In his recent telephone town hall meeting, Tim Bishop expressed his support for the continued payroll tax holiday but making it clear that it would have no impact on the Social Security Trust Fund. Money for Social Security would continue to go into the trust fund from other sources. What other sources you might ask? I may have an answer for you.

In an article in HousingWire magazine, the author points out that:

The Federal Housing Finance Agency will increase guarantee fees on single-family mortgage-backed securities charged by the government-sponsored enterprises by 10 basis points effective April 1, 2012, in response to the new funding mechanism for the payroll tax cut extension passed by Congress.

So it seems that the Social Security Trust fund will get its money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or more accurately, from new home buyers. So for a two month extension of the payroll tax holiday that will prevent taxpayers from paying an additional $130 into the Social Security Trust Fund, that everyone expects to get back anyway, new home buyers will have to pay thousands in new fees.

The g-fee increase will remain in effect through Oct. 1, 2021. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the g-fees would offset about $35.7 billion in the costs of the tax cut. Mortgage Bankers Association CEO David Stevens said the increase could mean an extra $4,000 in fees on a $200,000 mortgage.

One of the problems facing Long Island is affordable housing. Our young people are leaving Long Island for areas were there is a larger rental stock that they can start out in, rather than living in mom and dad’s basement, and where they can afford to buy a house after saving a down payment for a couple of years. Apparently for the benefit of a political talking point Tim Bishop votes to slam an already weak housing marking with additional fees. After all who can really call a two month anything sound fiscal policy? Notice there is no spending cut mentioned here, it is an increase in taxes and fees. This is what Tim Bishop was telling his constituents not to worry about in his town hall meeting? What will become of his district, if nobody lives here but retirees? Is that his plan to solve the unemployment problem? Drive enough young people away until the number of jobs fits the remaining population?

The problem is spending. It was only last week that Joe Biden was attacking Mitt Romney’s policies by saying:

“His proposal would actually double down on the policies that caused the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression and accelerated a decades-long assault on the middle class,” Biden added.

Decades long assault on the middle class? I guess he means you too, Bill Clinton. The greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression has been the Obama administration and if he were to get reelected it would finish America off. We have had the worst consistent unemployment since the Great Depression for the entire Obama administration. We have had the worst record of job creation, loss actually, since Herbert Hoover. The National Bureau of Economic Research says the recession ended in June of 2009. Does it feel like it to you? Most recoveries from economic downturns are mirror images of the slump. A gradual recession is followed by a gradual recovery; a sharp downturn is followed by a sharp upswing. Not this time. Just look at the job creation record of Team Obama.

This chart goes all the way back to Harry Truman and Obama’s performance stands alone.  Let’s put to rest the “eight years of failed Bush policy, yada, yada, yada” and face the fact that Obama and his spending, heavy-handed regulations, and insatiable appetite to fix everything by taxing more has put us into an economic winter. Tim Bishop has happily ignored the needs of his constituents to buy favor from the Democratic leadership and their special interest pals. They have done an awful job and we need to turn them out, before they turn us into Greece.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Judging by the two mail pieces I just received from my congressman, Tim Bishop, it looks like he has settled on his reelection strategy. After all, he doesn’t want to run on his record (ObamaCare, bailouts, Stimulus, trillions in deficit spending); with the demise of earmarks he can’t say he’s bringing home the bacon; since he is facing a re-match in his reelection bid, using the same smear tactics this time around will be harder; so let’s scare the bejeezus out of the seniors.

The Medicare system is going broke. Medicare consumes 10% of GDP today and is forecast to consume 15% of GDP in twenty years, that’s growth of 50%. Tim Bishop says we need to cut spending. Okay, Tim, we’re listening, what would you cut? …Tim?…Anyone out there? Nothing.

Seniors will pay more for care – Tim Bishop

Tim Bishop says seniors will pay more for care. If you are currently on medicare or are over the age of 55, nothing will change. So why is Tim Bishop lying about that? Tim Bishop voted for ObamaCare which has already taking $500 billion away from Medicare to pay for ObamaCare. Remember how they were struggling to get the cost of ObamaCare under $1 trillion? This is how they did it. What Tim Bishop, I believe, is trying to say without telling all the facts, is with regard to future generations, starting in 2021. But Tim Bishop doesn’t want to change Medicare at all and as the table below points out, Medicare will be bankrupt by 2021. So other than scaring people what is Tim’s plan?

