skip to main |
skip to sidebar
This is the third in our latest series of updates on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. Given that the rollout of a major component of Obama Care is supposed to be happening in three weeks, it is appropriate to review what has happened in the past month or so since our long series on Obama Care’s many disasters done back in August. Unfortunately, since we ran that series last month starting with
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-1-august-2013-obama-care-update.html,
the fiascoes have just kept on coming, fiascoes that we are reviewing in a quick hit fashion this week.
1) The first review of disaster comes from the latest analysis by the Heritage Foundation where they documented the top ten disasters of Obama Care. Since they do a better job of describing them than I could, I have lifted their words and placed them below:
1. WAIVERS: The Administration established a legally questionable program of temporary waivers when firms announced they were considering dropping coverage rather than comply with the law’s costly requirements. Even though more than half of the recipients of these waivers were members of union plans, many union leaders are still not satisfied—they want another waiver, to receive taxpayer-funded subsidies for their employer-provided coverage.
2. ILLEGAL TAXPAYER SUBSIDIES FOR CONGRESS: Last month, following heavy lobbying from leaders in both parties—and an intervention from President Obama himself—the Administration issued a rule regarding coverage for Members of Congress and their staffs, who will retain their taxpayer-funded insurance subsidies in the exchanges. Unfortunately, as previous research has documented, the Administration had no legal basis on which to make this ruling.
3. EMPLOYER MANDATE: In July, the Administration announced it would not enforce Obamacare’s employer mandate until 2015, effectively granting big business a one-year delay. This action came despite language in Section 1514(d) of the law requiring employers to act “beginning after December 31, 2013,” and despite the fact that hard-working Americans are not getting a delay from the other harmful effects of Obamacare.
4. PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS: Immediately after Obamacare was signed, Democratic staffers admitted that under the law as written, insurers “still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem.” The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) took it upon itself to issue regulations prohibiting plans from turning down such applicants three years earlier than the law required. As a result, insurers stopped offering child-only plans in 17 states, fearing that only parents of sick children would apply for insurance coverage.
5. OUT-OF-POCKET CAPS: Section 1302(c)(1) of the law includes caps on out-of-pocket expenses and explicitly states they are to take effect “beginning in 2014.” But earlier this year, the Administration delayed these new caps from taking effect as scheduled. What’s more, as The New York Times reported, the Administration made this unilateral change not by issuing rules subject to public comment, but by posting a series of questions and answers on an obscure website.
6. BASIC HEALTH PLAN: This government-run health plan for people above the Medicaid income level was created in Section 1331 of Obamacare as a way to promote “state flexibility,” but the Administration unilaterally delayed it for one year. One Democratic Senator criticized the Administration for this move, saying it does not “live up” to the law as written.
7. TAX DISCLOSURES: Section 9002 of Obamacare requires employers to report the value of workers’ health insurance on W-2 filings, effective for all “taxable years after December 31, 2010.” But the Administration unilaterally delayed this requirement, and employers did not have to report these data until after the 2012 presidential election.
8. HONOR SYSTEM: In July, the Administration announced it was placing most Americans on the “honor system” when it came to verifying their income and access to employer-provided health coverage. As prior research has documented, this move, coupled with loopholes written into the law, gives many Americans a strong incentive to “game the system” and obtain more in taxpayer-funded insurance subsidies than they should actually receive.
9. PRIVACY: Former HHS General Counsel Michael Astrue, when serving as Commissioner of Social Security earlier this year, complained strongly within the Administration about the security risks posed by Obamacare’s new data hub. However, the Administration overrode his objections, using what Astrue called “an absurdly broad interpretation of the Privacy Act’s ‘routine use’ exemption.”
10. TOBACCO PENALTIES: Section 1201 of the law allows insurance companies to charge smokers up to 50 percent more in premiums. But due to a “computer glitch,” those penalties will be limited for “at least a year”—meaning non-smokers may have to pay more as a result.
