House Republicans take aim at Obamacare this week with two transparency bills

House Republicans this week will debate two bills aimed at highlighting the glitch-ridden Obamcare website with bills that would require the government to notify users of security breaches as well as reveal detailed information about the public's interaction with the website.
Republican leaders plan a vote Friday on the Health Care Security and Transparency Act, which would require the Department of Health and Human Services to inform the users of state and federal health care exchanges of any security breach that "endangers personal data and information." The legislation would mandate HHS give notice of such a breach within 48 hours.
...The House on Friday is also expected to consider the Exchange Information Disclosure Act, sponsored by Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., that would require HHS to file weekly reports to Congress about the health care exchanges. The reports would include data on website visits, the number of people creating accounts, chat login information and problems associated with the website or call centers.
Terry said the bill is needed to because HHS has not been transparent about the website in the wake of its disastrous rollout that had prevented many people from signing up.
Democratic leaders say they oppose the legislation, however, because it would create an unnecessary burden for the administration, which they say is already releasing detailed information about healthcare.gov on a monthly basis.

The week ahead in economics: The gender pay gap, Janet Yellen, unemployment benefits and jobs

...For the week ahead:
On Monday, the Senate is scheduled to vote on the nomination of Janet Yellen, the current Federal Reserve vice chairwoman, to replace Ben Bernanke as chairman. Following Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's decision to change the Senate rules in November to eliminate the filibuster for executive appointments, Yellen needs only 51 votes to gain confirmation.
...Also on Monday, the Senate is scheduled to vote on a three-month extension of emergency unemployment benefits, which expired in December. It's not clear how the Senate will vote, and the extension faces an even tougher path to passage in the House. House Speaker John Boehner has demanded that the bill to extend benefits, estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to cost $6.4 billion, be offset with other budgetary savings.
On Wednesday afternoon the Federal Reserve is scheduled to release the minutes from its December meeting, providing a look into officials' decision to taper the quantitative easing program from $85 to $75 billion.
And on Friday morning the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the December jobs report. With the unemployment rate currently at 7 percent, it's possible that Friday could see the first sub-7 percent unemployment rate since November 2008.

Dems, GOP enter 2014 out of sync with America

By Mark Tapscott

...As the Washington Examiner's Brian Hughes reports this morning, a lot of Democrats think newly elected New York Mayor Bill de Blasio -- the progressives' progressive -- points the way for their party nationally.
"Some Democrats say taking de Blasio’s message nationally would be an effective political tool. They say the party would appear more in tune with the plight of the working poor, while tapping into public frustration over soaring compensation for the wealthiest Americans," Hughes reports.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, congressional leaders reportedly plan to "to unveil a giant spending bill next week that staff for appropriators have been preparing on a near daily basis throughout the holiday break," according to The Hill.
...In other words, GOP leaders want to get the spending issue off the table as early as possible, so they can concentrate all their fire on winning the 2014 election.

Here's the essential context for these moves: Seventy-two percent of Americans -- including a majority of Democrats and huge majorities of Republicans and Independents -- view Big Government as the biggest threat facing the nation, according to a Gallup poll.
That's why Obamacare is a political catastrophe for Democrats. As bad as the program's first three months were in 2013, 2014 will be worse, with endless horror stories about people losing their health insurance, losing their doctors and losing their money.
....This staggering inability of Democrats and Republicans to stop their respective versions of business-as-usual in Washington will hurt both come November.

The National Debt in One Picture

By Kelsey Harris
Congress is beginning its new year with a budget deal that busts right through “caps” it was supposed to have on spending. At Heritage, we want to hold Congress accountable for its tax-and-spend ways, even as Members claim there’s no room to cut.
A good place to start is understanding the mountain of debt Americans are already under. Check out and share our infographic below that puts it in perspective.

