The mounting U.S. debt and rising deficits that will continue under a proposed Republican budget blueprint may trigger critical votes in Congress to hold off on repealing the Affordable Care Act.
Such a scenario emerged this week when U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said he wouldn’t vote for a budget that increased the federal debt even if it included a repeal of the ACA. Paul is a critical vote among the GOP’s 52-member caucus in the Senate, which needs 51 votes to pass a budget that would conceivably include a repeal of the ACA. Democrats are unified in their opposition to a repeal.
A budget resolution the Senate approved this week without Paul’s support is a blueprint that would lead to another nearly $9 trillion to the federal debt, which already stands at about $20 trillion.
“Everybody’s hot and heavy to vote on this budget because they want to repeal Obamacare, but the budget Republicans are going to introduce will add $8.8 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years,” Paul added.
While many of Obamacare’s problems are focused on rising premiums from private individual coverage offered on exchanges, the law also includes myriad reforms that have slowed the growth of spending, particularly in the Medicare health insurance program for seniors.
The ACA’s Medicare reforms have shifted away from fee-for-service medicine that pays doctors and hospitals no matter how patient care turns out to value-based models that reimburse providers based on outcomes and quality measures. Insurers in the Medicare program like AetnaAET -0.20%, UnitedHealth GroupUNH +0.14%, HumanaHUM +0.50% and others are rated via a star system created by the ACA that many believe has spurred more competition.
Though Republican Senators this week voted to proceed with the budget blueprint, some of them have said they don’t want to proceed with an Obamacare repeal without having a replacement that would continue to cover more than 20 million Americans who have gained benefits since the law was enacted in 2010.
Republicans have yet to provide legislation that would replace the ACA with some calling for a delay of up to four years before they would offer up an idea.
“If you are repealing, show us what you’ll replace it with, then we’ll look at what you have and see what you can do,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who leads his party in Congress’ upper chamber, told the New York Times.
Any ACA repeal will now head to committees in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
“Repealing the entire ACA would leave no funds available for ‘replace’ legislation, and in fact would require further deficit reduction to avoid adding to the debt,” the committee said.
Republican senator says measure to begin process of repealing Affordable Care Act adds too much to federal budget deficit
Sen. Rand Paul, shown at an event on Oct. 27, says the Republicans’ measure to begin repealing the Affordable Care Act would add $9.7 trillion in debt over 10 years to the federal budget.PHOTO: TIMOTHY D. EASLEY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By KRISTINA PETERSON and SIOBHAN HUGHES
Jan. 4, 2017 2:13 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said Wednesday that he would oppose the budget measure Republicans are counting on to begin the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act, leaving the effort in danger of derailing if any other GOP senators defect.
The Senate on Wednesday took its first procedural vote on the budget measure, a vehicle that Republicans can use to repeal the 2010 health-care law with a simple majority vote. Republicans now hold only 52 seats in the Senate, where most legislation needs 60 votes to pass.
Mr. Paul said Wednesday he would vote against the budget measure because it adds too much to the federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2017.
Following Democratic and Republican party meetings on Capitol Hill, Vice President-Elect Mike Pence said repealing Obamacare is President-elect Donald Trump’s ‘first order of business,’ but Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned that rolling back the law would ‘make America sick again.’ Photo: AP
“I’m a no,” he said in a brief interview. “It adds $9.7 trillion in debt over 10 years.”
Other Senate Republicans, including Susan Collins of Maine and Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee, have voiced concerns about repealing the health-care law before the GOP has settled on a plan to replace it. However, all three voted to advance the budget in an early procedural vote Wednesday, which passed 51-48, allowing the Senate to consider the measure.
Mr. Paul was the only Republican to join the entire Democratic caucus in voting not to move forward with the budget blueprint. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) didn’t vote.
Other senators could still raise objections ahead of the final vote—on either the plan to repeal the health-care law or on the budget itself.
Aware of the razor-thin margins, GOP Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida wrote Tuesday in a joint letter to GOP Senate leaders that while they understood the budget was “primarily a mechanism to advance [the health law’s] repeal,” the Senate should still abstain from any budget devices that they oppose.
“Our votes in favor of the ‘Obamacare Repeal Resolution’ do not indicate in any way our support for the revenue, spending, and deficit numbers therein, nor for the use of those numbers as the basis for future federal budgets,” the three senators wrote, using the GOP nickname for the budget blueprint.
