Category Archives: Erik Paulsen

MN GOPers Aren’t the Health Care Saviors They Claim To Be

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Exuberant Minnesota Republicans seem to think they have a winning health care issue for the 2018 election season–reinsurance. And they do deserve a great deal of credit for helping to enact a state reinsurance program that is reducing premiums for Minnesotans in the individual market. The individual market is for the 162,000 Minnesotans who can’t get insurance from their employer or the government.

While their claim that premium increases in 2016 and 2017 were due to DFL policies is ridiculous, it is true that the Minnesota reinsurance program they helped pass is helping those consumers. As the Star Tribune reported:

Jim McManus, a Blue Cross spokesman, said that were it not for the state’s reinsurance program, the carrier’s Blue Plus HMO would be seeking an average individual market premium increase of 4.8 percent as opposed to the 11.8 percent decrease cited Friday by Commerce

Impressive, and Republicans deserve credit for this.

The Rest of the Story

But as Ricky Ricardo would say, before Minnesota Republicans can credibly brand themselves health coverage saviors, they still have some splainin to do.

Why Not National Reinsurance? First, they need to explain why their party – in complete control of the U.S. Senate, U.S. House and the Presidency and entire U.S. Executive Branch of the federal government – doesn’t enact reinsurance to help all Americans. Because of economies of scale and the need for market consistency, a national reinsurance program makes much more sense than a hodgepodge of variable state programs.

Moreover, if stabilizing the market and helping consumers pay less is good for Minnesotans, wouldn’t it be even more awesome to do that for all Americans?  That’s likely why 75% of Americans support enacting reinsurance at the national level.

Why Sabotage the ACA?  So why aren’t Rep. Erik Paulsen, Rep. Jason Lewis, Rep. Tom Emmer, Jeff Johnson or former Governor Tim Pawlenty pressing for reinsurance at a national level? Because they and their White House puppet master would rather sabotage the remarkably effective Affordable Care Act (ACA) than improve the ACA to help American families.

The list of things Trump and his congressional Trumpbulicans are doing to irresponsibly sabotage American families benefiting from ACA protections is long and breathtakingly irresponsible.  This is hurting tens of millions of struggling Americans.  Republicans are ignoring the 71% of Americans who say the Administration should do all it can to make the the ACA work, compared to just 21% who support efforts to make the ACA fail and replace it later.

Why Oppose Adding A MinnesotaCare Buy-in Option?  The other thing Republicans boasting about the state reinsurance bill need to explain is this: Why aren’t they supporting giving the 162,000 Minnesotans in the individual market a MinnesotaCare buy-in option?

The MinnesotaCare buy-in option would achieve much of what Republicans profess to support — more plan and doctor choices for consumers in sparsely populated areas, guaranteed coverage for all Minnesotans in sparsely populated areas, and more competition to control prices.

The fact that Minnesota Republicans won’t support the common sensical MinnesotaCare buy-in option proposal, won’t push for a national reinsurance program, and continue to actively sabotage the ACA makes their gloating about being health care saviors ring very hollow.

Why Are Minnesota Republicans Cutting Corporate Taxes?

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Yesterday, Minnesota House Republicans–following the lead of President Trump and congressional supporters like Representatives Lewis, Emmer and Paulsen–enacted legislation to lower Minnesota’s corporate taxes from 9.8 to 9.06 in 2020.

On most levels, cutting Minnesota’s corporate taxes makes no sense.

BAD POLITICS. Minnesota House Republicans certainly aren’t cutting corporation’s taxes because most of their constituents want it. By an overwhelming three-to-one margin, a Pew Research survey recently found that Americans say corporate taxes at the federal level should be raised (52%) or kept the same (21%), as opposed to lowered (24%), as Minnesota House Republicans are doing. There’s no reason to believe that Minnesotans would view cutting corporate taxes at the state level much differently than Americans do at the federal level.

BAD FOR NECESSARY INVESTMENTS. Minnesota Republicans aren’t cutting corporate taxes to help help finance necessary and popular state investments in things such as infrastructure, education, and health protections.  After all, corporate tax cuts will significantly reduce state funding available for such investments.

