The
Senate took up the debt ceiling vote and passed the increase. When the measure
came to the Senate, Sen. Ted Cruz opposed the matter and required a 60 vote
threshold for the bill to pass. With that, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
pressured numerous republican Senators to break the filibuster Cruz was using.
The vote was 67-31 to allow the measure to advance. The Senate then passed the
bill 55-43, along party lines.
During
the Presidents SOTU speech he talked about increasing minimum wage for federal contractors.
He has now officially signed that order.
The President has already started putting the pressure on congress to match his
rate increase for all Americans. The President urged Americans to call their
representatives and urge them to vote to increase the minimum wage. Along with
his encouragement for congress to act, he is claiming that by increasing wages
for contractors he is forcing them to become more efficient and claims the
government will not increase contractors' funds to absorb the higher wages. So
not only is the president telling those contractors what to pay their
employees, but is also telling the company that they have to pay more to their
employees but won't receive additional funds. This formula seems like it will
mostly backfire causing people to lose their jobs due to increased cost but no
additional revenue.
With
the expectation of a difficult election this year, vulnerable Democrats are
looking to the IRS for help. They are directly asking the IRS to investigate
groups like Americans for Prosperity, and other private spending groups, to
ensure they are not violating any tax laws. Essentially, they are going to use
the threat from the IRS to drain resources and find any sort of tax violation.
Also, the Treasury department is looking to adjust what is considered political
activity, such as voter registration or mentioning a candidate's name in an ad.
Amazingly, this is all being done in the open even after the scandal that the
Tea Party has been the object of IRS attacks. Democrats are now doubling down
on these efforts.
Michael
Tanner at the Cato Institute writes an opinion piece in regards to the recent
postponement of the individual mandate, again. The president recently announced
that employers with 50-99 employees will have the mandate for insurance delayed
until 2016. Why the delay again? political insurance. It appears that the
president is trying to prevent backlash from his signature achievement from
causing his political party electoral defeat. As Tanner concludes, since Obama
has set a precedent of delaying the bill, a Republican president could just as
easily at least postpone pretty much everything in the bill as long as s/he
likes.
"In a nutshell, and in Reuters' own
words, "the savings of the European Union's 500 million
citizens could be used to fund long-term investments to boost the economy and
help plug the gap left by banks since the financial crisis, an EU document says." What is left unsaid is that the
"usage" will be on a purely involuntary basis, at the discretion of
the "union", and can thus best be described as confiscation."
For the
first month, Obamacare has hit its enrollment goal. For the month of January,
nearly 1.2 million people signed up via the website. For the Obama
administration this is good news because it means enrollment is going well and
the website issues appear to be mostly solved. However, the overall enrollment
numbers are still around 1 million less than expected. Also, of those who signed
up, data isn't available yet with regards to who has actually enrolled and paid
a premium for insurance and of those who enrolled, how many didn't have
insurance previously. With the numbers still being down and young people not
participating in the exchanges, it will have an interesting effect on the cost
of the program.
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