It’s sad when your top ten is really a bottom ten of failures.
2) How screwed up and behind schedule is this piece of legislation? Consider a recent article from Forbes that had an actual scorecard of Obama Care’s rollout history:
- As of the end of May, 2013, the Obama Care implementation schedule had failed to meet 9 of 12 deadlines that should have been done in the first year after the legislation was signed.
- It failed to meet 22 of 53 deadlines in the second year.
- Another 9 of those implementation deadlines became moot after Congress did not appropriate funds to complete the assigned tasks.
- In year three, the implementation effort had missed 10 out of 17 deadlines.
- This comes to a total of 41 out of 82 deadlines missed, just a measly 50%.
- If you exclude the 9 deadlines that became moot because Congress never appropriated the funds to meet them, the Obama administration missed 41 out of 73 deadlines, or 56%, still very pathetic.
A pitiful performance by this administration. But not unexpected. We have previously reported that only a very small part of the regulations needed to implement Obama’s Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation was completed several years after the law was enacted. One could not expect this type of lousy implementation performance for Obama Care given the history of incompetence by this administration.
3) In the middle of August, 2013, the clothing chain Forever 21 announced that it was capping some full-time workers at 29.5 hours a week as of August 18, resulting in a loss of the health coverage and other benefits offered to full-time workers. 29.5 hours per week is an important because….Obama Care forces employers to provide health care insurance for employees that work more than 30 hours a week. Thus, add the employees from this company that now have fewer hours, lower wage levels, and no insurance as a result of Obama Care.
4) Unions, early avid supporters of Obama Care have certainly done a major reversal in support if you consider a recent press release from the Teamsters union: “ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour workweek that is the backbone of the American middle class.”
When your major supporters are abandoning ship, maybe it is a time to reconsider whether or not this is a good thing to do.
5) Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was interviewed in his home state of Nevada back on August 8, 2013 on a local radio station. He was taking questions from listeners when a union member called in and said he was worried that his health insurance coverage would take a hit under Obama Care. Reid’s response was pure political double talk when he first said: "He's [the union member calling in] exaggerating. ... I would recommend that he calm down and stop frightening people."
However, according to a Washington Examiner article documenting the exchange between Reid and the union member, Reid did appear to acknowledge that union members could lose access to some of their more generous health care policies, referred to as "Cadillac" plans. Bottom line according to Reid: don’t be afraid, don’t exaggerate, don’t frighten people. Oh, by the way, be very afraid, be very afraid when it comes to your union provided health insurance plan.
Enough for today. Unions bailing out, deadlines being missed left and right, and at least ten major screw ups as a result of the legislation. Makes you wonder how those in Washington can be so ignorant or blind to see that the monster that is Obama care is so bad, so crippling to every American’s life.
Worse of all, we are still not done, more quick hit disasters and idiocy from Obama Care tomorrow.
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.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Yesterday, we did an update of quick hits on how the rollout of Obama Care continues to be a disaster for just about everyone in America. As more and more of the legislation’s components get rolled out, delayed, or more thoroughly understood, it becomes abundantly clear that this is the worst piece of legislation ever written by the Washington political class.
Detailed analyses of the legislation was included in a series of posts put out in August, starting with the following post:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-1-august-2013-obama-care-update.html
Please refer to them for an in-depth view of this disaster. Yesterday and today contain a series of quick updates of the continuing damage Obama Care is doing to the country.
1) The Obama Care health exchanges, places where uninsured American theoretically can go and purchase health car insurance, are supposed to be up and running by October 1. However, problems apparently abound due to the complexity of training, data systems, etc. Oregon has already determined that its website won’t be functional until at least mid-October. State officials in other states have said that they wish they had more time to implement the exchanges. There is also concern that the lax security on the state exchange websites could lead to instances of identity theft.
The Washington Post recently reported: “Some officials in charge of setting up the systems say that the tight deadlines have forced them to take shortcuts when it comes to testing and that some of the bells and whistles will not be ready.”
