Retro 2: Wasteful Government Spending Week: Pimp My Congressional Ride - Part 2

Note: Given the Thanksgiving holiday this week and the resultant preparations, family visitors, and other commitments, we will be rerunning the top rated and most popular blog posts from the past five years. These posts cover a wide variety of political class insanity, wasteful spending, inane quotes, and other idiocy and are the discussions that most resonated with our readers. We will be back next week with fresh material, starting with our monthly update on "Political Class Insanity."

Monday, May 21, 2012

Wasteful Government Spending Week: Pimp My Congressional Ride - Part 2

Many Americans probably do not realize that a lot of their tax dollars are used to provide free car leases and free gasoline for those car leases for use by their Congressmen and Congresswomen. We had covered this spending atrocity previously in this blog, back in August, 2009,

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2009/08/pimp-my-ride-taxpayers.html

but thought it was worthwhile to cover again, Pimp My Congressional Ride - Part 2, since nothing has been done to terminate this obvious example of wasteful government spending by the political class in the House Of Representatives.

While the amount of money wasted is relatively small compared to the bloated overall bloated Federal budget, as former Senator Everett Dirksen once said: "A billion dollars here, a billions dollars there, and pretty soon you are talking about some real money."

In order to save trillions of dollars of unnecessary spending by the political class, you first have to start saving thousands which eventually becomes saving millions which eventually becomes saving some real money, billions, which eventually becomes saving trillions.

This is especially true when you consider how useless these Congressional expenses are in light of the following numbers and facts, brought to you by a recent investigation done by Inside Edition (http://www.insideedition.com/news/8119/inside-edition-investigates-congressional-cars.aspx):

• The typical Congressman in the House Of Representatives earns about $170,000 a year in salary, placing every one of them well within the upper 5% of wage earners in the country. Bottom line: they can afford to lease their own vehicles with their own money.
• The Senate does not have a similar program of taxpayers subsidizing autos for their members, Senators use their own funds and own vehicles. Bottom line: if Senators do not get free transportation from the taxpayer and seem to do okay without such a program, even though they have to cover the geography of a whole state, not the much smaller geography of a Congressional district, members in the House certainly do not need a free car program.
• Consider Gregory Meeks a Democratic Congressman from New York. He drives a luxury Lexus 450 Hybrid, a taxpayer funded lease that goes for $1,289.40 a month. This results in the taxpayer shelling out $15,374 a year. Bottom line: according to ecent United States Census data, (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0690.pdf), the taxpayer funded lease for this one car is greater than the household income of 13% of American households, about 15 million households. Talk about bad priorities, one unnecessary luxury car lease with more value than a year's earnings of so many American households.
• The really sad thing about this program is that Meeks is not the only Congressional driver whose annual lease cost is greater than the annual income of so many Americans. Bottom line: even if the program was essential, which it is not, for Congressional people to get around their districts, good sense should dictate that driving around in Lexus, Lincoln, and other high cost autos is totally unnecessary from a basic transportation perspective and blatantly egotistical on behalf of these supposed public servants.
• If you add up the monthly lease costs of 82 examples of taxpayer leased cars identified by the Inside Edition report, you find that the American taxpayer is on the hook for almost $700,000 a year for this unnecessary program. If you throw in the down payments of some of the leases and the taxpayer-funded gasoline that goes into these autos every year, it is probably a very safe bet that more than $832,000 a year is incurred each year by this program. Bottom line: when the GSA wastes $832,000 ONCE on a Las Vegas party, Congress goes into a rage even though it wastes at least $832,000 every YEAR on auto leases.

It never ends. Bad priorities, wasteful spending, over inflated egos of self importance, and never, ever the solution of any major problem facing most Americans. Since Congress cannot clean up its act, it falls back on us to do it ourselves. This involves the short term fix of dumping out all incumbents in the November elections since it is obvious that the current sitting Congressional people have not learned their lessons of leadership and thrift.

The longer term solution is the implementation of Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." This step would install term limits on all Federal politicians, "one and done." Current Washington politicians continue to prove that they are out of touch with reality, budget constraints, and struggling Americans. If you car lease is greater than the household income of 13% of America, you are out of touch. You are also expendable.

The following data comes from the Inside Edition website (http://www.insideedition.com/news/8119/inside-edition-investigates-congressional-cars.aspx) which recently did an investigative journalism piece on this wasteful government program.

Members of the House Of Representatives who lease tax payer-funded vehicles.

