Think Tanked

Cato's Bandow & Hudson's Shea Discuss Attacks on Christians in Iraq on Fox

Hudson Institute Responds to the Cost of Repeal

Last week, I posted on the Center for American Progress policy brief arguing that repealing health care would cost billions of dollars. It wasn't just CAP. The Congressional Budget Office also offered a preliminary report.

From the CBO Director's blog:

Because CBO and JCT estimated that the March 2010 health care legislation would reduce budget deficits over the 2010–2019 period and in subsequent years, we expect that repealing that legislation would increase budget deficits. The resulting increase in deficits projected for fiscal years 2012 through 2019 is likely to be similar in size to—but not exactly the same as—the reduction in deficits that was originally estimated to result from the enacted legislation.

One week later (and the week before repeal is expected to go up for a vote in the House), Hudson Institute senior fellow and Washington Examiner Columnist Diana Furchtgott-Roth dismisses the CBO analysis. 

If the act were repealed, Elmendorf wrote in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, "such reductions in spending and increases in revenues would not occur," and federal deficits would increase.

But the spending cuts and tax revenues are unlikely to occur. It strains belief that Congress will cut $500 billion from Medicare outlays over the next decade.

Recall that last year Congress was supposed to cut physician reimbursement rates for Medicare by 21 percent in June. The cuts were postponed until November. Then, in December, Congress rescinded the cuts again, and voted to delay a 25 percent cut until the end of 2011.

Now the 25 percent cut is due to take effect in 2012, to be followed by further cuts in 2014. Congress will undoubtedly postpone future cuts because they would lead to a shortage of doctors for Medicare patients.

The health care law will also have greater expenses than projected, as employers drop health coverage and their employees are forced to buy government-subsidized policies. Each additional person with government-subsidized premiums raises taxpayers' costs.

Petraeus Cancels for Tonight's Hudson Award Ceremony

After yesterday's announcement that General David Petraeus will take over (assuming confirmation) for ousted General Stanley McChrystal, all speaking Petraeus engagements have been canceled. 

That includes tonight's appearance in New York at a Hudson Institute dinner to receive the 2010 James H. Doolittle Prize.

In a note from Hudson:

We are pleased however, to inform you that the dinner will proceed to celebrate the awarding of the prize to the General, which will be accepted on his behalf by his former Executive Officer and friend, Colonel Mike Iverson.

The distinguished guest speakers at the dinner will be H.E. Ambassador Husain Haqqani, Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States, and The Honorable Raymond W. Kelly, Commissioner of the New York City Police Department.

We look forward to celebrating this award with you and joining together to recognize, at this most critical time for our country at war, the courage, patriotism and sense of duty that General David H. Petraeus personifies.

This is the second recent conservative think tank award for Petraeus. Last month, AEI presented Petraeus with the 2010 Irving Kristol Award.

Do the Tuesday Results Show Unions Are Irrelevant?

In a discussion on Tuesday's results at Politico's Arena, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, writes:

Unions are becoming less relevant. The percentage of private sector workers belonging to unions has been declining steadily, and reached 7.2% in 2009. Only partially offsetting this is the increase in the percentage of unionized government workers, 37% last year, up half a percentage point from 2008. This is because workers see that their dues go to political campaigns such as the one to unseat Blanche Lincoln. Ordinary Americans are tired of union corruption that takes money from rank-and- file union workers and uses it for politics.

The Service Employees International used its 2.2 million members’ hard-earned dues to finance an intense, expensive lobbying campaign against Senator Lincoln because she opposed the public option in health care reform, the appointment of union activist Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, and the Employee Free Choice Act, which would take away the secret ballot in union elections. The union's past president, Andy Stern, is reported to have been the most frequent visitor to the White House over the past year.

[...]

The SEIU wasted the hard-earned dues of its low-income members in its attack against Blanche Lincoln. No wonder membership is declining and unions are becoming less relevant.

Hudson's Feith & Shulsky on Obama's Nuclear Delusions

Doug Feith and Abram Shulsky, two former Pentagon officials now senior fellows at the Hudson Institute, wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal Friday essentially suggesting Obama's nuclear policy is naive and is situated in a world contrary to reality.  

U.S. efforts to organize sanctions in response to Iran's illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons have been exercises in frustration. The Security Council deal announced on Tuesday falls far short of the "crippling sanctions" the administration had once intended. This experience undermines the credibility of any threat of enforcement measures—even against a state not allied with a veto-wielding Security Council member. And if China, Russia or an ally of either were someday to cheat on the ban, enforcement would be precluded by veto.

Is some kind of "world executive" envisioned to implement, or at least authorize, enforcement measures over objections from major powers? If so, it's hard to see how the U.S. or any other great power would relinquish its sovereign rights to independent action and self-defense.

"Strong enough" enforcement would have to include military measures. Is the idea here a U.N. military force that could fight large wars, as some diplomats proposed when the U.N. Charter was negotiated in the late 1940s? Or would military enforcement be the duty of the strongest state, presumably the U.S.? Only an arrangement verging on world government—an entity that could deploy overwhelming military power against a violator without interference by other powers—could possibly fill the bill.

And here's what Tom Ricks had to say about the op-ed.