Category Archives: Fiscal Freedom

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Freedom Caucus tries to bring Obamacare clean repeal back to life. The group, which helped more conservative members agree to a deal on the Houses healthcare bill, filed a discharge petition today that would repeal Obamacare and then delay its implementation for two years. The bill is the same one that Congress passed and that was vetoed in 2015, under former President Barack Obama. It failed to pass the Senate as an amendment last month, with seven GOP senators voting against it. The petition was filed during todays pro-forma session. If it receives 218 signatures, it would force a floor vote, which would be held the second or fourth Monday in September.

The measure isnt expected to advance, but it is drawing support. "Republicans already sent this bill to the president in 2016, and should do it again," said Rep. Mark Walker of North Carolina, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee. "The only thing that changed since then is that with Donald Trump as president, this bill would actually be signed into law. This repeal should be the bare minimum Republicans pass on Obamacare as it fulfills the promise we all made to repeal Obamacare. I look forward to signing this petition on the House floor when we return from recess."

Before the filing, Freedom Caucus spokeswoman Alyssa Farah tweeted Thursday: guys, it's safe to say Obamacare repeal & replace is not dead. the idea that it ever was was mistaken. R's can't walk away from a 7 year promise.

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President Trump gives insurers more time. The administration on Thursday gave insurers three more weeks to submit requests for their premium rates for coverage sold under Obamacare, according to a memo from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The original deadline of Aug. 16 was pushed back to Sept. 5 for plans sold on healthcare.gov, the site that 39 states and the District of Columbia use. It comes as insurers are waiting to find out what will happen to cost-sharing reduction subsidies. Based on requests from state departments of insurance and issuers, CMS is providing issuers and states with clarity and additional time to account for recent rating practices, a representative said in an email.

The Congressional Budget Office will release an estimate next week of the effect that cutting off the payments could have, the agency announced Friday. The payments reimburse insurers for reducing out-of-pocket costs for low-income Obamacare customers.

Trump irritated with Republicans for their failure to pass healthcare. On Friday morning, Trump retweeted stories from Fox News describing the back and forth between him and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and another article that looked at the backlash that ensued after some Republicans turned on him. Tensions have been simmering between Trump and McConnell because of differing opinions on the next congressional legislative agenda item. McConnell would prefer to leave healthcare, while the president wants Republicans "to get back to work" to formulate comprehensive reform. On Thursday, Trump continued his Twitter tirade against McConnell: "Mitch, get back to work and put Repeal & Replace, Tax Reform & Cuts and a great Infrastructure Bill on my desk for signing. You can do it!"

What does Trump really think about McConnells leadership? Trump on Thursday cast doubt on McConnell's viability as the GOP's leader in the upper chamber should he not deliver on the presidents priorities such as tax reform and infrastructure. "Well, I'll tell you what. If he doesn't get repeal and replace done, if he doesn't get taxes done, meaning cuts and reform, and if he doesn't get a very easy one to get done infrastructure if he doesn't get that done, then you should ask me that question," Trump told reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., when asked if McConnell should step down, according to a pool report.

Trumps problem: No loyalty from Republicans. "The problem for Trump is that there is nobody that is going to challenge Mitch McConnell in the conference," said a Republican operative and Capitol Hill veteran. "Trump has an R' next to his name, but he's not a Republican; there's no loyalty." Trump's style has been to criticize congressional Republicans as though he were separate from them, rather than to embrace his role as the leader of the party and discuss their legislative goals, successes and failures, as shared. That has rankled Republicans already unhappy with what in their view is a president who has squandered the bully pulpit over an obsession with a Russia investigation he claims is fake and protecting his personal brand and declined to invest his political capital in replacing Obamacare. McConnell is being backed by his caucus, including Sen. Jeff Flake, who has been engaged in a long-running feud with Trump. @SenateMajLdr does a tough job well. He has my support, the Arizona Republican wrote on Twitter.

Newt Gingrich: Trump 'can't disassociate himself' from healthcare failure. The former House speaker said Thursday that Trump could not put all of the blame on McConnell for the Senate Republicans' failure to repeal Obamacare. "The fact is, with very narrow margin 52 people Mitch McConnell got 49 out of 52. And I think the president can't disassociate himself from this," Gingrich told Fox News. "He's part of the leadership team, he's not an observer sitting up in the stands. He's on the field. It was a collective failure." Gingrich added that it was "goofy" for Trump and McConnell to be "shooting at each other" when the healthcare bills did not attract any Democratic support.