Source: Statement of Disbursements – House of Representatives – 4th Quarter 2011

44 Democrats and 38 Republicans.

Representative State Monthly Payment Additional information

1. Dan Burton – Rep. (two leases) Indiana $600 + $684.78 Leases two vehicles
2. Mary Bono Mack – Rep. California $682.94
3. Rodney Alexander – Rep. Louisiana $167.99 Includes a $20,000 down payment
4. Xavier Becerra – Dem. California $271.80
5. Adam Schiff – Dem. California $489.24
6. Adrian Smith – Rep. Nebraska $692.52 Includes a $7,554.24 down payment
7. Al Green – Dem. Texas $436.89
8. André Carson – Dem. Indiana ***payment amount varies from $657.99 to $748.65 per month
9. Anna Eshoo – Dem. California $389.60
10. Barbara Lee – Dem. California $898.55
11. Bill Flores – Rep. Texas $455.55
12. Bill Johnson – Rep. Ohio $370.13
13. Bill Shuster – Rep. Pennsylvania $392.00
14. Bobby Rush – Dem. Illinois $1,027.53
15. Brad Miller – Dem. North Carolina $431.87
16. Chip Cravaack – Rep. Minnesota $1,008.22
17. Cliff Stearns – Rep. Florida $789.25
18. Collin Peterson – Dem. Minnesota $362 + $290.00 Leases two vehicles
19. Cory Gardner – Rep. Colorado $910.80
20. Dana Rohrabacher – Rep. California $918.63
21. David Dreier – Rep. California $598.92
22. David Scott – Dem. Georgia $519.40
23. Dennis Rehberg – Rep. Montana $499 + $799.00 Leases two vehicles
24. Don Young – Rep. Alaska $748.73
25. Donald Manzullo – Rep. Illinois $619.19
26. Ed Pastor – Dem. Arizona $294.33
27. Edolphus Towns – Dem. New York $1,285.06
28. Edward Royce – Rep. California $509.98
29. Eleanor Holmes Norton – Dem. D.C. $807.55
30. Emanuel Cleaver – Dem. Missouri $1,900.00 Lease is for mobile office used in district
31. George Miller – Dem. California $520.10
32. Gregory Meeks – Dem. New York $1,289.40
33. Gus Bilirakis – Rep. Florida $449.60
34. Heath Shuler – Dem. North Carolina $485.31
35. Hank Johnson Jr. – Dem. Georgia $725.79
36. Henry Cuellar – Dem. Texas $594.28
37. Howard Berman – Dem. California $382.78
38. Howard “Buck” McKeon – Rep. California $662.83
39. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen – Rep. California $479.86
40. James Clyburn – Dem. South Carolina $1,139.26
41. Jim McDermott – Dem. Washington $346.46
42. Joe Baca – Dem. California $732.86
43. Joe Barton – Rep. Texas $998.89
44. Joe Donnelly – Dem. Indiana $450.00
45. John Abney Culberson – Rep. Texas $880.00
46. John Conyers Jr. – Dem. Michigan $1,251.66
47. John Garamendi – Dem. California $910.82
48. John Lewis – Dem. Georgia $578.21
49. John Carter – Rep. Texas $880.96
50. John Sullivan – Rep. Oklahoma $258.30
51. José Serrano – Dem. New York $485.31
52. Kenny Marchant – Rep. Texas $899.67
53. Kevin McCarthy – Rep. California $716.25
54. Laura Richardson – Dem. California $852.96
55. Linda Sanchez – Dem. California $861.87
56. Louie Gohmert – Rep. Texas $466.40
57. Lynn Woolsey – Dem. California $647.97
58. Mario Diaz-Balart – Rep. Florida $722.02
59. Melvin Watt – Dem. North Carolina $431.81
60. Michael Simpson – Rep. Idaho $698.13
61. Michael Michaud – Dem. Maine $795.00
62. Mike Coffman – Rep. Colorado $671.51
63. Mike McIntyre – Dem. North Carolina $430.82
64. Mike Pence – Rep. Indiana $282.68
65. Mike Pompeo – Rep. Kansas $486.00
66. Mike Ross – Dem. Arkansas $851.28
67. Nick Rahall – Dem. West Virginia $671.41
68. Pedro Pierluisi – Dem. Puerto Rico $1,400.00
69. Peter Welch – Dem. Vermont $425.68
70. Phil Gingrey – Rep. Georgia $470.88
71. Randy Neugebauer – Rep. Texas $333.33
72. Raul Grijalva – Dem. Arizona $709.28
73. Sam Johnson – Rep. Texas $758.65
74. Sean Duffy – Rep. Wisconsin $1,350.00 Lease is for mobile office used in district
75. Sheila Jackson Lee – Dem. Texas $751.99
76. Silvestre Reyes – Dem. Texas $655.46
77. Steve Womack – Rep. Arkansas $565.61
78. Steven LaTourette – Rep. Ohio $502.24
79. Theodore “Ted” Deutch – Dem. Florida $301.17
80. Wally Herger – Rep. California $650.00
81. William “Lacy” Clay Jr. – Dem. Missouri $779.08
82. William Keating – Dem. Massachusetts $968.85

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

May, 2013, Obama Care Update, Part 7: Drug Costs Rising, HHS Looking For Donations and More

This will be the seventh and final (for this month!) post that went through the many current and likely future disasters and fiascos that Obama Care will cause to befall the country, its economy, and its personal and economic freedoms. Looking at the facts that these seven posts have discussed, it is quite hard for a rational human being to still believe that this is the best way to resolve the nation’s ever rising health care costs.

