The Heritage Insider: Obama budget is even worse than it appears, more right-to-work, North Korean missiles can now reach the U.S., and more
February 13, 2016
On its face, the last Obama budget spends and taxes a lot, but it’s even worse than it appears. “His budget plan is a liberal wish list of new government-entitlement commitments and an expansion of existing programs, including $66 billion over ten years for a universal pre-K program, more than $60 billion in expanded unemployment benefits, $14 billion for new Department of Labor job-training programs (despite decades of poor performance by the existing programs), and scores of other initiatives.
“The president’s priorities are clear enough. He wants to expand the federal government and pay for it with large tax hikes. He betrays no concern at all about the massive run-up of debt under his watch. According to his own numbers, federal debt will reach $14.1 trillion this year — $8.3 trillion more than it was at the end of fiscal year 2008.
“The fiscal outlook under this budget, bad as it appears, is in reality even worse. That’s because the president is relying on deep and unsustainable reductions in defense spending to make the deficit look smaller than it would otherwise be given his policies. In 2026, the president’s budget projects defense spending at 2.3 percent of GDP, or 1.0 percentage point of GDP less than is being spent today. Defense spending is already at historically low levels. Since 1990, the average level of spending on defense has been 4.0 percent of GDP. The president implausibly assumes spending on defense can be cut 42 percent below this 25-year average, even as the national-security threats around the world intensify.” —James C. Capretta, “President Obama’s Budgetary Deceptions,” National Review, February 9
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West Virginia adopted a right-to-work law this week. That means in May a majority of states will be right-to-work states. Contrary to progressive fulminations, that is good news for workers. “Once the workers have the freedom to decline to pay union dues, union officials can no longer regard them as captives. As Jason Hart and F. Vincent Vernuccio wrote in this Charleston Gazette-Mail op-ed, ‘Right-to-work can strengthen unions. It makes them more responsive to members because they now cannot take forced dues for granted. Instead, they need to earn the voluntary support of their members by becoming better.’ They point out that Indiana, which enacted right-to-work in 2012, added a nation-high total of 50,000 union members in 2014.
“The fact that we have had quite a series of states adopting right-to-work in recent years (since 2012, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and now West Virginia) suggests that the old scare-tactics that Big Labor found effective for so long have become jaded.
“It used to be trumpeted, for example that allowing workers this freedom meant ‘the right to work for less’ on the feeble ground that on average, wages in right-to-work states were lower. But average state wages have no logical bearing at all on the effect of right-to-work. If there is any cause-and-effect relationship, it favors right-to-work since those states tend to attract more investment and new business. Again, Hart and Vernuccio have the data: In 2012-2014, hourly wages rose by 56 cents per hour in Michigan and Indiana, but only 37 cents per hour in West Virginia.” —George Leef, “With West Virginia, a Majority of the States Are Now Right-to-Work,” Forbes, February 12
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Get ready for health insurance to get even more expensive: The Obama administration wants to turn anti-discrimination statutes into health insurance coverage mandates. “On its face, section 1557 prohibits discriminatory actions that prevent an individual participating in, or receiving public assistance for, federally funded health care coverage for which the individual otherwise qualifies. However, in the proposed regulation the Obama Administration further expansively interprets that already broad, statutory text to also apply those prohibitions to the benefits covered by health insurance plans, the treatments provided by medical professionals, and the health insurance coverage of tens of millions of Americans enrolled in private, unsubsidized plans. Such an expansive application would have significant implications for health policy—involving issues separate from the other legal and practical concerns raised by the proposed regulation, such as how it conflicts with conscience rights protections, or provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act, or federal laws governing relations with Indian tribes and the operation of the Indian Health Service.
“The practical effect of the Administration’s expansive interpretation of section 1557 would be to subordinate coverage and treatment determinations about what is ‘medically necessary’ or ‘medically appropriate’ to new, and evolving, determinations by federal regulators of what constitutes prohibited ‘discrimination.’ In essence, the Obama Administration is asserting that, under the guise of enforcing ‘non-discrimination,’ the HHS Office for Civil Rights has the power to impose coverage mandates on private health plans and to determine what constitutes appropriate medical practice.
“Such concerns are not merely theoretical. For example, this new regulation includes provisions that would explictly govern the coverage and treatment of gender dysphoria. By using the force of law to impose on others its opinions regarding one specific, contentious area of medical practice, this regulatory overreach would establish a troubling precedent for future federal intervention on similarly contentious coverage and treatment issues.” [Internal citations omitted.] —Edmund F. Haislmaier, “The Obama Administration’s Design for Imposing More Health Care Mandates,” The Heritage Foundation, February 11
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Sure, oil prices are low now, but there is still work to be done on energy policy. “Oil markets are cyclical: today’s low prices will inevitably rebound, just as prices always fall when peaks occur. And when oil prices rise, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Iran will still be major market players. Yet this time, there is a wild card: a cumulative $1 trillion invested by American firms and financiers in shale technology, infrastructure, and assets. In the near term, we will continue to see ‘creative destruction’ as many assets consolidate under stronger players, but a shale 2.0 resurgence will then follow. We’ve seen this kind of cycle before: in the late 1990s, the tech investment bubble ended in a bust; it was followed by a second Internet boom, which is still under way.
