Lee Statement on Attack in Libya

Sep 12, 2012

Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of Ambassador Chris Stevens and the three other embassy staff members who were killed in the outrageous attacks on the U.S. facility in Libya. Ambassador Stevens served his country faithfully and bravely in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. I strongly condemn the violence that led to the unnecessary deaths of these American Foreign Service officers and pray that the remaining staff members will be safe.

Remembering September 11 -- Day Lee Briefing 9/11/2012

Sep 11, 2012

Today's Agenda

Today, Senator Lee will meet with representatives of the American Psychological Association, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the American College of Cardiology, and the Dixie Regional Medical Center. He will also participate in the congressional ceremony marking the 11th anniversary of 9/11.

 

From the Senator's Desk

On Twitter

Around the Water Cooler

How the nation and the world are commemorating 9/11

At Israel's Sept. 11 memorial - a 30-foot bronze sculpture of a waving American flag that morphs into a memorial flame - the father of one victim endorsed the crackdown on terrorism. Dov Shefi, the father of Hagay Shefi, who was attending a conference that day in the twin towers, said, "Let us hope that the free world will continue to fight against leaders of terrorist organizations and their supporters; let all the souls of the thousands of victims whose names are marked on this great living memorial in Jerusalem be remembered from here to eternity."

 

Germany says "great uncertainty" about US debt

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble questioned on Tuesday how the United States could deal with its high levels of government debt after November's presidential election.

 

Looking Ahead

Tomorrow, Senator Lee will meet with representatives of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the National Farmers Union, the New Car Dealers of Utah, and the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges. He will also host a Jell-O bar for office visitors at 3:30 PM EDT (1:30 MDT).

 

Lee to Host Inaugural Constitution Bowl

Sep 11, 2012

On Friday, September 14, in celebration of the 225th Anniversary of the U.S. Constitution, Senator Mike Lee will host the first annual “Constitution Bowl.”

Saying No to UN Small Arms Treaty -- Day Lee Briefing 9/10/2012

Sep 10, 2012

Today’s Agenda

Today, Senator Lee is flying to Washington.

 

From the Senator’s Desk

 

On Twitter

Around the Water Cooler

US watchdog questions spending for Afghan army

The watchdog for U.S. spending in Afghanistan says lax accountability in a $1.1 billion program supplying fuel to the Afghan National Army needs "immediate attention" before control of the program is turned over to the Kabul government in less than four months.

 

GM’s Volt: The ugly math of low sales, high costs

General Motors Co sold a record number of Chevrolet Volt sedans in August — but that probably isn't a good thing for the automaker's bottom line.

Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.

 

Looking Ahead

 

Tomorrow, Senator Lee will meet with representatives of the American Psychological Association, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the American College of Cardiology, and the Dixie Regional Medical Center. He will also participate in the congressional ceremony marking the 11th anniversary of 9/11.

Global Competitiveness Dropping -- Day Lee Briefing 9/06/2012

Sep 6, 2012

From the Senator’s Desk

Courtesy of the Senate Republican Conference:

 

U.S. Global Competitiveness Ranking

Drops for Fourth Straight Year

  • According to a report issued today by the World Economic Forum, the United States dropped from fifth to seventh place in global competitiveness.
  • America ranked first in global competitiveness when President Obama took office in 2009.
  • The report also ranked the United States at a staggering 136th place in terms of the federal government’s massive debt-to-GDP ratio.  
  •  Over 100 countries have more competitive tax rates than the United States. 

  

President Obama’s policies are making it more difficult to do business in the United States:

  • Government red tape, high tax rates, and burdensome regulations are the highest hurdles for doing business in the United States, according to the report.  
  • While U.S. businesses remain competitive in terms of innovation and technology, the U.S. received some its worst rankings in the areas of high debt, deficits, and taxes.

 

The president should work with Congress to make it less expensive and easier to do business in the United States:

  • By extending all tax rates for at least one year, reforming the tax code, reducing the deficit, and eliminating unnecessary red tape and regulations, we can give job creators the certainty they need to expand and hire more American workers.
  • With over 23 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, the president should get serious about restoring America’s global economic competitiveness.

