The Issues In-depth

Quite a few of the solutions to these issues affect multiple areas and at the risk of being redundant will be repeated as necessary.

Unemployment Tax Reform

Budget Reform Health Care Reform

National Security and Sovereignty

Unemployment

While the nationwide unemployment rate is currently 9.5% that Kansas City Metropolitan area fairs little better than the national average at 8.3% as of May 2010 according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. For this same month, the number of people receiving unemployment benefits is 85,000 in the Metro area and the number does not include those people whose unemployment benefits have expired. All areas and industries have negative rates of employment change except for the Education and Health (3.3% growth) and Government which has grown 4.0% from May 2009 until May 2010. These are some of the approaches that should be followed to jumpstart the economy and increase employment:

Freeze the remaining balance stimulus funds and if necessary use a portion of them to extend unemployment benefits as opposed to going into further debt to fund unemployment benefits

Halt any legislation that would result in a loss of jobs, have an negative impact on business, or that will impose a net ecomonic cost

Pass the FairTax (H.R. 25) to eliminate corporate and personal income taxes and implement a National Sales Tax on all new purchases. This will reduce the corporate income tax rate from 35% to 0% and allow corporations to repatriate foreign earnings without paying income tax. It will also encourage foreign investment in the U.S. as we will have the lowest corporate income tax in the world, thereby creating more domestic jobs. Until FairTax iis implemented, retain the "Bush Tax Cuts"

Increase all domestic energy production to decrease energy costs, create domestic jobs, and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil by removing regulatory barriers.

Protect the domestic work force by temporarily reducing the limit on foreign workers until such time as the unemployment rate reaches 5%

Implement unemployment reforms to assist in retraining workers and returning them to work more quickly including trial part time work programs where the employer can decide to hire the part-time person for full-time work after the trial period ends.

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Tax Reform

I am a enthusiastic advocate of implementing the FairTax Act (H.R. 25, S. 296) as the much needed tax reform to encourage business growth and increase each individuals take home pay.

The FairTax eliminates all of the following corporate and personal taxes with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax on all new purchases administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities that is revenue-neutral:

Federal income taxes

Social Security and Medicare taxes

Self-employment taxes

Gift taxes

Estate Taxes

Capital gains taxes

Alternative Minimum Taxes (AMT)

The major benefits of the FairTax are:

No federal deductions which allows workers to keep more of their paycheck and retirees to keep more of their pensions

In advance refund (called a prebate) of the tax on the purchase of basic necessities

The prebate can be assigned to help purchase a basic necessity such as an automobile for transportation to work

Ensure Social Security and Medicare funding

Enables American products to compete fairly

Closes all loopholes and establishes fairness to taxation

Creates transparency and accountability to tax policy

Encourages foreign investment in the U.S. due to no corporate income tax

Allows domestic companies to repatriate foreign earnings without paying income tax

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Budget Reform

Budget Reform is based on the "Unified Fixed Pie Budget" (as proposed by the Independence Caucus) and is outlined in principle as follows:

Except in times of National Emergency, it is irresponsible for Government at any level to increase their overall spending if a deficit was incurred the previous year.
Congress must weigh the costs and merits of various spending proposals; and must prioritize federal spending within a pre-established finite spending limit.

The Government appropriation process should be both a transparent and honest process.
It is ineffective to have 3 separate budgets (Presidential, House, and Senate) that can only be reconciled "in Conference"; and that having 3 separate budgets is ultimately irresponsible because the entire "Conference Budget Reconciliation" process consistently results in unauthorized earmark items being added into the budget at the last minute with no vetting, no debate, and no cost-benefit analysis.
Congressional appropriations should only be earmarked if they meet the following 4 criteria an Earmark Request:
- must go through an open vetting process;
- must be scrutinized by the committee system; within the required committee time frames and deadlines;
- must have an appropriate federal nexus; and may not be requested for projects that are the responsibility of states and/or local communities to fund.
- must only be for a specific purpose, and cannot be awarded to private individuals or companies that have not gone through a transparent competitive bidding process.
Congressional appropriations process must be free from the taint of abuse, stains of corruption, cronyism, or charges of "pay to play" type schemes, wherein members of Congress submit earmark requests in exchange for campaign support or other favored treatment.