GOP lawmaker calls Senate's fight to repeal Obamacare Miracle at Dunkirk. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told a group of constituents the Senate had a setback when it came up one vote short of continuing efforts to repeal Obamacare. He then compared the Republican effort to the event at Dunkirk during World War II, in which a fleet of civilian ships helped to rescue British soldiers stuck on the shores of France soon after the country fell to Nazi invaders in 1940. "The French and British faced a 'setback' in fighting the Germans," Wicker said, according to a report in the Dispatch, a local Mississippi paper. "And that is what the Senate has faced with healthcare." The dubbed "Miracle at Dunkirk" is the subject of a recent film, simply named "Dunkirk." Wicker kept up with the World War II references by saying the GOP will return to the fight against Obamacare, much like Gen. Douglas MacArthur went ashore to reclaim the Philippines, the Dispatch said.

Healthcare groups recommend fixes to Obamacare. In a letter sent to McConnell, groups including the American Heart Association made several recommendations, including making payments for cost-sharing reduction subsidies, implementing a reinsurance program and a guarantee that the open enrollment period will be promoted by the administration so people know when they are supposed to sign up for coverage and can receive help to do so.

Trump declares the opioid epidemic a national crisis. "President Donald J. Trump has instructed his administration to use all appropriate emergency and other authorities to respond to the crisis caused by the opioid epidemic," Trump said in a statement. Earlier in the day, Trump told reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., that his administration was drawing up the paperwork to make the national emergency declaration. "The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I'm saying officially right now it is an emergency," he said. "It's a national emergency. We're going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis We're going to draw it up and we're going to make it a national emergency. It is a serious problem the likes of which we have never had."

Heres what an emergency declaration could do. "I don't think it is just symbolic," said Tom Coderre, a former official with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Coderre said the declaration would open a series of measures that the Department of Health and Human Services could take to combat the opioid epidemic. Chief among them is waiving certain rules that would let more treatment centers get reimbursed by Medicaid. Certain exclusions in the Medicaid program essentially block providers from being reimbursed for addiction services in a facility with more than 16 beds. "It would enable these treatment centers that have 30-50, 100 beds to get reimbursed and accept Medicaid patients," said Coderre, now a senior adviser to the Altarum Institute. "That would be a game changer." The declaration also means the federal government can access "no-year" funds appropriated to the Public Health Emergency Fund. The funds are available for an indefinite period of time and don't disappear at the end of the fiscal year. The federal government also can negotiate prices for the overdose antidote naloxone to ensure the medication is affordable and it could hand out grants for new ways to fight the opioid crisis.

Tom Price praises Trump for the decision. The Department of Health and Human Services secretary, who indicated earlier that the administration wouldnt be making the declaration, said Thursday: "President Trump is taking strong, decisive action in directing the administration to use all appropriate emergency and other authorities to respond to the crisis caused by the opioid epidemic. Todays announcement demonstrates our sense of urgency to fight the scourge of addiction that is affecting all corners of this country. Traveling the country, we have seen firsthand the devastation this crisis is inflicting on individuals, families, and communities. President Trumps announcement further punctuates his clear commitment to combating this epidemic and I thank him for his leadership."

Chris Christie says Trump 'deserves credit' for declaring opioid epidemic national emergency. The outgoing New Jersey governor leads the opioid commission that Trump created and that made the recommendation for a federal state of emergency. "It is a national emergency and the president has confirmed that through his words and actions today, and he deserves great credit for doing so," Christie said in a statement released by his spokesman. "As I have said before, I am completely confident that the president will address this problem aggressively and do all he can to alleviate the suffering and loss of scores of families in every corner of our country. We look forward to continuing the commission's efforts and to working with this president to address the approximately 142 deaths a day from drug overdoses in the United States."

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CALENDAR

MONDAY | Aug. 14

Congressional Budget Office expected to release an estimate of the effect of ending cost-sharing reduction subsidies.

Original post:

Freedom Caucus tries to resurrect Obamacare repeal - Washington Examiner

Chris Green Staff writer @chrisfgreen

ROCKFORD Air pollution causes at least 6.5 million premature deaths a year worldwide, andaccording to theWorld Health Organization, aboutone-third of those deaths occur in China.