 

On Twitter

Around the Water Cooler

Recession ‘taking hold’ in Eurozone, OECD says

Europe’s debt crisis is pushing the 17-country eurozone toward recession and dragging down the global economy, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Thursday.

 

Greek unemployment surges to 24.4% in June

Greece's unemployment rate surged to 24.4 percent in June, according to official figures Thursday, as protests continued against a massive new austerity package, with police blocking their colleagues from starting work.

 

Looking Ahead

Tomorrow, Senator Lee will attend the dedication ceremony for the new Jeffrey R. Holland Centennial Commons building at Dixie State College.

Patients vs. Providers: Controlling Costs of Healthcare -- Day Lee Briefing 9/05/2012

Sep 5, 2012

Today’s Agenda

Today, Senator Lee is attending the Uintah Energy Summit.

 

From the Senator’s Desk

Courtesy of the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:

In his weekly Bloomberg column today, former Obama Administration budget director Peter Orszag once again attempts to defend Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), the group of 15 unelected bureaucrats who will be empowered to make binding rulings on how to reduce Medicare spending.  His arguments are based on two premises – each of which contains flaws.  The first premise is that providers, not patients, should affect most health care spending:

Focusing on providers is key because health-care expenses are so concentrated: High-cost cases account for the vast majority of the total.  In those cases, the care provided is, as it should be, mainly the services and tests recommended by the provider.  So if you do not influence provider recommendations in those cases, you cannot do all that much to improve the system.

This premise is valid – to a point.  Obviously, heart attack patients rushed to the emergency room will have little substantive opportunity to influence their health care spending decisions.  But the statement lands on shakier ground in other cases; Orszag’s statement that care “should be” directed by the provider also implies that, for instance, knee replacement patients will not, and should not, be able to influence their course of treatment.  In some cases, our health system currently lacks the proper tools to allow such patients to make fully informed choices – but enhanced price and quality transparency data can remedy this defect.

Orszag makes an even less compelling case when he argues that only Medicare can influence provider behavior:  “For better or worse, only Medicare is large enough to lead the health-care system toward a new structure of payment for providers.”  The problem with this argument is that Orszag and his fellow liberals only want to follow the logic one way.  Because if liberals want to argue that only Medicare has the market clout to change the health care system, that also means Medicare’s size was large enough to cause the system’s current problems.  And, nearly 50 years after Medicare’s creation, liberals haven’t explained how “This Time Is Different” – how a Medicare system can help solve a problem of exploding health costs that it helped to create.  In fact, the Congressional Budget Office noted earlier this year that most Medicare demonstration programs over the past several decades have NOT saved money – suggesting Obamacare’s efforts to control costs by micro-managing Medicare in  different fashion won’t work either.

The bottom line is that the philosophy Orszag approvingly recommends in which “direct modification of the behaviors of providers (versus consumers or payers)” by a board of government bureaucrats isn’t likely to be successful, in two respects.  First, as noted above, CBO has taken a dim view towards the notion that better bureaucratic tinkering will change the dire direction of health spending, and the Medicare program.  Second, and more fundamentally, the American people won’t take kindly to the idea of government bureaucrats engaging in “direct modification” of providers – while ignoring patients entirely.  That smacks of everything Democrats said Obamacare was not – namely, a government takeover of health care.  And it might explain why President Obama, despite blowing full speed ahead on virtually every other aspect of Obamacare implementation, has yet to appoint a single individual to IPAB – because he doesn’t want to reveal the board’s true design until after the November election.

 

On Twitter

Around the Water Cooler

Survey finds U.S. competitive ranking down again

The United States’ ability to compete on the global stage has fallen for the fourth year running as confidence in the country’s politicians continues to decline, an annual survey from the World Economic Forum found Wednesday.

 

$16,015,769,788,215.80

The United States Treasury reports that the total public outstanding debt is: $16,015,769,788,215.80. This is the first time in American history debt has eclipsed the $16 trillion mark.

 

Looking Ahead

Tomorrow, Senator Lee will fly to Seattle to tour Microsoft’s Future Technology Lab and meet with business and technology leaders working there.