The next fiscal year’s budget, expected to pass this spring and help Republicans overhaul the tax code, must balance the federal budget in 10 years, they wrote.
Budget blueprints are nonbinding documents used by political parties to signal how they think federal dollars should be spent. The budget document introduced in the Senate Tuesday also starts the process of repealing the health-care law.
The Senate’s budget resolution directs four relevant committees, two in the Senate and two in the House, to write legislation by Jan. 27 that reconciles spending and tax policy with the budget blueprint for the coming fiscal year. Embedded in the committees’ legislation will be provisions that repeal much of the health law.
Democrats, who have paid a heavy political price for the health law’s unpopularity, said Republicans will now bear responsibility for any attempts to gut and replace it.
“Now, they’re gonna own it, and all the problems in the health-care system are going to be on their backs,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said Wednesday.
Story 1: Mainstream Media Mob Electronic Lynching of Dr. Ben Carson — Attempted Assassination Fails — Limbaugh Unmasked The Perpetrators — The Conservative Right Strikes Back — Videos
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November 6, 2015: GOP Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson addressed the media this evening on the alleged false claims he made in his book, “Gifted Hands”, including that he received a full scholarship offer to West Point and that he allegedly tried to stab a friend and hit his mother with a hammer.
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audio 11/6/15 RUSH LIMBAUGH: POLITICO & MEDIA TRYING TO TAKEDOWN BEN CARSON
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“There is not a single person in the media today that could wear Dr. Benjamin Carson’s uniform, whatever uniform he puts on in a day, a business suit, if it’s surgical scrubs, there’s not a single member of the media that could do anything close to what Ben Carson has done with his life. ”
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audio 11/6/15 BEN CARSON TO CNN, “ASK HILLARY THE SAME QUESTIONS”
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LIMBAUGH: CARSON IS VICTIM OF ‘ELECTRONIC LYNCHING’
Media ‘telling an outright lie’ in ‘an assassination attempt’
Talk-radio kingpin Rush Limbaugh shredded Politico and accused the news site and mainstream media of coordinating an “assassination attempt” against Dr. Ben Carson on Friday.
In fact, Limbaugh went even further, calling the onslaught of attacks an “electronic lynching being conducted against the Republican African-American candidate by a majority-white mainstream American liberal media.”
In a damning accusation Friday, Politico claimed Carson’s campaign “admitted he did not tell the truth” about having been accepted into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
A Carson spokesperson made a response to an inquiry by Politico into the veracity of a story in the surgeon’s autobiography, “Gifted Hands,” that the then-17-year-old was offered a full scholarship after a meeting in 1969 with Gen. William Westmoreland in 1969.
Politico reported West Point had no record of either Carson’s application or admission.
However, a Carson spokesman told the Daily Caller on Friday, “The Politico story is an outright lie.”
Doug Watts said, “The campaign never admitted to anything,” and Carson “[N]ever said he was admitted or even applied” to West Point.
“I want to show you how this works. I want to share with you some headlines that have run during the course of this program,” Limbaugh said, blasting Politico as a “liar,” and listing the following media reports Friday:
In a press conference late Friday, Carson ripped into combative reporters:
If you look at one of the websites that West Point has today, it says government offer for full scholarship to West Point. So they use that very language themselves. So almost 50 years ago, they may have been using that language as well.
They were very impressed with what I had done. I had become the city executive officer in less time than anybody else had ever done that. They were saying, “You would be a tremendous addition to the military, and we can get you into West Point with a full scholarship. I simply said, “I want to be a doctor. I really appreciate it. I’m very flattered.” And I moved on. So it didn’t go on any further than that. …
I think what it shows, and what these kinds of things show, is that there is a desperation on behalf of some to try to find a way to tarnish me because they have been looking through everything. They have been talking to everybody I’ve ever known, everybody I’ve ever seen, [saying], “There’s got to be a scandal. There’s got to be something. He’s having an affair, there’s gotta be something.” They are getting desperate. So next week it’ll be my kindergarten teacher who says that I peed in my pants. I mean, this is just ridiculous. But it’s OK because I totally expect it.