Agroup of 29 college engineering students andtwo teachersfrom China's Zhejiang University of Technology traveled halfway around the globe in search of fresh air. Today, their journey brought them to thegrounds of theRock River Water Reclamation District.

There they were greeted by Freedom Field Renewable EnergyExecutive Director ChetKolodziej.

"The smell here?" Kolodziej said. "This is a water treatment plant. We get about 30 to 40 million gallons ofwater a daythat either comes from the toilets or factories where theyuse the waterfor coolant. What happens is, it comes in here and we have bacteria that breaks the raw material down, and we capture the gas. See those domes? Those are full of bio gas. We have three mega watts of enginesthat use thebio gas to make electricity.

"The water? After it is processed here you can actuallydrink it. But we put it into the river. What is left is sludge. We put that on farm fields, which I think is fairly common in China."

Freedom Field isa showcase of various forms of renewable energylocated on the reclamation district's campus at 3333 Kishwaukee. The China contingenttoured aspart of Northern Illinois University's STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) Professional Development outreach program.

China accounts for half the worldsconsumption of coalandis the worlds largest emitter of climate-warming greenhouse gases, according to the World Health Organization.NIU Mechanical Engineering Professor Dr. Jenn-Terng Gautranslated and spoke on behalf of the two Zhejiang University teachers. Hecited health reasons and the high cost of traditional forms of energy such as fossil fuel and oil asthe driving forceforutilizingclean renewable energy such aswind, solar and water.

"We want to enlarge their scope of thinking," Gau said.

Inside the Freedom Field classroom Kolodziej stood next to asolar-powered go-cart and said,"Everything in here, one way or another, a student was involved in, be it as a capstone projector as part of an internship."

Since its inception, Freedom Field has been a yearly recipient of host fee dollars doled out each year by the Winnebago County Board. Thehost fee or tipping fee comes from waste haulers who are charged for garbage dumped in the Winnebago Landfill at 8403 Lindenwood Road. Each year, the County Board earmarks anticipated host fee revenue for economic development projects.

In fiscal year 2017, the host fee fund was over committed by $1.2 million more than it was projected to take in.Some host feerecipients like Freedom Field will receive less or no funding at all next year.

Earlier this year, County Board Chairman Frank Haney told board members there wasno correlation between moneygiven to Freedom Field and the creation of local jobs, specifically green jobs.

"So far, Freedom Field is nothing more than a long-term science project without any traceable research and development outcomes to invest back into local industry."

In light of the $1.2 million host fee shortfall, coupled with questions by the new Winnebago County administration aboutFreedom Field's local and regionaleconomic development impact, the County Boardvoted to take back$54,000 of the original$88,000 allocation for fiscal year 2017. No funding to Freedom Field is slated for next year.

FormerCounty Board Chairman Scott Christiansen, a charter member of Freedom Field's board of directors, said in March he was not surprised by the slash in fundinggiven the county's budget constraints. He alsosaidthe goal of the Freedom Field Board "has always been to get away from public funding."

Chris Green: 815-987-1241; cgreen@rrstar.com; @chrisfgreen

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Chinese students' search for renewable energy comes to Rockford - Rockford Register Star

RICHARD B. LEVINE/NewscomAnother debt ceiling fight is just around the corner. The government's borrowing limit will need to be raised yet again by the end of September to avoid default. Indications suggest that there will be enough support between Democrats and moderate Republicans to pass a "clean" increase, meaning no spending limits or cuts will be attached. However, this fiscal status quo is absolutely unacceptable, especially because it would be easy to take a small step toward much-needed fiscal discipline.

Debt is piling up, and it is doing so at a faster pace than the economy is growing. The gross national debt is already well past 100 percent of gross domestic product. Under very optimistic assumptions, the Congressional Budget Office projects that under current law, the debt will reach 150 percent of GDP in 2047thanks primarily to an aging population and poorly structured entitlement programs. Significant change is clearly needed if we're to avoid fiscal catastrophe.

The first step of addressing one's issues is to admit that you actually have problems. Say it along with me: "We have a debt problem." The next step is to adopt small solutionsas opposed to unrealistic goals that would be abandoned within days. Such a big goal would be to implement fundamental reforms to the programs that are the drivers of our future debt. There is no debate that this is what needs to be done and what should be done, and I will never stop advocating that goal. But it is also painfully obvious to me that in the current political environment, where neither party is willing to be the adult in the room, such a noble goal is out of reach.