Talking to Empty Chairs -- Day Lee Briefing 9/04/2012

Sep 4, 2012

Today’s Agenda

 Today, Senator Lee is in Utah to meet with constituents.

 

From the Senator’s Desk

Courtesy of the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:

Writing in the New York Times, Paul Krugman’s column hits the usual Krugman-esque notes.  The column, entitled “The Medicare Killers,” is liberal.  As you can tell from its title, the column is hyperbolically over-the-top.  And it’s also flat-out WRONG.  The most obviously false statement is his unequivocal declaration that not a shred of evidence exists that private plans can deliver Medicare benefits more efficiently than the federal government:

Wouldn’t private insurers reduce costs through the magic of the marketplace?  No.  All, and I mean all, the evidence says that public systems like Medicare and Medicaid, which have less bureaucracy than private insurers (if you can’t believe this, you’ve never had to deal with an insurance company) and greater bargaining power, are better than the private sector at controlling costs.

As Bill Clinton might say, the accuracy of that statement depends solely upon what the meaning of the word “all” is.  Because a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association just this month found that private plans would “bid an average of 9% below traditional Medicare costs” under a premium support model.  Which might explain why other liberals at the Center for American Progress are now – disingenuously – advancing the exact opposite of Krugman’s argument: that seniors would have to pay more to stay in government-run Medicare.

So either Paul Krugman doesn’t know his facts, or he doesn’t want to know his facts – because he would rather keep making claims about government-run Medicare’s “efficiency” that he knows to be wrong.  Either way, it’s a sad statement that Krugman and his allies would have to stoop so low to defend the indefensible – and unsustainable – status quo.

 

On Twitter

Around the Water Cooler

U.S. construction spending fell in July

U.S. construction spending fell in July from June by the largest amount in a year, weighed down by a big drop in spending on home improvement projects.

 

U.S. stock indexes hit by factory contraction

U.S. stocks fell sharply Tuesday, starting off a historically difficult month for equities, as European leaders readied to discuss regional debt and U.S. manufacturing data disappointed

 

Looking Ahead

Tomorrow, Senator Lee will attend the Uintah Energy Summit.

“Investment” as Politics

Aug 31, 2012

The really remarkable thing about President Obama’s rhetoric about the economy in this election season is just how little it has changed since 2010. Those who expected new ideas from this administration for getting the economy back on track must have been sorely disappointed, as the widely-anticipated “reset” on economic issues has really just been a “repeat.” Once again, he’s trotting out the same old strawmen and warmed over policies he has pounded relentlessly for the last three and a half years: he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, Republicans have stymied the recovery by refusing all compromise, and the only way we will remain competitive in the world economy is by “investing” in things like education, renewable “green” energy, and infrastructure development.

This “investment” angle has become so repetitive it’s easy just to ignore. 

But what does it really mean? 

When the president says he wants to invest in education, what, exactly does he want to invest in it?

It can’t simply be better education results, because 40 years of soaring costs for public education have already failed to do that.  Since 1970, the per-pupil cost of a K – 12 education has exploded from about $55,000 to about $150,000 in real, inflation-adjusted terms. Yet math and reading scores have stagnated, and science scores have actually declined.

Education Investment

Surely, President Obama cannot believe that “investing more in education and training” and “recruiting an army of new teachers” in math and science constitutes new and innovative education policy. We’ve been trying it for decades, and despite hiring 3 million more teachers and spending $210 billion more per year on public education, taxpayers have nothing to show for it.

If taxpayers and students have not benefited from all this public largesse, who has?  Teachers unions, of course, who are – not coincidentally – one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful constituencies and the single biggest obstacle to education reform in America today, continually sacrificing the interests of public school students to permanent job security and pay hikes for teachers.

When the president talks about investing in “education,” what he means is giving more money to the teachers unions in order to solidify their political efforts on his behalf.

The same goes for the other abstract nouns in which the president constantly demands more “investment.”

