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Implementation of Obamacare
The admitted misconduct begs the question: Do we want the IRS to be in control of our medical histories? -
BOHEMIA, NY, May17 – The IRS already has the power to intrude into
the personal lives of every American, and its ability to do so going
forward will be significantly enhanced by the implementation of
Obamacare this year and next, according to Dan Weber, president of the
Association of Mature American Citizens.“The law gives the Internal Revenue Service new, unfettered access to sensitive medical records. It’s a pretty scary thought considering the revelations of misconduct. You’ve got to ask yourself this question: Do we want the IRS to be in control of our medical histories?”
The IRS plays a key role in the operations of Obamacare. It is responsible for managing the law’s financial provisions, including tax credits and tax increases, and for making sure that employers, employees and all Americans are in compliance with the law’s provisions by collecting specific data regarding medical coverage.
“But, if the Affordable Care Act was a train-wreck in the making, as Democratic Senator Max Baucus called it before the IRS scandal broke this week, it is now revealed that the legislation, in fact, may contain the seeds of its self-destruction,” Weber said.
“The scandal,” he added, “has fired up lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Perhaps they will get mad enough to do something to thwart the agency’s ability to provide oversight and enforcement of Obamacare.”
There is agreement among some observers that the IRS does not have enough of a budget to take on what they call “the gargantuan task” of administering Obamacare and, they say, the latest discovery of misconduct is not likely to win them any new friends in Congress. Thus, the Internal Revenue Service’s budget deficiencies will hamper, if not prevent the IRS from adequately fulfilling its critical role under Obamacare, particularly if the agency cannot get the levels of funding it needs.
Floyd Williams, a former legislative affairs director for the IRS who is now with a private Washington public policy strategies firm told the online news service, The Fiscal Times, that “when people look at funding the IRS they’re going to take into account everything that’s out there.” He added that “it’s no secret some in Congress have been trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, let alone limit IRS funding for enforcement.” And, he pointed out, that the “IRS has already suffered the past three years with a status quo budget, which basically is a reduction, especially if you look at people who retired and haven’t been able to be replaced. Now, you have sequestration coming up. All of that added together spells trouble for the IRS and tax law enforcement.”
In other words, the scandal could derail the Affordable Care Act, Weber noted, adding that it has “enhanced” mistrust of the agency among lawmakers who feel it should not be the sole repository of an individual’s most important information—one’s financial condition and one’s medical condition.
“The IRS admittedly used its authority to target Conservative organizations. It was a blatantly partisan breach of faith and, hopefully, upcoming Congressional hearings will uncover just how high up in the hierarchies of the agency and the Obama administration the conspiracy originated,” Weber said. “If we were skeptical about the ability of government bureaucrats to keep the faith with the tax-paying public before the IRS confessed to its corruption, how much more distrustful are we now as the agency gets ready to administer the rules and regulations of Obamacare.”
Weber concluded: “To paraphrase Ben Franklin, nothing in this life is certain except death and taxes. The Internal Revenue Service has always controlled how and when we pay taxes and now, under Obamacare, it would have the power to oversee the ways and means we deal with the task of avoiding death.”
NOTE TO EDITORS: Dan Weber is available for telephone interviews on this issue. Editors/reporters may contact John Grimaldi at 917-846-8485 or jpgrimaldi@verizon.net to set up a call.
ABOUT AMAC
The Association of Mature American Citizens [http://www.amac.us] is a vibrant, vital and conservative alternative to those organizations, such as AARP, that dominate the choices for mature Americans who want a say in the future of the nation. Where those other organizations may boast of their power to set the agendas for their memberships, AMAC takes its marching orders from its members. We act and speak on their behalf, protecting their interests, and offering a conservative insight on how to best solve the problems they face today.
On Rand Paul’s Diversity Comments
Via Jedediah Bila at Breitbart News
Senator Rand Paul recently said something at the New Hampshire GOP’s “Liberty Dinner” that has stirred some debate.
The New Hampshire Union Leader reports:
He also said the GOP needs to improve from within if it hopes to reclaim the White House. “We need to grow bigger. If you want to be the party of white people, we’re winning all the white votes,” he said. “We’re a diverse nation. We’re going to win when we look like America.”In a sense, he makes a valid point. If the GOP wants to be successful in election seasons, it needs to win votes from women, men, Hispanic-Americans, Caucasians, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, young people, senior citizens–you name it. A successful party appeals to people of diverse groups, whether we’re talking about gender, ethnicity, age, or otherwise.
It’s not divisive to point that out; it’s honest. Much like it’s honest to acknowledge–as I have many times–that the GOP hasn’t done proper outreach or marketing of issues for many years and has suffered as a result.
However, the more important point to be made has nothing to do with race. It has to do with ideas. The GOP is going to win when a) it consistently stands for ideas b) promotes those ideas via smart marketing and proper outreach and c) supports candidates who articulate those ideas well and have the “It” factor that, whether you like it or not, gets many people to listen to what they’re saying in the first place.
When it comes to conservatism in particular, its biggest challenge is that, for many, the ideals of personal responsibility, self-sufficiency, and limited government simply aren’t appealing these days. That’s the truth. It’s not about race; many people (of all races) have simply come to prefer big government with all its promises.
