Obamacare's Medicaid Trap

While Members of Congress are arguing about defunding parts of Obamacare, the rubber is meeting the road in the states. Governors and state legislatures are sweating decisions about setting up government health care exchanges and expanding the Medicaid program.

While the offer of additional federal money for Medicaid is tempting for many governors and legislatures, it is a trap. And it is just one of the reasons Obamacare doesn’t work.

The Medicaid expansion is a crucial part of Obamacare that is supposed reduce the number of uninsured. But adding millions of people onto an already strained program doesn’t help anyone. The Medicaid program is already struggling to provide care to its core obligations—a diverse group of low-income children, disabled people, pregnant women, and seniors. So dumping more people into the program will make matters worse. Research shows that Medicaid enrollees already have worse access and outcomes than privately insured individuals.

This will have real effects on America’s needy, including children. Dr. Hal Scherz has seen the problems Medicaid creates firsthand. He practices in the only pediatric urology group in the state of Georgia, and more than half of his practice is made up of Medicaid patients.

But Medicaid already doesn’t cover the costs of many procedures, and expanding the program is only going to stretch the doctors’ even further—while they get paid less. It is unlikely that care providers like Dr. Scherz will be able to keep treating such high numbers of Medicaid patients under this scenario—which means less access to care for children who need it.

Thankfully, Georgia is not expanding Medicaid right now. But that doesn’t mean Medicaid is doing well, even in states that aren’t expanding. Due in part to low reimbursement, one in three doctors already refuses to accept new Medicaid patients.

Medicaid is a problem for patients—and it’s also a major problem for states that are struggling financially. As Heritage’s Nina Owcharenko explains:

Today, Medicaid consumes over 23 percent of state budgets, surpassing education as the largest state budget item. As Medicaid spending continues to rise, other important state priorities such as education, emergency services, transportation, and criminal justice are squeezed.

In fact, 40 out of the 50 states are projected to see higher costs—not savings—from expanding Medicaid.

Medicaid needs serious reforms to serve the people it was intended to serve. Expanding it under Obamacare is not the answer.

LEARN MORE:

Why the Obamacare Medicaid Expansion Is Bad for Taxpayers and Patients

MAPS: State Responses to Obamacare—Lawsuits, Medicaid Expansion, and Exchanges

STATE BY STATE: How Does Your State Fare in the Medicaid Expansion?

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/03/13/obamacare-medicaid-trap/?roi=echo3-14861649555-11803206-b140f39543548f53342ef86da46b2c08&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

Obamacare Health Application 'Time Consuming and Complex'

Applying for benefits under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul could be as daunting as doing your taxes.

The government's draft application runs 15 pages for a three-person family. An outline of the online version has 21 steps, some with additional questions.

Seven months before the Oct. 1 start of enrollment season for millions of uninsured Americans, the idea that getting health insurance could be as easy as shopping online at Amazon or Travelocity is starting to look like wishful thinking.

At least three major federal agencies, including the IRS, will scrutinize your application. Checking your identity, income and citizenship is supposed to happen in real time, if you apply online.

That's just the first part of the process, which lets you know if you qualify for financial help. The government asks to see what you're making because Obama's Affordable Care Act is means-tested, with lower-income people getting the most generous help to pay premiums.

Once you're finished with the money part, actually picking a health plan will require additional steps, plus a basic understanding of insurance jargon.

And it's a mandate, not a suggestion. The law says virtually all Americans must carry health insurance starting next year, although most will just keep the coverage they now have through their jobs, Medicare or Medicaid.

Some are concerned that a lot of uninsured people will be overwhelmed and simply give up.
"This lengthy draft application will take a considerable amount of time to fill out and will be difficult for many people to be able to complete," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, an advocacy group supporting the health care law. "It does not get you to the selection of a plan."