“Clean energy?”  We’ve been “investing” in that for years.  And what is the return on that investment?  Solyndra, a company whose failure cost taxpayers $528 million in Department of Energy loan guarantees.  A123 Systems, a recipient of $279 million in energy grants, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. First Solar, having procured $1.46 billion in loan guarantees, announced layoffs of over 2000 employees over the last several months. Dozens more “clean” energy companies are filing for bankruptcy or laying off thousands of workers after receiving federal funds. Is this “investment” producing better energy resources, or economic growth? 

But, as with the teachers unions, subsidized green energy executives do produce lots of campaign contributions. 

Time and again, when the president says “investment,” he doesn’t simply mean spending – he means a redistribution of wealth from successful individuals and businesses to those who support his liberal agenda.

The president compares his “investment” vision to the successes of Thomas Edison or the Wright brothers.  But none of them needed a government handout to invent the light bulb or the airplane.  Government “investments” invariably go not to the people with the most promising innovations, but those with the best political connections.  Politicians – of both parties – use the “investment” rhetoric to paper over payoffs to their friends and benefactors.  It’s both immoral and inefficient.

But for Obama, this spending is a matter of faith. “I don’t believe,” he asserted, “that a tax cut is more likely to create jobs than providing loans to new entrepreneurs or tax credits to small business owners who hire veterans. I don’t believe it’s more likely to spur economic growth than investments in clean energy technology and medical research, or in new roads and bridges and runways.”

If we are to take his rhetoric seriously, the president clearly believes that the way to get our floundering economy moving again is not to let employers keep more of the money they themselves created, but to tax them and spread the wealth around to special interests like teachers unions, labor bosses, and well-connected firms like Solyndra that embody the correct leftist policies.

Call it a boondoggle.  Call it crony capitalism.  Call it corporate welfare.  But let’s stop calling this “investment.”

Mike Lee is a U.S. Senator from Utah and a member of the Joint Economic Committee

The Higher Costs of ObamaCare -- Day Lee Briefing 8/30/2012

Aug 30, 2012

From the Senator’s Desk 

Courtesy of the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:

Two articles in the past week have demonstrated the impact of Obamacare on health care professions, and the bottom line for millions of struggling American families.  First, the Washington Post profiled two recent mergers – one among insurers, another among assisted living facilities – noting that “the health care industry is increasingly turning to consolidation as a way to cope with smaller profit margins and higher compliance costs that many anticipate when the federal government’s health care reforms under [Obamacare] take effect.”  One analyst noted that “the regulatory limitations on their margins mean that to drive profitability, they need to get leverage on [administrative costs]….In order to do that, they need to be bigger.”

The another article, this one in the Wall Street Journal, highlighted how bigger does NOT mean better for patients.  The article began with the story of a Nevada patient whose echocardiogram bill rose from $373 to a whopping $1,605 in the space of six months.  The same procedure – performed in the same office, by the same cardiologist – quadrupled in price simply because the cardiologist’s practice had been bought out by a hospital system, which used the change in ownership to extract higher prices from insurers.  The Journal notes the increasingly common nature of the practice:

With private insurers, hospital systems with strong market heft can often negotiate higher rates for physician services than independent doctors get. The differential varies widely, anywhere from 5% or less to between 30% and 40%, industry officials say.  The bounce can be far greater: Blue Shield of California said that after one group of physicians based in Burlingame, Calif., came under the umbrella of the powerful Sutter Health system in 2010, its rates for services increased about 140%.  The insurer said it saw a jump of approximately 95% after a Santa Monica, Calif., group became part of the UCLA Health System in January 2011.

Summing up then: Thanks to Obamacare, hospitals, insurers, and physicians feel the need team up – in an attempt to gang up on patients and charge the highest possible prices, raising costs rather than lowering them.  Call this many things, but do NOT call it “reform.”

 

On Twitter

SenMikeLee

During my Richfield town hall meeting, I explained what can be done about Sen. Reid's refusal to pass a budget: http://ow.ly/dinzW  #tcot

 

SenLeeComs

It's a mathematical certainty that Democrats' do-nothing plan will "end Medicare as we know it".

 

SenLeePressSec

@mckaycoppins So nice to finally meet you!