“[I]f, in the next decade, the U.S. were to replicate the shale production growth of this past decade, the nation would reap not only a second shale boom but also a tectonic shift in the geopolitical status quo. How can America expand its petroleum power in a new Third Oil Era, especially in the face of fierce global price manipulation and competition? […] Congress [can] pursue four steps to help American oil firms compete in a low-cost environment that would also benefit consumers with sustained low prices and, not least, also expand U.S. geopolitical petroleum power.
- Cut red tape. Reverse existing overregulation, freeze—and review—new intrusive regulation, and facilitate expansion of oil-related infrastructure.
- Cut corporate taxes. Lower U.S. corporate tax rates to (at least) the OECD average and reform America’s anti-competitive ‘repatriation’ tax, which leaves hundreds of billions of dollars stranded offshore—money that could be invested in America.
- Drill more on federal lands. Expand private-sector access to federal lands, instead of further restricting it. Increasing access to ‘sweet spots’ would benefit the economy and add royalties to the Treasury.
- Repurpose the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Sell a share of the excess oil in the SPR—a surplus created by new shale production—to fund basic research in shale science and to fund new public-private partnerships that can test next-generation shale technologies.” —Mark Mills, “Expanding America’s Petroleum Power in the Third Oil Era,” Manhattan Institute, February 11
What are colleges asking their students to read during the summer? “No Classics: Only a scattering of colleges assigned works that could be considered classics. With few exceptions, the hundreds of common reading programs across the country ignored books of lasting merit. Austen, Balzac, Cather, Dostoevsky, Eliot, and Fitzgerald were not to be found. Neither was there a trace of Gissing, Hawthorne, Ibsen, James, Kipling, or Lessing (Doris or Gottfried). There is a void that stretches from Achebe to Zamyatin.
“No Modern Classics: Even in confining themselves to living authors, common reading programs neglect some of the best ones, such as Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Wendell Berry, J. M. Coetzee, Don DeLillo, Annie Dillard, Mark Helprin, Denis Johnson, Cormac McCarthy, John McPhee, Alice Munro, V. S. Naipaul, Jodi Picoult, Marilynne Robinson, Philip Roth, Richard Russo, Wole Soyinka, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Tom Wolfe.
“A Narrow, Predictable Genre: The common reading genre is parochial, contemporary, commercial, optimistic, juvenile, obsessed with suffering, and progressive. Not every selected text embraces all these categories, but these adjectives define the characteristic common reading.” —David Randall, “Beach Books: 2014-2016: What Do Colleges and Universities Want Students to Read Outside Class?“ National Association of Scholars, February 9
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There are at least 13 common mistakes people make when giving a speech. Here are two of them: “1. Not tailoring your message to your audience.
As Benjamin Disraeli once said, ‘Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.’
On the other hand, if you don't talk to your audience about themselves, they most likely won't listen, says Darlene Price, president of Well Said, Inc. and author of ’Well Said! Presentations and Conversations That Get Results.’ ‘Speakers frequently fall into the bad habit of giving generic off-the-shelf presentations that are not tailored to address the needs of this particular audience. Listeners know when the speaker has not done their homework, and their response ranges from disappointment and frustration to anger and disengaging.’
To avoid this, ask yourself: Who is my audience? What are their burning issues? How does my message help them? How much do they know about my topic? What will I ask them to do in response to my message? ‘All the best practices in public speaking depend upon this first tenet: Know Your Audience.’
2. Eye dart.
From beginners to veterans, the majority of speakers fail to maintain meaningful, sustained eye contact with their listeners. ‘Unconsciously, their eyes scurry from person to person, darting around the room, without ever pausing to actually see the recipients of their message,’ Price says. ‘A lack of eye contact implies a list of offenses: insincerity, disinterest, detachment, insecurity, shiftiness, and even arrogance.’
To visually connect, maintain eye contact for at least two to three seconds per person, or long enough to complete a full phrase or sentence. Effective eye communication is the most important nonverbal skill in a speaker's toolbox. —Jacquelyn Smith, “13 Most Common Mistakes People Make When Giving a Speech,” Inc., February 5
More from the Toolkit
What North Korea’s February 7 missile launch means:
—Bruce Klingner, “North Korea’s Missile Launch Shows It Could Target US Homeland,” The Daily Signal, February 8
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