BAD FOR MOST CONSTITUENTS. If Minnesota Republicans are cutting those corporate taxes because they believe doing so will help their constituents, they should dig more deeply into the facts. We’ve already seen at the federal level that the benefits of federal corporate tax cuts are mostly staying with corporations and wealthy people. As CNN Money recently reported:

The White House has celebrated the tax cut bonuses unveiled by the likes of Walmart (WMT), Bank of America (BAC) and Disney (DIS).

Yet shareholders, not workers, are far bigger direct winners from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

American companies have lavished Wall Street with $171 billion of stock buyback announcements so far this year, according to research firm Birinyi Associates. That’s a record-high for this point of the year and more than double the $76 billion that Corporate America disclosed at the same point of 2017.

Wall Street loves buybacks because they tend to boost the share price in part by inflating a key measure of profitability. In just the past three days, Cisco (CSCO), Pepsi (PEP) and drug maker AbbVie (ABBV) have promised a total of $50 billion of buybacks.

“It’s the largest ever — and nothing has really changed, except the tax law,” said Jeffrey Rubin, director of research at Birinyi Associates.

Conservative Republican Senator Marco Rubio summarized the situation well when he recently told The Economist “there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”

Federal corporate tax cuts are primarily good for a very small slice of the wealthiest citizens.  The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities analysis finds:

“Mainstream estimates conclude that more than one-third of the benefit of corporate rate cuts flows to the top 1 percent of Americans, and 70 percent flows to the top fifth. Corporate rate cuts could even hurt most Americans since they must eventually be paid for with other tax increases or spending cuts.[1]

While this analysis focuses on federal corporate tax cuts, it’s reasonable to assume that the same is true with state corporate tax cuts.

GOOD FOR CAMPAIGN DONATIONS. At the same time, cutting corporate taxes would ingratiate Minnesota House Republican legislators to large campaign donors in corporations.

I’ll let you reach your own conclusion about what is going on here.

Minnesota’s Trumpublican Trio Owns The Trump Damage

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This week, statewide coverage featured Minnesota Republican Congressman Erik Paulsen, Tom Emmer and Jason Lewis mugging with President Donald Trump’s lead partner in crime, Vice President Mike Pence.

The news coverage serves as a helpful reminder to Minnesotans that these three gentlemen have enabled Donald Trump’s disastrous presidency every step of the way. They have slavishly voted for the mean-spirited Trump agenda about 90% of the time. It reminds us that the reelection of Minnesota’s Trumpublican Trio is effectively a referendum on Trump’s corruption, chaos, incompetence, and extremism.  A few things that Minnesotans should be reminded of during campaign season:

WEAKENING OUR HEALTH PROTECTIONS. These three congressmen repeatedly supported Trumpcare, which would have stripped health protections from 51 million Americans, and only had the support of 17% of Americans. They are also complicit with Trump’s ongoing sabotaging of the historically effective Affordable Care Act protections. Moreover, they oppose efforts that would make health protections much more available and affordable, such as with a national reinsurance program, restoration of the Cost Sharing Reductions (CSR) they cut, and giving Americans the option of buying into the popular and efficient Medicare program.

DEFICIT SPENDING TO ENRICH BILLIONAIRES. Paulsen, Emmer, and Lewis brought us Trump’s trickle down tax code, which gives a huge tax break to the wealthiest 1% at a time when we are suffering from the worst wealth inequality since 1928. The top 1% got an obscene 83% of the benefits provided in the tax bill, creating the largest transfer of wealth to the richest Americans in the nation’s history.

Oh, and by the way, these self-proclaimed “deficit hawks” put the $1.5 trillion cost of their lavish tax giveaway to the wealth on the federal credit card that our kids and grandkids now have to pay.  Absolutely shameless.

PUTTING TRUMP ABOVE THE LAW. They have turned a blind eye to Trump’s repeated obstruction of justice during the investigation into Russia’s attack on America’s democratic jewel, our free and fair elections. This obstruction of justice is far more extensive than the actions that forced President Nixon out of the White House, but the Republicans of 1972 had enough integrity to fulfill their oversight duties and push Nixon out, while these contemporary Republicans are cavalierly shrugging it off.

PUTTING NRA CONTRIBUTIONS OVER COMMON SENSE GUN PROTECTIONS. They have blocked common-sense gun protections that enjoy overwhelming public support, because they and their guy Trump value NRA donations over the wishes of the people they were elected to represent.