Dr. Carson explained that, as the top ROTC student in Detroit 50 years ago, he was invited to “a number of events because of my position.” In that role, he was invited to meet Gen. Westmoreland.
“That was also a time, as I recall, that several of the high brass told me that I would be somebody that they would be interested in in the military. It was an offer to me. I interpreted it as an offer. … They told me this was available to me because of my accomplishments and that they would be delighted for me to do it. And I told them immediately that my intention was to become a physician. It always has been, and I was very honored but I would not be pursuing that.”
Carson said he “made it clear” in his book that he, in fact, only applied to one college because he had just enough money for one application fee.
When relentlessly pressed about his childhood years, Carson told reporters, “My prediction is that all of you guys trying to pile on is actually going to help me, because, when I go out to these book signings and I see these thousands of people, they say, ‘Don’t let the media get you down. Don’t let them disturb you. Please continue to fight for us.’ They understand that this is a witch hunt. …
“Let me just say one thing. I do not remember this level of scrutiny for one President Barack Obama when he was running. In fact, I remember just the opposite. I remember people just [saying], ‘Oh well, we won’t really talk about that. We won’t talk about that relationship. Well, Frank Marshall Davis, we don’t want to talk about that. Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, we don’t really know him. You know, all the things that Jeremiah Wright was saying, oh, not a big problem.’
“[Obama] goes to Occidental College, doesn’t do all that well, and somehow ends up at Columbia University. His records are sealed. Why are his records sealed? Why are you guys not interested in why his records are sealed? Why are you not interested in that? Let me ask you that. Can somebody tell me why? … Now you’re saying that something that happened with the words ‘a scholarship was offered’ was the big deal, but the president of the United States, his academic records being sealed is not? Tell me how there’s equivalence there.”
Carson told reporters he wouldn’t “sit back and let you be completely unfair without letting the American people know what’s going on.”
New front-runner Ben Carson faces closer scrutiny of his life story
By David Weigel and David A. Fahrenthold
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson — now making the transition from living legend to scrutinized candidate — faced new questions Friday about the way he tells his powerful life story.
For years, Carson has said he was offered a “full scholarship” to the U.S. Military Academy when he was a high-achieving high school Army ROTC cadet in the late 1960s. But Carson never applied to West Point, was never accepted and never received a formal scholarship offer. In fact, West Point does not offer scholarships; all cadets attend free.
The story was first reported Friday by Politico. Carson responded to the resulting controversy by saying that when he spoke of an “offer,” he referred to informal, verbal statements of encouragement from military leaders he met through the ROTC, the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps .
“I was told that because of my accomplishments, they would be able to manage to get me into West Point and that I wouldn’t have to pay anything,” Carson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network. He said he decided not to apply and went to Yale University instead to pursue medicine. “There was no application process [at West Point]. I never even started down that path,” Carson said.
Carson’s campaign cast the episode as new evidence of persecution of the candidate by the news media. Tension between Carson and the media came to a boil Friday night in Florida, where at a combative news conference the candidate asked why President Obama had not been subjected to such scrutiny.
“The words ‘a scholarship was offered’ were a big deal, but the president of the United States’ academic records being sealed is not?” he said.
The original Politico report declared that Carson had “fabricated” a story about “his application and acceptance” at West Point. It also claimed that the candidate had “admitted” the fabrication.
Carson’s campaign vehemently denied those statements.
The Politico story seemed to mischaracterize a small but key detail in the way Carson has told the story. In many cases, Carson implied only that he received a formal offer from West Point. He never said explicitly that he had been accepted or even that he had applied.
“It gives journalism a bad name,” said Armstrong Williams, Carson’s close friend and business manager. “It only fits into Dr. Carson’s narrative of a witch hunt” by the media.
By mid-afternoon, Politico posted a new version of its story that no longer included the wording that Carson had “fabricated” a part of his biography. Later in the day, the news site posted an editor’s note stating that the story should have made clear that Carson never claimed to have applied for admission to West Point.
“We continue to stand by the story,” Politico spokeswoman Lauren Edmonds said in a statement. “We updated it to reflect Ben Carson’s on the record response to the New York Times and other new details, which underscore the validity of our original reporting.”
