WSJ.com - Obama, McCain, and Health-Care

2 related articles on the candidate's Health-Care proposals:

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Obama and Health-Care Equity

 

All in all, workers would come out ahead with the McCain plan. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, the average taxpayer would see his tax bill drop by $1,241 in 2009. 

 

Mr. Obama's chief economic adviser agrees with the McCain critique of the current system, or at least he once did. "This massive program of tax breaks is ineffective and regressive, wasting money on those who have health insurance while doing little for those who can barely afford it and nothing at all for those without it,"

On choice, portability, quality and especially equity, the McCain health plan is far superior to Mr. Obama's. The Democrat is merely offering Canada on the installment plan.

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: McCain Is the Real Health-Care Reformer

Mr. McCain recognizes that a large part of the problem is that the tax code favors employer-funded health insurance. The system, which began as a response to FDR's wage and price controls, is built on tax breaks that allow employers to buy health insurance with pretax dollars.

Mr. McCain doesn't want to scrap employer-based insurance. He would keep part of the tax deduction in place. But he wants to fundamentally change the way the system works and instead give the self-employed and individuals a tax break for buying their own insurance. There are several advantages to this approach:

WSJ.com - About That Middle-Class Tax Cut . . .

WSJ.com - Opinion: About That Middle-Class Tax Cut . . .

 

Mr. McCain could do worse than remind the middle class what happened to them the last time a charismatic Democratic candidate promised them a tax cut. While he's at it, he might also remind them how much more expensive it will be to send Barack Obama to the White House at a time when his fellow Democrats will have a majority in both houses of Congress.

 

Back when Mr. Clinton was campaigning for president in 1992, he made a pretty direct pitch: Raise taxes on people making more than $200,000, and use those revenues to fund tax relief for the "forgotten middle class."

 

Mr. Clinton, of course, won that election. And as the inauguration approached, he began backtracking from his promise...

 

WSJ.com - America and the New Financial World

WSJ.com - Opinion: America and the New Financial World

This should not be a partisan argument. It is perfectly fair to argue that wealthy corporations should pay a greater share of the tax base than struggling middle-class Americans. Fair, but not realistic. The U.S. government can no longer dictate to global capital. Once, when the U.S. was the engine of global growth, when the world needed Wall Street for funding, capital could be taxed and controlled by the fiat of the U.S. government. No longer. The U.S. may have the will; it does not have the power.

The current debate in Washington gives no indication that this reality is understood. Both sides of the aisle are susceptible to a false sense of American economic sovereignty. Companies and countries flush with cash increasingly view U.S. laws, regulations and attitudes as undue burdens. As consumer activity accelerates outside the U.S. and Europe, and as financial centers spring up elsewhere, there is increasingly less inclination and less need for the world to go either to Wall Street or to Main Street.

 

WSJ.com - Not Everyone Should Own a Home

WSJ.com - Opinion: Not Everyone Should Own a Home

Maybe only a friendly foreigner could say this. But America needs to realize that not everyone can own a home. The American Dream of home ownership for all is a fraud. Politicians who pimped this dream created an unsustainable mortgage industry whose collapse is only surprising because it didn't happen earlier. America's mortgage industry will not recover, nor deserve to recover, unless it is prepared to challenge this politically unpalatable reality.

America has a long and undistinguished history of populist politicians stacking the cards against lenders and in favor of risky homeownership... If socially laudable but economically reckless laws cause entirely predictable problems for lenders, don't be surprised if taxpayers have to bail them out.

WSJ.com - The Tax Issue Still Resonates

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Tax Issue Still Resonates

Most Americans hold an intuitive belief that one of the most effective ways to keep government in its appropriate place is to limit its access to our wallets. They have a well-grounded, experience-based suspicion that if government can take anything it wants from some (high-income) people, it can, and most likely will, take it from everyone else, too. They are unenthusiastic about massive new spending because they understand tax increases both feed government and whet its appetite for more.