What isn't out of reach, however, is the smaller and more realistic short-term goal of implementing spending caps. The logic is simple. Debt is just a symptom of Washington's excessive spending problem, so we must address the latter to solve the former. To get the nation's finances on the right track, we simply need to ensure that government is growing more slowly than the economy. A spending cap would do this by limiting the growth of government to a set percentage of GDP, perhaps 2 percent. As a recent video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity shows, maintaining such limits would bring the budget into balance in less than 10 years.

Of course, there would have to be trade-offs. Washington cannot live within these limits without making some small changes to Medicare, Social Security and other programs. But the advantage is that the spending caps would finally force lawmakers to think about these trade-offs. Also, seeing as the caps would explicitly continue to grow by some percentage each year, they would make it harder for proponents of big government to moan about "savage" budget cuts. They would allow lawmakers to focus on reforms, as opposed to "cuts."

The case for spending caps isn't just based on theory. The evidence shows that a focus on reducing spending works better than rules aimed solely at reducing deficits and debt. Both Switzerland and Hong Kong have seen positive results from their spending caps. Hong Kong is one of the richest countries in the world, and Switzerland is rare among European nations in its fiscal strength.

On the other hand, balanced budget amendments haven't saved states such as California, New York and Illinois from bloated governments and debt accumulation. The uncertain nature of economic performance and tax collection makes yearly balanced budgets much harder to achieve than long-run spending limits. Perhaps more importantly, the seductive call for a tax hike tends to sap the political will for spending reform. It's easy to lock in repetitive cycles of new spending programs followed by tax increases to fund them.

Debt and deficits are bad, but they are symptoms of an underlying spending problem. Focusing narrowly on reducing debt can lead to counterproductive policy choices, whereas spending caps would most likely achieve the desirable goals of reducing excessive government and finally getting the nation's debt under control.

See the article here:

Spending Caps Are Low-Hanging Fruit in the Fight Against Debt - Reason

The Cherokee County Board of Supervisors approved the placement of a permanent sign near the recently completed Cherokee County Veterans Freedom Rock outside the Cherokee County Courthouse.

Steve Reinert of the VFW, which spearheaded the project to get the Cherokee County Veterans Freedom Rock placed and painted primarily through privately raised funds, addressed the supervisors at the Tuesday meeting.

Reinert explained that the sign will be mounted on a pedestal and will give a brief history of each of the four veterans with Cherokee connections who are depicted on the rock.

Approval of the sign project did not require a formal motion. The supervisors expressed consensus that the installation of the sign could proceed.

Reinert asked the supervisors about contributing seed money to an account to be set aside for future maintenance or modification of the rock. Supervisors explained that the county betterment funds are all allocated for the current fiscal year and any county contribution to such an account will need to wait until the next fiscal year.

Reinert said that a dedication of the rock will likely take place on a Sunday afternoon sometime in September.

In committee reports, Rick Mongan, board chairman, reported that Cherokee Economic Development Corporation Executive Director Mark Buschkamp has resigned to take a position at North Star Credit Union. The resignation will take effect later this month.

Mongan said that a professional executive headhunter will be employed to find a new executive director for CAEDC. John Comstock will oversea that effort and serve as interim CAEDC director.

Read the original here:

Supervisors approve Freedom Rock sign - Chronicle Times

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New Zealands strong commitment to economic freedom has resulted in a policy framework thatencourages impressive economic resilience. Openness to global trade and investment are firmly institutionalized. The financial system has remained stable, and prudent regulations allowed banks to withstand the past global financial turmoil with little disruption.

Other institutional strengths of the Kiwi economy include relatively sound management of public finance, a high degree of monetary stability, and strong protection of property rights. The government continues to maintain a tight rein on spending, keeping public debt under control and sustaining overall fiscal health. A transparent and stable business climate makes New Zealand one of the worlds friendliest environments for entrepreneurs.