As the day went on, conservative media voices chimed in to agree with Carson. “It’s almost like the Politico is the official leak machine for the Republican establishment,” Rush Limbaugh said on his syndicated radio show. Radio host and blogger Erick Erickson replaced an entire post about “the beginning of Ben Carson’s end” with one about a “demonstrably false” Politico report.
Carson, 64, achieved worldwide fame for his daring surgeries at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and for his story of rising out of poverty in southwest Detroit. This week, as Carson has challenged Donald Trump for the lead in the Republican presidential primary contest, there has been a new focus on Carson’s personal beliefs and on the way he tells his life story.
First, the Web site BuzzFeed posted a 17-year-old video of a commencement speech in which Carson offers an alternative theory about why the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids. In Carson’s telling, they were not built to be tombs, as historians and archeologists say. Instead, they were built for grain storage, in keeping with the biblical story of Joseph, in which the patriarch counseled the pharaoh to store up grain for years of famine.
Carson told CBS News this week that he still believes that the pyramids were granaries, saying the proof was in sealed chambers inside the structures. “You would need that if you were trying to preserve grain for a long period of time,” he said.
Then, CNN sought to verify a key part of Carson’s life story: that, as a young man in Detroit, he had committed acts of violence, including smashing a boy’s nose with a thrown rock, attempting to stab a friend in the abdomen and threatening his own mother with a hammer during an argument.
CNN interviewed nine people who knew Carson during his childhood and who said that the violent incidents did not fit their recollections of him.
Carson said CNN did not speak with the right people. “I was generally a nice person,” he told the network. “It’s just that I had a very bad temper. So unless you were the victim of that temper, why would you know?”
It was an unusually odd situation: a presidential candidate insisting, in the face of skepticism, that he really did have a history of violence.
The part of Carson’s life at issue Friday — the “offer” he got, or did not get, from West Point — is a story that Carson has told repeatedly in books, interviews and speeches.
He tells it in the context of his rapid rise through high school Army ROTC, which ended with him as the top-ranking cadet in Detroit.
“I was offered a full scholarship to West Point,” Carson wrote in his 1990 memoir, “Gifted Hands.” “I didn’t refuse the scholarship outright, but I let them know that a military career wasn’t where I saw myself going. As overjoyed as I felt to be offered such a scholarship, I wasn’t really tempted. The scholarship would have obligated me to spend four years in military service after I finished college, precluding my chances to go on to medical school.”
In that account and others, Carson seems to rely on loose, broad definitions for the words “offer” and “scholarship.”
In fact, applicants to West Point must be sponsored by a member of Congress or the secretary of the Army. If accepted, they attend tuition-free: There are no “scholarships” at West Point beyond the benefits that all cadets get.
Doug Watts, a spokesman for Carson’s campaign, said Carson never completed the process for acceptance by West Point and never had an official sponsor. Indeed, in “Gifted Hands,” Carson makes clear that he actually applied only to one school: Yale.
“Each college required a ten-dollar non-returnable entrance fee sent with the application,” Carson wrote. “I had exactly ten dollars, so I could apply only to one.”
Still, his campaign spokesman said, it was proper to say Carson had an “offer” of a scholarship because military leaders had told him that his acceptance would be a sure thing.
“He was told by the ROTC commander that he could have an appointment,” Watts said. “Dr. Carson rejected the offer, did not apply or pursue admission. Had he done so, and been accepted, that would have been tantamount to a scholarship, the same that all cadets receive.”
In one of his books, Carson also made a similar claim about a scholarship offer from another school.
“The University of Michigan had offered me a scholarship, but I wanted to go farther from home,” he wrote in his 1999 book, “The Big Picture.”
A spokesman for the University of Michigan, Rick Fitzgerald, said he could not confirm that account. The university no longer has records from that time. Carson’s camp said the scenario was similar to that involving West Point: He had decided to apply elsewhere and never submitted an application.
Exclusive: Carson claimed West Point ‘scholarship’ but never applied
Republican hits POLITICO story, later admits to The New York Times he wasn’t offered aid.
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson on Friday conceded that he never applied nor was granted admission to West Point and attempted to recast his previous claims of a full scholarship to the military academy — despite numerous public and written statements to the contrary over the last few decades.