Support the passage of a National Sales Tax with no exemptions or exclusions, plus an attached "pre-bate" feature; which is the only tax system that eliminates favorable tax treatment of one group over another; while simultaneously creating numerous incentives and benefits for the growth of the national economy as currently included and written in the proposed "Fair Tax" legislation.

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Health Care Reform

Current State

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) needs to be repealed. Rep. Steve King (IA-5) has introduced a discharge petition (H.R. 4972) to bring it to the House floor for an up-or-down vote. The number of co-sponsors have been growing rapidly and have at the present time, reached 102 in number. Rep. King is optimistic that the 218 signatures required will be gathered to force a vote on the repeal of Obamacare.

This discharge petition doesn't come a moment too soon as some companies have already experienced increase costs as a result.

Additionally, there are projections from different agencies refuting the President's assertion that the law "not only makes sure everybody has access to coverage but is reducing costs."

From the Congressional Budget Office (CBO):

Ten years from now there will still be 21 million uninsured Americans

Almost half of the newly covered aren't getting access to health insurance but to Medicaid with all of its problems of access and quality

Insurance premiums will double over the next six years, roughly the same as without health care reform

Employees who buy their own insurance, as opposed to employer-provided insurance, will see their premiums rise 13% faster than if the legislation had never passed

From the RAND Corporation:

Warns that longer waits and severe over-crowding of emergency rooms may result

Younger and healthier Americans may see a 17% rise in their insurance premiums

From the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS):

Some of the mandated cuts in Medicare could result in the closing of up to 15% of U.S. hospitals

And this quote from a New York Post article dated July 20, 2010: "Accurately measured, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will cost more than $2.7 trillion over its first 10 years of full operation and add more than $352 billion to the national debt. This doesn't even include more than $4.3 trillion in costs shifted to businesses, individuals and state governments."

This is clearly not the kind of health care reform that is needed and Missouri's 5th District Rep. Cleaver was disappointed that the legislation that was passed didn't include single-payer.

Improving Access, Quality, and Reducing Cost

The three major areas for improvement in health care are access, cost, and quality.

Most of the current focus has been placed on access via affordable health insurance when the average profit margin for health insurance companies is around 2%. There are laws that need to be repealed to introduce free market competition into the health insurance market such as removing state boundaries, however, attempting to make significant improvements in cost or quality of health care by focusing on health insurance is analogous to attempting to reduce the cost or improve the quality of an automobile by focusing on financing options.

A major source of cost for health care is malpractice insurance. It is not unusual for an OB/GYN that delivers infants to pay $200,000 per year for malpractice insurance. There is at least one known case where an OB/GYN (after practicing many years) elected to remove the delivery/surgery services to be able to affordably continue his practice, after his malpractice insurance increased to $400,000 per year, . If an OB/GYN delivers 100 babies per year with a $200,000 malpractice insurance premium, then the physician must charge a minimum of $2,000 per delivery just to cover malpractice insurance. Conversations with an eye surgeon also indicate that most in his profession retire by the age of 55 as malpractice insurance premuims render the practice unprofitable.

This is counter-productive to reducing the cost of health care and a standard response is to practice "defensive" medicine in order to avoid malpractice lawsuits. "Defensive" medicine further drives up the cost of health care.

There are institutions such as the Mayo Clinic which resist this temptation to practice "defensive" medicine and have some of the highest quality and lowest cost health care in the nation. These institutions needs to be studied in order to develop a collection of Best Medical Practices for at least three purposes:

To provide a reference for all care providers as the most effective practices, for the lowest cost, highest quality health care

To use a guideline for reimbursement from health insurance companies as a financial incentive for care providers to conform to best practices.

To compare actual practice against best practice for review of non-economic damages during malpractice suits

In order to provide a timely and cost-effective resolution to malpractice suits, state-sanctioned medical arbirtration boards or tribunals should be established in an effort to speed the resolution of the case and reduce litigation costs. The guidelines for this approach are as follows:

Review of each case by a panel of experts, comprised of 3-7 members with physicians constituting half of the membership and the remaining members having clearly defined expertise in healthcare legal matters, that will recommend liability and compensation

The parties may settle or proceed to the tribunal

The tribunal must be presided over by a judge with health care expertise and the parties may be represented by legal counsel

In suits where there are multiple defendants, assessing the portion of each defendant's liabilty, where a defendant that is only 10% at fault is responsible for 10% of the damages.

