First Steps To Balance The Budget

Folks from throughout the political spectrum should be able to agree on one thing – we are living beyond our means. We’ve been doing so since 2001, after a brief sojourn in the 1990s when the budget was balanced. It’s much harder to reach consensus on what we should do about it. Some, like Rep. Paul Ryan, say we must balance our budget solely by cutting federal expenditures. The inevitable result of this will be substantial cuts to programs that benefit the neediest in our society, including ending Medicare as we have known it.

One way to get at a possible solution to this dilemma is to look at some statistics. In 2007, the last year for which such information is available, the top 1% of the US population held 43% of the country’s financial wealth and 35% of the total net worth. By contrast, the bottom 80% of the population has only 7% of financial wealth and 19% of the total net worth. The percentage held by the very wealthy has been steadily increasing during the past generation, and dramatically so since 2001, when the Bush tax cuts on the rich came into effect. We have become a nation of haves and have-nots, reminiscent of the gilded age of the robber barons.

There is no question that we will all have to do more with less to balance out federal budget. But, surely the place to start is to eliminate the Bush tax cuts on the rich. They have benefitted richly from our great country. They should be willing to repay their fair share.

Don’t Throw Seniors Under The Bus To Balance The Budget

I was in the optician’s office the other day, waiting for a new lens to be put in my glasses. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself as I struggled to read a magazine without glasses. Then, a fellow came in pushing an elderly lady in a wheelchair. I try not to be nosy, but it was hard not to overhear them.

She had just been to the ophthalmologist, and had been told she needed to have cataract surgery. It became clear that she lives alone without any family close by. The gentleman who brought her in goes to the same church as her, and has been helping her for years, transporting her to appointments and helping her with financial matters. The cataract diagnosis had obviously had upset her, and she struggled to hold back tears as she tried to work out whether or not she should have this surgery at 90 years of age. Her friend from church tried to console her. When she asked what she would owe for the visit to the ophthalmologist as well as this minor repair to her glasses, he had encouraging words. The doctor visit was covered by Medicare and the optician probably wouldn’t charge to fix her glasses.

Folks like this lady can sometimes struggle through what are supposed to be their golden years. Things promise to get even worse for her successors if the plan to privatize Medicare is enacted. Under Rep. Paul Ryan's proposal, seniors and others on Medicare would begin receiving a set amount of money, starting in 2022, to offset the cost of buying a private insurance plan. This plan to replace the federal government's Medicare plan sounds good in theory. Ryan says that applying what he calls "free-market principles" to the insurance market is the best way to control costs.

But, will it really work out that way? The independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says otherwise. CBO’s review of Ryan’s program estimates seniors would end up paying almost twice as much out of their own pockets — or more than $12,510 a year. Altogether, the total cost of health care would be higher. That is why a number of studies show that voucher programs like the one Rep. Ryan is proposing will not reduce health care costs.

Why is that? It turns out that buying health insurance is different from picking out a car or groceries. You and I can figure out which auto will be best for us by comparing different models and using resources like Consumer Reports. We can choose whether we want to buy the name brand box of corn flakes or the generic store brand. But, how many of us can figure out which is the best health care plan for us, given the myriad factors like deductibles, exclusions from coverage, lifetime caps, etc., etc.?

Rep, Ryan says he wants seniors to be covered by a plan that is similar to that currently in effect for federal employees. But, here’s an interesting fact. Under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, costs have risen over 64% over the last five years, far faster than health care costs generally and faster than Medicare costs have increased. Of course, under Rep. Ryan’s plan, the federal government will only be paying a fixed amount to each senior for health care, meaning that our seniors will bear the brunt of higher health care costs.

Now, maybe, you and I can educate ourselves so that we can make an intelligent choice among health care providers. But, is this a burden we want to impose on frail seniors like the lady in my optician’s office? Is it morally right to make her have to figure out which health insurance option is best for her? Is it right to make her bear a steadily increasing share of health expenses as we switch from a program with a good track record of containing costs to one that has let costs rise much faster?

We will all need to make sacrifices to balance our federal and state budgets. Rep. Ryan’s plan mostly imposes the sacrifices on the elderly and less fortunate, those least able to bear it. I think we should couple some cuts to these programs with some revenue increases. These should include a repeal of the Bush tax cuts on the rich. We should also close some loopholes in the individual and corporate tax codes that allow those with the brightest lawyers and accountants to avoid paying taxes. Those who have benefitted the most in our society should contribute their fair share. Just throwing the elderly under the bus is the wrong solution to our budget problems.

