Sunday’s editorial offers the
editorial board’s thoughts on the presidential election:
Few things about this presidential
election have lent themselves to unambiguous, clear decisions, despite what the
campaigns and their diehard supporters might like us to believe. Neither of the
major candidates is a miraculous savior or unmitigated fiend. Both stand before
U.S.
voters with significant high and low points, and nobody has managed to leap to
the fore as the obviously better choice.
For proof, you need look no further
than the latest polling data. We give our fellow Americans credit for being
fairly smart and invested in the future of this nation, and as such, if the
decision on picking our next leader were an easy one, we wouldn’t be coming
down to the wire with two candidates that are still neck and neck.
Friday’s editorial applauds the compromise reached in the legislature on reducing soaring unemployment insurance bills:
Seasonal workers on the Grand Strand could be in for a surprise next year.
As the legislature quickly headed toward the end of its regular session this week, a compromise bill on unemployment benefits passed on Wednesday containing a new restriction on unemployment benefits for those who work for seasonal businesses. The change comes with a number of others that should ease the draconian increases in unemployment insurance rates that surprised businesses following last year’s reform of the state’s ill-fated Employment Security Commission.
Should seasonal workers get unemployment benefits? That’s one of the questions that Sunday’s editorial tackles.
Stephen Greene has been shopping around the same anecdote to listeners across the state for the past few weeks. It involves the state’s unemployment tax, a family-owned restaurant on the Strand and a bill that unexpectedly grew by $75,000.
Greene, the president of the Myrtle Beach Hospitality Association, is working hard to raise awareness about the sudden and mostly unexpected impact of last year’s reform of the inept and indebted Employment Security Commission.
Is going back to work after retiring double dipping? We take a look at the issue in Friday’s editorial:
We’ve heard the complaints for years about those who take advantage of retire-rehire policies and the state’s Teacher and Employee Retention Incentive program. It seems to come up every time somebody prominent takes advantage of the option.
When Myrtle Beach City Manager Tom Leath and Police Chief Warren Gall, for example, took advantage of the option in December, it prompted a groundswell of grumbling about unfairness and “double dipping” into the coffers.
As we describe in Sunday’s editorial, the next year will be one in which the state decides what it wants to look like and what it means to be a South Carolinian:
We have heard (and said), over and over, that 2011 will be a year in which the way our state lawmakers handle the budget crisis will redefine what South Carolina government will look like. Our lawmakers, however, are only our representatives, and what our government does defines what South Carolinians, as a whole, do.
In other words, welcome to the year in which we redefine South Carolina.
In an episode sadly reminiscent of
the health-care reform debate, Republican U.S. Rep. John Boehner was publicly
lambasted this week for the apparent modern-era sin of proposing a serious
policy solution to a serious governmental problem.
Specifically, Boehner (the House
Minority Leader) gave an interview in which he proposed three changes: raising
the Social Security retirement age to 70 over time, tying benefits to increases
in prices (which rise more slowly than Social Security’s current index, wages)
and reducing benefits for wealthy retirees who do not need them. Denunciations
from Democrats were swift and furious. “Callous, outrageous and frankly
un-American,” said U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat also from Boehner’s state
of Ohio.
Amercans United for Change, one of the many left-leaning groups that pounced,
said called his ideas “an assault on the safety net that has kept generations
of seniors from poverty” that would “launch a nuclear bomb” on Social Security.
Saturday’s editorial urges Congress and the White House to
focus soon on fixing Social Security.
Regardless of whether you agreed
with the Obama administration’s methods or believed its conclusions, you likely
had some appreciation for the White House’s stated intent for making
health-care reform a first priority: addressing the nation’s out-of-control
long-term deficits.
During the lifetime of any young
child today, the greatest single driver of the federal budget deficit is the
rising costs of Medicare and Medicaid - not stimulus spending, not earmarks,
not the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq nor even any given president’s tax cuts.
This is partly because of our country’s aging population but moreso because of
the expected inflation in the price of health-care for everyone, insured or
not, and health-care reform was intended to slow that growth in costs - hence
the phrase “bend the cost curve.”
Friday’s editorial encourages the legislature to use an
increase in cigarette taxes to pay for Medicaid spending.
Here we are again.
Two years ago, the S.C. House of
Representatives and the S.C. Senate passed a law raising the cigarette tax by
50 cents, but Gov. Mark Sanford’s veto was (back then) too much for the
legislature to overcome, and the effort was for naught.
Now, the House and the Senate have
again each passed a cigarette-tax increase, but before the bill can brave
Sanford’s desk once more, lawmakers must first decide how much to raise the
tax.
Friday’s article examines the broad agreements between
President Obama’s health care reforms and most Republican proposals to suggest
that it already is a centrist plan.
Can we now, finally, all concede
that President Obama’s health care proposal is not a socialist government
takeover of medicine? Because that’s what Republican Congressional leaders
finally did on Thursday, when they were forced to sit down and talk about the
actual plan point by point.
Saturday’s editorial recommends Congress devote itself to the
spending restraint and entitlement reform that will correct the country’s
unsustainable budget crisis.
Editor’s
note: Part 2 of 2 about the federal budget.
You will hear, in the coming weeks,
about the massive deficits contained in the Obama administration’s budgets.
In dollar terms, they truly are
staggering: nearly $1.6 trillion this year and $1.3 trillion in 2011. To be
fair, tax revenues are still projected to be about 15 percent beneath their
peak in 2007 and 2008, while the costs of everything (especially including
those mandatory programs) have continued to rise. Moreover, President Obama
inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit when he took office and still plans to cut it
to about $700 billion as the economy recovers near the end of his term. Even
so, our country is clearly on an unsustainable path – and the “wasteful spending”
you will hear described is only a small part of the problem.
Recent Comments