Unquantifiable non-economic damages are limited to no more than $250,000 from a single institution or class of practitioner and $500,000 from a class of institutions for a total possible non-economic cap of $750,000 in some cases

If a physician followed best practice guidelines then there are no non-economic damages awarded.

Past and current expenses will be paid at the time of judgment, while future damages can be funded over time

If either party is displeased with the tribunals decision, they may appeal to state-court (preserving trial by jury), thereby voiding any determinations and compensation made at the panel or tribunal level.

A defendant may intitiate a settlement by submitting one or more qualified offers to the party seeking damages, if these are rejected, the case is appealed to a state-court, and the judgment at trial is significantly less favorable than the original offers, the party seeking damamges is responsible for the litigation costs of the defendant.

These approaches can be implemented in an incremental fashion without the need for massive legislation that cannot be reviewed thoroughly.

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Strengthen National Security and Preserve National Sovereignty

National Security

An additional drain on our economic resources as a nation are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is the argument of dealing with a threat on foreign soil before it becomes a domestic one and there is a certain amount of validity to that argument but it is not the responsibility of the U.S. to be a police force to the nations. It seems ironic that we have such domestic security failures as the "underwear" bomber but the argument continues to be made that is made that it is in the interest of our national security to fight these foreign wars. Lets bring our troups home as quickly and as safely as possible and abstain from further foreign conflict, while increasing free trade with all countries. These steps would help the U.S. make great strides toward a improved national security:

Secure our borders - Not only are Mexican citizens crossing the southern border illegally, but some "Mexican drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) are involved in smuggling potential terrorists across the southwestern border, according to the Government Accountability Office." Let's bring home the troops and if necessary, use some of the troops to help enforce and support existing border security to reduce drug trafficking and potential terrorist threats until a permanent barrier can be built as was approved but never funded during the Bush Administration.
Modernize our internal security systems so that we don't allow individuals on no-fly lists to enter the country.

Release government lands owned by the federal government to allow natural resource development. The enumerated powers of the U.S. Constitution (Article I Section 8) only allows the federal government exclusive legislation over the seat of the U.S. government and "to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock yards, and other needful buildings;". This does not include ownership in such states as Arizona where 56% of the total land is not open for development as it is "owned" by the federal government. This land is rich in copper but lies idle while our national debt increases due to importing copper from foreign countries. If we reduce our foreign dependence on natural resources (oil, copper, uranium, etc.) by developing what we have domestically, we reduce our trade deficits, employ U.S. workers in meaningful work, and do not subject our supply of these resources to whims of hostile countries.

National Sovereignty

There are continued efforts to undermine our national sorvereignty by attempting to ratify international treaties that subject the U.S. to international law and abrogates portions of our Constitutional rights. There is an interesting interview of former ambassador John Bolton talks about how the gun control groups have been frustrated during the legislative process, so they attempt to circumvent the legislative process through international treaties entitled "Will America Bend Its Knee?"

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) "poses a serious threat both to parental rights and to U.S. sovereignty, as the UNCRC dictates not only that the federal government must intrude into the family sphere to an unprecedented degree, but also how the federal government is to monitor and govern the actions of our families. Parental rights would be replaced by "the best interests of the child" as defined, ultimately, by an international committee of 18 people in Switzerland." That is the reason, I strongly support the Parental Rights Amendment to the Constitution (H. J. Res. 42) which confirms that "The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right."

Any attempts to create a North American Union with associated Super Highway should also be rejected.

Other policies/treaties that should be rejected to protect National Sovereignty are:

Climate change agreements (otherwise known as Cap and Trade) which has been acknowledged as a means for global government
Arms control effort that are subject to UN verification and oversight
Subjection of national law to the International Criminal Court (ICC)
The Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) which would allow an international bureaucracy to make law for the U.S.

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Paid for by the Committee to Elect Jerry Fowler to U.S. Congress