In his mail piece Tim Bishop says that “according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, a private health plan as good as Medicare will soon cost $30,000 per year.” Wow! But a little math will show how that is ridiculous. Total spending on all health care in the US runs around 16% of GDP. Total GDP for the US is about $14.6 trillion, so total health care spending comes out to about $2.33 trillion. There are 46.5 million people on Medicare. If they each paid $30,000 just for health care premiums, the premiums alone would total $1.39 trillion. So Tim Bishop wants us to believe that private health insurance premiums for seniors would cost 60% of all health care spending. It just doesn’t add up.

One of the techniques from ObamaCare to “bend the cost curve down” is to pay Medicare providers less and less. It is the same static thinking that the government can do what it wants and nobody will react to it. But in fact, here is one of the chief actuaries of Medicare testifying that 40% of service providers will stop serving Medicare patients. That means rationing and long waits. Who will decide? Not you, but a unelected panel of bureaucrats, accountable to no one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1igPowGu6M

Seniors forced onto for-profit insurance market — Tim Bishop

Tim Bishop makes his plug for socialism by quickly pointing out “for profit” insurance companies. Horrors. Just think of all the damage those “for profit” companies have done to us.

Yes those, for profit companies have made our lives hell compared to the altruistic, benevolent government enterprises. But we all know what happens when a free market is allowed to operate. Calculators that used to cost hundreds of dollars when first introduced are now throw away items; mobile phones that hit the market at $4,000 per copy are now $39; GPS systems that used to cost thousands and require a substantial unit be installed in the trunk of your car, are now a standard feature on your phone. Costs come down, features go up, service improves. Here is the actuary Mr. Foster talking about this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z__m5IYoJBg

The True Cost Drivers of Medicare

Despite Tim Bishop’s scare tactics that costs will continue to skyrocket, let’s look at the true drivers of Medicare costs.

• Spending other people’s money. No one is going to spend a lot of time looking int to waste, fraud, and abuse if it is not directly affecting you. But it is about $2,150 per person per year. It is not going to get someone reelected to Congress to fix it, and the individual doesn’t care. If it affects the spending power of their premium and the profits of the evil “for profit” company, you can bet it will be attacked aggressively.
• The Government keeps expanding the goods and services covered by Medicare. I have seen quite enough TV advertisements for “The Scooter Store” telling me how I can get a “free” scooter completely paid for by Medicare.
• The Prescription Drug Plan passed by President Bush had no revenue stream associated with it, so this is all deficit spending. Let drug companies compete for the seniors’ business
• Medicare overpays for many items, because it sets prices higher than the free market would. Are you listening Congressman Bishop?
• Fee for Service – this encourages providers to deliver too many services. When in doubt, add it.

Where “for profit” companies are involved they watch the bottom line. A dollar saved in fraud, waste or abuse, goes straight to the bottom line. The company can decide to either increase profits or cut premiums to grow market share. Medicare is now soviet style centralized planning where a bunch of bureaucrats set prices on 30,000 items and somehow we are to believe they are smarter than all the doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and other health care providers.

Tim Bishop wants to kick the can down the road. Instead of making a contribution and working to fix the problem, he would prefer to scare seniors into voting for him so he can continue to draw his $174,000 salary and keep a low profile. It’s time to retire Congressman.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

In today’s rant titled, “The Angry Rich and Taxes,” Paul Krugman continues to amaze how the man won a Nobel Prize for economics.  I know, I know, it was for his work on international trade.  I keep telling myself, but it just seems so strange that when he wanders into other areas he seems so lost.  But then again, he was a paid advisor to Enron.

After his introductory riff he gets down to business, “The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took office. At first, however, it was largely confined to Wall Street.”  Ever since Mr. Obama took office and primarily from Wall Street?  Wall Street spent tremendous amounts of money to get Obama elected over John McCain and Krugman is trying to tell us that they were upset with him from the day he took office?  Here are the numbers:

1. Goldman Sachs associates gave $764,700 more to Obama than McCain
2. Citigroup associates gave $379,239 more to Obama than McCain
3. JP Morgan associates gave $467,025 more to Obama than McCain
4. UBS associates gave $350,726 more to Obama than McCain
5. Morgan Stanley gave $241,429 more to Obama than McCain

Who is crazier, Krugman or all those folks on Wall Street, who we are told are devilishly clever, who spent a fortune to elect a man they hated the day he won?

