Mediaboss Marketing

A group of vulnerable House Democrats is warning of spikes in ObamaCare premiums this fall, saying that enhanced financial assistance from last years relief bill needs to be extended.

Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) led the letter from 26 swing-district House Democrats to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), calling for the enhanced ObamaCare financial assistance to be extended as part of any party-line economic package that Democrats put together.

If Congress does not act, experts note ObamaCare enrollees will receive notices of increases in their premiums in the run-up to the midterm elections, adding a political blow for Democrats at a time when the party is already facing major electoral headwinds.

The American Rescue Plan signed by President Biden early last year temporarily provided enhanced premium help for ObamaCare enrollees. But those extra subsidiesare slated to expire at the end of this year, leading to calls for Congress to act to make the enhanced help permanent.

These out-of-pocket cost increases are imminent: starting this autumn, when enrollees begin receiving notices of their premium increases for 2023 health plans, our constituents will find that the same high-quality coverage that they have been able to afford thanks to the American Rescue Plan will now be out of reach, the lawmakers write.

We cannot allow the progress we have made to be temporary, they add.We must make lower out-of-pocket costs and expanded coverage a permanent pillar of our health care system, and reconciliation is our only chance to get this done.

Extending the enhanced ObamaCare subsidies was part of President Bidens Build Back Better package that House Democrats passed in November.

But negotiations over the Senate version of thepackage have been stalled for months, and it is unclear if leaders will be able to reach a deal with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), the key swing vote if Democrats hope to use reconciliation to bypass a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

Manchin has expressed openness to the enhanced ObamaCare subsidies in the past, though their fate is tied up in the larger negotiations.

If the enhanced subsidies are not extended, premium increases could be substantial. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that premiums would have been 53 percent higher on average this year without the extra financial assistance.

The lawmakers are also calling for a provision extending health coverage to low-income people in the 12 states that have not expanded Medicaid to be included in the package.

Original post:
Vulnerable House Democrats urge action to prevent ObamaCare premium hike this fall - The Hill

Legislation sponsored by Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal supported by Connecticut's other senator, Chris Murphy, and Governor Lamont, Democrats all which was narrowly defeated in the Senate on May 11, titled the Women's Health Protection Act, isn't nutty just because it would authorize all abortions all the time, right up to birth. It's also nutty because, after its title, it doesn't mention women at all, not even once.

Instead, the text of the legislation substitutes "person" for "woman," apparently on a premise shared by all Democratic senators, except Joe Manchin of West Virginia, that there are no longer different genders and that men now can become pregnant.

The hallucination of transgenderism now rules the Senate Democratic caucus and Connecticut's Democratic Party.

After all, why title the bill the Women's Health Protection Act and then immediately cut women out of the text except to deceive and signal belief in transgenderism?

Since Connecticut's senators, the governor, and their supporters complain aboutRepublican extremism, they should be pressed about the implications of their legislation.

Do they really believe that men can become pregnant and need abortions?

Do they really believe that the law should be indifferent to the abortion of viable fetuses of full gestation?

Do they really believe that parents shouldn't necessarily know that their minor daughters are having surgery?

Last week the governor admitted that he opposes conditioning abortions for minors on the notification and consent of their parents, even though state law requires parental consent for mere tattooing. The governor argued that the law doesn't need to require parental notification because most minors seeking abortions tell their parents anyway.

Most may do so, but law is customarily enacted to apply to departures from the norm. Most people don't rob banks but, for good reason, bank robbery remains illegal, and a sensational case from 2009 provided Connecticut with everlasting good reason for requiring parental notification.

In that case, a 15-year-old girl who ran away from her home in Bloomfield and had been missing for almost a year was discovered living with an unrelated 41-year-old man in West Hartford. She had obtained an abortion at a Connecticut clinic after becoming pregnant from statutory rape of her by him, only to be returned tothe manand sex slavery because no one involved with the abortion asked critical questions.

While the age of majority in Connecticut is 18, for years now liberal Democrats in the state, starting with former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, have claimed that young people are incapable of taking full responsibility for themselves until they are 25 or so and that, as a result, they should be exempt from serious criminal penalties. So how do 15-year-olds become competent to decide by themselves on surgery?

The Women's Health Protection Act, which the Democrats likely will keep submitting in Congress, would duplicate the horrible conflict of interest that Connecticut law creates with abortion. It would deprive minors of any true guardians at a moment of the most profound risk to their physical and mental health, instead giving guardianship to their abortion providers, even though, by definition, the pregnancies to be terminated are the result of statutory rape or worse and the failure to notify parents, guardians, or law enforcement may conceal the most abusive felonies and facilitate still more abuse.