So, if you want to win elections, it’s not just about articulating your vision; it’s about changing hearts and minds. That’s very hard work. It means stepping away from preach-to-the-choir techniques. It means a willingness to hear people’s concerns, rather than shout about how you’re right and they’re wrong. And it means talking to people who disagree with you without name-calling or other childish nonsense that may win you points with your “team,” but will inspire absolutely no one on the other “team” (or in the middle) to hop on over to your side.
So, if the conversation is about winning, let’s have it. But let’s be honest. For me, that conversation shouldn’t be about race. Rand Paul, do you agree with me?
Follow Jedediah on Twitter @JedediahBila
The Tax Reform Moment?
by
John Hayward – Rupert Murdoch took some heat for observing on Twitter,
“Growing IRS scandal makes perfect case for flat tax and abolition all
deductions. Nothing could be fairer and abuse free.”
Several responses took Murdoch to task
because the abusive treatment of certain groups applying for tax-exempt
status, based on their politics, doesn’t have any direct relationship
with the progressive income tax system, or plans to replace it.
But if I might be a bit more charitable to Murdoch, I think he was trying to make the broader case that a Flat Tax system would greatly reduce the size and power of the IRS. If his suggestion is taken literally, and all deductions are abolished, it follows that no one would be applying for any sort of tax-exempt status at all. One of the complaints raised by the groups targeted in the IRS scandal is that it put them at a competitive disadvantage against liberal groups, which sailed right through the Tax Exempt Organizations unit and secured approval in a matter of weeks – even when they were actually violating tax law at the time, as in the case of the Barack H. Obama Foundation, run by the President’s half-brother. This isn’t just a scandal about those who were given a hard time; it’s also about those who weren’t.
Take all of this power and discretion away from the IRS, reduce it to processing a massive pile of postcard-sized tax returns every quarter, and you won’t have any more scandals like the one currently gripping Washington. You also won’t have as many opportunities for politicians to control our behavior or reward favored constituencies by modifying the tax code in countless non-scandalous, but nonetheless corrupt ways.
The tax system really should be the fairest, flattest, most efficient method of funding the government, dispersing the burden as evenly and widely as possible. It shouldn’t provide new, surreptitious methods for the government to exercise power over us. And the tax burden should be clearly understood by every American, not hidden with quick-and-painless paycheck deductions everyone forgets about, or concealed behind impenetrable layers of pass-through corporate taxation. No citizen of the United States fully understands his tax burden at the moment, and of course the government feels no compulsion to limit its spending to anywhere near the amount of revenue it takes in.
If we don’t understand these vital attributes of government, how can we truly exercise our electoral freedom by casting fully informed votes? Our political rhetoric is filled with talk of “choice.” Choice is only meaningful in the presence of accurate information about costs, benefits, and consequences. That’s why business entities can be sued for fraud – when they lie to attract customers, those customers are not freely choosing to engage in commerce with them. There are no more thoroughly defrauded “customers” on Earth than U.S. taxpayers, who actually were referred to as customers by Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller during House Ways and Means Committee hearings last Friday.
The Fair Tax, which would shift the burden of taxation to a national sales tax, would also strip Washington of powers that invite political abuse. Politicians love to play a little game where they introduce new taxes by claiming they’ll only apply to a few ultra-rich people, but they end up affecting nearly everyone. The Alternative Minimum Tax was sold this way – it was only supposed to hit one hundred and fifty-five super-wealthy individuals when it was introduced in the late 1960s, but now it slams into more than 30 million people per year. The income tax itself was originally presented as a very modest surtax on the richest Americans.
Once a new tax is firmly in place, the rules change, and suddenly everyone is getting soaked… and then a growing constituency at the bottom is inexorably removed from the tax rolls, becoming a reliable constituency for Big Government benefits they don’t see themselves having to pay for. They’re not entirely correct in that belief, because they still end up paying a lot of hidden taxes, but they see themselves as “free riders.”
There would be no way to play such a game with the Fair Tax, or the kind of simple Flat Tax Rupert Murdoch endorsed, because cranking up the tax rates would affect just about everyone. A standard deduction would leave a fairly small group without skin in the Flat Tax game, but the resistance to rate increases from the far larger population that did pay them – by writing a check to the IRS every quarter – would be formidable. Almost the entire populace would be very skeptical of Fair Tax rate increases, which they would pay every time they made a purchase.
Both Flat and Fair Tax systems could be corrupted, much as the relatively simple income tax imposed on our great-grandparents was twisted into the smoke-filled labyrinth of shadows and pitfalls we currently navigate. Special exemptions could be introduced, a flat system with only one or two rates could be made more “progressive,” special Fair Tax rates could be created for certain goods favored or disdained by the political class… there are lots of ways any system could go wrong.
