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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; federal bureaucracy</title>
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		<title>Poor Regulations</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/poor-regulations/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=poor-regulations</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/poor-regulations/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Aug 2014 04:40:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lloyd Billingsley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[federal bureaucracy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Paul Ryan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Victims]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238995</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Paul Ryan shines a light on the biggest victims of federal bureaucracy.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/red-tape_2810803b.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239013" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/red-tape_2810803b-450x334.jpg" alt="red-tape_2810803b" width="304" height="226" /></a>“Paul Ryan is moving to reframe the debate on regulations,” <a href="http://thehill.com/regulation/215486-paul-ryan-opens-new-front-in-war-on-poverty"><span style="color: #0433ff;">notes <i>The Hill</i></span></a>, “arguing that the nation’s poor are the real victims of the red tape spewing from Washington.” The Wisconsin Republican’s “Expanding Opportunity in America” initiative intends to address what the Obama administration calls “income equality,” which persists despite massive federal efforts.</p>
<p>According to the House Budget Committee majority staff, <a href="http://budget.house.gov/waronpoverty/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">at least 92 federal programs purport to help lower-income Americans</span></a><span style="color: #343434;">. These include dozens of education and job-training programs, 17 food-aid programs, and more than 20 housing programs. In fiscal year 2012, the federal government spent $799 billion on these programs. Ryan is hardly alone in charging that some of these programs hurt the poor. </span>He cites Creighton University economics professor Diana Thomas, who says that Department of Transportation regulations requiring rear-view cameras will impact low-income car buyers, who prefer to spend their money elsewhere.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="color: #000000;">Those in the lowest fifth of income spend the greatest share of their incomes on energy. </span>Earners in the lowest income quintile spend 24 percent of their pre-tax income on energy, as opposed to 4 percent in the highest quintile. Therefore, as this analysis from the Manhattan Institute notes, “<a href="http://budget.house.gov/waronpoverty/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">America’s poorest citizens will be hurt most by the new EPA regulations</span></a>” on emissions and “it is the poor who will have their budgets squeezed as they struggle to pay for gas and electricity.”</p>
<p>Sofie E. Miller, senior policy analyst at the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center,<i> </i>writes that federal<i> </i>regulations <a href="http://regulatorystudies.columbian.gwu.edu/opinion-paul-ryan-anti-poverty-plan-targets-regressive-regulation"><span style="color: #0433ff;">“often leave low-income Americans paying a heavier price than their neighbors.”</span></a> Energy standards for appliances “cause prices to increase and push some low-income consumers out of the market.” Likewise, Diana Thomas says “regulation has a regressive effect: It redistributes wealth from lower-income households to higher-income households by causing lower-income households to pay for risk reduction worth more to the wealthy.”</p>
<p><span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.moneynews.com/Economy/Furchtgott-Roth-EPA-emission-carbon/2014/06/02/id/574557/">Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist for the Department of Labor</a></span> argues that new “cap and trade” environmental regulations “will reduce opportunities for the poorest Americans.” The regulations “impose real costs on the economy,” and deprive workers of  “the security of employment that comes from industrial activity.” Citing rent control, <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/stephanie-slade/2013/07/22/dc-and-new-yorks-real-estate-regulations-hurt-the-poor"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Stephanie Slade charges</span></a> that “<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">it’s liberals who continue to support laws that, whatever their intentions, have turned out to be disproportionately harmful to the poorest members of society.”</span></p>
<p style="color: #272727;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">As Patrick Fagan and Robert Rector observed nearly 20 years ago, it’s not exactly news that War on <a href="http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1996/06/bg1084nbsp-how-welfare-harms-kids"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Poverty programs such as Aid to Families With Dependent Children have been a bust</span></a>. </span>Welfare dependency “has a negative effect on the earnings and employment capacity of young men.” The more welfare income received in childhood, the lower the earnings as an adult, the very “income inequality” lamented by the Obama administration.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">Beyond the consequences of those laws and regulations stands the regulatory establishment and its enormous cost. As the late William F. Buckley observed, a tax dollar cannot travel to Washington DC, go out on the town, and return intact to the needy in the form of benefits. Even low-income workers must support the vast bureaucratic establishment churning out regulations that Paul Ryan charges are detrimental to the poor.</p>
<p><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">His plan would require agencies to </span>conduct a “distributional analysis” on proposed regulations to see if they would have a disproportionate economic effect on low-income households or low-wage workers.  He wants block grants to replace federal welfare programs, expand the Earned-Income Tax Credit and make it work better. Ryan wants to get rid of regressive regulation and emphasize “evidence-based policy-making.”</p>
<p>Some Democrats welcome Ryan’s initiative but Chris Van Hollen, ranking Democrat on the budget committee, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/24/paul-ryan-poverty_n_5616609.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">told reporters it was “nothing more than a block grant gussied up with some bells and whistles”</span></a> and “<span style="color: #272727;">would dramatically slash the resources available to help struggling families.”</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #272727;">Advocates of limited government might note that Ryan did </span>not announce plans to eliminate any federal agencies, not even the federal Department of Education, which dates from 1980 and was a payoff to the National Education Association for endorsing Jimmy Carter. Ryan wants to fix federal education funding and make it more flexible, so even if given the chance, his plan might not deliver. But as it gets the hearing it deserves, Americans might recall the back story, <span style="color: #272727;">the 50-year federal War on Poverty whose strategic weapons were federal spending and federal regulation.</span></p>
<p>On January 8, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson, famously declared a “War on Poverty.”  In his State of the Union address, LBJ said, <span style="color: #343434;">“Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.” </span>Fifty years later, those curious about how the war came out should consult Sasha Abramsky, leftist author of <i>The American Way of Poverty</i> and who also writes for the <i>Nation</i>. Abramsky concedes that LBJ’s war “failed,” and “not since the Great Depression have so many people been beaten down by vast, destructive forces.”</p>
<p>He wants Obama to do it all again, only more so, a War on Poverty Mark II.  The enemy is the anti-tax, anti-government movement that has managed to convince people “that taxes are a mugging rather than an investment.” In this vision, government regulations and government spending are always the solution, and Big Brother always knows best.</p>
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		<title>ObamaCare On the March</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/obamacare-on-the-march/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacare-on-the-march</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/obamacare-on-the-march/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:30:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[american health care]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[irs workers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Legislation]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[U.S.