"Conservative" Scott Perry Proposes Dramatic Changes to the "Castle Doctrine" For No Reason He Can Demonstrate

Rep. Scott Perry of Cumberland County was a guest on WITF's Radio Smart Talk the other morning. He spoke eloquently about the need to expand the "Castle Doctrine" beyond the home. He said we need this major change to the law on when a person can lawfully use deadly violence so that a person defending him or herself from attack will not be prosecuted.

Yet, he cannot produce A SINGLE INSTANCE where a person was prosecuted under existing PA law but would not have been under his proposed change. No one else can, either. So, why exactly do we need this change? We have lots of real problems in this state. I humbly suggest that Rep. Perry should focus his efforts on some of them, rather than proposing solutions in search of a problem.

I guess Rep. Perry thinks he is a conservative. I wonder what is conservative about someone who proposes a change in a law when there is no demonstrated need for the change?

Don't blame unions for the current budget crisis

These are troubled times for all levels of government. Federal, state and local leaders are grappling with budget deficits. A significant part of the problem is public pensions whose obligations have not been fully funded. Everyone agrees that this is a problem. What gives me heartburn is the constant chorus telling us that this problem is caused solely by greedy labor unions.

Blaming unions for the current fiscal crisis seems to me a bit like George Steinbrenner, late owner of the New York Yankees, blaming Alex Rodriguez for negotiating the largest contract in baseball history. There was no gun at George's head as he agreed to take on A-Rod's deal. But, to hear some politicians and Tea Partiers these days, the unions were wielding automatic weapons when they negotiated the public sector pension deals. The truth is that these pensions were arrived at fair and square through a series of negotiations between unions representing employees and elected officials representing us, the taxpayers. Both sides had legal representation and knew exactly what they were doing.

The problems arose after the negotiations. These pensions created liabilities on the part of government. Government representatives were supposed to fund these obligations. They simply didn’t do it. It is morally reprehensible for our government officials to now blame the unions for terrible sin of negotiating a deal and then expecting government to live up to it.

It is generally true that public sector pensions are better than those in the private sector. But, again, is A-Rod to blame because he was able to negotiate a better deal than his fellow athletes? Another fact is that private sector pensions used to be better than they are now. But, over the past generation, retirement benefits in the private sector have declined significantly. Many companies have converted their defined benefit pension plans, where the company takes more risk, to defined contribution plans, where the employees take most of the risk. This hasn’t happened as much in the public sector because more public employees are represented by unions who haven’t allowed this.

Financial planners have been advising us for years to prepare for our retirement. That is what the public sector unions did for their members. Unions made sure that their employees had adequate pensions. In many cases, unions agreed to give up larger salary increases in return for better pensions. Now, in the fun house mirror world of today's politics, they are the bad guys. Do I detect a little pension envy here?

Here’s a concrete example. I worked over thirty years in the private sector. My wife worked about the same length of time as a public school employee. We both have graduate degrees. I consistently earned a paycheck of about one third more than her. But now, she enjoys a pension benefit that is about three times more than mine. In my opinion, that is because her pensions were negotiated through a collective bargaining process, and mine were not.

So, who should we blame for the fix we are currently in? I say it is the politicians who agreed to these pensions without adequately funding them. So, hey, President Reagan, President George W. Bush, and Congress – why did you cut taxes on the rich without first funding government pensions and our infrastructure needs? On the state level, hey Gov. Ridge, Gov. Rendell and state legislators – why did you agree to the pensions and early buy-outs for state workers without providing adequate funding for them?

Ultimately though, I think we all need to look in the mirror. We let our politicians get away with the charade of inadequate funding. They told us there was a free lunch, and we were foolish enough to believe it. The most we can accuse the public sector unions of is being good negotiators. We will all need to make sacrifices to fix our budgetary problems. However, it is a mistake to blame the unions.

Rick Santorum's Populist Campaign

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has once again shown he has his finger on the pulse of the American public. You remember Rick. He was apparently going to be Senator for life until he faced a real political opponent in 2006, Bob Casey, Jr., who shellacked him by 18 percentage points.

Now, Rick, who seems to be running for President, has struck again. He's criticizing Pres. Obama for supporting the pro-democracy protesters who recently drove Egypt's strongman Hosni Mubarak from office after thirty years of virtual dictatorship. In the fun-house mirror world of Rick and his soul mate Glenn Beck, we need to prop up every tinpot dictator on the off chance that they might support some US foreign policy objective while repressing democracy.

Most of us saw the spirit of 1776 in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria recently. Rick and Glenn saw a looming threat to one of their dictator buds.

Good luck with your populist Presidential campaign, Rick. It looks like you've recaptured the spirit that caused you to suffer the largest defeat by an incumbent Senator in a generation.