The tax issue has lost its political punch in the eyes of some commentators, but not among voters. So the presidential candidates recognize this year's election could hinge on who better convinces Americans that he has the right plan to cut taxes.

 

WSJ.com - McCain Is Right On Interstate Health Insurance

WSJ.com - Opinion: McCain Is Right On Interstate Health Insurance

A recent kerfuffle between Mr. Obama and Republican presidential candidate John McCain concerned the interstate purchase of health insurance. Mr. McCain wants to allow people to buy health insurance across state lines. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, opposes the idea and seems to believe it would create an unsafe, unregulated health-insurance market.

Mr. McCain backs legislation sponsored by Arizona Rep. John Shadegg. Known as the Health Care Choice Act, it would allow individuals living in one state to purchase health insurance being sold to people living in other states. The policy would still have to meet the regulations of the state in which it is being sold, and would be subject to additional federal oversight.

Creating an interstate option for individuals to purchase health insurance doesn't solve every problem faced by the 45 million Americans who are uninsured. But the choice isn't between a regulated or unregulated health-insurance market. The choice is between an overregulated market favored by Mr. Obama and a regulated market favored by Mr. McCain that provides more options to help individuals afford health coverage. 

 

WSJ.com - Bill v. Barack on Banks

WSJ.com - Opinion: Bill v. Barack on Banks

A running cliché of the political left and the press corps these days is that our current financial problems all flow from Congress's 1999 decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 that separated commercial and investment banking. Barack Obama has been selling this line every day. Bill Clinton signed that "deregulation" bill into law, and he knows better.

As for the sins of "deregulation" more broadly, this is a political fairy tale. The least regulated of our financial institutions -- hedge funds -- have posed the least systemic risks in the current panic. The big investment banks that got into the most trouble could have made the same mortgage investments before 1999 as they did afterwards. One of their problems was that Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns weren't diversified enough....

Mr. Obama's "deregulation" trope may be good politics, but it's bad history and is dangerous if he really believes it. The U.S. is going to need a stable, innovative financial system after this panic ends, and we won't get that if Mr. Obama and his media chorus think the answer is to return to Depression-era rules amid global financial competition. Perhaps the Senator should ask the former President for a briefing.

 

WSJ.com - Debate Questions for Joe Biden

WSJ.com - Opinion: Debate Questions for Joe Biden

 

Softballs for the foreign policy 'expert.'

WSJ.com - Obama's Leftism

WSJ.com - Opinion: Obama's Leftism

 

Nonpartisanship does not just mean Democrats coaching Little League, lovely as that is, but cooperating with members of the other party in developing compromise solutions to national problems. The Senate has a particularly rich tradition of such bipartisanship, but Mr. Obama appears never to have participated in it. On the contrary: according to Congressional Quarterly, which measures how often each member votes in accordance with or at variance from the majority of his own party, Mr. Obama has compiled one of the most partisan of all voting records.

 

Throughout his Senate career, according to Americans for Democratic Action, the dean of liberal advocacy groups, ... Mr. Obama voted to ADA's approval more than 98% of the time.

 

In sum, Mr. Obama comes to us from a background farther to the left than any presidential nominee since George McGovern, or perhaps ever. This makes him an extremely unlikely leader to bridge the divides of party, ideology or, for that matter, race.

WSJ.com - The Public Deserves a Better Deal

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Public Deserves a Better Deal

 

There is a better alternative to stabilize the markets: Invest the $700 billion of taxpayer money in senior preferred stock of the troubled financial institutions that pose systemic risks. Let's call this the "Preferred plan." 

This mechanism -- purchases of senior preferred stock with warrants in troubled institutions -- addresses the problems with the Treasury plan. The financial market is stabilized, companies get recapitalized, failures are avoided, debt securities are supported, and time is gained for illiquid assets to mature.