New Zealand is a parliamentary democracy and one of the AsiaPacific regions most prosperous countries. After 10 years of Labor Partydominated governments, the center-right National Party, led by Prime Minister John Key, returned to power in November 2008. Key was reelected in 2011 and 2014. In December 2016, Key resigned and endorsed his deputy, Bill English, who was elected to succeed him as prime minister. Far-reaching deregulation and privatization in the 1980s and 1990s largely liberated the economy. Agriculture is important, but so too are a flourishing manufacturing sector, thriving tourism, and a strong geothermal energy resource base. Following a sizable contraction during the global economic recession, the economy has been expanding since 2010.

Private property rights are strongly protected, and contracts are notably secure. The judicial system is independent and functions well. New Zealand ranked fourth out of 168 countries surveyed in Transparency Internationals 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index. The country is renowned for its efforts to penalize bribery and ensure a transparent, competitive, and corruption-free government procurement system.

The top income tax rate is 33 percent, and the top corporate tax rate is 28 percent. Other taxes include a goods and services tax and environmental taxes. The overall tax burden equals 32.4 percent of total domestic income. Government spending has amounted to 42.2 percent of total output (GDP) over the past three years, and budget deficits have averaged 0.5 percent of GDP. Public debt is equivalent to 30.4 percent of GDP.

The entrepreneurial environment is one of the worlds most efficient and competitive. Start-up companies enjoy great flexibility under licensing and other regulatory frameworks. The labor regulations facilitate a dynamic labor market. New Zealand, which has the lowest subsidies among OECD countries, removed all farm subsidies more than three decades ago and spurred the development of a vibrant and diversified agriculture sector.

Trade is important to New Zealands economy; the value of exports and imports taken together equals 55 percent of GDP. The average applied tariff rate is 1.3 percent. There are few barriers to foreign investment, although some investment may be subject to screening. The financial sector, dominated by banking, is well developed and competitive, offering a full range of financing instruments for entrepreneurial activity.

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New Zealand Economy: Population, GDP, Inflation, Business ...

If you thought the recent fight over health-care reform was fun, get ready for the next big Washington circus: raising the debt ceiling.

In October of 2015, Congress chose to avoid the usual fight over setting a symbolic debt target by agreeing to waive any limit on the debt for 17 months, until March of this year. For the past few months, the Treasury Department has engaged in what it calls extraordinary measures to extend the deadline through the end of September. By that time, the U.S. national debt will officially exceed $20 trillion.

As is almost always the case, the big fight will be over whether or not to pass a clean increase in the debt ceiling i.e., one without any amendments. A bill to raise the debt ceiling will require 60 votes in the Senate, effectively giving Democrats veto power over any Republican proposal. If Republicans added a provision supporting Mom, the flag, and apple pie, Democrats could be counted on to oppose it unanimously. Indeed, many Democrats are expected to back a proposal by Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii to abolish the debt limit altogether.

Yet, many Republicans see this as one of their few opportunities for budget leverage. Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson is typical in warning, Ive been raising the issue of the debt ceiling for months now, and certainly what Id like to see is some meaningful, structural control enacted in conjunction with increasing [the debt limit].

House Republicans are expected to take an even harder line against any bill that raises the debt ceiling without making an attempt to rein in future spending. Just this week, Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, never considered a firebrand, said that he could not see any scenario in which the House agrees to raise the debt ceiling without accompanying spending cuts. Meanwhile, the conservative House Freedom Caucus is backing a number of separate proposals, ranging from as much as $50 billion in spending cuts to a demand that the federal government sell property to pay down the debt. Some also want to attach a partial repeal of Obamacare to the bill.

It should come as no surprise that the Trump administration is putting out conflicting signals about what it wants from this fight. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin reportedly prefers a clean bill, as Treasury secretaries have since time immemorial. Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney is more ambivalent. He originally wanted spending cuts in exchange for increasing the debt limit, but has recently dropped that demand. He now says that the administration hopes for the cleanest possible bill. But he also remains one of the chief proponents of prioritizing debt payments, which would allow the federal government to avoid default if the debt negotiations drag on.

All of this will take place against a backdrop of apocalyptic commentary from much of the media and the business community. They will ignore the fact that the federal government actually did briefly default on its debt in 1979, in part as the result of a debt-ceiling impasse under a Democratic-controlled Congress. Since then, both Democratic and Republican Congresses have missed deadlines to increase the debt ceiling: Once in 1981, a second time in 1985, a third time in 1996, and a fourth time in 2002. In none of those cases did the world end.