We Need Reasonable Regulations on Gun Ownership and Use

Like most people, I'm heart sick at the horrible attack on Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords that wounded her, killed six innocent bystanders, and maimed thirteen more. The most heart rending was 9 year old Christina Taylor Green, born on 9-11, about whom much has been written and said. In the aftermath, we've seen predictable outrage from both the right and left about how the heated rhetoric of the other side laid the groundwork for the shooting. Much as I hate the current atmosphere of vitriol, there is simply no evidence that Jared Lee Loughner planned the attack after hearing Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Glenn Beck or anybody else.

What we do know is that Loughner got his gun and high capacity bullet magazines after his repeated actions had shown him to be mentally ill. The college he was attending said he could not return until he had a mental health evaluation. Yet, that didn't stop him from buying a semi-automatic weapon and large ammo clips. He was only stopped by heroic individuals as he paused to put another big clip in.

I own guns, and I support the responsible use of them. I learned how to use a gun responsibly as a young boy while hunting small game and deer with my dad. But, why can't we use this horrible incident to enact a few reasonable safeguards that probably would have prevented this tragedy, or at least reduced its terrible toll? First, what responsible gun owner thinks that mentally ill people have a right to buy guns, especially automatic weapons? We need to move toward a mental background check for people wishing to buy handguns and automatic weapons.

Second, we should re-institute the ban on high capacity magazines that was in place for ten years as part of the assault weapons ban. There is simply no need for ordinary gun users to have these that isn't overridden by the danger when criminals and the mentally ill can get them. While Loughner could still have done some damage with an ordinary clip, there's no doubt he would have killed and maimed fewer and been easier to stop.

When it comes to reasonable limits on guns and ammunition, we have let the NRA and the rest of the gun lobby play a clever game. They would have us believe that anyone who supports the most minimal and reasonable gun restrictions really wants to take away all firearms and repeal the Second Amendment. Any legislator who proposes basic firearm regulation is promised an opponent with unlimited funding in the next election.

So far, the reasonable center has let them get away with this game. I think most folks are like me. We support gun rights, but also support reasonable regulations on firearms. In most places, you have to be licensed to perform potentially dangerous activities like driving a car, flying a plane, applying pesticides, or even much less dangerous pursuits like hairstylist or pedicurist. Why is it unreasonable to regulate and require thorough background checks before one can purchase a Glock 9 millimeter semi-automatic weapon with a huge clip which you then take to a shopping mall and fire thirty rounds at innocent citizens in around seven seconds?

It's time to call them out. Will the gun lobby really storm the barricades of the State Houses and Capitol Hill for the sacred cause of assault weapons and giant clips for the criminals and mentally ill? Does someone too mentally ill to attend college still have the right to take his loaded Glock to a legislator's meet and greet in a shopping mall? Will we continue to be the only western democracy without effective restrictions on deranged people wielding automatic weapons with high capacity magazines? Stay tuned.

A Measured Step Towards Health Care For All

Well, it’s finally happened. Congress has passed health care reform. Now what will happen? Truthfully, no one knows for sure. But that hasn’t stopped the right wing crazies and their enablers Fox News and Rush Limbaugh from telling us. They say that the passage of this socialist takeover of healthcare means we are on an inevitable path to communism. Uncle Sam will choose your doctor for you. The IRS will hunt you down and bankrupt you if you don’t sign up for health insurance. The American public will rise up in anger and throw out the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

Has Armageddon arrived? Hardly. The dirty little secret is that many on the left are as dissatisfied with this bill as the right. This legislation is nothing like the single payer programs that Canada and Britain have. Healthcare in this country will still be mostly provided by employers, and through private health insurance carriers. The major change is that most people who now don’t have access to health insurance will be able to get it. Folks will no longer be denied coverage due to having a preexisting medical condition. Young adults will be able to stay on their parents’ insurance until they get their own coverage. As for the penalties for not getting health insurance, many worry that the penalties in the bill are so SMALL that many will simply pay them rather than comply.

The Obama health care bill is a compromise first step in making sure everyone has access to affordable health care. This law is actually very similar to the Republican proposal offered as the alternative to “Hillarycare” in the 90s. The process of passing it was ugly and sometimes distasteful. But it is a tremendous step forward in providing a higher quality of life for all Americans. The same criticisms made of this process were made of other dramatic improvements like Medicare, Medicaid, Civil Rights and Womens Suffrage. Many of the legislators who voted against those landmarks later wished they hadn’t. I applaud the 219 brave souls who put their careers on the line to vote in favor of real progress. Some of them may suffer at the polls this fall. But history will see them as visionaries.