Given that three major components of the law have already been delayed, the employer mandate, subsidy verification requirements, and consumer-cost caps, it should not come as a surprise that another component is in such bad shape. Does not give one a lot of confidence that this is going to work anytime soon without major problems, the most dangerous of which is massive identify theft.
2) A recent Dallas Federal Reserve report and analysis that was focused on the Texas area showed that, probably as a result of Obama Care, the average employee work week collapsed at its fastest pace in 2 years (and the last 2 months have dropped the most in 3 years), smashing the work week back to its lowest level since October 2009. And if this is happening in Texas, the top job producing state in the whole country, imagine how work hours are being reduced for Americans in other areas with an even less robust economic situation.
3) Remember when the President declared, "if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan"? Certainly reassuring words at the time but certainly a lie today. Consider what is happening to over 100,000 New Jersey residents and their current health care plan, as explained in a recent article from the National Review:
The latest casualty of Obama Care may be a low-cost New Jersey health-care policy. Though President Obama promised “if you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period,” that will not be the case for approximately 106,000 New Jersey residents whose plans will disappear under the law.
Known as the “basic and essential,” or B&E, health-care plans, the policy costs as little as a few hundred dollars per month and is the choice of 71% of New Jersey residents on the individual insurance market. It provides minimum coverage for things such as doctor’s visits and procedures that do not involve a hospital stay. According to the Newark Star-Ledger, B&E policy holders will, under Obama Care, “be left with what may be a choice among pricey, pricier and priciest” plans.
Currently, the monthly plans go for $150 for a 25-year-old male or $1,100 for a family with parents in their 40s and, as Rutgers University’s Center for State Health Policy director Joel Cantor told the Star-Ledger, it would cost three or four times more for a standard policy under Obama Care on the individual market.
So what happened to the B&E plans? They don’t meet the regulations imposed by Obama Care because they do not cover services that the law will force every individual health-insurance plan to provide. The Star-Ledger reports that B&E customers who don’t qualify for a federal tax credit to purchase insurance “will see price increases” in the cost of their next plan.
Another Obama Care promise bites the dust and another 100,000 American lives are needlessly and dangerously upended.
4) The wonderful website, Bankrupting America, pointed out the five most devastating impacts of Obama Care in an article from August 21, 2013, the highlights of which include the following points:
- Americans Will Lose Their Health Insurance; Pay More. According to the Congressional Budget Office, about seven million Americans will lose their current health insurance as a result of the Obama Care. Healthy Americans will also likely see their premiums rise by two to three times as much on the individual insurance market.
- Businesses Won’t Expand; Employee Hours Will Be Cut. The mandate that requires employers to provider health insurance to their employees kicks in when a company has 50 or more full-time workers. The cut-off was put in the law so it would not be a burden on small businesses (a significant and worthy concern), but the mandate will also keep small businesses on the cusp of adding more than 50 employees from expanding. Businesses are dealing with the mandate by cutting current full-time employees’ hours back to the part-time level (30 hours). Schools in Florida have taken this action as have small businesses all over the country.
- Spouses, Children Dropped From Employer Insurance Plans. The Atlanta Business Chornicle reported recently that UPS planned to drop spouses from 15,000 employee health care plans as a result of Obama Care. These individuals are assumed to be eligible for health insurance elsewhere, but carrying several different providers will make health care decisions more complex – and potentially costly – for the average family.
- Fewer Choices. According to The Wall Street Journal, the insurance plans offered under Obama Care may severely restrict Americans’ choices of doctors and medical care. The newspaper reports a number of current health insurance plans in the Obama Care exchanges will likely have limited choices of doctors and hospitals in their networks.”
- Higher Prices For Younger Workers. Young, healthy Americans are going to pay higher insurance prices than if they had bought health insurance before Obama Care took effect.
Still not seeing how the positive aspects, assuming there are anything, within Obama Care are outweighing the devastating negatives that are being reported everywhere.