The institutions continue to function, their cost of funding will decline as equity capital increases, and innocent third parties like bank depositors, broker/dealer clients and insurance-policy holders are all protected. The only difference is that potential losses are kept with the shareholders where they belong.

Under a Preferred plan, the shareholders of the firms who created the problems bear the first loss. Who do you think should pay?

WSJ.com - Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess

WSJ.com - Opinion: Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess

Many monumental errors and misjudgments contributed to the acute financial turmoil in which we now find ourselves. Nevertheless, the vast accumulation of toxic mortgage debt that poisoned the global financial system was driven by the aggressive buying of subprime and Alt-A mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities, by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The poor choices of these two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) -- and their sponsors in Washington -- are largely to blame for our current mess.

The same politicians who today decry the lack of intervention to stop excess risk taking in 2005-2006 were the ones who blocked the only legislative effort that could have stopped it.

WSJ.com - Give Me That Old-Time Religion

WSJ.com - Opinion: Give Me That Old-Time Religion

Once we're done imposing Spartan discipline on the dining rooms of Wall Street, how about some of the same for the halls and classrooms of the average inner-city high school? A nation in panic at the sight of banks imploding has yawned for years while the public-school system melted down.

A handful of Supreme Court decisions going back 40 years relaxed standards of oversight for dress codes, comportment, speech and expulsion, and the average school principal or teacher threw in the towel on daily discipline. Not my job.

This election may be won by whichever man looks better riding an economic surfboard the next month, but the campaign's undercurrents are pushing the basics back to the surface.

More than opportunism has landed this presidential campaign in places that represent standards, like Saddleback in California and Messiah in Pennsylvania. People want standards again because they work -- in business, in schools, in daily life.

WSJ.com - Putin Is Ruining Russia's Economy

WSJ.com - Opinion: Putin Is Ruining Russia's Economy

With their reliable business partners in the West, the Kremlin has opened up a lucrative market for what could be called democracy offsets. In exchange for oil and gas from Russia, they provide democratic credentials and pretend Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev are elected officials rather than mafia bosses.

Until Russia has a government that is accountable to its citizens, no company or individual will be safe here. The silver lining of the meltdown will be the weeding out of so many of the foreign and domestic profiteers who greedily abetted Mr. Putin's drive to turn Russia into a dictatorship. But there are still many who hope that all will be back to business as usual once the dust settles. Apparently they think the show must go on, even though many of the lead actors have left the stage -- and the theater itself is ablaze.

WSJ.com - Will McCain Waste Palin?

WSJ.com - Opinion: Will McCain Waste Palin?*

The media is turning the news into a presidential video game. "Hurricane Ike" or "Wall Street Meltdown" appears onscreen, and the media boots up Barack Obama and John McCain to see how well they talk the problem. Mostly they are speaking gobbledygook about things they barely understand. Whatever a credit default swap is, I'm against it. The public is left to wonder if they are voting for a commentator in chief or commander in chief.

You say Sarah Palin doesn't have enough "experience" to run Washington? Washington is barely fit to be run.

The problem isn't standard political corruption. The problem is that the $2.8 trillion federal budget is a vast ocean of Beltway pilot fish feeding off scraps from the whale -- lawyers, lobbyists, ex-Members of Congress. No one runs the Sea of Washington. It's too big, too deep.

WSJ.com - Democrats Still Aren't Serious About Drilling

WSJ.com - Opinion: Democrats Still Aren't Serious About Drilling

 

Democrats are back in Washington and claiming that they want to do something about oil prices.  But the problem is that their plan...will not produce a single drop of oil. 

Indeed, incessant legal and administrative challenges make true the Democrat claim that oil from newly opened areas will not reach the market for years. These groups make use of a wide range of laws and regulations to challenge development. And they will make sure that the Democrats' proposal is meaningless.

We're told that the Democrats now favor drilling. That they have seen the light after feeling the heat all summer. What's really happening is we're mid-way through a political hoax.