West Point has occupied a central place in Carson’s personal story for years. According to a tale told in his book, “Gifted Hands,” the then-17 year old was introduced in 1969 to Gen. William Westmoreland, who had just ended his command of U.S. forces in Vietnam, and the two dined together. That meeting, according to Carson’s telling, was followed by the offer of a “full scholarship” to the military academy.
Story Continued Below
West Point, however, has no record of Carson applying, much less being extended admission.
“In 1969, those who would have completed the entire process would have received their acceptance letters from the Army Adjutant General,” said Theresa Brinkerhoff, a spokeswoman for the academy. She said West Point has no records that indicate Carson even began the application process. “If he chose to pursue (the application process), then we would have records indicating such,” she said.
When presented by POLITICO with these facts, Carson’s campaign conceded he never applied.
“Dr. Carson was the top ROTC student in the City of Detroit,” campaign manager Barry Bennett wrote in an email to POLITICO. “In that role he was invited to meet General Westmoreland. He believes it was at a banquet. He can’t remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson’s performance as ROTC City Executive Officer.”
“He was introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC Supervisors,” Bennett added. “They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in ROTC. He considered it but in the end did not seek admission.”
In an interview with The New York Times following the POLITICO story, Mr. Carson said: “I don’t remember all the specific details. Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told that someone like me – they could get a scholarship to West Point. But I made it clear I was going to pursue a career in medicine.”
“It was, you know, an informal ‘with a record like yours we could easily get you a scholarship to West Point.’”
Carson would have needed to seek admission in order to receive an offer of free education from West Point. Also, according to West Point, there is no such thing as a “full scholarship” to the military academy, as Carson represented in his book.
An application to West Point begins with a nomination by a member of Congress or another prominent government or military official. After that, a rigorous vetting process begins. If offered admission, all costs are covered for all students; indeed there are no “full scholarships,” per se.
The statement from Carson’s campaign manager on Friday went on to say: “There are ‘Service Connected’ nominations for stellar High School ROTC appointments. Again he was the top ROTC student in Detroit. I would argue strongly that an Appointment is indeed an amazing full scholarship. Having ran several Congressional Offices I am very familiar with the Nomination process.
“Again though his Senior Commander was in touch with West Point and told Dr. Carson he could get in, Dr. Carson did not seek admission.”
Ben Carson has repeatedly claimed he was offered a full scholarship from West Point. He conveys the story in at least two other books, “You Have a Brain” and “Take the Risk.” Carson repeated his West Point claim as recently as Aug. 13, when he fielded questions from supporters on Facebook.
And in October, Carson shared the story with Charlie Rose: “I had a goal of achieving the office of city executive officer [in JROTC]. Well, no one had ever done that in that amount of time … Long story short, it worked, I did it. I was offered full scholarship to West Point, got to meet General Westmoreland, go to Congressional Medal dinners, but decided really my pathway would be medicine.”
The Carson campaign pushed back against POLTICO’s story after its publication, with Carson himself telling Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The Brody File” that the media “will go through all lengths trying to discredit me.” According to a tweet from the show, Carson said, of the mainstream media, “they’ll ask my kindergarten teacher, ‘did I ever wet my pants.’”
The concession from Carson’s campaign comes as serious questions about other points of fact in Carson’s personal narrative are questioned, including the seminal episode in which he claimed to have attempted to stab a close friend. Similarly, details have emerged that cast doubt on the nature of Carson’s encounter with one of the most prominent military men of that era.
The West Point spokeswoman said it certainly is possible Carson talked with Westmoreland, and perhaps the general even encouraged him to apply to West Point. However, she said, the general would have explained the benefits of a West Point education without guaranteeing him entry.
In “Gifted Hands,” Carson says he excelled in his ROTC program at Detroit’s Southwestern High School, earning the respect of his superiors — just a couple years after anger problems led him to try to murder a friend. He attained the rank of second lieutenant by his senior year of high school and became the student leader of the city’s ROTC programs.
In May of his senior year, he was chosen to march in the city’s Memorial Day parade.
“I felt so proud, my chest bursting with ribbons and braids of every kind. To make it more wonderful, we had important visitors that day. Two soldiers who had won the Congressional Medal of Honor in Viet Nam were present,” he wrote. “More exciting to me, General William Westmoreland (very prominent in the Viet Nam war) attended with an impressive entourage. Afterward, Sgt. Hunt” — his high school ROTC director — “introduced me to General Westmoreland, and I had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners. Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point.”
