unlocking America's Economic Growth Potential

Congressman Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, sits with Steve Forbes to discuss the choices American faces in the 2012 election, the economic policies the U.S. should embrace for future growth and how to tackle issues around funding Medicare. From the George W. Bush Presidential Center's Tax Policies for 4% Growth conference at the New-York Historical Society.

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Allen Barton - Ryan's Hope: A New Budget That Cuts Taxes and Curbs Spending

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) put forward a new budget the simplifies the tax code while cutting spending. Is it possible to clean up the federal balance sheet with just two tax rates of 10% and 25%? Find out as Allen Barton talks to Brian Doherty of Reason Magazine, and Terry Jones of IBD.

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THP Vidos - Paul Ryan On How To Save Strengthen Health Retirement Security

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Paul Ryan - Saving Medicare, Visualized

“We can no longer let politicians in Washington deny the danger to Medicare – the danger is all too real, and the health of our nation’s seniors is far too important. We have to save Medicare to avoid disruptions in benefits for current seniors, and to strengthen the program for future generations. House Republicans have put forward a plan to do just that. Democratic leaders in Congress have failed to produce a plan – it has been 755 days since Senate Democrats even passed a budget. Meanwhile, the President’s plan would empower a panel of 15 unelected bureaucrats to cut Medicare for current seniors, while failing to save the program for future retirees.

“This video lays out the clear choice our nation faces on Medicare: Will Medicare become a program in which a board of bureaucrats manages its bankruptcy by denying care to seniors? Or will leaders work together to save and strengthen Medicare by empowering seniors to choose health care plans that work best for them, with less support for the wealthy and more help for the poor and the sick? House Republicans have advanced solutions to save Medicare. Instead of working with us, the leaders of the Democratic Party have opted to play politics with the health security of America’s seniors.”

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Ask the President - What are you going to do with $181 Billion Dollars if you're not paying bills?

President Obama, what exactly will you choose to pay? What are your priorities?

If you're not going to pay our $17 billion average monthly debt...with 10 times that amount of money on hand to do so...well then, what are you going to spend that money on? Can you tell us what you and Secretary Geithner could possibly see as more important than avoiding default on our debt obligations?

And if you're not going to pay the $93 billion promised to Social Security and medicare recipients in August, when you will have twice that much money on hand, then who are you going to give that money to instead? Who exactly do you think is more important than our senior citizens?

If you're not going to pay for the war you unilaterally launched in Libya, or the war you expanded in Afghanistan; and you're not going to pay our armed forces who are defending our country, and you're not going to pay our air traffic controllers...even though you will have plenty of funds on hand to do so...then what are you going to spend that $61 billion on instead?

America knows that it's going to be your choice where to spend the money, so this is the only questions we want to know from you: Tell us what your priorities are. America demands and deserves nothing less from our chief executive officer.

Where's that money going to go each and every month?

Jul 19, 2011

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Paul Ryan - Choice & Competition Work Better Than Gov't Price Controls

Rep. Paul Ryan on why Medicare reforms that bring choice and competition to seniors would lower costs better than IPAB - a board of 15 unelected people with the power to deny seniors care. "What our concern is, is if we invest all of the power and the funding decisions with a board of 15 people - who's decisions go into law and don't even go through Congress - is that the best way to save this entitlement and restrain spending? We believe there's a better way."

July 12, 2011


July 12, 2011

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Dan Mitchell - Saving Social Security with Personal Retirement Accounts

There are two crises facing Social Security. First the program has a gigantic unfunded liability, largely thanks to demographics. Second, the program is a very bad deal for younger workers, making them pay record amounts of tax in exchange for comparatively meager benefits. This video explains how personal accounts can solve both problems, and also notes that nations as varied as Australia, Chile, Sweden, and Hong Kong have implemented this pro-growth reform.

Dan J. Mitchell, Ph.D.

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Dan J. Mitchell, Ph.D. is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, Washington’s premier free-market think tank.
Visit his Website at: http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/

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Dan Mitchell - Saving Medicare: Free Market Reforms Are Better than Bureaucratic Rationing

Saving Medicare: Free Market Reforms Are Better than Bureaucratic Rationing

Dan J. Mitchell, Ph.D.

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Dan J. Mitchell, Ph.D. is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, Washington’s premier free-market think tank.
Visit his Website at: http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/

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Dan Mitchell - Promote Federalism and Replicate the Success of Welfare Reform with Medicaid Block Grants

The Medicaid program imposes high costs while generating poor results. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video explains how block grants, such as the one proposed by Congressman Paul Ryan, will save money and improve healthcare by giving states the freedom to innovate and compete.

Dan J. Mitchell, Ph.D.

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Dan J. Mitchell, Ph.D. is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, Washington’s premier free-market think tank.
Visit his Website at: http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/

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Paul Ryan - GOP Medicare Plan Predicts Competition Will Drive Costs Down

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) told Bret about his plan to save Medicare, which would give patients the option to buy private insurance with a subsidy, and force providers to compete for business, therefore driving costs down.

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Ryan and Van Hollen Debate Medicare Proposals

In Special Report's look at the War on Medicare, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) went head-to-head over their differing Medicare proposals, butting heads over sources of revenue, private drug plan costs and conclusions from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

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