The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent congressional agency that advises Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program, has begun to discuss an issue important to Sen. Chuck Grassley: new methods of “improving efficiency and preserving access to emergency care in rural areas.” The commissioners discussed a possible new payment option for critical access hospitals in which the hospitals would shift to outpatient services only with emergency room services. Grassley is the sponsor of the Rural Emergency Acute Care Hospital (REACH) Act that would allow such hospitals to shift from offering inpatient care to outpatient care with emergency room services. Grassley’s bill is meant to recognize that inpatient beds are hard to fill in many small communities but emergency room care is critical. Grassley made the following comment on MedPAC’s discussion.
“It’s good news to hear a discussion about hospital needs in rural communities. MedPAC notes that rural hospitals have closed, and more are in danger of closing, so a discussion of whether to shift away from inpatient beds to outpatient care and emergency services is timely and necessary. I look forward to more discussions among policy experts and the enactment of policies that keep rural hospitals open and serving their communities in a flexible, updated way.”
TAX FREEDOM DAY 2016
Q: What is Tax Freedom Day?
A: As tax filing season winds down for the year, taxpayers can look forward to reaching another milestone on April 24. That’s the day, 114 days into the calendar year (excluding Leap Day), that the nonpartisan Tax Foundation says taxpayers have worked to meet their federal, state and local tax burden. Federal revenue collections in 2016 will be $3.34 trillion and state and local taxes combined will reach $1.64 trillion. That adds up to $4.99 trillion, approaching one-third of national income. According to the Tax Foundation, Americans will spend more on taxes in 2016 than they will on food, clothing and housing combined. If you factor in savings for retirement and college, it’s no wonder so many Americans are wondering why it’s so hard to get ahead and stay ahead. Working until the middle of April just to foot their tax bill sure makes people feel like they are spinning their wheels to earn a living and pay their own bills. Factor in federal borrowing, and taxpayers have an even gloomier forecast. That’s because if you calculate how much longer taxpayers work to make up for annual federal borrowing, Tax Freedom Day takes 16 days longer to reach: May 10, 2016. There’s a small bit of consolation, comparatively, for Iowans. Iowa’s Tax Freedom Day falls on April 14, 2016. Iowa ranks 14th among the 50 states to observe the day when taxpayers in their respective states have earned enough money to pay their tax burden for the year. Residents in Connecticut (#50) must work an extra month (until May 21) to clear their tax hurdle before they start earning money for their own expenses and personal savings.
Q: Where is Congress in the budget process this year?
A: In February the President proposed a $4.2 trillion budget. His budget projects that revenue collections would cover 86 percent of spending and the remainder, 14 percent, would be borrowed. It never balances. Washington needs to change its mindset. America can’t tax, spend and borrow our way to prosperity. Since President Obama took office, the federal debt has increased $9 trillion to $19 trillion. In fact, the budget deficit – the difference between what the government spends and collects -- surpassed $1 trillion each year from 2009 to 2012. As a member of the Senate Budget Committee, I work to hold government spending accountable as a watchdog for taxpayers. Congress holds the power of the purse strings. Each year, Congress legislates tax dollars for what’s called discretionary and mandatory spending. Roughly speaking, about two-thirds of the budget is mandatory, about one-quarter is discretionary and the rest goes to service the federal debt. The discretionary spending authority changes from year to year to pay for programs and public services such as national security, transportation and infrastructure, scientific research, veterans’ healthcare benefits, food and agriculture, and the military, for example. Mandatory spending is authorized by existing law, such as Social Security and Medicare. Its expenditures depend on the number of people who qualify for benefits from year to year. Over the next several months, lawmakers will hammer out public policy and prioritize spending decisions that fund the government. I’ll continue working to make sure tax dollars are spent and collected as intended on both sides of the federal ledger. Without exception, Iowans at my 99 county meetings tell me they are fed up with reckless spending habits that mortgage the future of their kids and grandkids. It’s morally irresponsible to live high on the hog today and leave it the next generation to pick up the tab. That’s one reason I voted against the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill in December. Washington needs to get its fiscal house in order. As a fiscal conservative, I’ll keep working to rein in the bloated bureaucracy, expose wrongdoing and account for better stewardship of tax dollars. That includes a bill I introduced in April to close a loophole in the farm payment system. Family farmers are hitting the fields this spring with uncertainty about low commodity prices. Congress needs to strengthen the farm safety net for those it was intended to serve, not an unlimited number of “non-farming” family members. Although I secured language in both the House and Senate passed farm bills to curb abusive farm payments, last-minute negotiations on the final 2014 farm bill restricted the USDA’s ability to eliminate this loophole. There are more loopholes I’m working to close across the sprawling bureaucracy, from wasteful U.S. military spending in Afghanistan to corruption and cronyism at public housing authorities. What’s more, the federal government in 2014 made $124 billion in improper payments, according to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, $19 billion more than the previous year. What’s worse, the GAO estimates there have been $1 trillion in federal tax dollars lost to improper payments since reporting began in 2003. Also consider the extensive use of paid administrative leave that has resulted in some federal workers collecting tens of millions of dollars not to report to work. Incredibly, the federal government paid 263 employees from 2011-2013 to stay off-the-job for a year or more, with paychecks exceeding $31 million. I’m working to pass bipartisan legislation that would curb abusive practices and federal agencies’ misuse of paid administrative leave. As Iowans wrap up another tax filing season, I will continue working to keep a tight leash on federal spending so that taxpayers may be able to celebrate Tax Freedom Day earlier rather than later.