Obama's War Against the Elderly

By Paul Shlichta
...All of this is discouraging enough but so far, we've considered only half the story. You may remember the old Jack Benny joke about "your money or your life." Well, the government seems to want both.
You and your life insurance company want you to enjoy a long life. But frankly, your government wishes otherwise. If you are a typical retiree, your income tax has probably shrunk to the point where it's scarcely worth collecting. On the other hand, you've become an expensive liability, eating up Social Security and Medicare funds at an alarming rate.
This problem -- and you are considered a "problem" -- has been exacerbated by ObamaCare, which requires that two healthy young people enroll to support three older sign-ups. The young are not cooperating; in fact, many of them will have to be subsidized. The Democrats won't dare antagonize them, since they are one of their most important supporting groups. So guess who's going to get thrown under the bus. You are living too long and spending too much healthcare money to do so. You must be persuaded to gracefully depart.
One way is healthcare rationing. You probably laughed when Sarah Palin began talking about ObamaCare death panels. But perhaps the numerous articles in this website have induced you to consider them seriously. I fear that the coming year will vindicate Nancy Pelosi's famous prediction; we shall find out more about healthcare rationing as the ramifications of ObamaCare unfold during the coming year. (A shocking example of Obamacare discrimination against the elderly was exposed here.)
But that may not be enough to balance the budget. Old people who should die and won't die may have to be persuaded to die.
It will take time for our nation to become accustomed to assisted suicide. So far, only three states have legalized it and only a few hundred people have availed themselves of the opportunity. At present, the public is about equally divided on the issue while doctors seem to be 2 to 1 against it. It will take even longer to gain public acceptance of "persuaded" suicide but (as the gay marriage movement has taught us) radical changes in public moral norms can be achieved by patience and persistence.
I suspect that liberals have already taken some preliminary steps in that direction. In the state of Washington, where assisted suicide is legal, about 40% of the hospital beds are under Catholic supervision. Suddenly last summer, the ACLU became worried that this Catholic oligopoly would jeopardize "reproductive and end-of-life care" -- the code names for abortion and assisted suicide. This position seemed rather odd, since these services are, by an overwhelming margin, currently performed outside of hospitals.
Then, in November, the Department of Health decided to consider a new rule that would require hospitals to list, on their websites, the "reproductive and end of life" services that they do and do not provide. (This rule would not apply to any other services or procedures.) Surprisingly, the local MoveOn team urged its members to attend the meeting and support the rule. Simultaneously, the DOH comments website was flooded with comments advocating the rule and condemning Catholic hospitals for "imposing their morality" on hospital patients. A few later comments noted the apparent "scripting" of the earlier ones and suggested that the rule was the first step toward compelling all Washington hospitals to provide these services.
This would be the perfect one-stop solution to the problem of superfluous old people. Every hospital would be required to have a staff thanatician who would smoothly handle the transition from long-term care to assisted suicide. Recalcitrant patients could be persuaded by frequent "counseling" and reduction of palliatives such as opiates. Perhaps I'm being paranoid; I hope so.

De Blasio’s Horse-Drawn Carriage Ban: Is It Really About Campaign Cash?

By Robert Stacy McCain

Mayor Bill de Blasio's promise to ban New York City's iconic horse-drawn carriages could backfire, exposing what the newly-elected mayor's critics suggest is a corruption scandal masquerading as an animal-rights crusade. Defenders of the carriage industry point to a real-estate executive who is one of de Blasio's major campaign donors as the driving force behind the effort to abolish the carriages.
...The bad guy in this drama, according to the carriage drivers, is Steve Nislick, chief executive officer of a New Jersey-based real-estate development company, Edison Properties. The company "employs legions of lobbyists to influence city decisions on real estate and zoning in its favor," journalist Michael Gross reported in 2009, pointing out that two of Edison's businesses "have multiple locations in the same Far West Midtown neighborhood as the stables where the Central Park horses are housed." An anti-carriage pamphlet Nislick circulated in 2008 made this interesting observation: “Currently, the stables consist of 64,000 square feet of valuable real estate on lots that could accomodate up to 150,000 square feet of development. These lots could be sold for new development.”
Gross asked the obvious question: "What are the odds that good neighbor Nislick, the out-of-state real estate developer, simply covets those valuable, underdeveloped New York lots -- and has teamed up with ambitious pols to use the emotions of animal rights activists as fuel for their own agendas?" Nislick founded a 501(c)4 group called New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets (NYCLASS) that spent big money to elect de Blasio mayor, as Chris Bragg of Crain's New York Business reported in October:

Two major supporters of Democratic mayoral nominee Bill de Blasio, including his biggest campaign fundraiser, gave heavily to an outside group that targeted his primary rival City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, newly released records show.
The group, New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets (NYCLASS), spent nearly $124,000 on anti-Quinn phone banking and leafleting for the September primary election, which Mr. de Blasio won with more than 40% of the vote. NYCLASS also gave an above-the-legal-limit, six-figure donation to the anti-Quinn group "New York Is Not For Sale," which spent more than $1 million to defeat Ms. Quinn, and played a role in knocking the speaker from her frontrunner status early in the race. ...

In March, Mr. de Blasio, who also has taken direct donations from NYCLASS founder Steve Nislick and close associates, promised to the ban horse carriage industry in Central Park on his first day as mayor, a top priority for NYCLASS. ...
The newly filed records at the Campaign Finance Board also list the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals as making a $50,000 contribution to NYCLASS in March. Nonprofits registered as 501(c)3 entities such as the ASPCA are barred from giving political donations because charitable contributions to a 501(c)3 are tax-deductible.