But, according to records of Westmoreland’s schedule that were provided by the U.S. Army, the general did not visit Detroit around Memorial Day in 1969 or have dinner with Carson. In fact, the general’s records suggest he was in Washington that day and played tennis at 6:45 p.m.
There are, however, several reports of an event in February of that year, similar to the one Carson described. Then, Westmoreland was the featured guest at a 1,500-person banquet to celebrate Medal of Honor recipient Dwight Johnson. The event drew prominent guests, including the governor at the time, the mayor of Detroit, the president of Ford Motor Company and nine previous Medal of Honor awardees, according to an Associated Press account of the event.
Carson, a leader of the city’s ROTC program at the time, may have been among the invited guests at the $10-a-plate event.
Carson’s later retelling of the events in this period of his life downplays his meeting with Westmoreland and that event’s link to a West Point acceptance. In his January 2015 book, “You Have a Brain,” — a book geared toward teenagers — Carson again recalls his rapid rise through his high school ROTC program to become the top student officer in the city.
“That position allowed me the chance to meet four-star general William Westmoreland, who had commanded all American forces in Vietnam before being promoted to Army Chief of Staff at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.,” he wrote. “I also represented the Junior ROTC at a dinner for Congressional Medal of Honor winners, marched at the front of Detroit’s Memorial Day parade as head of an ROTC contingent, and was offered a full scholarship to West Point.”
Carson has said he turned down the supposed offer of admission because he knew he wanted to be a doctor and attending West Point would have required four years of military service after graduation.
Cecil Murphey, who ghostwrote “Gifted Hands,” told POLITICO that his memory of Carson’s exchange with Westmoreland was hazy.
“My gut response is that it was not a private meeting, but there were others there,” he said in an email. “The general took a liking to Ben and opened doors.”
Ben Carson admits he lied about West Point scholarship, insists stories about troubled childhood are true
BY MEG WAGNER
Ben Carson admitted Friday that he lied about earning a prestigious scholarship to West Point while controversy over the validity of his troubled kid-to-renowned doctor narrative reached a crescendo.
The 2016 GOP candidate said he fabricated a part of his 1996 autobiography, “Gifted Hands,” in which he claimed he was given a “full scholarship” to the U.S. Military Academy just hours after he rebuked accusations that he lied about his violent outbursts as a child and teenager.
In the nearly 20-year-old book, Carson boasted about his transformation from rage-filled boy to refined neurosurgeon, describing how he once tried to hit his mother with a hammer and attempted to stab one of his friends to death.
His former classmates, however, said they don’t remember the Republican as a rough kid.
“I don’t know nothing about that,” Gerald Ware, Carson’s classmate at Detroit’s Southwestern High School, told CNN. “It would have been all over the whole school.”
BRENNAN LINSLEY/AP
Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson claimed in his 1996 book that he had a violent childhood full of moments of ‘pathological anger.’
CNN spoke with nine people Carson grew up with. Not one remembered the Republican’s self-proclaimed violent outbursts.
While Carson slammed the CNN report, calling it a “bunch of lies” and “pathetic,” he did admit that there is at least one falsehood in the book: A story about how Gen. William Westmoreland offered the then-17-year-old a full-ride to West Point.
Carson said that as the leader of his high school’s Junior ROTC program, he attended a 1969 Memorial Day dinner for Congressional Medal of Honor winners. There, he met with General Westmoreland.
“Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point,” he wrote.
Carson may have met Westmoreland at the 1969 banquet — which was held in February, not May — but the general would not have promised the student a scholarship, West Point told POLITICO. All costs are covered for admitted West Point students, so “full ride” scholarships don’t exist.
Carson was “introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC Supervisors” at a banquet, Carson’s campaign manager Barry Bennett said. While they may have discussed application process, Carson never applied or received a scholarship.
Instead, he attended Yale University before going on to the University of Michigan’s medical school.
West Point said it has no records of Carson applying to or enrolling in the academy.
Carson admitted he “doesn’t remember all the specific details” of meeting Westmoreland.
Ben Carson’s Violent Childhood Called Into Question as Classmates Don’t Remember
NY Daily News
“Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told someone like me – they could get a scholarship to West Point,” Carson told the New York Times.