You're supposed to know better than to ask the barber if you need a haircut. So who should ask the abortion clinic if she needs an abortion?

Connecticut Democrats are calling the Republican nominee for governor, Bob Stefanowski, an extremist for his position on abortion. But Stefanowski supports the abortion policy established by Roe v. Wade unrestricted abortion prior to fetal viability, state regulation afterward as well as parental notification, which Roe allowed.

With the Women's Health Protection Act, the governor and Connecticut's senators and most state Democratic candidates would go far beyond Roe. Thus, they have become the extremists here, and crackpots as well because of their legislation's suggestion that there is no biological difference between men and women and that biology itself has been a myth all along.

Read the original post:
The Day - In Connecticut, Democrats are the abortion extremists - News from southeastern Connecticut - theday.com

Democrats are bracing for a bad election night this November, and if they aren't worrying, the pundits certainly are on their behalf. The president's party usually loses seats in midterm elections, especially the first off-year election for a new president, and Democrats have no seats to spare in Congress. But this year, Democrats have the added headwinds of high inflation and worse, the dreaded specter of "stagflation," or the combination of rising costs and lower economic growth.

How might inflation affect the 2022 midterms?

The Consumer Price Index the benchmark U.S. inflation gauge rose 8.3 percent year-over-year in April, down slightly from 8.5 percent in March but still the highest inflation rate since 1982. "Inflation erodes living standards, and especially the kind of inflation we're talking about of basic needs food and shelter and energy, the three pillars of existence," Diane Swonk, chief economist at the consulting firm Grant Thornton LLP, tells The Wall Street Journal.

Inflation is high everywhere, not just the U.S. Britain's inflation hit its own 40-year-high of 9 percent in April, and the European Union reported annual inflation of 7.4 percent. But Europeans aren't voting in U.S. elections this fall.

It can be hard to get a good read on what actually motivates voters, but "at this point, the answer to what Americans are most worried about is pretty straightforward: inflation," Geoffrey Skelley and Holly Fuong write at FiveThirtyEight. "We asked Americans this question in a variety of ways, but regardless of how we asked it, the top answer was always the same: inflation."

So while "the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are solid, with households still in a strong position financially as more people get jobs and return to old habits like traveling, dining out, and going to concerts," and wages are rising and unemployment is at a historically low 3.6 percent, the Journal reports, people aren't necessarily feeling it.

"Democrats tend to point to and focus on unemployment, which is certainly important to the people that are unemployed and their families and communities," veteran political analyst Charlie Cook tells NPR News. But about 4 percent of Americans are affected when unemployment rises, while "100 percent of people are affected by inflation, and so you could actually argue that it's like 25 times more." And people are confronted with higher prices every time they buy groceries or fill up their car at the gas station.

The main causes, as Democrats will highlight, are enduring supply chain issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic plus rising fuel and food prices tied to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its fallout. President Biden also argues that some companies are greedily raising prices even as they rake in record profits, while Amazon's Jeff Bezos recently joined Republicans in blaming high inflation on Biden's American Rescue Plan and previous (bipartisan) stimulus checks people had money to spend on scarce products, driving up prices.

"They're both right. And they're both wildly overstating their positions," Allison Morrow writes at CNN Business. "The truth is that inflation doesn't have any single cause," or an "easy cure." Along with the Ukraine war, Chinese COVID shutdowns, and other supply chain kinks, the Federal Reserve "unleashed a flood of easy money while cutting interest rates to near zero to prevent an economic collapse," she adds. "And just to pile on: There remains an unsolved, psychologically complex imbalance in the labor market that's forcing businesses to shell out more on wages and other benefits."

It doesn't really matter, politically speaking, analysts say. With inflation or other bad economic news, "the one thing certain is that an incumbent president will get the blame," Stuart Rothenberg writes at Roll Call. "Indeed, Biden already has." It "wouldn't matter how great a job President Biden is doing on handling Ukraine or the coronavirus," Cook tells NPR. "If voters are mad about the economy in general and inflation in particular, then that's the rifle-shot vote, and that's what Democrats have to really worry about."

Republicans are pretty open about using it against Democrats, too."We're going to continue to have inflation, and then interest rates will go up," Sen. Rick Scott (R., Fla.), who heads the Senate Republican campaign arm, told The Wall Street Journal last fall. "This is a gold mine for us." And, he told NBC News, "this is going to be devastating for them."

