Three important communications appearing at the Center For Individual Freedom (CFIF)
(Excerpts)
Congress Poised to Bailout Insurers, Fleece Taxpayers
By Betsy McCaughey, October 25 2017
Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are pushing for a $10 billion a year payout to insurance companies that sell Obamacare plans. President Trump calls it “bailing out” the insurance industry. Truer words were never spoken.
. . .
The deal’s authors, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R. Tenn., and Sen. Patty Murray, D. Wash., have taken hundreds of thousands in insurance contributions personally and through their PACs. No surprise the deal gives insurers everything they want: an estimated $10 billion a year cash plus $100 million in Obamacare ads. No other industry gets taxpayers to pay for their advertising. Meanwhile, consumers get nothing: no freedom to buy affordable plans without Washington-mandated benefits, no escape from onerous tax penalties for not enrolling.
In 2010, the powerful insurance industry worked hand in glove with Democrats to enact the Affordable Care Act, a scheme compelling everyone to buy their product. The ACA also steered tens of billions of dollars in backdoor payments to insurers through 2016 to insulate them from losing their shirts on Obamacare. It doesn’t get any sweeter—a law making your product mandatory and forcing taxpayers to subsidize your bottom line.
. . .
The ACA requires insurers selling Obamacare plans to give low-income consumers a break on deductibles and copays. Insurers claim they lose money doing that, and want taxpayers to make up the shortfall. But Congress never voted for those payments, despite providing many others to the industry. No problem, under President Obama. He paid the insurers without getting Congress’s consent. But the U.S. Constitution says the president can’t spend what Congress doesn’t appropriate. The House of Representatives sued and Obama lost. Federal judge Rosemary Collyer ruled that the payments were illegal.
Fast forward to Oct. 12, when Trump announced he would halt the payments. . . .
Trump’s decision lobs the issue back to Congress, where it belongs. But tragically that’s where insurers have more sway than taxpayers.
Denying it’s a “bailout,” Alexander claims “we have strong language in the Alexander-Murray agreement that consumers get the money, not the insurance companies.” Those are weasel words. In truth, low-income consumers are already guaranteed breaks on copays and deductibles under the ACA. This agreement gives them nothing extra. The money is paid directly to insurers, going straight to profits.
. . .
Of course, bailing out insurers will keep them participating in Obamacare, propping up the failing system. . . .
Read the entire article here
Citizens United Critics’ Predictions Have Fallen Flat
By Timothy H. Lee October 19 2017
. . . And now, we can test critics’ predictions of corporate takeover of the nation’s elections against several cycles of accumulated data. Unsurprisingly, their doomsday assurances proved just as defective as their legal arguments.
. . .
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, so-called “super PACs” raised a total of $1.8 billion for the 2016 elections. Of that amount, $1 billion, or approximately 55%, came from individual donors. Just $242 million – less than one-sixth – came from nonprofit organizations, trade associations and labor unions.
And what about actual business corporations? All of them added together only accounted for $85 million.
To put that in perspective, leftist billionaire and environmental activist Thomas Steyer alone donated $89.5 million to super PACs in the 2016 cycle, more than any other group or individual. Somehow that hasn’t interrupted his ongoing assaults against Citizens United, hypocritically telling PBS, “We felt from the beginning that Citizens United was a mistake, that the way money is used in American campaigns isn’t good for democracy.”
Makes perfect sense.
Placing fifth on the list of largest political donors was an organization named “NextGen Climate Action,” which accounted for $33 million of PAC donations, and leftist Priorities USA action right behind at $26 million. Placing tenth in the list of top super PAC donors was former New York City mayor and all-around lifestyle scold Michael Bloomberg at $24 million, just behind the National Education Association teachers’ union and just ahead of the activist Service Employees International Union.
All told, only one of the top 40 contributors to super PACs in 2016 was a corporation, whereas eight labor unions were among that group.
And here’s another dirty little secret that labor unions don’t want you to know: They donate approximately 95% of their political contributions to Democrats, whereas corporations tend to split closer to 50/50 between Democrats and Republicans.
This accumulation of inconvenient facts likely won’t end leftists’ ongoing attacks against Citizens United, which merely respected the First Amendment’s prohibition against government censorship of private political speech, and weakened the mainstream media domination of electoral discourse. But nobody should maintain any illusion that critics’ predictions were any more credible than their legal arguments.
The “Honest Ads Act” Threatens Free Speech
Bradley A. Smith, Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Free Speech and Former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, discusses the so-called “Honest Ads Act,” how the proposed legislation would impose more burdens on Americans’ free speech rights, and the problems with extending the existing “electioneering communication” FEC disclaimer language to social media ads.
Sustain your conservative instincts with these important articles available at CFIF