As we have proven many times before, Obama Care never understood the root causes of our high health care costs and thus any of the solutions within it are highly unlikely to resolve the underlying problems. All the legislation does is create another huge, ineffective, and inefficient government bureaucracy.

Although this last post will do it for this month, I fear that next month we will need to run another series of posts that updates the continuing disaster that is Obama Care.

1) Democratic politicians, many of whom voted to approve Obama Care, seem to have growing concerns about the legislation. Seventeen Senators who previously voted for the law recently tried to repeal a new medical device tax that was in the legislation because it was causing economic stress on companies back in their home states.

One of the original active advocates of the law, Montana Senator Max Baucus, now calls the legislation a train wreck, a concern that has been voiced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. A Democrat running for Congress in a special South Carolina election recently called the legislation problematic.

And now another U.S. Senator, Chris Coons from Delaware, interviewed by NBC news recently, openly stated that he has some real concerns about the legislation and that Congress needs to keep a close on eye it as it is rolled out.

Real concerns, train wreck, problematic. Feeling comfortable that this is going to work when these types of descriptions are attached to it?

2) A May 13, 2013 Associated Press article had some bad news for Americans who might come down with specific types of diseases in that Obama Care, and the implementation of the law in each state, may result in skyrocketing medication costs for those specific diseases. This is the exact opposite of what the legislation was supposed to do, i.e. reduce costs of medications for sick Americans, not increase the cost.

Details of the article include the following points:

• In an attempt to keep health care insurance premiums low, some states are likely to allow insurance companies to charge patients a larger share of the cost for expensive medications used to treat cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and other life-affecting chronic diseases.
• Such "specialty drugs" can cost thousands of dollars a month. In California, for example, patients needed these so-called specialty drugs for these specific types of diseases would pay up to 30% of the cost, a monthly cost that can run into the thousands of dollars.
• The article also cites the widely used cancer drug, Gleevec, asserting that a patient that needed Gllevec patient could pay more than $2,000 for a month's supply.
• Industry experts fear that many states will follow California's lead, a trend that would defeat the purpose of Obama's overhaul, because some of the sickest patients may be unable to afford their prescriptions.
• "It's important that the benefit design not discriminate against people with chronic illness, and high copays do that," said Dan Mendelson, president of Avalere Health, a data analysis firm catering to the health care industry and government.
• "You have to worry about a world where if you happen to contract cancer or multiple sclerosis, you are stuck with a really big bill," Mendelson said. "It's going to be very important for states to take a long, hard look at their benefit design."
• His company’s research shows that 1 in 4 cancer patients walks away from the pharmacy counter empty-handed when facing a copay of $500 or more for a newly prescribed drug.
• A spokesman for Covered California said state officials are trying to balance between two conflicting priorities: comprehensive coverage and affordable premiums.

And this last statement from the article kind of sums up the failure of Obama Care: it never resolved the underlying causes of our high health care costs, it just created a giant government bureaucracy that moves taxes and rules around but never solves the problem. California is trying to balance the two priorities of comprehensive coverage and affordable premiums. To really solve the problem, a good piece of legislation would solve the overall problem and not resort to “balancing priorities.”

Thus, if you are in need of a “free” medical check up or a “free” mammogram, you may think Obama Care is great because it balances in your favor. But if you have cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, or other serous diseases, you are just out of luck because Obama Care got balanced in such a way to make your life more expensive, not less expensive, more dangerous, not less dangerous. Nothing is free in life, and certainly not in Obama Care. Your free was the result of making someone else’s health calamity less free. A real solution would never result in having to make this balancing choice.

3) When Obama Care was jammed through the legislative process, its supporters pointed to their analyses that showed it would take less than $900 billion to implement the program over ten years. Just a few years later, Congressional Budget Office analyses predicted that the ten year implementation costs had about doubled to over $1.7 TRILLION, not a good trend.

And now that onerous cost may be understated as we recently learned that the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Katheleen Sebelius, has been going to various non-government entities, hat in hand, asking them, pressuring them to actually contribute to the roll out of the legislation since HHS feels it does not have enough money in its budget to do the rollout properly.

This action becomes particularly distressing in light of the news this week that the Obama administration, via its control of the IRS, had vindictively acted against Americans and political groups that were at odds with the positions of the administration. Could this asking for funds from private entities be another Obama administration shake down along the lines and philosophy of the IRS Mafia-like actions?

