Embracing ObamaCare caused Colorado budget crunch

The newest dubious justification for weakening Colorado’s limits on government spending is “our aging population.”

The spending lobby seeks to frighten senior citizens by telling them that the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) in our state constitution “hampers the ability to fund key programs.”

Parents are told that public schools are in a squeeze because state government needs more money.  But ask why social welfare spending is growing three times as fast as spending on education, and you’re told it’s because Medicaid has enrolled more children and senior citizens – as if that happened merely by chance.

Those explanations ignore some inconvenient facts. (more…)

Our schools are strangled by data-collection overload

When discussion of K-12 education focuses on partisan funding battles, we sometimes ignore measures to improve our schools that ought to receive bipartisan support.

Over the past two decades, lawmakers, as well as state and federal bureaucrats, have handed down overwhelming mandates for collection of information about students and teachers. (No doubt, I voted for some of these mandates during my years in the Colorado Senate.) (more…)

Easy access to entitlements undermines Americans’ work ethic

“Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933.

Although sometimes considered the father of the American entitlement state, FDR understood that our sense of achievement and self-sufficiency comes from our work.

Forty years later, another Democrat, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan likewise grasped the degrading affect of welfare on those it supposedly benefits:  “It cannot too often be stated that the issue of welfare is not what it costs those who provide it, but what it costs those who receive it.”

In the past 50 years, our federal government has made it increasingly easy to collect a check for doing nothing.  We are now witnessing the rotting fruits of those policies falling from the tree of good intentions and spoiling our society from within. (more…)

Udall’s narrow view of choice is a bad joke

Fortune cookies and Mark Udall have more in common than Colorado’s Democrat U.S. Senator might like to admit.

You probably know the juvenile prank of reading the message inside a fortune cookie – like “Now is the time to try something new” – and then adding “. . . in bed” to give it an off-color twist.

Sadly, Udall’s campaign rhetoric is strikingly similar.

The 64-year-old Udall hasn’t had a for-profit job in more than 30 years. But he’s made a political career by telling ordinary Americans that he and his Washington cronies know better than the rest of us about everything from educating our children to the type of vehicle we drive.

Ironically, he says in his campaign commercials that “each of us has the freedom to make our own choices, to live life on our own terms.  That you have the right to be an individual.”

If Udall were honest, he would have added “. . . about sex” after each of those clauses because he doesn’t seem to appreciate freedom elsewhere. (more…)

A dim view of ‘rights’

Liberty is something you would expect liberals to understand.  Instead, the liberal view of liberty is backward, confusing rights with entitlements.

Rights and freedom should be synonymous.  Authentic rights can be enjoyed without someone else’s permission and without imposing a burden on someone else’s liberty – including their liberty to use the fruits of their labors however they please.

Liberals also believe that they enjoy the sole prerogative to define which freedoms are truly important – primarily those related to sex and drugs.  Other freedoms, they say, are not so important – e.g., the right to self-defense, freedom of religion, the right to own and enjoy your property, freedom of association, educational choice, or freedom to support the candidate or cause of your choice. (more…)

Let’s not be The Stupid Party, again!

It’s been said there are two political parties – The Evil Party and The Stupid Party.  Take a few minutes to read the following, and then decide which label fits.

Four years ago, a group backed by Democrat billionaires Tim Gill and Pat Stryker spent $500,000 to help a virtually-unknown candidate, Dan Maes, rise from obscurity to win the Republican primary for governor.

Maes narrowly upset former Congressman Scott McInnis, 50.7% to 49.3%.

So why did Democrats – even very wealthy ones with money to burn – spend a half-million dollars to influence the Republican primary?  Obviously, because they thought Maes would be easier for the Democrat candidate to beat.

They were right. (more…)

ObamaCare chains more of U.S. to government dole

What sets Americans apart from people in so many other countries is that we actually like working.  No, every job isn’t fun, but Americans understand the dignity that comes with work.  We achieve a sense of self-reliance by producing something worthwhile, creatively using our unique talents, and providing security and opportunity for ourselves and our families.

When the Congressional Budget Office reported that ObamaCare would push 2.3 million people out of the workforce, all but the most blindly partisan understood this to be bad news.

The ObamaCare spin machine then proceeded to tell us that bad news is good news, up is down, and less is more.

“Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance,” lectured Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat leader in Congress.

Well, Ms. Pelosi, why stop at health insurance?  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people didn’t have to work in order to eat, own a home, or drive a car?  Then we could all just go fishing.

Except that somebody has to pay for all of this.

Under ObamaCare that “somebody” is increasingly young people.  Already burdened by the costs of college loans, home mortgages and car payments, young people now see their health insurance premiums increasing (often by 60 to 250 percent) and their out-of-pocket costs soaring, too. (more…)

What ObamaCare means for rural Colorado

Whether by design or coincidence, rural residents can expect to take it in the pocketbook as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka “ObamaCare”) takes effect over the next 15 months.

Insurance exchanges, for those wanting to buy insurance, open on October 1 of this year.  In 2014, everyone is required to buy “qualified” insurance coverage or pay a penalty to the IRS.

However, the new law’s impact on for people in rural areas isn’t the same as for those in urban areas.

According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, rural residents are more likely to purchase their own coverage through the individual market or to be covered by employers with less than 50 employees.

Individuals under 35 are now experiencing premium increases of 40% and higher.  Others are finding that insurance plans they’ve used for years are being discontinued because politicians and bureaucrats have deemed them inadequate.

Rural residents are also more likely to be covered by PPO plans because HMOs are seldom offered in rural areas.  Under ObamaCare’s health insurance tax (or “HIT” tax), PPOs pay double the tax charged to HMOs and self-funded plans aren’t taxed at all. (more…)

Hickenlooper: the governor that might have been

John Hickenlooper had a chance to bring a breath of fresh air to the governor’s office.

Imminently likable and with a charmed political career, he could have been the rare maverick moderate Democrat – strong enough and bold enough to be a governor for all Colorado.  He could have been the adult in the room when liberal legislators ran amok on the lunatic fringe.

For two years, he largely fit the bill.  With a Republican majority in the state House offset by Democrats controlling the Senate, playing the centrist required little effort.

This year, however, he has been all too reminiscent of his feckless predecessor, signing virtually any bill on the wacky wish list of the loony Left. (more…)

Republicans are right to draw line on taxes

The culture of Washington is one of compromise.  Go along.  Get along.  Get something done – good, bad or otherwise.

Sometimes compromise is necessary.  When the levers of power are divided, reality dictates two choices: live with the status quo or do some “horse trading” in order to make changes that are marginally better.

When Republicans in Congress compromised on the so-called fiscal cliff, they acknowledged that Barack Obama won re-election, in part, by campaigning on the idea of raising taxes on “the rich.”

Republicans fared remarkably well on that compromise.  By conceding a tax increase on those who make more than $400,000 a year, Republicans secured most of the 2003 income tax cuts that otherwise would have expired.

That brings us to the dreaded “sequester,” which President Obama’s White House concocted but now wants to disavow.  As president, Obama presides over annual deficits of more than $1 trillion – borrowing 30 cents of every dollar spent – but suggests that to cut a mere $85 billion (just over two percent) from a $3.7 trillion budget would result in calamity. (more…)