"When you combine those two processes, it is enormously time consuming and complex," added Pollack. He's calling for the government to simplify the form and, more important, for an army of counselors to help uninsured people navigate the new system. It's unclear who would pay for these navigators.

Drafts of the paper application and a 60-page description of the online version were quietly posted online by the Health and Human Services Department, seeking feedback from industry and consumer groups. Those materials, along with a recent HHS presentation to insurers, run counter to the vision of simplicity promoted by administration officials.

"We are not just signing up for a dating service here," said Sam Karp, a vice president of the California HealthCare Foundation, who nonetheless gives the administration high marks for distilling it all into a workable form. Karp was part of an independent group that separately designed a model application.
The government estimates its online application will take a half hour to complete, on average. If you need a break, or have to gather supporting documents, you can save your work and come back later. The paper application is estimated to take an average of 45 minutes.

The new coverage starts next Jan. 1. Uninsured people will apply through new state-based markets, also called exchanges.

Middle-class people will be eligible for tax credits to help pay for private insurance plans, while low-income people will be steered to safety-net programs like Medicaid.

Because of opposition to the health care law in some states, the federal government will run the new insurance markets in about half the states. And states that reject the law's Medicaid expansion will be left with large numbers of poor people uninsured.

HHS estimates it will receive more than 4.3 million applications for financial assistance in 2014, with online applications accounting for about 80 percent of them. Because families can apply together, the government estimates 16 million people will be served.

Here are some pros and cons on how the system is shaping up:

— Pro: If you apply online, you're supposed to be able to get near-instantaneous verification of your identity, income, and citizenship or immigration status. An online government clearinghouse called the Data Services Hub will ping Social Security for birth records, IRS for income data and Homeland Security for immigration status. "That is a brand new thing in the world," said Karp.

— Con: If your household income has changed in the past year or so and you want help paying your premiums, be prepared to do some extra work. You're applying for help based on your expected income in 2014. But the latest tax return the IRS would have is for 2012. If you landed a better-paying job, got laid off, or your spouse went back to work, you'll have to provide added documentation.

— Pro: Even with all the complexity, the new system could still end up being simpler than what some people go through now to buy their own insurance. You won't have to fill out a medical questionnaire, although you do have to answer whether or not you have a disability. Even if you are disabled, you can still get coverage for the same premium a healthy person of your age would pay.

—Con: If anyone in your household is offered health insurance on the job but does not take it, be prepared for some particularly head-scratching questions. For example: "What's the name of the lowest cost self-only health plan the employee listed above could enroll in at this job?"

HHS spokeswoman Erin Shields Britt said in a statement the application is a work in progress, "being refined thanks to public input."

It will "help people make apples-to-apples comparisons of costs and coverage between health insurance plans and learn whether they can get a break in costs," she added.

But what if you just want to buy health insurance in your state's exchange, and you're not interested in getting any help from the government?

You'll still have to fill out an application, but it will be shorter.

http://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/obamacare-Benefits-application-complex/2013/03/12/id/494368?promo_code=12390-1&utm_source=12390PJ_Media&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1#ixzz2NRQQAbdr

Obama's Propaganda Machine: Your Kids Aren't Safe at School, You Know

The organizing arm of the never ending Obama campaign, Organizing for Action, sent out an email to supporters yesterday telling them "this isn't meant to scare you" but....your kids are no longer safe at school thanks to sequester. Not surprisingly, they're using children who will go without food to make their argument.