But maybe the current atmosphere of scandal and abuse surrounding the IRS will help Americans realize they’re currently living in just about the worst of all possible worlds, short of collectivist horror shows like communism. Almost everyone reading this is technically a “tax criminal,” in violation of some obscure requirement. Expensive professional assistance is necessary for even the most well-meaning business owner to comply with the law, and even the IRS itself gets tax questions wrong with frightening regularity. A great deal of our behavior is conducted – or abandoned – in fear of the tax code. Bad investments are made to take advantage of its loopholes, while good money is sheltered instead of finding productive opportunities.
And now we’re facing the ugly realization that our political discourse – held in reverence by most Americans, at every point on the political spectrum – has been corrupted by the IRS. We should not hesitate to bring the miscreants to justice, no matter what office they hold, but we should also do some hard thinking about the offices themselves.
But if I might be a bit more charitable to Murdoch, I think he was trying to make the broader case that a Flat Tax system would greatly reduce the size and power of the IRS. If his suggestion is taken literally, and all deductions are abolished, it follows that no one would be applying for any sort of tax-exempt status at all. One of the complaints raised by the groups targeted in the IRS scandal is that it put them at a competitive disadvantage against liberal groups, which sailed right through the Tax Exempt Organizations unit and secured approval in a matter of weeks – even when they were actually violating tax law at the time, as in the case of the Barack H. Obama Foundation, run by the President’s half-brother. This isn’t just a scandal about those who were given a hard time; it’s also about those who weren’t.
Take all of this power and discretion away from the IRS, reduce it to processing a massive pile of postcard-sized tax returns every quarter, and you won’t have any more scandals like the one currently gripping Washington. You also won’t have as many opportunities for politicians to control our behavior or reward favored constituencies by modifying the tax code in countless non-scandalous, but nonetheless corrupt ways.
The tax system really should be the fairest, flattest, most efficient method of funding the government, dispersing the burden as evenly and widely as possible. It shouldn’t provide new, surreptitious methods for the government to exercise power over us. And the tax burden should be clearly understood by every American, not hidden with quick-and-painless paycheck deductions everyone forgets about, or concealed behind impenetrable layers of pass-through corporate taxation. No citizen of the United States fully understands his tax burden at the moment, and of course the government feels no compulsion to limit its spending to anywhere near the amount of revenue it takes in.
If we don’t understand these vital attributes of government, how can we truly exercise our electoral freedom by casting fully informed votes? Our political rhetoric is filled with talk of “choice.” Choice is only meaningful in the presence of accurate information about costs, benefits, and consequences. That’s why business entities can be sued for fraud – when they lie to attract customers, those customers are not freely choosing to engage in commerce with them. There are no more thoroughly defrauded “customers” on Earth than U.S. taxpayers, who actually were referred to as customers by Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller during House Ways and Means Committee hearings last Friday.
The Fair Tax, which would shift the burden of taxation to a national sales tax, would also strip Washington of powers that invite political abuse. Politicians love to play a little game where they introduce new taxes by claiming they’ll only apply to a few ultra-rich people, but they end up affecting nearly everyone. The Alternative Minimum Tax was sold this way – it was only supposed to hit one hundred and fifty-five super-wealthy individuals when it was introduced in the late 1960s, but now it slams into more than 30 million people per year. The income tax itself was originally presented as a very modest surtax on the richest Americans.
Once a new tax is firmly in place, the rules change, and suddenly everyone is getting soaked… and then a growing constituency at the bottom is inexorably removed from the tax rolls, becoming a reliable constituency for Big Government benefits they don’t see themselves having to pay for. They’re not entirely correct in that belief, because they still end up paying a lot of hidden taxes, but they see themselves as “free riders.”
There would be no way to play such a game with the Fair Tax, or the kind of simple Flat Tax Rupert Murdoch endorsed, because cranking up the tax rates would affect just about everyone. A standard deduction would leave a fairly small group without skin in the Flat Tax game, but the resistance to rate increases from the far larger population that did pay them – by writing a check to the IRS every quarter – would be formidable. Almost the entire populace would be very skeptical of Fair Tax rate increases, which they would pay every time they made a purchase.
Both Flat and Fair Tax systems could be corrupted, much as the relatively simple income tax imposed on our great-grandparents was twisted into the smoke-filled labyrinth of shadows and pitfalls we currently navigate. Special exemptions could be introduced, a flat system with only one or two rates could be made more “progressive,” special Fair Tax rates could be created for certain goods favored or disdained by the political class… there are lots of ways any system could go wrong.
But maybe the current atmosphere of scandal and abuse surrounding the IRS will help Americans realize they’re currently living in just about the worst of all possible worlds, short of collectivist horror shows like communism. Almost everyone reading this is technically a “tax criminal,” in violation of some obscure requirement. Expensive professional assistance is necessary for even the most well-meaning business owner to comply with the law, and even the IRS itself gets tax questions wrong with frightening regularity. A great deal of our behavior is conducted – or abandoned – in fear of the tax code. Bad investments are made to take advantage of its loopholes, while good money is sheltered instead of finding productive opportunities.
And now we’re facing the ugly realization that our political discourse – held in reverence by most Americans, at every point on the political spectrum – has been corrupted by the IRS. We should not hesitate to bring the miscreants to justice, no matter what office they hold, but we should also do some hard thinking about the offices themselves.
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