5) The Bankrupting America website used two examples to illustrate the points made above. According to a recent Associated Press report, about a year ago Teresa Hartnett was on the verge of expanding her small business. The company had hit $1 million in sales, and requests from clients were flowing in.
Ms. Hartnett had planned to transition from nearly 30 part time, freelancers to a full-time staff of 60 by 2014. Then, the reality of Obama Care began to become real. She realized she might not be able to afford to carry out her plan, based on the added financial burdens that Obama Care would place on her business expansion plans. The law undid all of Hartnett’s hard work, plans, and dreams: “At the end of that marathon of effort and sweat and stress, I’d face the impact of the ACA [Obama Care]. I decided against it.”
Given that there are over 20 million Americans that are either unemployed, too discouraged to look for work, or who are underemployed, isn’t a shame that Obama Care is preventing the evolution of this business from thirty part time freelancers into sixty full time, taxpaying, productive Americans?
6) Another illustrative example from Bankrupting America. According to The Hill: “Young people in Colorado will pay more to buy a bare-bones insurance plan under Obama Care … The average premium for a middle-of-the-road policy will roughly hold steady across the state, but premiums for the cheapest policies appear likely to rise. A 27-year-old non-smoker would pay $135 per month next year for the state’s cheapest catastrophic plan — the skimpiest level of coverage available through the healthcare law’s new insurance exchanges. That’s about 140 percent more than the cheapest policy on the market today.” Higher costs with less benefits and quality, a recipe for disaster.
That will do it for today, more bad news through at least tomorrow as Obama Care’s disease spreads across the land. If you are as disgusted with Washington politicians as most of America is, may we suggest you visit our term limits website and sign the petition to enforce term limits on all Washington politicians:
www.howmuchworseoculditget.com
Because, really, given what Obama Care is turning out to be and that it was written by most of the people still in office in Washington, how much worse could it be if we started over with a fresh set of elected representatives?
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.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Let’s jump from one disaster, Obama’s irrational desire to attack Syria, with another brewing disaster, Obama Care. We did an extensive, nine part review of this unfolding fiasco in August, including a review of the underlying reasons and root causes why Obama Care will never solve the problem of ever escalating health care costs in this country. That initial post in that series, which contains the root causes of high health care costs that Obama Care does not address, can be accessed at:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-1-august-2013-obama-care-update.html
A lot things have developed and come to light since that series that need to be reviewed since we are just three weeks away form the rollout of Obama Care’s health care exchanges. Unfortunately, all of the news since that August series has been bad news with more Americans losing their jobs, more Americans seeing their hours cut, more Americans losing their existing health care coverage (which was predicted years ago by the Congressional Budget Office), and other disasters of reason, implementation, and sanity.
Over the next day or so we will do a bunch of quick hits on news stories that have arisen over the past month. The detailed reasoning and discussions of why Obama Care is and will continue to be a failure was embedded in that August series. Our update this month is just the ruins it has wrought on America and its citizens.
1) We have already reported many times on how schools, universities, companies, small businesses, unions, and government entities are reducing or completely eliminating their healthcare coverage for their employees and students because of Obama Care. Taylor University of Indiana recently joined that list.
A letter sent to parents of students at Indiana’s Taylor University this summer explains the school had to choose between dropping student insurance coverage completely or raising premiums by about 110 percent (from $430 to $946 annually for U.S. students). Taylor chose the first option, explaining that the school’s insurance premium costs would rise even higher after the 2013-14 school year.
Thus, another one bites the dust as a result of Obama Care and students will now lose what apparently was a good deal for health care coverage.
2) Obama Care insults come in all shapes and sizes. This legislation will add trillions of dollars to our national debt and cost trillions of dollars to implement, all paid for by the American taxpayer. And given the recent announcement from the state of Illinois, a big chunk of that taxpayer money will be sent overseas to develop Obama Care IT systems in India.