Friend -

Megan Allen is a fifth-grade teacher in Tampa, Florida. At her elementary school, 90 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Many live in poverty, with unstable home lives — some have parents in prison, others go hungry over the weekends. But at school, they’re winning science fairs, challenging themselves, and eating two hot meals a day.
For Megan’s 36 fifth graders, school is a safe place. The budget cuts known as the sequester could change that.
In the county where Megan teaches, 142 schools stand to lose $3 million in funding. The sequester could also slash as much as $2 million in federal funding for special education.
When those cuts kick in, Megan’s students could lose teachers that help them every day — for example, the folks who coach them through tricky arithmetic, or give those who are having reading trouble the special attention they need. The Head Start programs that got these students ready for kindergarten will be dramatically cut down. Their class sizes could go up, leaving less time for individual attention.
The sequester isn’t a list of numbers made up to scare you. It’s a very real thing that will negatively impact real people — like Megan’s 36 students and their families. [...]
Thanks for speaking up.
Lindsay
Lindsay Siler
National Director of Issue Campaigns
Organizing for Action

Everybody panic! When sequester officially started over a week ago, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan claimed teachers were "literally" getting pink slipped and then had to walk the statement back. The Washington Post fact-checker gave him four pinocchios for the claim.

Duncan’s claim, on one of the Sunday morning shows, that teachers were already getting pink slips because of the looming sequester was actually the second time he had made this assertion.
“I was on a call yesterday, people are starting to give RIF [reduction in force] notes,” Duncan said in a meeting with reporters Feb. 21, three days before his appearance on CBS. “Schools are already starting to give teachers notices.”
Oddly, however, the Education Department for days was unable to cough up the name of a single school district where these notices had been delivered. Then, on Wednesday, Duncan appeared before the White House press corps and produced a name — Kanawha County in West Virginia — with a major league caveat. “Whether it’s all sequester-related, I don’t know,” he said.
Duncan’s spokesman, Daren Briscoe, said in an e-mail that “the information shared on the call was that just over 100 teachers and Head Start teachers had received layoff notices.”
There is little debate that across-the-board spending cuts in education funding will cause pain for some schools and states. But there is no reason to hype the statistics — or to make scary pronouncements on pink slips being issued based on misinformation.
Indeed, Duncan’s lack of seriousness about being scrupulously factual undercuts the administration’s claim that the cuts are a serious problem.
Duncan made this claim not once, not twice, but three times. Let this be a teachable moment for him: Next time, before going on television, check your facts.

Not to mention, as I wrote last week, there are $67 billion worth of taxpayer savings annually available right now, 78 percent of sequestration, that haven't been implemented by the Obama administration.

Last week, the Oversight Committee reviewed report data showing federal agencies held more than 894 lavish conferences last year, costing more than $100,000 each and totaling $340 million for taxpayers.
Further, a Committee report released today revealed waste-cleanup recommendations from non-partisan Inspector Generals working across the federal government, which would save taxpayers $67 billion per year, have not been implemented. Backlogs of unimplemented recommendations have grown to 16,906.
“This report chronicles $67 billion in unimplemented reforms that non-partisan Inspectors General have identified,” said Committee Chairman Darrell Issa. “President Obama should listen to the recommendations of his Administration’s own Inspector Generals and work with Congress to implement common sense spending cuts that target wasteful and poorly performing programs instead of settling for the furloughs and service disruptions happening under the sequester.”

Considering the Education Department doesn't know how much money it spends on swanky conferences, the alarm bell in the email above has little credibility.

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan asked Education Department Deputy Secretary Anthony Miller and Transportation Department Deputy Secretary John Porcari how much money has been spent on travel, conferences and consultants. Jordan was told the departments do not think additional savings can be found when it comes to conference spending and travel for government employees. Jordan's line of questioning included the now infamous 2010 GSA conference in Las Vegas which cost taxpayers $840,000.

One parting thought: When did it become the taxpayer's responsibility to feed children at school? If your responsibility as a parent isn't to feed your child, then what is?