If Biden "stresses that the economy is still growing, he risks looking out of touch," Rothenberg writes. "And it he turns to a revised 'Build Back Better' plan, he has to call for more government spending during a period of inflation not exactly an ideal place to be." But "the president doesn't have a lot of options when it comes to trying to slow inflation," he adds. "It's the Federal Reserve, after all, that is tasked to assure price stability, and the Fed may well have already miscalculated."

Presidents can't do much to lower consumer prices, tamp down oil prices, stop Russia's invasion, or unkink supply chains, but political strategists say it is still important for Biden "to communicate empathy and action even in the absence of good options as an otherwise divided Republican party unites around attacking the president over 'Bidenflation,'" Reuters reports. The White House has also "developed a three-prong strategy: act as aggressively as it can on prices it thinks it can impact on the margins, stress the role of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the pandemic, and attack Republicans, suggesting their economic policies would be worse."

And in fact, Biden honed in on Scott's "Rescue America" proposal, which the president said would "raise taxes on 75 million American families" while doing nothing "to hold big corporations and companies accountable." Look, "I happen to think it's a good thing when American families have a little more money in their pockets at the end of the month," Biden said. "The Republicans in Congress don't seem to think so. Their plan is going to make working families poorer." He went on list actions he has taken to address inflation, "his No. 1 priority," including cutting the budget deficit and hacking away at gas prices.

In the end, said economist Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under former President Barack Obama, "I don't think there's any message that would make people feel good about 7 percent inflation."

"Interviews with a half-dozen Republicans showed that while the party is not yet unified around a specific plan," NBC News reported last fall, their "proposals include boosting domestic energy production, eliminating COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates, and cutting shipping and trucking regulations," ideas experts said "amount to a mixed bag: Some could help alleviate inflationary pressures, while others would have little effect or no effect in addressing the cause of increased costs or would not materially affect the economy for years."

Ideally, Republicans would get creative and come up with "a comprehensive program to dramatically cut back government benefits and tax breaks for people and businesses in the top 1 percent of income for their age cohort or firm size," conservative commentator Henry Olsen writes at The Washington Post. "A program such as this would combine populist politics with conservative economics," shrinking the government in a politically winning way.

In reality, "there's no great mystery behind the GOP's strategy: It's rooted in the idea that Americans are upset about something; Democrats hold the reins of federal power; so voters should blame the governing majority," Steve Benen writes at MSNBC. "It doesn't matter whether it makes sense or whether Republicans have meaningful solutions." And honestly, "that strategy might very well work."

And if we get stagflation, that "obviously would be a nightmare for Biden and his party," Rothenberg adds "Of course, anyone who has been around for a while knows that predictions about the economy and the stock market are even less reliable than the promises of a snake oil salesman. The problem for Biden is that snake oil salesmen seem to be having a pretty easy time selling their snake oil these days."

Excerpt from:
What price will Democrats pay for high inflation? - The Week

This years Democratic primaries are being largely framed as an ideological struggle between the national partys moderate and progressive wings. But voting patterns over the last few weeks have complicated that narrative.

In marquee contests in Pennsylvania and Oregon, progressive wins led to proclamations that the left wing of the party is gaining influence, while some moderate victories defied that thinking. Whats becoming clear as votes are counted, however, is that Democratic primary voters seem to care less about who the progressive candidate is and more about if candidates are campaigning on progressive goals. What many of the Democrats who won this week have in common is that they all embraced progressive priorities tailored to where they were running.

Perhaps nowhere encapsulated this reality better than swing-state Pennsylvania, where a relatively progressive and locally trusted candidate who repeatedly rejected the progressive label Lt. Gov. John Fetterman trounced the more moderate, Washington favorite, Rep. Conor Lamb, in the primary race for the US Senate.

Just being a centrist anymore, its hard to get things done. Theres shrinking room left in the middle, Mustafa Rashed, a Democratic strategist in Philadelphia, told me about the states dynamics.

Around the state, candidates who delivered digestible versions of progressive messages did well, from the left-leaning candidates who won races in heavily Democratic areas for state and federal legislatures to the moderate incumbents who survived tough challenges from the left. In nearly all of these races, a general shift to the left was apparent among the partys base and candidates.

This trend isnt necessarily universal: Plenty of more traditional moderate Democrats won their races in Ohio and North Carolina. And its possible upcoming races in California, Illinois, Michigan, and Texas may upset this narrative. But for the most part, the primaries so far appear to show that progressive activism and ideas have changed what primary voters want and what their candidates are offering.