This past June, Illinois Governor Patrick Quinn's administration awarded a ten year $71.4 million staffing contract to Cognizant Technology Solutions. News report indicate that the company is staffing operational headquarters in Chennai and Bangalore, India for the Illinois work. Thus, we have a costly piece of legislation that is unlikely to work and in the process we are sending millions and millions of dollars to overseas workers to do the work necessary to fail.
3) According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, IBM has announced plans to move about 110,000 retirees off of its company-sponsored health plan and instead give them a payment to buy coverage on a health-insurance exchange, in a sign that even large employers are not likely to keep providing the once-common benefits as medical costs continue to rise.
The move, which will affect all IBM retirees once they become eligible for Medicare, will relieve the company of the responsibility of managing retirement health-care benefits. IBM said the growing cost of care makes its current plan unsustainable without big premium increases.
The bigger story here is not that IBM is trying to shed health care costs. The bigger story is that IBM obviously does not see Obama Care resulting in curtailing or at least controlling the rise in health care costs and is dumping what used to be a valuable benefit for IBM retirees.
4) According to a Forbes article from August 28, 2013, the Federal government just issued it’s final set of regulations regarding Obama Care’s individual mandate that theoretically requires ALL Americans to carry health care insurance or be fined by the IRS. A few interesting, ridiculous, and insane aspects of the final ruling:
- The final set of regulations, not the whole set, is 75 pages long. Thus, just weeks before the whole individual mandate is set to take place, the country is supposed to understand 75 pages of Federal government regulation language. Not going to happen.
- The Obama Care fine for not having health care insurance will become less and less onerous over time. Right out of the gate, the fine for not having insurance is in the hundreds of dollars vs. the cost for getting health care insurance which is in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. This probably means that most uninsured Americans will not go out and get health care insurance, not incurring a big cost in doing so, and hope that the IRS does not track them down. In the future, the fine levels will rise according to inflation but the cost of health care insurance is likely to rise much faster, making the fine less and less punitive over time. Brilliant! (sarcasm)
- The IRS cannot subject taxpayers to “any criminal prosecution or penalty” for refusing to pay the mandate fine. Additionally, in contrast to normal tax levies, the IRS cannot “file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section.” The only way the IRS can collect an Obama Care fine is to take it out of an income tax refund. If you make sure that the IRS does not owe you a refund every year, not having health care insurance will not subject you to any Obama Care fine, penalty, or criminal record. Even more brilliant! (Sarcasm)
- If a person needs to buy health care insurance on their own, they are exempt from the individual mandate if the cost of that coverage is more than 8% of their household income. Thus, many older Americans, who generally pay higher premiums than younger people, will be exempt from the mandate altogether. Thus, we see that first set of Americans that Obama Care will exempt from the universal health insurance mandate, a mandate that was supposed to force ALL Americans to carry health care insurance (hint: more exemptions to come).
- If you don’t file a tax return or if your income is below the poverty line you are exempt from the Obama Care mandate.
- If you’re a member of a Federally-recognized Indian tribe, if you are Amish, or you are a member of another religious sect that meets certain criteria, you are also exempt from Obama Care’s individual mandate to carry health care insurance.
- In light of these exemptions, MIT economist and Obama Care developer Jonathan Gruber estimates that 40% of Americans who are currently uninsured are exempt from the individual mandate.
A whopping 40% of the uninsured are exempt. Wasn’t the whole purpose of Obama Care to get health care coverage for every American? And the legislation itself exempts the people it was designed to help? Insanity.
Add in those Americans that have the ability to do some simple math to see that Obama Care fines are miniscule and getting smaller over time vs. the need to put out thousands of dollars every year to purchase health care insurance, in combination with the fact that penalties are likely to be small and punishment non-existent, and it becomes pretty obvious that this is the worse piece of legislation, from a reality and logic perspective, that was ever enacted.