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/03/13/obamas-propaganda-machine-your-kids-arent-safe-at-school-you-know-n1532480

Sources: Democrats' New Budget May Actually Accelerate Spending

Bear in mind that this is the same crew whose most recent "deficit reduction" plan increased the deficit by tens of billions, who are trying to redefine tax increases as "spending cuts," and whose idea of a "balanced approach" doesn't actually involve balancing the budget. Still, inventing close to $2 trillion in phony, fig-leaf deficit reductions is a pretty tall order. Yesterday I briefly called attention to a piece in The Hill that sketched out the broad contours of Senate Democrats' forthcoming budget proposal -- their first in nearly four years. It's now widely accepted that Harry Reid and Patty Murray's document will call for approximately $1 trillion in tax increases, but will never come to balance. A number of articles on the yet-unseen document simply accept Democrats' preliminary claim that their blueprint will include $1.85 trillion in deficit reduction. Will it, though? Back to Erik Wasson's piece in The Hill:

[Senator Patty] Murray argues that her budget cuts $1.85 trilion from deficits over ten years. But once the sequester cuts are turned off, Murray’s budget appears to reduce deficits by about $800 billion, using the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline. The Murray budget does not contain net spending cuts with the sequester turned off. The details of Murray’s budget came hours after House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) released his budget, which reduces tax rates and slashes spending much more deeply that Murray’s budget. The Ryan budget would balance in 10 years without raising taxes and by reducing spending over the next decade by $5.7 trillion compared to the CBO baseline.

First, Wasson exposes Democrats' trillion-dollar juke, which they try to pull off by not accounting for shutting off the sequester (a huge spending increase, which they proceed to offset with phony savings and tax hikes). This stunt leaves them with only $800 billion remaining in supposed deficit reductions. Now pay attention to the phrase, "compared to the CBO baseline" in the excerpt above. Paul Ryan is careful to assert that his budget saves $4.6 trillion over ten years compared to the "current path," even though the CBO line inflates that number to $5.7 trillion. Why would Ryan decline to take credit for an extra trillion in savings? Because that misleading CBO baseline bakes in a number of illusory "savings" via the discontinuation of spending that was going to expire anyway, and other gimmicks. Wasson expands on this point:

The $975 billion in spending cuts include $240 billion in savings from the end of the Afghanistan war and $242 billion in reduced interest payments, according to a source. Republicans have criticized Democrats in the past for counting these as spending cuts, and Ryan made a point in his budget of producing a different baseline that did not count CBO’s projected savings from war and disaster spending.

So right off the bat, roughly half ($480 billion) of the $975 billion in purported "spending cuts" are exposed as gimmickery. That calculation comes from adding up the interest payment savings (which were going to materialize anyway, due to the sequester) and the fake Afghanistan war savings (CBO is forced to assume war spending will continue to be funded at 2013 levels for the next decade, which everyone agrees isn't going to happen). Democrats subtract expected Afghanistan spending from the fictional inflated level, and dress it up as "savings." Whereas Ryan disdains and abjures these "moon yogurt accounting" tricks, Democrats rely on them. This year, they have another card up their budgetary sleeve: Hurricane Sandy relief. The CBO baseline unrealistically assumes that tens of billions in federal Sandy aid will continue every year for the duration of the budget window. This, of course, is absurd. Sandy was a one-time natural disaster, not a recurring expense. But by citing the CBO baseline, Democrats are likely to say they're "saving" hundreds of billions by not spending big bucks on Hurricane Sandy in 2014, 2015, 2020, and so on. All told, dishonest accounting appears to cover the majority of the "spending cuts" in Murray's budget -- and other cuts, like the unspecified ones to healthcare spending, are punted away for other committees to handle. A senior Senate Republican budget aide tells Townhall this actuarial sham is outrageous, but not surprising:

Even though Senate Democrats haven’t produced a budget for four years, in various fiscal negotiations, they’ve repeatedly tried to claim savings from money that was never going to be spent anyway. And the President has a nasty habit of abusing this widely panned gimmick. You’d have to be naïve to think they won’t try it again, given the party’s aversion to real spending reductions.