Moreover, until fairly recently, it was considered routine to add all sorts of conditions to debt-ceiling legislation. Perhaps the most famous of these provisions was the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings amendment in 1995.

Of course, failure to raise the debt limit would not be a good thing. Financial markets could be expected to react badly. Increased uncertainty would slow economic growth. And we might even see another downgrade of the U.S.s credit rating. But those consequences pale in comparison to the almost-certain calamity that will result from a failure to get control of runaway federal spending and debt.

In the end, the fight over the debt ceiling will mostly be a question of political theater. An increase in the debt limit will eventually pass. Congress will go on spending money on a bipartisan basis the way it always does. And, in a couple of years, well do this all over again.

But amid all the noise thats sure to follow, its important not to forget that our fiscal irresponsibility cant continue forever. Congress may be in the habit of pretending otherwise, but were headed for a fall.

READ MORE: The Bipartisan Push to Increase Spending and the National Debt Congress Continuing Self-Degradation Can Republicans Stand Together on Spending?

Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis. You can follow him on his blog, TannerOnPolicy.com.

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Debt-Ceiling Fight Looms as Next Big Test for Congress - National Review

Scanning recent tax revenues, one would think that all is well in Puerto Rico. On Aug. 2, the Puerto Rican Treasury Departmentannouncedthat tax collection for the first month of fiscal year 2018 was ahead of its forecast. In addition,there was the publication of data showing the government collected more than $150 million above the forecasted revenue figures in fiscal year 2017.

Yet, on Friday, the federally-appointed financial oversight board announced the implementation of a two-day government furlough program beginning this September, along with a 10-percent cut to public pension benefits beginning in fiscal year 2020.

This issue is very worrying because the Puerto Rican government informed Judge Laura Taylor Swain, who is overseeing the island's bankruptcy proceedings, that by the end of June, cash flow would be $290 million. Now, Rossellos administration said the government ended with almost $1.8 billion in cash on June 30.

According to new information arising from the ninthmeeting of the fiscal board last Friday, oversight of the finances of the commonwealth are clearly lacking. The budget was certified weeks ago, and the government did not meet the plan. Furthermore, in March, the liquidity report concluded cash flow was at $230 million.

All of this news comes on top of the lack of financial transparency that has governed the actions of the Puerto Rican government and the financial oversight board. One thing is clear: The actions taken by the board and Gov. Rossellos administration are ripping off bondholders.

For the last few months, the unelected seven-member fiscal board set up under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) has been pursuing a policy to lead Puerto Rico back to the markets. However, this policy is being pursued in the belief that the island can quickly regain access via fiscal consolidation, and given the lack of definition of what is an essential service, this consolidation isamounting to basically reducing debt service payments.

The current situation has seen the board and government follow the policy of taking almost every government entity through Title III bankruptcy instead of following the route of fair, transparent and open negotiations with creditors, many of whom are Puerto Ricans. Consequently, this path results in a cut to bondholder payments totaling almost 80 percent of the expected payments for the next 10 fiscal years.

Instead of following a strong fiscal policy that includes a real fiscal consolidation and the subsequent return to sound finances, Puerto Rico has chosen to violate creditors' rights and fail to pay the money creditors are owed.

The fiscal board established by Congress has chosen to disregard the words and intent of the PROMESA legislation, refusing to amend the fiscal plan for more debt service payments in spite of the better-than-expected revenue figures. It has misrepresented the liquidity figures in court by arguing that the government will be out of cash by Nov. 1.

Now, it turns out, given the refusal to pay bondholders, the government is sitting with millions in cash, which wasn't accounted for in the evidence presented to Judge Swain.

After all of the time the fiscal board has spent litigating against creditors, the most recent meeting of the board reveals its failure to establish the real fiscal condition of the commonwealth. The decisions and disregard of the fiscal board are laying the groundwork for a clear vote of no confidence.

Ojel L. Rodriguez is a research analyst for the Puerto Rican public policy think tank Fundacin Libertad, which promotes libertarian principles of individual freedom, limited government and free markets.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

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Puerto Rico financial board creating grounds for own removal - The Hill (blog)

I know many Democrats and progressives who continue to be frustrated by the conservative Republicans who have controlled the North Carolina General Assembly since 2010.

The Left has spent years stating and restating its standard narrative about our state: that North Carolina has historically grown faster and been more successful than other Southern states because it was more willing to spend tax dollars on higher education, infrastructure, and other government programs.