5) Obama Care is ravaging many segments of our population. It strips $700 billions out of future Medicare and Medicaid budgets which is likely to have negative impact on seniors’ medical needs. It is forcing doctors to retire early rather than put up with another massive and ineffective government bureaucracy. Current day workers are losing their jobs, their work hours, and current health care insurance as a result of Obama Care. Younger Americans are being forced to legally buy a product, health care insurance, that they may not need, want or be able to afford.
But here are actually a few small segments of America that are profiting and doing well as a result of Obama Care, as pointed out in a recent article by the Heritage Foundation, The Hill reports on how dozens of former staffers who wrote and implemented the law are now “cashing in,” trading their expertise in developing Obama Care’s legislation for big bucks: “Obama Care has become big business for an elite network of Washington lobbyists and consultants who helped shape the law from the inside. More than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law have set up shop on K Street since 2010….
“When [Vice President] Biden leaned over [during healthcare signing] and said to [President] Obama, ‘This is a big f’n deal,’” said Ivan Adler, a headhunter at the McCormick Group, “he was right.””
Lobbyists win, Americans lose. Just another day in Washington.
That completes the first set of quick hitters on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. More to follow tomorrow…and the next week, next month, and next years as long as this horrid, illogical, and poorly written piece of legislation stays on the books.
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.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
As most informed Americans know, President Obama issued a dare/threat to the Syrian government in August, 2012, warning them not to use poison gas in their civil war against rebel forces. The President then proceeded to do nothing to operationalize that threat over the next twelve months, despite numerous and long vacations and many, many rounds of golf. He did not get Congressional approval to strike militarily if poison gas was used, he did not get United Nations approval to strike, he did not get the American public behind him, he did not pressure Syrian allies to force Syria not to use chemical weapons, nothing.
As a result, if reports are to be believed, the Syrian government did use poison gas on its people and the President is out on a very thin limb. He has now gone to Congress, twelve months too late, and is trying to get them out on the limb with him by authorizing a military strike on Syrian targets. Over the past week, Congressional hearings and meetings have been held to determine if Congress should give him this ill thought out and probably ill fated power to attack.
The first Congressional voted was held by a Senate responsible for such matters and a resolution passed, 10 votes for military action vs. 7 voted against military action. That resolution will now move along the Congressional process for a vote by the entire Senate. We have made the case this week, as have many other, smarter Americans why attacking Syria is a very bad idea. Those posts can be reviewed starting with the first one:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/political-class-insanity-special.html
So, given that so many Americans are against military action, I wondered why a majority of Senators on this committee voted to support military action. Was there something going on behind the scenes that we are not aware of? Well, an analysis posted by the Wired magazine website provides a theory and hypothesis of what is really going on.
Before going on, a quick discussion on correlation and causation. Just because two factors look to be interrelated, it does not mean that one caused another. Simple example. I recently went on a diet and as my weight dropped, my golf game improved. On the surface, it looks like my weight loss made me a better golfer, or said another way, my weight loss caused my golf improvement.
But I also took some lessons and bought new golf clubs in the midst of my weight reduction effort. In all likelihood, the new clubs and lessons CAUSED my golf game improvement, while the weight loss was CORRELATED with the improvement in my golf game, it did not cause the improvement.
Okay, that is a long winded way of saying that just because defense and intelligence companies and contractors gave a lot more reelection campaign money to the Senators who voted yes to go to war does not necessarily mean that their money caused them to vote yes for war, it could just be a correlation or a coincidence.
But it is a worthwhile avenue of investigation since we are talking about spending billions of dollars to attack Syria and putting our fighting service men and women in mortal danger. It would be a shame if those costs were incurred for a few thousands dollars of campaign contributions from companies that would profit handsomely from another Middle East military action.
The following graphic of how the “yes” voters got more money from defense contractors and companies vs. those that voted “no” to war is lifted from the Wired article (double click on the image for a larger view):

The data is based on campaign contributions from 2007 through 2012. The information comes form the fabulous Open Secrets website that tracks all money being donated to all politicians over the years and what was the source of those contributions.