Both sides of the Democratic ideological spectrum could claim wins on Tuesday. From North Carolina to Oregon, there wasnt uniformity in who emerged victorious.

What does tie a lot of Tuesdays races together, though, is how few moderates ran openly down the middle of the ideological spectrum without co-opting at least some of the issues and language progressives have used in previous races. That includes things like advocating for a higher minimum wage, expanding health care access and coverage, more openly embracing gun control and abortion rights, and at least addressing climate change.

A more moderate, establishment type prevailed in Pennsylvanias Third Congressional District, where Rep. Dwight Evans beat back progressive challengers by focusing on affordable housing, criminal justice reform, gun violence, and crime. A similar dynamic could be seen in other seats in the state legislature, including with longtime state Sen. Anthony Williams, who campaigned on abortion access, gun-violence prevention, and criminal justice reform as he faced his first serious challenge from the left. And in the primary for lieutenant governor, frontrunner Rep. Austin Davis defeated rivals to his left running on abortion and criminal justice reform.

This trend wasnt just seen in Pennsylvania.

In Kentucky, liberal state Senate Minority Leader Morgan McGarvey defeated a lefty rival to represent the Louisville-area Third Congressional District, which is solidly Democratic, by supporting partial student loan cancellation, single-payer health care, and endorsing the idea of a Green New Deal.

In North Carolina, a similar picture emerged. Centrist-minded state Sen. Don Davis, backed by outgoing US Rep. GK Butterfield, comfortably beat his progressive challenger, a former state senator endorsed by US Sen. Elizabeth Warren and an array of progressive groups. Though Davis doesnt back a Green New Deal or Medicare-for-all, he still campaigned on affordable health care, voting rights, reproductive rights, and increasing the minimum wage.

Things were a little different in Democrat-dominated Oregon, however, where progressives were ascendant. The solidly centrist incumbent Rep. Kurt Schrader, who campaigned on pragmatism and consensus-building, is on track to lose to progressive activist Jamie McLeod-Skinner in the Fifth District, while crypto-backed lawyer Carrick Flynn, who had no political experience, is also trailing the progressive state Rep. Andrea Salinas. And after a difficult campaign, former state House Speaker Tina Kotek defeated a moderate challenger, state Treasurer Tobias Read, in the primary for Oregon governor.

Oregons results, which saw voters gravitate toward the conventional, genuine progressive, add another layer of complexity to the primary picture. Regardless, races this week showed Democratic candidates of all ideologies feel compelled to address their left flank.

A lot has changed since the last midterms in 2018, when progressives made big gains but moderate Democrats were instrumental in giving the party a majority in the House. So far, the partys primaries are showing an electorate much more willing to accept populist, progressive(-ish) ideas than before a big win for left-wing activists and thinkers who have managed to move the partys ideological center in their direction.

Few candidates so far have run overtly as centrists without at least paying lip service to progressive priorities. Where they refused to do so, as in Schraders race, they faced headwinds from a changing Democratic primary electorate.

Ten years ago, blue-dog and corporate Democrats would run on that [centrist] message against progressives, Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has endorsed several progressive upstarts this election cycle, told me. These days, theyre more willing to use the language of progressives against progressives in primaries but Schrader was the exception to this rule.

Thats not to say a moderate using progressive talking points has a sure path to success. Marcia Wilson, the chair of rural Pennsylvanias Adams County Democratic Party, said Lambs campaign showed how some Democrats fear electing an apparent liberal who turns out to be a Joe Manchin-style Democrat.

Democrats are feeling more galvanized and want to be known as Democrats, not because they are unwilling to compromise but because we want to support Democratic ideals, she said. Wilson told me that partly explains why Lambs pitch to the state didnt resonate a more conservative background and platform in past races made his leftward shift in the Senate primary seem inauthentic.

But still, Lamb attempted some ideological change. A similar thing happened in earlier Democratic primaries in Ohio, where more moderate candidates like Tim Ryan (in the states Democratic Senate race), Nan Whaley (in the governors race), and Shontel Brown (in the 11th Congressional District) were pushed to the left. Upcoming races will test this trend, but so far, it appears Democratic voters want their candidates to speak like progressives, even if they arent actually progressive.

The general election may in turn change the way these candidates talk about their priorities. The citizens who typically turn out to vote in November tend to be less ideological and party-affiliated than the voters who participate in primary elections. And the progressive ideals beloved by hardcore Democrats may not be as well received by moderates and centrists in competitive general election seats.