If the rough figures reported in The Hill and elsewhere prove to be roughly accurate, it's a fairly safe bet that the Reid/Murray plan will amount to a significant net spending increase, above and beyond the current path. Look at it this way: House Republicans' budget calls for about $41.5 trillion in federal spending over the next ten years. The current trajectory spends approximately $46 trillion during the same span. Democrats' proposal will likely exceed $46 trillion, and may even approach $47 trillion. The only way Democrats can maintain any veneer of deficit reduction is through their tax increases; the phony spending cuts are all eaten up by new spending, including a reported $100 billion earmarked for new "stimulus." To the extent that Democrats achieve any deficit reduction, virtually every single dollar of it will come from tax increases alone -- which violates even the president's distorted definition of "balance."

Senate Republicans can only offer educated guesses, based on past behavior and media leaks, about what lies ahead in this budget. Remember, they won't actually see it until this evening (Paul Ryan provided House Democrats with advanced copies of his plan). Drawing on all the available information, Republican sources say they expect the Democrats' budget to massively hike taxes, punt on entitlement reform, substantially increase spending beyond current levels, and never balance -- all while relying heavily on smoke and mirrors. In other words, it will look an awful lot like President Obama's last two budgets, both of which were so reckless and unserious that they were unanimously voted down in both houses of Congress. Will this low bar suddenly become good enough for Senate Democrats? Even the ones who are up for re-election in 2014, particularly in red and purple states?

UPDATE - Senate Budget sources now say they're anticipating some limited deficit reduction in the Democrats' plan. The jury's still out on total spending.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/03/13/budget-n1532315

Related: Report: Senate Democrats' Budget Hikes Taxes by $1 Trillion, Never Balances

The Hidden Purpose of Organizing for Action — Obama’s New Political Action Group

In Washington, D.C. yesterday, major donors to the Obama campaign are meeting with the president at a $50,000 per person fundraiser on behalf of the ongoing campaign’s new so-called “grassroots” organization, Organizing for Action. It is officially explained as follows:

A nonprofit organization established to support President Obama in achieving enactment of the national agenda Americans voted for on Election Day 2012. OFA will advocate for these policies throughout the country and will mobilize citizens of all parties and diverse points to speak out for speedy passage and effective implementation of this program, including gun control, sensible environmental policies to address climate change and immigration reform. In addition, OFA will encourage the formation of chapters that will be dedicated at the grassroots level to this program, but also committed to identifying and working progressive change on a range of issues at the state and local level.

The official statement is as non-threatening as possible, hiding what is particularly unique and different about this group. Those visiting its website will not be made aware that no American president has ever put together a group such as this.

In essence, it is the campaign organization continuing on after the last election, now focused on promoting outside pressure towards a left turn by the nation.

The liberal Huffington Post terms it “a pro-Obama group positioned as progressive answer to Karl Rove,” but that is not entirely accurate. Rove’s operation is a top-down, donor-driven group that, for example, has recently taken out ads against actress Ashley Judd to harm her chances to get the Democratic nomination should she decide to run against Mitch McConnell in the next Kentucky Senate race.

The OFA, on the other hand, is much more than a group hoping to influence the choice of a candidate in a race and to be a source of funding for ads and a campaign. It is a group more akin to the Alinskyite community organizing force with which young Obama cut his teeth, an organization meant to mobilize the Left to pressure for things like “taxing the rich” via organizing and actions such as those the now-defunct ACORN used to engage in.

That is why it purports to be non-partisan. It wants outside pressure to push the Democratic Party — whose candidates it inevitably will support — to back the most left-wing programs put forth. As the article by Samuel Jacobs at Huffington Post makes clear, that means “attacking the influence of special interest money in politics.” Of course, this excludes special interests like big pharma, with whom Obama has cut a deal in exchange for getting their support of Obamacare.

The group claims it will accept funds from unions, but not from corporations. That does not imply that corporate CEOs — say, green energy CEOs — will not give large amounts personally.

The group pledges to eventually name all donors who have given over $250, and we can be certain that George Soros and others like him will be found among the list.