For this analysis, these sources include political action committees and employees from defense and intelligence firms related to such companies as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, Honeywell International, and others. This category of contributors in the Open Secrets website gave $1,006,887 to the 17 members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who voted yes or no on the authorization Wednesday, The analysis and data research was done by Maplight, a Berkeley-based nonprofit that performed the inquiry at WIRED’s request.
Let’s review the findings and do a little math work of our own:
- Those Senators that voted yes for war on average received 83% more money from defense contractors than those that voted no to war.
- A majority of those Senators that voted no to war (four out of seven), received less money from defense contractors than the lowest recipient of funds among the ten Senators that voted yes to war.
- If you assume that McCain on the yes side and Barrasso on the no side are outliers which distort the results, removing these two highest paid recipients on each side of the issue and recalculating averages show even worse results, with the yes side getting about 92% more from defense firms than the no side.
- If you leave Barrasso in and just remove McCain, the results are still damning, with the yes voters getting on average 54% more than the no voters.
- The top three recipients of defense contributions on the yes side received, on average, 94% more than the top three recipients on the no side.
It is tough/impossible to cut the data anyway possible and not come away with the conclusions that those that voted yes to going to war with Syria were much better financially supported by defense firms, companies that would do very well in a war environment, than those Senators that voted no. Again, this does not mean that heavy financial support to the yes voters influenced their vote, remember correlation vs. causation. It could just be a coincidence that it ended up that way.
But who really believes that. Consider another viewpoint that again, could just be a correlation/coincidence and have nothing to do with going to war or not. In the past month, the stock market’s S&P index is down about 2.49% while the Dow industrial stock average is down even more, 3.83%.
However, if you look at four major defense firms, firms listed above that are heavy contributors to Senators’ reelection campaigns, we see that the Lockheed stock price over the past month is down only .43%, Boeing’s stock price is down just .91%, United Technologies is down 1.87%, and Honeywell is down 2.97%. Thus, in general, defense firms have done much better than the overall stock market in the past month as war talk and attacking Syria talk has ramped up.
Again, the better than market performance of defense firms in the midst of Senate debate on going to war could just be a coincidence. But if war is your business and the potential for engaging in military action is on the table, than business can be very good, especially if you can influence the events via lobbying and campaign funding.
These facts and figures could all be just a coincidence. But why take the chance? Shouldn’t Congressional actions, decisions, and votes be based on the merits relative to the majority of American citizens and not based on how much money incumbent politicians can potentially sell their vote for?
And if we are not talking about a coincidence, isn’t it a disgrace that just over a $1 million in campaign donations can risk billions of dollars in war supplies and the potential deaths of American troops and seamen and airmen?
That is why we need to remove the chance for causation by implementing two steps from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government:”
1) Step 7 would allow only American citizens to contribute to political campaigns. No companies, no unions, no PACs, no Super PACs, and no lobbyists would ever be allowed to contribute to any political election campaign. Washington politicians should be voting on issues as dictated by citizens, not defense firms or any other kind of organized entity.
2) Step 39 would impose term limits on all Washington politicians. We get into these difficult situations because the primary purpose of anyone serving in Congress is to continue serving in Congress, election after election after election. These perpetual elections require money from various sources.
And with money comes debts that need to be paid back in order to get more reelection campaign funding. Make reelection impossible and that would certainly focus sitting politicians on the real issues, making the proper decisions since reelection and the need for reelection funding goes away.
If those ten Senators that voted yes to go to war, those ten that had received much more campaign money from defense firms than the seven no voters, knew that reelection was not possible, it would be interesting to see if they still would have voted yes.
In any case, we need to remove this suspicion of acting for reelection rather than the safety of our country, our taxpayer wealth, and the safety of our armed forces. You can help make that possible by joining our effort to impose term limits on all Washington politicians at:
www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
Because, really, how much worse could it get when just over a $1 million could cost us much more in treasure and lives?
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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