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Wind energy reaches job record nationwide
Sen. Chuck Grassley is the author of the original production tax credit for electricity from wind and has successfully worked to renew the tax credit ever since. Late last year, he secured a long-term, five-year extension and phase-out of the tax credit, intended to give the industry certainty for investments and job creation. Grassley notes that the wind energy industry is the only energy industry that has proposed a phase-out of its tax benefit, unlike many longstanding industries like oil and gas that have permanent tax benefits. Today, the American Wind Energy Association announced that American wind power supported a record 88,000 jobs at the beginning of this year, an increase of 20 percent in one year. Grassley made the following comment.
“In Iowa, a state that just became the first in the nation to generate more than 30 percent of its power from wind energy, we’ve seen the economic success story behind renewables up close and personal. There are more than 6,000 good wind jobs in Iowa. In addition to the direct jobs, wind energy is a selling point for tech companies that located to Iowa in part because they wanted to take advantage of wind energy. The latest job statistics show that wind energy is far from being only an Iowa phenomenon. Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas and many other states show the gains of taking advantage of this clean energy opportunity.”
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Cybersecurity, taxpayer information; IRS doesn't implement all watchdog recommendations, to Grassley's frustration
At a Finance Committee hearing today on “Cybersecurity and Protecting Taxpayer Information,” Sen. Chuck Grassley pressed IRS Commissioner John Koskinen on why the IRS hasn’t implemented several no cost and low-cost recommendations to protect taxpayer information. Grassley, former chairman of the Finance Committee and current chairman of the Judiciary Committee, just introduced legislation to increase penalties for the theft of taxpayer information. Grassley made the following comment on his exchange with the IRS commissioner.
“Agency watchdogs and auditors put out a lot of recommendations that took time and money and would help solve problems. It’s frustrating when agencies don’t implement the recommendations and even more frustrating when they don’t have a good reason for not implementing the recommendations, as we saw with the IRS today.”
Video of Grassley’s exchange with Koskinen is at the one-hour mark here.
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Prepared Floor Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee
Consideration of Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr.
to be a District Judge for the Middle District of Tennessee
Monday, April 11, 2016
Today, the Senate is expected to confirm Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr. to be a district judge for the Middle District of Tennessee. I offer my congratulations to Mr. Crenshaw on his confirmation. Mr. Crenshaw is President Obama’s 324th judicial nominee confirmed since he took office in 2009. To put this in perspective, at the same point in his eighth year, President Bush had only 303 judicial nominees confirmed by the Senate. Furthermore, throughout his entire presidency, the Senate confirmed 326 of President Bush’s judicial nominees. Including tonight’s vote, the Senate will only be 2 judges shy of the total number it confirmed under President Bush.
-30-Prepared Floor Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Chairman, Senate Committee on the Judiciary
The Supreme Court and the Remarks of President Barack Obama at the University of Chicago
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Mr. President,
Before I turn to my prepared remarks, I’d note that the Minority Leader came to the floor this morning to complain, again, that the Senate is following the Biden Rules on the Supreme Court vacancy.
As I’ve said before, there’s not much that makes the Minority Leader more mad than when his side is forced to play by its own rules. So, I won’t dwell on his daily missives.
Most us around here have grown used to it, and don’t pay him much mind, especially given his record of leading a Senate where even some Members of his own party were never allowed to offer a single amendment. He voted 25 times to filibuster judicial nominees— including a Supreme Court Justice, and at the time argued there is nothing in the Constitution requiring the Senate to vote on nominees.
And of course, he’ll be remembered as the leader who did more damage to the Senate than any other leader in history when he invoked the so-called nuclear option in November of 2013.
Now I’d like to share a few thoughts about the President’s remarks last week at the University of Chicago.
“I think just from reading the cases you’ll acknowledge that there’s politics in legal rulings.”
That’s what President Obama said last week when he visited the University of Chicago.
The President met with law students and answered their questions. They asked him about judicial nominations, including his decision to make a nomination to fill Justice Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court.
His responses were revealing.
I agree with President Obama that too often politics seep into legal rulings. He’s right as a factual matter. In fact I said the same thing on the Senate floor a few days before the President did.