 

WSJ.com - Comparing Obama and McCain On Public Service

WSJ.com - Opinion: Comparing Obama and McCain On Public Service

Both John McCain and Barack Obama exhorted Americans to dedicate themselves to public service in an appearance at Columbia University on Thursday, to mark the seventh anniversary of 9/11. But Americans need no lectures from politicians to participate in their nation's civic life. They need them to stay out of the way. Between the two, Sen. Obama is far less likely to do so.

WSJ.com - Bush's Lonely Decision

WSJ.com - Opinion: Bush's Lonely Decision

 

"The War Within," the fourth installment in Bob Woodward's account of the Bush Presidency.

 

As is often the case with the Washington Post stalwart, the reporting is better than the analysis, which reflects the Beltway conventional wisdom of a dogmatic and incurious President. But even as a (very) rough draft of history, we read Mr. Woodward's book as an instructive profile in Presidential decision-making. 

The success of the surge in pacifying Iraq has been so swift and decisive that it's easy to forget how difficult it was to find the right general, choose the right strategy, and muster the political will to implement it. It is also easy to forget how many obstacles the State and Pentagon bureaucracies threw in Mr. Bush's way, and how much of their bad advice he had to ignore, especially now that their reputations are also benefiting from Iraq's dramatic turn for the better. 

WSJ.com - Good Judges Are More Important Than Ever

WSJ.com - Opinion: Good Judges Are More Important Than Ever

Democrats have often caricatured conservatives' concern with judges as part of what they consider an "obsession" with abortion. In fact, over the last 40 years judicial activism has brought the courts to the center of national policy making in virtually all aspects of life.

All nominees must be decent human beings that meet the highest standard of competence, honesty and integrity. But they must judge neutrally, without fear or favor, and without regard to what interests may be before them and their personal feelings for the litigants or the causes they may represent. Justice and the rule of law demand no less. The Constitution and laws must be interpreted as they were written, not as judges think they should have been written.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution believed that the judiciary would be the "least dangerous branch" because the judges commanded neither purse nor sword, and would exercise judgment and not will. In order to keep faith with the Constitution they drafted, all Americans, whatever their policy preferences, should agree that this is the judiciary's proper role, and that foreign and defense policy must be left to the politically accountable president and Congress.

WSJ.com - The Foreign Policy Difference

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Foreign Policy Difference

 

[The Obama candidacy] can be reckoned as the sharpest break yet with the national consensus over American foreign policy after World War II. This is not only a matter of Sen. Obama's own sensibility; the break with the consensus over American exceptionalism and America's claims and burdens abroad is the choice of the activists and elites of the Democratic Party who propelled Mr. Obama's rise.

Mr. Obama truly believes that he can offer the world beyond America's shores his biography, his sympathies with strangers. In the great debate over anti-Americanism and its sources, the two candidates couldn't be more different. Mr. Obama proceeds from the notion of American guilt: We called up the furies, he believes. Our war on terror and our war in Iraq triggered more animus. He proposes to repair for that, and offers himself (again, the biography) as a bridge to the world.

WSJ.com - Yes, Palin Did Stop That Bridge

WSJ.com - Opinion: Yes, Palin Did Stop That Bridge

 

Mrs. Palin's leadership and record of reform stands well above that of Mr. Obama.

Mrs. Palin used her veto pen to slash more local projects than any other governor in the state's history. She cut nearly 10% of Alaska's budget this year, saving state residents $268 million.

Mrs. Palin also killed the infamous Bridge to Nowhere in her own state. Yes, she once supported the project: But after witnessing the problems created by earmarks for her state and for the nation's budget, she did what others like me have done: She changed her position and saved taxpayers millions. Even the Alaska Democratic Party credits her with killing the bridge.

Mrs. Palin's record here is solid and inspiring. She will help Mr. McCain shut down the congressional favor factory, and she has a record to prove it. Actions mean something. You can't just make stuff up.