PUTTING CORPORATIONS’ NEEDS OVER ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS. They have marched lockstep behind Trump as he has racked up the worst environmental record in our lifetime.  For instance, Trump made the United States the only nation on the planet to not sign the Paris accord on climate change.

These are just a few examples, but the list of pro-Trump votes is a long one. According to FiveThirtyEight, Rep. Emmer votes with Trump 87% of the time, Rep. Lewis votes with Trump 90% of the time and Rep. Paulsen votes with Trump 97% of the time. Clearly, a vote for Emmer, Lewis, and Paulsen is effectively a vote for the historically unpopular Trump.  Minnesotans who are fed up with Trump need to be speaking out, donating and organizing against them.

Paulsen and Kline Finally Support A Jobs Bill

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Erik_Paulsen_John_KlineIn the past, I’ve been critical of Minnesota Republican  Congressmen John Kline and Erik Paulsen for not doing enough to address America’s chronic unemployment problem.  But I have to hand it to them, because yesterday they passed legislation ending the government shutdown that will immediately put 800,000 Americans back to work, and stabilize the economic position of many others.  That’s fantastic news.

Unfortunately, Paulsen and Kline haven’t always been so strong supporting job creation for Americans.  They both refused to support President Obama’s 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that, according to the independent, non-partisan organization FactCheck.org, created a whole lot of jobs:

“…the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report in August that said the stimulus bill has “[l]owered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points” and “[i]ncreased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million.”

Simply put, more people would be unemployed if not for the stimulus bill. The exact number of jobs created and saved is difficult to estimate, but nonpartisan economists say there’s no doubt that the number is positive.”

Paulsen and Kline have also refused to support pending legislation proposed by President Obama, the American Jobs Act, that, according to private sector experts, would stimulate millions of more jobs:

Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi: “The fiscal boost from the jobs package next year would be larger than in the first year of the 2009 economic stimulus, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. Zandi, who was briefed on the plan before the president’s speech, forecast passage of the entire jobs package would add 2 percentage points to economic growth next year and bring down the unemployment rate by 1 percentage point compared with current policy, under which a temporary payroll tax cut and an extended unemployment benefits both expire Dec. 31.”

This morning Economic Forecasting FirmMacroeconomic Advisers issued a report: “We estimate that the American Jobs Act (AJA), if enacted, would give a significant boost to GDP and employment over the near-term. The various tax cuts aimed at raising workers’ after-tax income and encouraging hiring and investing, combined with the spending increases aimed at maintaining state & local employment and funding infrastructure modernization, would: Boost the level of GDP by 1.3% by the end of 2012, and by 0.2% by the end of 2013. Raise nonfarm establishment employment by 1.3 million by the end of 2012 and 0.8 million by the end of 2013, relative to the baseline.”

…Citigroup Chairman Richard Parsons said, “The President’s proposed combination of personal and business tax relief, targeted spending to support infrastructure, and aid to states offers several direct and innovative ways of creating jobs and bolstering our economy. The President’s focus on assisting small business is spot on, since small business is the engine of job creation.”

Finally, Paulsen and Kline have refused to support legislation to end the “sequester” of billions of dollars federal funds.  CBO economists say lifting these spending cuts would immediately add millions more jobs for the American people.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Thursday estimated that keeping the spending cuts from sequestration in place through fiscal 2014 would cost up to 1.6 million jobs.

Canceling the cuts, on the other hand, would yield between 300,000 to 1.6 million new jobs, with the most likely outcome being the addition of 900,000, the CBO said.

“Those changes would increase the level of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.7 percent and increase the level of employment by 0.9 million in the third quarter of calendar year 2014 (the end of fiscal year 2014) relative to the levels projected under current law,” the report states.

Again, these are the job creation bills that Kline and Paulsen have historically refused to support.

But I do want to give credit where credit is due.  The bipartisan legislation Paulsen and Kline supported yesterday will immediately put 800,000 more Americans back to work, and end a government shutdown that will have cost taxpayers, according to Standard and Poors, about $24 billion.  That’s $24 billion that isn’t circulating in the economy creating jobs.

Forget that Kline and Paulsen originally did nothing to speak out against their fellow House Republicans who were giddy in forcing these 800,000 Americans out of work.  At long last, Paulsen and Kline have supported a jobs bill.  Here’s hoping it’s the beginning of a trend.

– Loveland

Note:  This post also was featured in Minnpost’s Blog Cabin.