Krugman continues, “And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it.”  I almost forgot, that the money was really yours, Paul, yours and President Obama’s and, how does it go, oh, yeah “to each according to his needs.”  My apologies to Karl Marx if I didn’t get that exactly right.  So whatever stipend you decide it is permissible for the most productive members of our society to live on, let us know so we can stop complaining about the socialist march to a worker’s paradise, like Cuba.

“The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.”

As Samuel Goldwyn said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”  We are indeed a lucky nation, but that is not by accident, it is because the Founding Fathers put in place a government that was limited and restrained.  Mr. Krugman wants to drain the luck out of America by replacing it with unbridled government that consumes all it can grasp and then reach for more.  Here’s a bulletin for you Mr. Krugman, there is no $700 billion price tag for extending the tax breaks you oppose.  Not extending them is a $700 billion tax increase on an economy that should have been roaring back months ago if you and your ilk would get your collective boots off the economy’s neck.  It is not the government’s $700 billion that will be paid to those taxpayers, it is those taxpayer’s hard earned money that the you and Obama want to steal to waste on programs that don’t work now and more that won’t work in the future.  Stop the spending.

Here is the reality for Mr. Krugman.  In a 2007 article, Stephen Moore wrote, “The Congressional Budget Office reports that, since the 2003 tax cuts, federal revenues have grown by $745 billion—the largest real increase in history over such a short time period. Individual and corporate income tax receipts have jumped by 30 percent in the two years since the tax cuts.” How is that possible, Uncle Paul, we cut tax rates and tax revenue grew faster than ever? Say it ain’t so, Uncle Paul!  Let’s look at it another way. According to the Tax Foundation:

So how does this add up?  Everyone (isn’t that such an American concept?) got a tax cut under Bush, across the board.  Revenues flowed into the Treasury at a record pace.  The rich shouldered a larger share of the tax load and the lowest earners shouldered less.  That sounds to me like win-win-win, and it’s so American.  But now Obama, and his acolytes like Mr. Krugman want to burden their fragile recovery with $700 billion in additional taxes. 

I have a very simple message for you both. It’s the spending, stupid!

I’ll bet you thought I would be writing about Roland Burris, the senator appointed by Governor Rod Blagojevich under dubious circumstances.  No, Senator Mary Landreau of Louisiana just sold her vote on the senate health care bill to Harry Reid for $100 million.

Here is what was reported by ABC News.

On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”

The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”

I am told the section applies to exactly one state:  Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.

In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world:  Louisiana.  (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)

Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.

How much does it cost?  According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.

But don’t worry, the talking heads in the lame stream media will soon be circling the wagons saying that Senator Landreau didn’t personally get any money, she got it for her state.  But where did the money come from?  Your pocket, my pocket, and your children’s and your grandchildren’s pocket.  In short, Harry Reid is using the coercive power of the IRS to take your property and give it to Louisiana so that a deeply flawed health care bill will get passed and Mary Landreau can get re-elected.  Seems fair to me.  Does it seem fair to you?  Isn’t that what makes you proud to be an American?  The arrogance of this Congress and administration are incomprehensible.  They see Tea Parties across the country rising up to protest their out of control spending.  They get blasted when then go home for their summer recess.  Poll after poll says the country is opposed to the stimulus package, cap and trade, the health care bills, but they just keep rolling on.

Let me quote from the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

“But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their Future Security.”

These are troubling times.  We cannot allow these abuses to continue without speaking out loudly and strongly.  Our government has gotten far too big and out of control.  It’s time to shrink it back to where the Founding Fathers envisioned it: limited and unobtrusive.

Obama called for bipartisanship during the campaign. Well here it is. The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office says President Obama’s budget plan is a disaster. But the bumbling, stumbling Obama administration puts their inexperience on full display. Press Secretary Gibbs dismissed the report comparing it to picking Final Four brackets six years out.

Perhaps, the President should forget Jay Leno and start reading Ronald Reagan’s writings.