Let us take the group’s claim at face value — that it exists primarily to get people to knock on doors “to advocate for the passage of the president’s legislation,” such as universal background checks for potential gun owners. It is therefore using campaign tactics to gather support for legislation favored by the White House, meant to hopefully draw out votes in areas where either Republicans or blue-dog Democrats dominate, so they can be defeated in coming congressional races.

More telling is a statement from an unnamed Obama organizer, who said that it will be the equivalent of a left-wing National Rifle Association, a “group for the left that has the power to cajole lawmakers into toeing the progressive line.”

The NRA, however, is a single-issue group — much like pro-abortion groups on the political left.
OFA, which hopes to continue functioning after the Obama administration comes to an end and is not tied formally to the Democratic Party, is meant to fulfill what many on the Left have been calling for.

In making their case, the analogy they draw is from the early New Deal and the first years of FDR’s presidency. Roosevelt, they point out, started in office advocating a conservative program, having pledged deficit reduction and minor fixes for an economy that had crashed. But after major pressure from the newly formed CIO — which led radical sit-down strikes and organized unskilled workers through industrial America — and combined with the pressure exerted by radicals of various stripes including Communists and socialists, FDR was forced to commence with the Second New Deal. It was only then, they argued, that the president instituted the far-reaching, more extensive welfare state measures that the Left had been calling for.

The Left is therefore trying to create this strategy anew, in far different times than the 1930s. The major difference is that the union movement is almost dead. Most industry is not organized, and the only gains for the AFL-CIO come from government employee unions, quite a different thing than unions that worked on behalf of unskilled industrial workers whose jobs were in heavy industry. Moreover, some of the Left constituency is at odds with labor, the most obvious example being the conflict between the labor movement and the environmentalists on such issues as the Keystone pipeline, which labor favors and the green movements want killed.

Never in our recent past has the Left tried to organize for its program from the top-down via a group created out of the last presidential campaign and run by former White House staffers, and endorsed by those still in the administration — including the president.

The next president of the United States will not be a community organizer who comes from that particular background. It is rather unlikely that four years from now Organizing for Action will still be around. Of course, as a former chief executive of our country, Barack Obama might choose to become the new head of OFA, and then try to rally his old troops on behalf of what becomes the standard bearer for the Left in America. Indeed, that might be just what he has in mind.

http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2013/03/12/the-hidden-purpose-of-organizing-for-action-the-obama-teams-new-political-action-group/?singlepage=true

U.S. to let spy agencies scour Americans' finances

The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters.

The proposed plan represents a major step by U.S. intelligence agencies to spot and track down terrorist networks and crime syndicates by bringing together financial databanks, criminal records and military intelligence. The plan, which legal experts say is permissible under U.S. law, is nonetheless likely to trigger intense criticism from privacy advocates.

Financial institutions that operate in the United States are required by law to file reports of "suspicious customer activity," such as large money transfers or unusually structured bank accounts, to Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

The Federal Bureau of Investigation already has full access to the database. However, intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, currently have to make case-by-case requests for information to FinCEN.

The Treasury plan would give spy agencies the ability to analyze more raw financial data than they have ever had before, helping them look for patterns that could reveal attack plots or criminal schemes.

The planning document, dated March 4, shows that the proposal is still in its early stages of development, and it is not known when implementation might begin.

Financial institutions file more than 15 million "suspicious activity reports" every year, according to Treasury. Banks, for instance, are required to report all personal cash transactions exceeding $10,000, as well as suspected incidents of money laundering, loan fraud, computer hacking or counterfeiting.

"For these reports to be of value in detecting money laundering, they must be accessible to law enforcement, counter-terrorism agencies, financial regulators, and the intelligence community," said the Treasury planning document.

A Treasury spokesperson said U.S. law permits FinCEN to share information with intelligence agencies to help detect and thwart threats to national security, provided they adhere to safeguards outlined in the Bank Secrecy Act. "Law enforcement and intelligence community members with access to this information are bound by these safeguards," the spokesperson said in a statement.