Oddly, those on the left who were up in arms over my remarks were silent on the President’s. I suppose that’s because, unlike the President, I think it’s a bad thing that there’s politics in judicial decision-making these days.
Politics in judicial rulings means that something other than law forms the basis of those decisions.
It means the judge is reading his or her own views into the Constitution.
Unlike the President, I believe the biggest threat to public confidence in the court is the justices’ willingness to permit their own personal politics to influence their decisions.
This isn’t the first time the President has talked about how he believes justices should decide cases. He has repeatedly said they should decide cases based on something other than the Constitution and the law.
His views on this subject are clear.
When Chief Justice Roberts was confirmed, then Senator Obama said that in the really hard cases, “the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge’s heart.”
In 2009, President Obama said he views “empathy” as an essential ingredient for justices to possess in order to reach just outcomes.
And before he made his most recent Supreme Court nomination, the President said that where “the law is not clear,” his nominee’s decisions “will be shaped by his or her own perspective, ethics, and judgment.”
But what’s in a judge’s “heart,” or their personal “perspective [and] ethics” have no place in judicial decision-making.
The President’s idea of what’s appropriate for justices to consider is totally at odds with our constitutional system. We are a government of laws and not a government of judges.
I’ve said before that we should have a serious public discussion about what the Constitution means and how our judges should interpret it. President Obama and I have very different views on those questions.
Politics belongs to us—it’s between the people and their elected representatives. It’s important that judges don’t get involved in politics.
That’s because, unlike senators, lifetime-appointed federal judges aren’t accountable to the people in elections.
It’s also because when nine unelected justices make decisions based on their own policy preferences, rather than constitutional text, they rob from the American people the ability to govern themselves.
And when that happens, individual liberty pays the price.
To preserve the representative nature of our government and our constitutional system, our judges need to return to their limited role, and decide cases based on the text of the Constitution and laws that the people’s representatives have passed.
President Obama last week described the justices’ power as an “enormous” one. That’s true in a sense. But the Constitution limits the justices’ power to deciding controversies in specific cases that come before them.
President Reagan talked about this on the day that Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Scalia were sworn in. He recounted how the Founding Fathers debated the role of the judiciary during the summer of 1787.
As President Reagan said, the Founders ultimately settled on “a judiciary that would be independent and strong, but one whose power would . . . be confined within the boundaries of a written Constitution and laws.”
For decades now, the Supreme Court has been issuing opinions purportedly based on the Constitution where the Constitution itself is silent. This kind of judicial decision-making usurps the right of Americans to govern themselves on some of the most important issues in their lives.
That’s what happens, for example, when the court “discovers” rights in the Constitution that aren’t mentioned in its text and weren’t observed when the Constitution was adopted.
The same thing happens with ordinary statutes that Congress passes.
If the justices limited themselves to saying what the Constitution or statute says about the case before them, their power wouldn’t be so “enormous.”
President Obama says it’s not so simple. He says the cases that really matter are the ones where there’s some ambiguity in the law. In those cases, President Obama thinks a justice needs to apply “judgment grounded in how we actually live.”
Again, I disagree.
When judges ask what a law should mean, the meaning of a law will change, depending on the judge’s “life experiences” or what judge happens to hear the case.
The people lose control of what their laws say. It’s not consistent with our system of self-government.
James Madison—the “Father of the Constitution”—explained the same thing in a letter to Richard Henry Lee. He said that “the sense,” or meaning, “in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation” defines the Constitution.
He said that’s the only way the Constitution is legitimate.
That’s because, in Madison’s words, “if the meaning of the text be sought in the changeable meaning of the words composing it,” the “shape and attributes” of government would change over time.
And importantly, that change would occur without the people’s consent. It wouldn’t be consistent with the way we govern ourselves through our representatives.
That’s a very different view than the President suggested in Chicago last week when he said that ambiguous cases ask a judge to consider “how we actually live.”
In President Obama’s view, the judge isn’t asking what a law meant when it was passed, but what it should mean today.
President Obama described this as his “Progressive view of how the courts should operate.” With respect to the President, it’s my view that the courts shouldn’t operate in a political way at all.
Not a progressive one, not a moderate one, not a conservative one.
Instead, in my view, the courts should operate in a constitutional way that ensures government by the people.
Again, when Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Scalia were sworn in, President Reagan touched on this very subject.
He said that for the Founding Fathers, the question about the courts was not whether they would be liberal or conservative. The question, President Reagan said, was “will we have government by the people?”
Judges have a role in ensuring that we have government by the people.
They fulfill that role when they try to understand what a law meant—either a statute or the Constitution—when the people’s representatives enacted it.
If the justices decided cases that way, there would be a lot less politics in legal rulings. Unlike the President, I think that would be healthy for our democracy. But more important, it was the understanding of those who wrote and adopted our Constitution.
I yield the floor.
