Peter Ferrara is General Counsel for the American Civil Rights Union and Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Institute for Policy Innovation. He served as a senior staff member in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and has practiced law with firms on Wall Street and in Washington, DC. He wrote the first book for the Cato Institute providing a comprehensive intellectual foundation for a personal account option for Social Security, Social Security: The Inherent Contradiction (1980), and has continued to write on that concept in further books, studies and articles for Cato, the Heritage Foundation, the National Center for Policy Analysis, the Family Research Council, the U.S Chamber of Commerce, and a wide range of other institutions and publications.
Peter Ferrara
The Obamacare Deficit Fraud
by Peter FerraraPresident Obama has been barnstorming the country saying that CBO scores his health care takeover plan as reducing the deficit by over $100 billion in the first 10 years, and by almost a trillion dollars over the second 10 years. What is that based on?
Wading deep into documents available from CBO and the House and Senate Budget Committees reveals that the claim that Obamacare, in the form of the Senate health bill Democrats are now trying to deem through the House, would reduce the deficit is based on the assumption of an immediate 21% cut in payments to doctors and hospitals under Medicare. But that is just the beginning.
The growth of these payments would be arbitrarily limited over time, so this cut would effectively become bigger and bigger. For the second 10 years, the claim that Obamacare would reduce the deficit by close to a trillion dollars is based on assumed Medicare cuts over those years of over $2 trillion.
This would cause havoc and chaos in health care for America’s seniors. They would often not be able to find doctors, specialists and hospitals to provide needed health care. Most enjoying superior coverage from Medicare Advantage plans would lose that coverage, as indicated by the Chief Actuary for Medicare. Investment in new health care technology, new breakthrough medical treatments and services, and new miracle cure drugs would dry up, which has already started.
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Stopping the Runaway Congress
by Peter FerraraThe recall of New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez took a step forward yesterday with a promising oral argument in New Jersey state court. The New Jersey Constitution expressly provides for the recall of members of Congress representing the state in a provision adopted by a 75% favorable vote of the people in 1995. The New Jersey state legislature then expressly provided by statute for the procedures for such a recall.
The Committee to Recall Robert Menendez filed papers for the circulation of their petitions to begin last September. But the Secretary of State, who has no authority to issue rulings on constitutional questions, nevertheless refused to approve them on the grounds that her own New Jersey state constitution must be unconstitutional under the federal constitution, which she said did not allow such recalls.
The three judge appellate panel considering yesterday whether the recall should proceed expressed reluctance to declare a provision of their own state’s constitution duly adopted by the people null and void. They also seemed receptive to the argument by the recall committee that they were only asking the court for an order for the circulation of petitions to proceed, and there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prohibits that. To the contrary, the U.S. Constitution protects the political expression involved in signing a petition calling for the recall of an elected official, and the petitioning of government for the redress of grievances.
If the recall committee gets the required signatures from over a million citizens calling for the recall of Senator Menendez, and the majority of citizens vote to recall him in a recall election, and the Senator decides to thumb his nose at the will of the people anyway, then the issue of whether state recalls of members of Congress are constitutional under the U.S. Constitution would be presented to the courts. But until then all that the New Jersey recall committee is asking for is the freedom of political expression involved in gathering recall petition signatures, and the U.S. Constitution protects rather than prohibits that.
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Covering the Uninsured Without Obamacare
by Peter FerraraWhat everyone needs to recognize before the Health Care Summit later today is that the uninsured can be covered at modest additional net cost without the government takeover of health care, government health care rationing, 100 new health control bureaucracies and programs, and trillion dollars in new taxes and spending (woefully underestimated) involved in Obamacare.
The lack of a clear safety net for the uninsured is what gives Democrats the political lift to keep coming back for socialized medicine. Republicans should advance the modest reforms necessary to establish a true safety net that will ensure that no one will be denied essential health care. Only that will permanently protect the health care of the American people from government takeover and control. Republicans should trumpet this point at the health care summit tomorrow.
Reform should start with Medicaid, which already spends over $400 billion a year providing substandard coverage for 50 million poor Americans. Congress should transform Medicaid to provide assistance to purchase private health insurance for all who otherwise could not afford coverage, ideally with health insurance vouchers.
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Throw the Bums Out: Let’s Take It On The Road
by Peter FerraraEighteen states provide for recall elections to remove state officials. Nine of those provide for the same for their Congressional representatives. But such a right of recall can and should be adopted in every state.
Ideally this would be done by amending the state constitution to provide for such recall elections. But it can be done through statute as well, with the New Jersey Uniform Recall Election Law as a good model.
The greatest opportunity is in the states that already provide for citizen initiatives to put state constitutional amendments or proposed statutes on the state ballot for a vote of the people for adoption. In these states, the citizens can act directly, without depending on the politicians to adopt a check on their own power.
The right of recall is desirable because it maintains democratic accountability to the people throughout the entire term of elected officials, rather than just at election time. This is more relevant now because increasingly we see an attitude among elected officials that they know best and the people are ignorant yahoos who should be ignored until they need to be fooled again at election time. The people need a right of recall to remove officials who display this anti-democratic attitude after they are elected.
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The Right of Recall
by Peter FerraraCongress is out of control. The public overwhelming opposes a government takedover of our health care. But Congressional leaders are telling us they don’t care – that they know best, and they’re going to pass it anyway.
We are getting the same attitude on other issues, from global warming regulation, to taxes, government spending, deficits, federal debt, energy policy, welfare, corporate bailouts, and beyond. Too many of our elected Members of Congress are making behind-closed-door deals and ignoring their constituents, calling them “yahoos,” “Nazis”,“and “tea-baggers.”
This isn’t American democracy — this is a shop-worn, elitist, authoritarianism closer to abuses we see in countries like Venezuela.
So, what would happen if the people could change this rotten situation?
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