Congress]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=55386</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A bad bill is passed by even worse means. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/f3bc80e69629408aa924ec70d1a3cd20.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55390" title="APTOPIX Health Care Overhaul" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/f3bc80e69629408aa924ec70d1a3cd20.jpg" alt="" width="410" height="398" /></a></p>
<p>It took a seedy campaign of intimidation, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/30/the-300-million-louisiana-purchase/">bribery</a>, and back-room deal-making worthy of Tammany Hall, but Democrats have nearly pulled off the radical transformation of the American health care system that they – if not the rest of America – so desperately desire.</p>
<p>With yesterday’s <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703775504575135440191025592.html">219-to-212 party-line House vote</a>, made possible by the last-minute collapse of a holdout block of anti-abortion Democrats led by Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak, the federal government’s intrusion into one-sixth of the economy is one step closer to becoming a reality. All it cost the Democratic majority was the prospect of fiscal responsibility, the pretense of bipartisanship, and any remaining confidence that the American public may have had in its elected representatives.</p>
<p>Sunday’s legislative “victory” was achieved despite the flaws of the House health care bill, which are by now well-documented. Of these the most notable is the staggering ten-year price tag for the legislation: $940 billion, complete with tax increases totaling $400 billion. Even in its enormity, that figure does not factor in the expensive new federal bureaucracy that the bill would create. For instance, some 16,500 new IRS workers will be <a href="http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=12179683">needed</a> to collect, examine and audit the new tax information that families and small businesses will have to provide to comply with the bill’s provisions. Nor does it include the penalties – up to $700 in some cases – that Americans will be forced to pay lest they fail to purchase insurance.</p>
<p>Billions in new entitlement spending may seem troubling, especially during an economic recession, but Democrats have sought to dismiss any anxiety about the health care bill’s effect on the deficit. To that end, Democrats spent the week gleefully touting the Congressional Budget Office’s projection that the House bill would reduce the deficit by $138 billion over ten years. If CBO projections could be taken at face value, that would be encouraging news. But as the <em>Washington Post</em> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/18/AR2010031805445.html">reported</a>, the real budget outlook is far more dire, since the CBO’s estimates are based on the expectation of savings and cuts that may not come to pass. Medicare is a prime example. While CBO estimates factor in cuts in Medicare reimbursements, such cuts are politically unlikely and, indeed, no Congress in recent history has dared to make them. Assuming that those cuts will take place this time around is little more than wishful thinking. As it stands, the health care overhaul seems more likely to confirm another of the CBO’s projections: that public debt will rise to 90 percent of GDP by 2020 under President Obama’s budget.</p>
<p>As awful as the substance of the House bill is, the process by which it was passed may be even worse. By embracing a series of shady procedural stratagems – from the dubiously constitutional “deem and pass,” in which the Senate version of the health care bill would be deemed to have passed without the formality of an actual vote, to “reconciliation,” usually reserved for budgets of bills that are already law – Democrats sowed widespread distrust and even alienated some media allies. At the height of the health care subterfuge, even the <em>Washington Post</em> was stirred to editorialize against the Democrats’ “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/15/AR2010031503156.html">unseemly</a>” tactics. If last night’s vote was, as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34767.html">suggested</a>, the conclusion of “a national conversation” on health care, it was a conversation carried on largely without the nation.</p>
<p>This go-it-alone arrogance, magnified with unprecedented media coverage, sheds light on the profound cynicism that has set in with the American public. A new NBC News/<em>Wall Street</em><em> Journal </em>survey finds that <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/wsjnbcpoll03162010.pdf#page=14">76 percent</a> of Americans do not trust the U.S. Congress. That distrust extends to health care. Polls show that the plurality of the American public opposes the health care reform efforts in Congress – a striking statistic when one considers that the need for the reform was one of the few original points of consensus in the health care debate. With their scorched-earth campaign to pass the bill, Democrats have almost singlehandedly destroyed a once-promising political landscape. The Tea Party protestors who flocked to Capitol Hill yesterday to voice their opposition were only the most visible sign of the public’s sour mood.</p>
<p>To be sure, ObamaCare is not yet the law of the land. The companion legislation to the House bill still needs approval in the Senate. There, the Democrats’ majority is far more tenuous, thanks to the recent of Massachusetts’s Scott Brown on the campaign pledge of opposing ObamaCare. But if the House vote sets any kind of precedent, it is that Democrats will stop at nothing to force through their signature legislation.</p>