Some privacy watchdogs expressed concern about the plan when Reuters outlined it to them.

A move like the FinCEN proposal "raises concerns as to whether people could find their information in a file as a potential terrorist suspect without having the appropriate predicate for that and find themselves potentially falsely accused," said Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior counsel for the Rule of Law Program at the Constitution Project, a non-profit watchdog group.

Despite these concerns, legal experts emphasize that this sharing of data is permissible under U.S. law. Specifically, banks' suspicious activity reporting requirements are dictated by a combination of the Bank Secrecy Act and the USA PATRIOT Act, which offer some privacy safeguards.

National security experts also maintain that a robust system for sharing criminal, financial and intelligence data among agencies will improve their ability to identify those who plan attacks on the United States.

"It's a war on money, war on corruption, on politically exposed persons, anti-money laundering, organized crime," said Amit Kumar, who advised the United Nations on Taliban sanctions and is a fellow at the Democratic think tank Center for National Policy.

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

The Treasury document outlines a proposal to link the FinCEN database with a computer network used by U.S. defense and law enforcement agencies to share classified information called the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System.

The plan calls for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence - set up after 9/11 to foster greater collaboration among intelligence agencies - to work with Treasury. The Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

More than 25,000 financial firms - including banks, securities dealers, casinos, and money and wire transfer agencies - routinely file "suspicious activity reports" to FinCEN. The requirements for filing are so strict that banks often over-report, so they cannot be accused of failing to disclose activity that later proves questionable. This over-reporting raises the possibility that the financial details of ordinary citizens could wind up in the hands of spy agencies.

Stephen Vladeck, a professor at American University's Washington College of Law, said privacy advocates have already been pushing back against the increased data-sharing activities between government agencies that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.

"One of the real pushes from the civil liberties community has been to move away from collection restrictions on the front end and put more limits on what the government can do once it has the information," he said.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-us-to-let-spy-agencies-scour-americans-finances-20130313,0,2719682.story

PK'S NOTE: Oh those silly Democrats. What war against women?

Democrat: A Democrat Bashing a Woman's Head in is Totally Irrelevant to the Discussion About Violence Against Women

Biden Implies "Garden Variety Slap Across the Face" of a Woman is No Big Deal

Democrat Can't Explain Why He Wants to Legislate Women Into Being Victims

"Next Question"

GSA executive fired for lavish spending gets his job back

Remember the controversy surrounding the General Services Administration and its lavish, ultra-expensive parties in Las Vegas? The Obama administration tried to sweep the frivolous spending incidents under the rug by firing a few upper-level employees who took the blame. But today, one of those executives is being reinstated after a review of his termination exonerated him of the misconduct charges.

Oh, and on top of the Vegas parties we paid for, we taxpayers also get to pay him 11 months of back pay. Awesome.

The General Services Administration was ordered this week to reinstate a senior executive who lost his job last year amid revelations of lavish spending at a Las Vegas conference.
GSA officials had told Paul Prouty that he “knew or should have known about the questionable and excessive expenditures” that embarrassed the Obama administration when they were revealed last year. But the agency failed to prove that the career civil servant in charge of federal buildings in the Rocky Mountain region was guilty of misconduct, the Merit Systems Protection Board ruled.

The merit board also awarded Prouty, 64, 11 months of back pay. Administrative judge Patricia Miller wrote in a 48-page ruling that because Prouty did not attend the four-day conference in 2010 and was not heavily involved in planning it, he should not have been fired.

“We are disappointed with the . . . ruling,” the GSA said in a statement. The agency “has taken strong action against those officials whom we believe were responsible and will continue to do so where appropriate.” Acting Administrator Dan Tangherlini, appointed by President Obama to clean up the agency, “has taken significant steps over the past year to improve internal controls and oversight,” the statement said.