Despite the scholarship lie, Carson defended the rest of the book Friday, saying all the stories about his violent childhood are true.
In the 19-year-old book, Carson claimed he once tried to strike his mother with a hammer as they argued over clothing. His brother Curtis stepped in and disarmed the boy before he could physically harm their mother.
Carson also said he physically attacked at least two of his school friends.
In the seventh grade he hit a boy named Jerry with a lock after he teased Carson for saying something “stupid” in English class.
MIKE GROLL/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Carson wrote that he was given a “full scholarship” to West Point.
“I swung at him, lock in hand. The blow slammed into his forehead, and he groaned, staggering backward, blood seeping from a three-inch gash,” Carson wrote.
Two years later, in the ninth grade, he tried to stab a friend who he identified in the book only as “Bob.” The blade stuck Bob’s belt buckle, breaking the blade and leaving the teen unharmed.
“I was trying to kill somebody,” Carson wrote of the knife attack, calling it a moment of “pathological anger.”
The teenage Carson ran to the bathroom after the failed stabbing and prayed. Since then, he has never had a problem with his temper, he claimed in the book.
Carson’s classmates remembered him as introverted and studious — someone who was more likely to be found in the library than in the middle of a schoolyard fight.
Carson’s classmates have described him as a quiet, shy student, not an angry young man.
“He was a quiet, shy kid, not too outgoing,” said his junior high and high school classmate Jerry Dixon. “Bennie stayed home a lot or went to the library to work.”
Dixon said he is not the Jerry the doctor-turned-politician beat with a lock — and said he had never even heard of such an incident.
Carson refused to reveal the names of his victims in a Friday interview on CNN, saying to name them would be “victimizing.”
He admitted that he changed the names in his autobiography, but maintained both “Bob” and “Jerry” are real people who will only be identified if they chose to come forward on their own.
“Tell me what makes you think you’re going to find those specific people?” Carson asked CNN’s Alisyn Camerota. “What is your methodology? Because I don’t understand it.”
Carson’s campaign adviser Armstrong Williams also refused to identify the candidate’s alleged victims or provide any kind of documentation showing disciplinary actions for his claimed school fights.
“Why would anyone cooperate with your obvious witch hunt?” Armstrong Williams wrote to CNN in an email last week, the day before Halloween. “No comment and moving on…… Happy Halloween!!!!!”
Donald Trump quickly weighed in on his rival’s controversy.
“The Carson story is either a total fabrication or, if true, even worse-trying to hit mother over the head with a hammer or stabbing friend!” he tweeted Thursday.
Ben Carson prepared to board his campaign bus after appearing at a book signing in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Thursday.Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images
A report on Friday said Ben Carson had acknowledged never having applied to West Point, raising questions about his repeated assertions that he had turned down a scholarship to attend the military academy.
According to the report, in Politico, West Point had no record that Mr. Carson, who has been leading in some national polls in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, had applied. When Politico approached Mr. Carson’s campaign with the information, his campaign manager, Barry Bennett, in a statement, explained that Mr. Carson had considered an offer to receive help getting an appointment to the academy, but he did not apply.
In repeated references to West Point over the years, Mr. Carson has strongly implied that he had a standing offer to attend.
In his statement, Mr. Bennett said, “Dr. Carson was the top R.O.T.C. student in the City of Detroit.”
Referring to Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the Army chief of staff at the time, Mr. Bennett added: “In that role he was invited to meet General Westmoreland. He believes it was at a banquet. He can’t remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson’s performance as R.O.T.C. city executive officer.”
“He was introduced to folks from West Point by his R.O.T.C. supervisors,” Mr. Bennett said. “They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in R.O.T.C. He considered it but in the end did not seek admission.”
In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, Mr. Carson said: “I don’t remember all the specific details. Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told that someone like me – they could get a scholarship to West Point. But I made it clear I was going to pursue a career in medicine.”
“It was, you know, an informal ‘with a record like yours we could easily get you a scholarship to West Point.’”
Mr. Carson has recounted the episode of being offered a scholarship at various points in telling his triumphant personal story. (Technically, West Point does not offer scholarships; it is free to attend.)
In his recent book, “You Have a Brain,” Mr. Carson described how he decided which college to attend: “I still had the scholarship offer from West Point as a result of my R.O.T.C. achievements.”