WSJ.com - The Spending Explosion

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Spending Explosion

 

Here's a prediction: The media will report today that the federal budget deficit is big and getting bigger. What most of them won't report, alas, is that the cause of these deficits is an explosion in federal spending. The era of big government is back, bigger than ever. 

 

We hope Congress and the Presidential candidates don't obsess over the deficit per se, because the real fiscal drag from government comes from how much it spends, not how much it borrows.

The Bush tax cuts also aren't the budget problem. Until this year federal tax collections have been surging. In the four years after the 2003 tax cuts become law, tax receipts exploded by $785 billion.  

The fiscal blowouts have included a record farm bill, notwithstanding record farm income; an aid bill for distressed homeowners, extended unemployment benefits, and more generous veterans benefits....  Rather than sort through priorities, Congress is spending more on just about everything.

Meanwhile, remember that "pay as you go" spending promise that Speaker Nancy Pelosi made in 2006? We called it a ruse at the time, and the last two years have proved it.   

As they contemplate their choice for President, voters might want to consider which of the candidates is likely to be a check on Congressional appetites, rather than a facilitator. 

WSJ.com - Herbal Legends

WSJ.com - Herbal Legends

 

Usually, alternative medicine is a harmless distraction. And some treatments actually do offer benefits. But going outside modern medical practice also carries dangers. 

 

 "Alternative medicine is not so much about the treatments we discuss in this book," the authors write, "but about the therapeutic relationship. Many alternative practitioners develop an excellent relationship with their patients that helps to maximize the placebo effect of an otherwise useless treatment." To bring all treatments in line with rigorous science, an "excellent relationship" between doctor and patient is a good place to start.  

WSJ.com - Weekend at Henry's

WSJ.com - Opinion: Weekend at Henry's

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants to prop up the walking dead so the world keeps buying their mortgage-backed securities. His action may calm jittery credit markets, and it may get the companies through the current mortgage crisis -- albeit at enormous cost to American taxpayers. The tragedy is that he and Congress didn't act 18 months ago -- when the cost would have been far less -- and that he still isn't killing the Fannie and Freddie business model that has done so much damage. These corpses could still return to haunt us again.

WSJ.com - The Inflation Hurricane

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Inflation Hurricane

New Orleans is still far from being able to withstand a 100-year storm -- in other words, a storm that has a 1% chance of happening next year, a 10% chance in any given decade, and a 30% chance during the duration of a standard mortgage. An individual might accept these odds, but not a rational insurance company for any price most property owners would be willing to pay.

Final liability for more and more of life's risks is being assumed by the federal government, i.e., taxpayers. 

...if homeowners and businesses were expected to pay the full costs of the weather risks they take, we would see a lot more pristine coastline.... What is the function of insurance, after all, but to provide price signals to encourage safe choices over dangerous ones?

WSJ.com - Big Government Is a High-Stakes Affair

WSJ.com - Opinion: Big Government Is a High-Stakes Affair

The stakes are so high in this presidential election for a fundamental reason that doesn't get discussed nearly enough: The federal government is so large and powerful. In particular, any aggressive president and Congress acting together have it in their legal authority -- under our presently elasticized Constitution -- to exercise near complete control over the economy. A long line of judge-made law since the Supreme Court's New Deal era decision in Wickard v. Filburn (1942) says there is almost no limit, under the commerce clause of the Constitution, to the regulatory reach of the federal government.

Thus, a united president and Congress can, as a practical matter, do all or any of the following (plus much more): take your money and give it to someone else; tell businesses what to produce and sell, who to hire and what wages to pay; set all commodity, wholesale and retail prices; control all energy supplies, communication networks and financial markets; replace all private health-care with a government system; prescribe the curriculum for all schools; determine which students get a slot in elite universities; diminish political and other speech; and enroll all citizens above the age of 17 either in the military or in civilian corps for periodic instruction and service. Children could be required to spend the summer in government "youth" camps.