Having repeated this catechism faithfully and endlessly, and yet seen no significant change in the policy direction of the state, progressives either resort to conspiracy theories about dark-money interests dictating terms to their political lackeys or they resort to personal attacks on the intelligence of GOP lawmakers.

I chose my terms carefully. The Lefts narrative is a kind of quasi-religious orthodoxy. It is neither good history nor good social science. Since the end of World War II, North Carolinas economy has usually outgrown the nations, to be sure. But thats a regional phenomenon, not a Tar Heel phenomenon. In fact, the average annual growth rate since 1948 of per-person, after-tax income has been exactly the same for North Carolina, South Carolina, and the Southeast as a whole.

Im not arguing that government programs have no value. But to assert that North Carolina had the right amount of government expenditures and taxes before the Republicans took over in 2010, and now it has not enough government, is to make an ideological claim, not an empirical one.

Several years ago, I began keeping a list of all the studies I could find on the subject of state economic growth. My database contains many hundreds of papers, all published either in peer-reviewed academic journals or as chapters of peer-reviewed academic books.

The available research doesnt just examine public-policy variables such as government spending, taxes, and regulations. It also considers other potential explanations for differences in economic growth, including energy prices, private investment, geography, and educational attainment.

Overall, this emerging body of empirical evidence suggests that most governments are too large and do more than they should taxes and regulations are negatively associated with economic growth but that non-policy factors are usually more significant in explaining differences among states and localities.

In the new edition of the Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Southern Methodist Universitys Dean Stansel and Meg Patrick Tuszynski reported the results of their own review of the literature. They looked specifically at the 155 studies that have used the Fraser Institutes annual Economic Freedom of North America index in their empirical models. The index includes state-by-state measures of government size, taxes, and labor-market regulations.

In two-thirds of the studies, Stansel and Tuszynski found, economic freedom was associated with better economic performance among states. Of the three sub-indexes, the regulatory burden was the most important.

If you view this conclusion with suspicion, you are of course free to disbelieve it. But just understand that repeating your catechism a few more times isnt going to change anything. Fiscal conservatives have good reasons to believe what we believe. What are yours?

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Evidence Shows that Freedom Works - The Weekly Post

First, the administration is confounded by inexperience, incompetence and infighting. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has little expertise in congressional stage management, but he understands the gravity of the situation and has lobbied for a clean debt ceiling bill one without conditions or unnecessary amendments.

But that puts him in tension with his White House colleague Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, who has intimated that breaching the debt ceiling would not be that consequential, and who has argued that the must-pass legislation should be used to advance the hard rights agenda. Without a firm signal from the White House that the debt ceiling should not be held hostage to political agendas, it will be hard to get Congress to do the right thing.

And thats the second problem: Congress, and in particular the Freedom Caucus. As the health care fight showed, the caucus is fixated on cutting entitlement spending. It has made it clear that if the House leadership balks on their demands for major cuts in the 2018 budget, theyll refuse to vote on raising the debt ceiling.

Finally, some conservative policy makers besides Mr. Mulvaney have convinced themselves that crashing into the debt ceiling wont be a big deal because the government can prioritize its bill payments, so that interest on Treasury debt will be paid on a current basis, while other bills sit unpaid.

Understanding the false allure of prioritization requires a little background. Hitting the debt ceiling is not the same as a government shutdown or other fiscal brinkmanship. Think of the United States, acting through the Treasury, as holding a bank account at the Federal Reserve. Every day, millions of bills arrive and are promptly paid by debiting Treasurys account at the Fed. At the same time, millions of dollars in tax and other receipts arrive and are credited to that bank account. The money coming in is systematically less than the money being disbursed (thats what it means to run a deficit), and Treasury makes up the difference by borrowing in the capital markets.

A government shutdown occurs when the Treasury has money in its bank account but Congress refuses to appropriate the funds necessary for the government to function. Crashing into the debt ceiling, by contrast, would occur if Treasury had no money in its bank account because Congress prohibited it from funding deficits through incremental borrowing.

If Treasury hits the ceiling, it has only two realistic responses. Treasury can pay the governments bills on a first-in, first-out basis, with the wait for payment growing every month, or it can prioritize bills, as Mr. Mulvaney and others have suggested it would.

