This is one that has been simmering since the middle of March. We finally take a stab at it with today's Fact Check in the 13th congressional district Republican primary.
Claim: Paul Coble as a Wake County commissioner says he has balanced the county’s budgets, but those budgets have included $192 million in unfunded liabilities, and Coble has approved millions of dollars in new debt.
Proposed federal cuts to Medicaid could cost North Carolina thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in business activity, warns a report by Families USA.
The nonpartisan health and consumer advocacy group is pushing Washington lawmakers to avoid slashing Medicaid as they consider ways to reduce the federal budget deficit.
“This is exactly the wrong time for Congress to cut a program that boosts the economy while also providing a boost to individuals and families facing hard economic times," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, in a prepared statement.
A 5 percent in federal funding for Medicaid spending this year would cost North Carolina $431.7 million in federal Medicaid money, and put at risk about $942 million in business activity and 8,890 jobs, the group reports.
North Carolina, which has borrowed billions from the federal government in recent years to pay unemployment benefits, will soon have to start paying some of that money back.
The first interest payments on the roughly $2.5 billion the state has borrowed since February 2009 is due in September.
North Carolina is one of 30 states that owes money for its unemployment programs, a situation caused by the length and severity of the downturn and the fact that many states entered the recession with too little money saved up to pay benefits.
Only a handful of states have borrowed more than North Carolina.
I was watching C-Span after getting home from work and they were showing tape of the reading of the Constitution on the floor of the House.
The Wall Street Journal has a report dripping with details of the increase in taxpayer-funded Congressional travel. The article revolves around a high-end trip to Scotland for a five day conference in Edinburgh, where 12 legislators, some with spouses, wined and dined and shopped in style. Military attaches carry luggage and shop for single malt scotch for the represenatives, who traveled on Air Force jets.
Besides rooms for sleeping, the 12 members of the House of
Representatives rented their hotel's fireplace-equipped presidential
suite and two adjacent rooms. The hotel cleared out the beds and in
their place set up a bar, a snack room and office space. The three
extra rooms -- stocked with liquor, Coors beer, chips and salsa,
sandwiches, Mrs. Fields cookies and York Peppermint Patties -- cost a
total of about $1,500 a night. They were rented for five nights.
While in Scotland, the House members toured historic buildings. Some
shopped for Scotch whisky and visited the hotel spa. They capped the
trip with a dinner at one of the region's finest restaurants, paid for
by the legislators, who got $118 daily stipends for meals and
incidentals.
Eleven of the 12 legislators then left the five-day conference two days early.
The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to expand unemployment benefits and extend and expand the first-time homebuyer tax credit that is scheduled to expire at the end of the month.
The vote is good news for Triangle real estate professionals who have been watching anxiously to see whether Congress would act to keep the tax credit. The U.S. House is expected to quickly follow the Senate's lead and pass a similar bill.
The tax credit is thought to be one of the main reasons national and Triangle home sales showed signs of improvements in recent months, and many real estate agents feared what would happen to the market when it went away.
The credit allows first-time buyers to reduce their federal income taxes by 10 percent of the price of a home, up to a maximum of $8,000. The new version of the tax credit would be expanded to include a $6,500 credit for repeat buyers who have lived in their current homes at least five years. Under the Senate bill extension, purchase agreements would have to be signed by April 30, 2010 and closings made final by June 30.
John Wood, president of the Raleigh Regional Association of Realtors and a Re/Max United agent in Cary, said his members are thrilled with the Senate's action.
"Even though not all homebuyers will qualify, obviously it brings a whole pool of buyers into the marketplace and gives an additional incentive to consider moving up or down," he said. "We certainly hope Congress the President will speed this through this week so that everybody knows where we stand."
Wood said expanding the tax credit would also likely help higher priced segments of the housing market. Much of the increased sales activity in recent months has involved homes priced below $250,000.
So the national health care debate is moving to the local level, so to speak, as the congressional recess brings our representatives back home to "get in touch" with constituents. Toward that end, some will have open forums where people will be able to ask questions and state their own opinions, in hopes the Capitol Hill gang will return to work in a state of enlightenment, having taken a break from the normal barrage of special-interest lobbyists coming to call.
This is a good idea, but it can be skewed by organized efforts to dominate such conversations with the views of one side or another. And apparently, according to some news reports, opponents of heatlh-care reform, or at least the type of reform proposed by President Obama, have really tried to stir up grass roots opposition, which may manifest itself at these public meetings.
All folks are entitled to their opinions, of course, and that's fine. But if these members of Congress are bombarded by just one side of this debate, it's really not going to help much with that Enligthenment Thing. Particularly if the opponents of reform speak, shall we say, at full volume. Polls (I know, I know...I'm not crazy about 'em either...) show that views of health-care reform are all over the lot. There's nothing about it, in other words, that is unanimous.
Here's hoping for a civilized back and forth, not a shouting match. I think if I were a congressman, and I came to a forum and was getting hit by a fairly one-sided view, I might be a little suspicious.
Members of Congress, of course, know that some folks are happy, some folks are fairly content and some folks are mad. They expect some confrontation when they venture forth. I once attended a forum some years back where people in the audience were standing and shouting and shaking their fists at a multi-term incumbent. I asked the fellow later, tongue in cheek, "How do you take it? Aren't you ever tempted to roll up the shirtsleeves and just wade out there?"
His reponse: "It's part of the job. People have a right to be heard."
This editorial cartoon by McClatchy artist Lee Judge just struck me as hilarious, but it has been a very long week, or two, or four. In case it has been for you, too, and you're as punchy as I am, enjoy.
President Barack Obama urges Americans to rise to the challenge during an address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2009.
U.S. Rep. David Price, who represents the 4th Congressional District, discussed this week how the $787 billion stimulus plan will help the Triangle. The full interview will run Saturday in The Durham News, but here's an excerpt. Price said no specific projects for the 4th District were named in the bill. He said Congress did not allow so-called earmarking to specify money how money would be spent.
Q: How will the money get from Washington to the Triangle?
PRICE: In a number of ways. Some of the money will come directly to individuals. For example, extended unemployment insurance, expanded Pell grants, food stamps, small business loans, premium subsidies for health insurance between jobs — COBRA health insurance. So that’s one way — through individuals.
A lot of the money will come through established channels by formulas, to the states or to localities. For example, the Medicaid support for the states will go out to the states according to a formula which incorporates the number of Medicaid beneficiaries. The highway infrastructure money for the states will go out according to the regular formula. School construction money will go to individual school districts according to their Title 1 allocations. So either localities or states by formula.
And then finally some money will go out by a competitive process where agencies will evaluate applications. For example, there is some additional money in here for National Institutes of Health research, for National Science Foundation research, for building out of broadband. Those are examples of programs where there will be no entitlement, but a competitive process to see what proposals have the greatest merit.