At least one person, and probably many more, think this type of be government behavior may have crossed the line into criminal actions: “To solicit funds from health-care executives to help pay for the implementation of the President’s $2.6 trillion health spending law is absurd,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said in a statement. “I will be seeking more information from the Administration about these actions to help better understand whether there are conflicts of interest and if it violated federal law.”

Even if the Secretary’s actions were not criminal, it is just another example that shows the supporters of this legislation were either clueless when they put it together relative to the unbelievably high costs that are coming to light or deliberately lied about the true costs to get the legislation approved. Whether the reasons were criminal, ignorant, or liars, the bottom line is this law is a disaster of historic proportions.

4) An Independent Journal report from April 19, 2013 reported on an analysis from The Society of Actuaries (SOA) that estimated the cost of individual health insurance plans on Obama Care exchanges will rise more than 80% in some states in 2014. Overall, the SOA report predicted that medical claims per member will rise 32% in the individual plans expected to dominate the Obama Care exchanges next year.

Why will this happen when the overall objective of Obama Care and its exchanges was to REDUCE costs of individual insurance plans? According to the analysis, elderly and sick people will likely join the exchanges at much higher rates than younger, healthier people who are more likely to risk paying the penalty for not buying health insurance than actually buying it.

And since the law is set up to make it virtually impossible for the government to force people to pay the penalty for non-insurance coverage, the revenue anticipated into Obama Care will not occur while the health care costs of old and sick people actually in the exchanges will actually soar. Not rocket science, but common sense found lacking again in those who wrote this disastrous legislation.

5) A May 15, 2013 United Liberty website article summarized some research findings relative to small business owners and what Obama Care will do to them:

• Results of a recent Gallup poll of small businesses found that 48% of them expect Obama Care to have a negative impact on their business while only 13% expect it to have a positive impact.
• The United States Chamber of Commerce recently reported on a separate opinion poll of small business owners that showed massive confusion about Obama Care’s components and the finding that 41% of business owners surveyed had already held off on hiring new workers as a result of Obama Care.
• Another 38% in that survey said they had held off on expanding their businesses because of Obama Care.
• The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that Obama Care will decrease the labor force by 800,000 workers over the next 10 years.
• A recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that only 35% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the law, while 40% have an unfavorable view. More than have of respondents support changes to Obama Care or outright repeal.

Is there any doubt that Obama Care is one of the leading reasons why the true unemployment rate is still up around 14% and over 20 million Americans cannot find full time jobs?

6) A Newsmax article from May 5, 2013 reported on the massive communications and miscommunication issues surrounding Obama Care’s rollout. Since the lynch pin of Obama Care is getting uninsured Americans to enroll in the law’s insurance exchanges to purchase health care insurance, if that does not come about, the entire legislation collapses on itself.

The reason? The law’s financials and mechanics requires healthy younger Americans to give up some of their wealth and purchase health insurance so that this money can than be diverted to cover others who cannot afford insurance and those generally older Americans who likely need more medical resources to stay healthy.

In other words, the government needs to take money from Paul (generally younger, healthy Americans) to pay Paul (generally older, less healthy Americans). This gets back to the “balancing act” discussed above. Obama Care never resolved the underlying root causes of our high health care costs, it just tries to move around wealth and taxes and insurance fees in a constant balancing act.

But the ability to get all of these younger Americans to purchase health care insurance faces a wall of ignorance:

• A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 77% of Americans know little or nothing about Obama Care health insurance exchanges.
• 40% falsely think Obama Care reforms create a government panel to make end-of-life decisions for people on Medicare.
• An April survey of 1,003 people by HealthPocket, a company that helps consumers find health care insurance, found that the law's penalty for not buying coverage would not induce most 25-to-34-year-olds or 18-to-24-year-olds to purchase it.
• The Newsmax article points out that a major communications vehicle for the entire legislation program allocates just $600,000 each for 13 states.

7) One last word of disgust on the whole Obama Care affair, this one from Democratic Senator from Iowa, Tom Harkin. and chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on health care, said in a recent New York Times article that he was extremely upset with Mr. Obama’s action to transfer budget funding from public health prevention programs and use it to publicize the Obama Care: “I am greatly disappointed — beyond upset — that the administration chose to help pay for the Affordable Care Act in fiscal year 2013 by raiding the Public Health and Prevention Fund.”

So rather than use taxpayer wealth to change underlying bad life style habits that lead to high health care costs via public health initiatives, a really good way to get down health care costs, the President has decided to use that well intended money for a PR campaign. Pathetic.

That will do it for this month. The bad news is overwhelming, the good news is non-existent relative to Obama Care. It is truly shaping up as the worst written, worst thought out piece of legislation ever written and approved. And probably the worst news is yet to come, something we will pick up and cover next month. Until then, stay healthy because under this law you probably cannot afford to get sick.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w