But there are profound doubts as to whether the Treasury could even implement prioritization, beyond ring fencing interest payments, because its payment systems are designed to pay all claims as they are due, regardless of their origin. More important, prioritization is default by another name. The consequences are the same, regardless of which i.o.u.s Treasury chooses to dishonor.

All valid claims against the United States are backed by the credit of the United States, full stop; the Constitution does not contemplate that some claims are more senior than others. The deliberate nonpayment of billions of dollars of uncontested claims every month thus constitutes default, even if the Treasury is paying some of its other debts. The resulting class-action lawsuits will enrich generations of lawyers.

Once the unthinkable happens, no future constraints on congressional irresponsibility with regard to the national debt will remain. Prioritization will constitute the intentional subordination, not just of one claim to another, but of all claims to the pettiness of congressional politics. As a result, the once unassailable credit of the United States will become a perennial hostage to politics, and in response the debt markets will demand much higher interest rates.

These are noisy times in Washington. But even in this context, the awfulness of a debt ceiling crisis should galvanize us. Like an impending execution, it should concentrate our minds now, while something can still be done.

Edward D. Kleinbard, a law professor at the University of Southern California and a former chief of staff of the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, is the author of We Are Better Than This: How Government Should Spend Our Money.

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A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 7, 2017, on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: The Debt-Ceiling Crisis Is Real.

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The Debt-Ceiling Crisis Is Real - The New York Times - New York Times

Aug 7, 2017 at 6:12 pm | Print View

CEDAR RAPIDS Tourism, entertainment, culture, economic development, and subsidizing city owned facilities, including debt at the DoubleTree Hotel, are top priorities in plans to award nearly $4 million to private organizations and city run enterprises.

The plans are up for approval by the Cedar Rapids City Council, which meets at noon Tuesday at City Hall, 101 First St. SE.

The City Council is being asked to approve distribution of $3.7 million generated through hotel motel tax collections to more than two dozen organizations. Also, in separate decisions, the city would renew four commitments worth $260,000 to economic development and business-minded organizations.

The city levies a 7 percent tax on consumer lodging at hotels and motels, which is the maximum allowed under state law. This is on top of the 5 percent state excise tax on room rentals.

Cedar Rapids has seen its hotel motel tax budget increase 34 percent since fiscal 2012, when the budget was $2.76 million, to $3.7 million this fiscal year.

Cedar Rapids divides the hotel motel tax allocation with about 55 percent or $2 million to primary city needs and the remainder $1.7 million to private applicants on a three-year cycle.

Primary allocations include debt payments at the Museum of Art ($35,700), Cedar Rapids Ice Arena ($294,720), city convention center ($250,000), a stair enclosure project at The Roosevelt ($94,490), the DoubleTree Hotel ($450,000), and the convention center parking ramp ($110,355).

Other primary allocations would include the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance getting $120,000, $391,978 to subsidize operating deficits at the U.S. Cellular Center and convention center, $100,000 for Ice Arena equipment, $123,659 to subsidize Ice Arena operations and $25,000 to subsidize Ushers Ferry Historic Village operations.

Application-based awards, which are reviewed every three years, are recommended for a mix of 24 civic organizations covering interests such as the outdoors, theater, history and entertainment. The top recipient would be $1 million for the Cedar Rapids Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, or GO Cedar Rapids.

Others include $106,632 to the All Iowa Agricultural Association, or Hawkeye Downs, $80,000 to the Freedom Festival, $50,000 to Brucemore Inc., $25,000 the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance Foundation, $39,000 to the African-American Historical Museum, $40,500 to Theatre Cedar Rapids, $39,500 to the Indian Creek Nature Center and $45,000 to the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library.

The current three-year cycle is coming to an end this year meaning these allocations will be reviewed next year.

In separate votes, city staff is recommending memorandums of understanding and funding worth $100,000 each for the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance and Entrepreneurial Development Center. Memorandums and funding worth $50,000 for the New Bohemian Innovation Collaborative for the Iowa Start Up Accelerator and $10,000 for the Kirkwood Small Business Development Center also are up for separate votes.

The memorandums and funding cover fiscal 2018, or July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018.

l Comments: (319) 339-3177; brian.morelli@thegazette.com

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Cedar Rapids plans to award $4 million to entertainment organizations and city owned hotel complex - The Gazette: Eastern Iowa Breaking News and...