 

SenLeeResearch

Feel robbed after every #grocery run? With so many #foodsdependent upon #corn, this chart explains a lot: http://bit.ly/ObAVxj  #tcot#tlot

 

Around the Water Cooler

Chicago teachers union gives 10-day strike notice

The Chicago Teachers Union issued a 10-day strike notice Wednesday, saying teachers in the nation's third-largest school district are ready to walk off the job for the first time in 25 years.

 

Efficiency of Private Plans -- Day Lee Briefing 8/29/2012

Aug 29, 2012

From the Senator’s Desk 

Courtesy of the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:

Last Friday the liberal Center for American Progress released a paper co-authored by Harvard professor David Cutler that amounted to a partisan – and thoroughly un-principled – attack on conservative entitlement reform proposals.  When it comes to premium support proposals in Medicare, the CAP paper alleged that traditional, government-run Medicare would be cheaper for senior citizens than a choice of private plans:

Seniors will face higher costs not only because of this cost shift from the government but also because the Romney-Ryan plan increases system-wide costs by promoting private insurance that will be more costly than the existing Medicare system.  The Romney-Ryan plan would cost more than the current Medicare system because, as the Congressional Budget Office has documented, private insurance companies have higher profits and administrative costs than Medicare does, and because the plan would reduce the market share, and therefore the purchasing power, of traditional Medicare….Ample evidence exists that premium support would not foster the type of competition that reduces prices.  

There then followed a whole series of calculations showing how much more seniors would be forced to pay because the paper alleges the Romney-Ryan plan will drive them into private, less-efficient health plans.  This position would be slightly less disingenuous had not both CAP and Cutler himself, in a paper Cutler co-authored earlier this month, taken the exact opposite position and put out similarly detailed projections about how much more seniors would pay – not because private plans would be less efficient than government-run Medicare, but because they would be more efficient:

An estimate of what such a bidding system may mean for Medicare beneficiaries, using 2006-2009 data on MA plan bids and traditional Medicare costs, is shown in the TABLE.  Nationally, in 2009, the benchmark plan under the Ryan-Wyden framework (i.e., the second-lowest plan) bid an average of 9% below traditional Medicare costs (traditional Medicare was equivalent to approximately the tenth-lowest bid).  Since traditional Medicare is simply another plan option under the Ryan-Wyden plan, a beneficiary in 2009 would have paid an average of $64 per month (9% of $717) in additional premiums to stay in traditional Medicare….beneficiaries must pay more for traditional Medicare or join a private plan.

The rest of the CAP paper really needs no rebuttal – its author’s lack of principles discredits it enough on its own.  And as we have pointed out before, the Center for American Progress has done a thorough job disgracing itself by taking wholly illogical and inconsistent positions for no apparent reason other than political gain.

But one fundamental question is why Harvard University allows faculty members like David Cutler to use their institutional affiliation to put out such mutually contradictory and disingenuous work.  Universities claim to be bastions of academic freedom.  But changing one’s position in a matter of weeks, and putting out detailed estimates on both sides of an economic argument, may strike many as a perversion of academic freedom – engaging in either rank political opportunism, selling one’s “academic” conclusions to the highest bidder, or some combination thereof.  In short, academic freedom does not mean the freedom not to have principles – a lesson that Cutler and Harvard apparently need to re-learn.

 

On Twitter 

SenMikeLee

We definitely had a lot of questions about the #cutcapbalance act at my recent town hall meetings: http://ow.ly/dgQit  #utpol

 

SenLeeComs

It's a mathematical certainty that Democrats' do-nothing plan will "end Medicare as we know it".

 

SenLeePressSec

@mckaycoppins So nice to finally meet you!

 

SenLeeResearch

Feel robbed after every #grocery run? With so many #foodsdependent upon #corn, this chart explains a lot: http://bit.ly/ObAVxj  #tcot#tlot

 

Around the Water Cooler

Gasoline rising to holiday high as storm surge presses Obama

Hurricane Isaac and a deadly blast at Venezuela’s Amuay refinery pushed gasoline to an almost four- month high and threatened to revive a debate about energy costs in the run-up to the presidential election in November.