If progressives and progressive ideas do win uphill battles in these swing districts, however, Democrats may end up with a newly empowered left flank, catalyzing the political polarization Americans have come to expect from their government.

Excerpt from:
Progressive ideas are winning in the 2022 Democratic primaries - Vox.com

To tell by the past few weeks, Americas universities have become so saturated with woke politics that they have forgotten how to teach basic economics, or Democrats never bothered to take those classes (or both). Thats the only logical reason to explain why policy-makers have shown an ignorance, and incoherence, about the biggest issue facing American families.

But if people in Washington cant understand, or care, when parents get crushed by skyrocketing food and gas bills, they may after November 8. The public outrage over inflation, and the lefts bumbling responses to it, are driving voters of all stripes away from Democrats in droves.

Politico began a recent article with an anecdote whereby leftist Rep. Katie Porter, D-California, tried to teach her Democratic colleagues about inflation, and they apparently responded like she was from Mars:

Only after Rep. Katie Porter put bacon in her cart at her local grocery store recently did she notice that its price had spiked to $9.99 a pound. Reluctantly, she put the package back.

It was a dose of reality that Porter, a California progressive and single mother of three, has long understood. But shes not sure all of her Democratic colleagues share her interest in connecting to average Americans experiences outside the Beltway.

When Porter gave an emotional speech about how inflation has been hitting her family for months during a private House Democratic Caucus meeting last week, she said it seemed like the first time the personal toll of high consumer prices had sunk in for some lawmakers in the room.

This story seems shocking, but not altogether surprising. Members of Congress make $174,000 per year, with (illegally) subsidized health coverage and other benefits that many ordinary working Americans dont receive. That amount of annual household income is more than three times the U.S. median. So why would the average member of Congress know, let alone care, whether bacon costs $3.99 or $9.99 a pound?

While some congressional offices express indifference towards the plight of American families, others have apparently resorted to lecturing constituents. The same Politico article featured this anecdote from Capitol Hill: One Democratic House office has received so many calls from a constituent complaining about the cost of bacon that she was connected to a policy aide to talk about why it was suddenly so expensive. But the woman had little interest in understanding the effects of meat consolidation. Instead, she simply urged the lawmakers office to get the price down.

Memo to Washington: When families are getting their proverbial teeth kicked in when they go to the grocery store every week, they dont want lectures on how evil pork producers are making excessive profits. Or, to put it more simply, searching for a scapegoat wont solve the actual problem.

Into that breach stepped President Bidenwho promptly got his tongue tied. The president tweeted: You want to bring down inflation? Lets make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.

It is perhaps unsurprising that Biden would tout as a solution for inflation the exact same policies he has promoted since he began running for president. But given that most studies indicate that some portion of corporate tax increases get passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices or lower wages, Bidens proposed fix would actually worsen the inflation squeeze on families.

At her first official press conference as White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre was asked how Bidens proposal to raise corporate taxes would tame inflation. Suffice it to say that the word salad that followed should not inspire confidence in this administrations competence and knowledge of economic policy:

Q: But how does raising taxes on corporations lower the cost of gas, the cost of a used car, the cost of food for everyday Americans?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: So, look, I think we encourage those who have done very well right? especially those who care about climate change, to support a fairer tax tax code that doesnt change that doesnt charge manufacturers workers, cops, builders a higher percentage of their earnings; that the most fortunate people in our nation and not let the that stand in the way of reducing energy costs and fighting this existential problem, if you think about that as an example, and to support basic collective bargaining rights as well.Right?Thats also important.But look, it is you know, by not if without having a fairer tax code, which is what Im talking about, then all every like manufacturing workers, cops you know, its not fair for them to have to pay higher taxes than the folks that who are who are who are not paying taxes at all or barely have.

While the question focused on inflation, the answer (such as it was) discussed climate change and collective bargainingtopics only tangentially related to the price of goods.

The prototypical leftist response regarding the concerns of voters in Americas heartland occurred nearly a decade and a half ago. While campaigning at a rural Iowa farm in July 2007, Barack Obama tried to empathize with the crowd by asking rhetorically: Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, theyre charging a lot of money for this stuff. The remark at a time the chi-chi grocer (which some call Whole Paycheck) did not even operate an establishment in the Hawkeye State.

Democrats still havent shown much of a clue about the needs, or lifestyle, of ordinary voters in the years since. That attitude will go a long way towards explaining the likely wipeout the party faces in November.

See more here:
If Democrats Don't Understand Inflation, They Will After November 8 - The Federalist