[Jill]

Hi everyone! Remember me?

I was reminded of this forum when the torture report came out yesterday, because we had such a great conversation about torture a few years ago. I was going to revive that thread, but thought I'd pop in here first because it looked like fun, too, so here goes (Part 1 of 2) ...

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

In regard to the Affordable Health Care, it has created a nightmare in my area. Many jobs have become part-time to skirt the health insurance benefits.

While I appreciate the anecdote, do you have any factual evidence of this occurring, as well as evidence that the Affordable Care Act is to blame for it if it is? I ask because if that's the case, it's contrary to what economists know from the data. From the conservative Wall Street Journal:

“Companies are just more inclined to hire part-time workers, not necessarily because of the health-care law, but for business reasons that make it a more attractive option,” Ms. Girard said.

Anecdotal reports have suggested employers have cut hours to prepare for the implementation of the health-care law, but that hasn’t been borne out by economic data.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

I know a lot of people who have ended up having to pay more for health insurance.

More than what? More than previous years? More than for bad policies that didn't actually cover them for anything if they got sick, which were disallowed under the new law?

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Plus, my son is a Medicaid Eligibility Specialist. He sees large numbers of people who had health care from work, but are now forced to purchase their own or go on Medicaid.

Define "large numbers," please. Any factual evidence as to why they've been "forced" out of work-related health care?

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Many lower middle class and working class families can't afford the insurance but make too much for Medicaid.

Now here you've said something quite profoundly true. Would you care to know why that is?

The Coverage Gap: Uninsured Poor Adults in States that Do Not Expand Medicaid – An Update

Nationally, nearly four million poor uninsured adults fall into the “coverage gap” that results from state decisions not to expand Medicaid, meaning their income is above current Medicaid eligibility but below the lower limit for Marketplace premium tax credits. These individuals would have been newly-eligible for Medicaid had their state chosen to expand coverage. ...

Adults left in the coverage gap due to current state decisions not to expand Medicaid are spread across the states not expanding their Medicaid programs but are concentrated in states with the largest uninsured populations (Table 1). ...

The geographic distribution of the population in the coverage gap reflects both population distribution and regional variation in state take-up of the ACA Medicaid expansion. As a whole, more people—and in particular more poor uninsured adults— reside in the South than in other regions.[sup]3[/sup] Further, the South has higher uninsured rates and more limited Medicaid eligibility than other regions. Southern states also have disproportionately opted not to expand their programs, and nearly half (11 out of 23) of the states not expanding Medicaid are in the South. These factors combined mean 86% of people in the coverage gap reside in the South (Figure 2).

That would therefore not be the fault of either President Obama or the Affordable Care Act. It would be the fault of the conservative Supreme Court who altered the ACA to make Medicare expansion optional instead of mandatory for the states. In other words, blame your state Governor, not President Obama.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Obama is not responsible for the economy? He's only been president for 6 years during which the Democrats controlled the Senate and for awhile the House.

I'm happy to give President Obama credit for the economy. I think he's done a great job with it. (Though you're incorrect in the length of time Democrats in Congress had any kind of meaningful majority. It was actually more like five months that Democrats had control of both houses of Congress with filibuster-proof majorities. But you should know, in spite of that obstacle, the 111th Congress was one of the most productive of any Congress since WWII.)

Here is Politifact's assessment of the economic numbers as compared to when President Obama took office. For the most part, the numbers you want to see going up, are going up, some of them significantly. And the numbers you want to see going down are going down.

Where the numbers aren't doing what we'd hope for, there are factors that have little to nothing to do with anything President Obama has done or not done. You'll find (should you choose to read through it in full) that "bad" numbers are often attributed to the financial collapse that occurred as a result of the previous administration's bad policies that brought us to our knees in a deep recession.

For instance:

Median household income rose just slightly to $51,939 in 2013, Census reported. In “real” income, adjusted for inflation, that was 0.3 percent higher than in 2012, but still 4.6 percent below 2008, the year before Obama first took office, when the first effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression were just starting to be felt. ...

As of September, the U.S. had 5,459,000 more people employed than it did when Obama took office in 2009. And the official unemployment rate had dipped to 5.9 percent, which was 1.9 percentage points below where it was when he first took office.

But scars from the great recession of 2007-2009 remain.

His policies have been extraordinarily great to Businesses and Wall Street -- those folks Reagan promised would "trickle down" their financial rewards on us if we would lower their tax responsibility to "free up" more of their cash -- yeah, those guys. Who never actually did that.

The Obama years have brought dramatically better times for corporations and their stockholders.

Corporate profits (after taxes) reached a record annual rate of more than $1.8 trillion in the second quarter of this year, the most recent figures available. That was 174 percent higher than the quarter before Obama first entered the White House.

Do you think the average worker and family would be doing better if corporations stopped using taxpayers like you and me to supplement their payroll departments with our money in the form of survival security programs? Did you know that if Wal-Mart would take their $28 Billion in annual profits (profits -- as in after taxes -- not income) and raised all 1.4 million American workers' salaries by a mere $5,000 a year, it would pull families out of poverty, reduce reliance on social programs (freeing up tax dollars to be used for infrastructure repair, creating jobs for millions of Americans), and still leave them a multibillion-dollar corporation with annual profits of $18 billion?

It's true. Do you not think corporations in America have a responsibility to pay their own payroll from their own profits? Why should they be allowed to suck off the government teat when they have way more than enough to cover their own payroll expenses and still be filthy rich? How does that promote American values? How does that promote a self-reliant public? If people were doing that -- forcing the government to pay their mortgage or rent, their utilities and their food, while all they paid for was their car and their clothing while they were sitting on million-dollar bank accounts -- you'd be UP IN ARMS and you know it.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

We have the highest national debt ever.

Yes we do. Are you interested in why? Because it's not all President Obama's fault, you know.

The federal debt held by the public, which had not quite doubled as of our last report, is now nearly 103 percent higher than it was the day he first took office. The “total” debt, which includes money the government owes to itself, has gone up by more than 68 percent.

Both figures are staggering, but are not entirely Obama’s fault. As we’ve often noted, the FY2009 federal deficit was running at a rate of $1.2 trillion on the day he took office in the midst of a financial crisis.

The debt is now growing less rapidly than during Obama’s first years, which saw a string of trillion-dollar-plus annual deficits. CBO projects this year’s deficit will be $506 billion, so the deficit has fallen by more than half since he took office.

I'd love to see it do better. What have Republicans who control the purse strings in Congress done to make it better? They've spent a lot of time and taxpayer resources to make 54 votes to repeal or gut the Affordable Care Act. How many jobs bills have they introduced, let alone passed? Actual jobs bills, not tax cuts that they claim will create jobs in the way Reagan's peeing program claimed but failed to deliver.

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