FBI quietly drops 'law enforcement' as its primary mission

By Thomas Lifson
Without any fanfare, "law enforcement" has been dropped from its status as the FBI's primary mission. John Hudson reports on The Cable blog of Foreign Policy:

The FBI's creeping advance into the world of counterterrorism is nothing new. But quietly and without notice, the agency has finally decided to make it official in one of its organizational fact sheets. Instead of declaring "law enforcement" as its "primary function," as it has for years, the FBI fact sheet now lists "national security" as its chief mission.

As Hudson notes, federal agencies realize that citing "national security" seems to open the funding spigot. But don't we already have a Department of Homeland Security? The idea that the federal government is funding two rival organizations with the same mission bespeaks bureaucratic bloat, especially given the notorious tendency to keep information within the same agency rather than share it with an agency that might be a rival for funding in the future.

Seven Minimum Wage Facts That Have Democrats Worried

By Wynton Hall
With the midterm elections just over 300 days away, nervous Democrats reeling from the Obamacare debacle are hoping a big push to raise the minimum wage will be the silver bullet that will spare them from the historic losses they suffered in 2010.
Democrats and unions are busy working to get minimum wage initiatives on state ballots in the hopes of creating an electoral “minimum wage magnet” to attract low-income, minority, and union voters to the polls.
Seven minimum wage facts, however, may diminish Democrats' high hopes.
1. Just 2.8% of American workers earn at or below the minimum wage.
The U.S. Department of Labor says 1.6 million people make the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Another 2 million earn below that rate, such as restaurant servers who make tips in addition to a lower base hourly wage which, according to U.S. News and World Report, "in many cases actually puts them significantly above the minimum wage in reality, if not officially." That means in a nation of 317 million people, just 3.6 million (1.1%) make at or below the minimum wage. As a share of the U.S. workforce, just 2.8% of people working make minimum wage.
2. Half of all minimum wage workers are 16 to 24 years old.
According to the Department of Labor, "minimum wage workers tend to be young," and "about half of those paid the Federal minimum wage or less" are below age 25. Many of these are students working while in school or teenagers with part-time or summer jobs. That means half of the people most affected by a minimum wage hike are among those least likely to show up at the polls to vote, especially in a midterm election year. Indeed, minimum wage workers who are 16 and 17 years old are not even legally eligible to vote.
3. Labor workers already make well above the minimum wage.
Democrats and unions hoping labor workers will be energized by a minimum wage bump will be sad to know that laborers in every single sector of what the government calls "production and nonsupervisory employees"—like manufacturing, construction, mining, retail, transportation, etc.—already earn well above the minimum wage. In fact, in November 2013, the government reported that the average hourly labor wage across all industries was $20.31—a figure nearly three times the federal minimum wage. And as the unions themselves boast, a union member's annual salary is already $10,400 higher than a non-union worker.
4. Even those who support minimum wage hikes concede it could kill jobs.
Many economists and conservatives point to the body of economic literature that shows minimum wage increases kill jobs and simply encourage companies to pass along the added cost in the form of higher prices. But even ardent supporters like socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, who recently helped pass a $15 minimum wage in the SeaTac, Washington, concede the move could spawn job losses. "There may be a few jobs lost here and there, but the fact is, if we don't fight for this, then the race to the bottom will continue," said Sawant.
5. Minorities and the poor are hit hardest by the minimum wage. Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously noted that "the most anti-black law on the books of this land is the minimum wage law." Higher wages mean employers seek higher, more skilled workers. That, said Friedman, puts those with disproportionately less education and experience at a significant disadvantage when looking to put their foot on the first rung of the employment ladder.
6. Even progressives concede the minimum wage is no panacea for America's economic woes.
President Barack Obama's former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Economic Advisers Christina Romer says, "economic analysis raises questions about whether a higher minimum wage will achieve better outcomes for the economy and reduce poverty." As a result, says Romer, "most economists prefer other ways to help low-income families." Similarly, progressive Daily Beast writer Jamelle Bouie says while he supporters the move, "the minimum wage is a Band-Aid for wage stagnation and income inequality" and "doesn't make up for our sluggish economy and weak labor market."
7. 21 states already have minimum wages that are higher than the federal $7.25/hr rate.
Just last week, 13 states boosted their minimum wage rates above the federal minimum wage rate of $7.25/hr. That means 21 states now already have minimum wages that exceed the federal rate.
For these reasons and more, Republicans see Democrats' minimum wage tactic as a desperate attempt to run from the Obama record.
"If I had a dollar for every time Democrats thought their issue of the week was going to be their pathway to victory, I would have enough money to pay taxpayers back all the money that was wasted on the broken Obamacare website," said Republican Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman Andrea Bozek.