<p>Whatever the ultimate outcome of the health care battle, the democratic process has clearly become a casualty. The American public is more cynical about its government that at any time in recent history. Next fall’s elections may yet bring a measure of retribution for the Democrats’ overreach. But by then the damage – all $940 billion of it – may be irreparably done.</p>
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		<title>What Republicans Lack</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/thomas-sowell/what-republicans-lack/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-republicans-lack</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/thomas-sowell/what-republicans-lack/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:00:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Thomas Sowell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Act]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[articulation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[awkward questions]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Bureau]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bureau of the census]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[case]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[disparities]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Robert Rector]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The homework that's necessary for the next match.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-46952" title="republican_party_logo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/republican_party_logo.gif" alt="republican_party_logo" width="450" height="338" /></p>
<p>Some people say that there is no real difference between Republicans and Democrats. Whether that is said because of being too lazy to examine the differences or because it makes some people feel exalted to say, in effect, &#8220;a plague on both your houses,&#8221; it is a dangerous self-indulgence.</p>
<p>When Republicans were in power, they acted too much like Democrats, with big spending and earmarks, lending weight to the notion that there is no real difference.</p>
<p>Among the differences between the parties is that Democrats are more articulate.</p>
<p>Admittedly, the Democrats have an easier case to make. It takes no great amount of thought, nor much in the way of persuasive powers, to sell the idea of government handing out benefits hither and yon. It is only when you stop and think about the consequences, for this generation and generations to come, that some grim questions arise.</p>
<p>But if Republicans don&#8217;t raise those awkward questions, and don&#8217;t take the trouble to explain what is wrong with government playing Santa Claus, then the Democrats can soar on a cloud of euphoria. Sometimes it doesn&#8217;t matter that you have a better product, if your competitors have better salesmen.</p>
<p>Republicans lag not only in the articulation department, they also lag in seeing the long-run importance of the federal bureaucracy. When the Democrats load the federal bureaucracy with liberals, those liberals stay on during Republican administrations and in many cases can shape the perceptions that reach the media and the public, by the way they present data, hire consultants and make grants.</p>
<p>The Bureau of the Census is a classic example. The tendentious way that data and pie charts are presented provides a steady stream of material for a political and media drumbeat about &#8220;disparities&#8221; that call for government intervention.</p>
<p>Data on income differences, for example, are presented in a way that suggests that the different income brackets represent enduring classes of people over time, when in fact other studies show that the vast majority of people in the lowest income brackets as of a given time rise out of those brackets over time.</p>
<p>More people from the bottom fifth end up in the top fifth than remain at the bottom.</p>
<p>Household income data are presented in ways which suggest that there is very little real improvement in the American people&#8217;s standard of living over time, and innumerable editorials and television commentaries have elaborated that theme. But per capita income data show far more improvement over time. The difference is that households have been getting smaller but one person always means one person.</p>
<p>Just by deciding what kind of data to present in what way, the Census Bureau has become, in effect, an adjunct of the liberal establishment, even when conservative Republicans are in control of the federal government. This is not necessarily deliberate political sabotage, just liberals being liberals.</p>
<p>Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has for years repeatedly exposed the fallacies of the inferences drawn from Census data. Yet when Republicans controlled the federal government— as they did for 12 consecutive years, beginning in 1981— did they try to appoint someone like Robert Rector to a position where they could put an end to tendentious statistics that promote misconceptions with political implications? Not at all.</p>
<p>Too many Republicans don&#8217;t even know their own party&#8217;s history. One painful consequence is that too many Republicans act as if they have to apologize for their party&#8217;s civil rights record— which is in fact better than that of the Democrats.</p>
<p>A higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It was Republicans whose &#8220;Philadelphia Plan&#8221; in the 1970s sought to break the construction unions&#8217; racial barriers that kept blacks out of skilled trades.</p>
<p>Just as boxers have to do training in the gym and roadwork before they are ready for a boxing match, Republicans need to do a lot of homework before they are ready for their next match against the Democrats.</p>
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