More recently, in a Facebook post in August responding to a question, he wrote that he had been “thrilled to get an offer from West Point.”
“But I knew medicine is what I wanted to do. So I applied to only one school. (it was all the money I had). I applied to Yale and thank God they accepted me. I often wonder what might have happened had they said no.”
The revelation came just a couple of days after a CNN report questioned the accuracy of Mr. Carson’s accounts of violent episodes in his youth, which are central to his often-told story of personal redemption through faith and hard work, one that has made him a favorite of evangelical Christian voters. On Friday, shortly before the Politico report was published, Mr. Carson attacked the CNN report as a “bunch of lies.”
Ben Carson defends his telling of an informal offer from West Point
By David Weigel
Ben Carson defended his long-told story of a “scholarship” to West Point today, responding to scrutiny by saying that he merely had received an “informal” offer of a free ride to the military academy.
“Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told that someone like me [could] get a scholarship to West Point,” Carson told the New York Times. “It was, you know, an informal ‘with a record like yours we could easily get you a scholarship to West Point.'”
Allies of the former neurosurgeon, who has slowly risen to the top of 2016 Republican primary polls, had been making a similar case all day. The argument — which depends on a careful parsing of verbs — is that he never applied, even after being told he’d be a sure-thing candidate. The point, which found many takers in conservative media, was that the controversy could be dismissed as a witch hunt.
That reasoning came together Friday morning, after Politico published a story titled “Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship.” After confirming that Carson had never applied to West Point, and that a meeting Carson described with Gen. William Westmoreland apparently did not happen when the candidate had claimed, the story quoted Carson campaign manager Barry Bennett’s new explanation.
“He was introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC Supervisors,” Bennett said. “They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in ROTC. He considered it but in the end did not seek admission.”
West Point cadets must be sponsored by a member of Congress or the Secretary of the Army. But Doug Watts, a spokesman for the campaign, said that Carson never completed — nor claimed to have completed — the process for acceptance into West Point, and those never had an official sponsor.
“He was told by the ROTC Commander that he could have an appointment,” explained Watts. “Dr. Carson rejected the offer, did not apply or pursue admission. Had he done so, and been accepted, that would have been tantamount to a scholarship, the same that all cadets receive.”
In an interview, Carson’s close friend Armstrong Williams argued that Politico had written a false headline off of Bennett’s accurate quote.
“In the story itself, the campaign does not say Dr. Carson applied to West Point,” Williams said of Politico. “Dr. Carson boasts about his scores in ROTC. Westmoreland encourages him to apply. As Dr. Carson says, they were impressed by his scores, but he never applied. They said to him, we could get you in. This guy got into Yale — obviously he could have got in. The headline was a fabrication.”
Carson, whose steady rise to the top of presidential primary polls has started to draw media scrutiny his way, is depending on a loose interpretation of the word “scholarship.” There is no tuition at West Point; there is no equivalent of a “scholarship” as generally understood at most universities. In his memoir “Gifted Hands” and in anecdotes about the offer, Carson never says that he “applied,” only that some “scholarship” came his way after a meeting with Westmoreland and “congressional medal winners.”
“I was offered a full scholarship to West Point,” Carson wrote. “I didn’t refuse the scholarship outright, but I let them know that a military career wasn’t where I saw myself going. As overjoyed as I felt to be offered such a scholarship, I wasn’t really tempted. The scholarship would have obligated me to spend four years in military service after I finished college, precluding my chances to go on to medical school.”
That description of the offer came with its own problems — it is not, for example, impossible for a West Point graduate to complete his service, then become a doctor. But Carson’s allies insist that the gap between “applying” and being offered a “scholarship” debunks the Politico story. Indeed, in “Gifted Hands,” Carson repeatedly described how he had only $10 to submit with a college application, limiting his choices.
“Each college required a ten-dollar non-returnable entrance fee sent with the application,” Carson wrote. “I had exactly ten dollars, so I could apply only to one.”
In an August 2015 Facebook post, Carson described that situation again, to tell a questioner that he applied only to Yale.
“I was the highest student ROTC member in Detroit and was thrilled to get an offer from West Point,” wrote Carson. “But I knew medicine is what I wanted to do. So I applied to only one school. (It was all the money I had). I applied to Yale and thank God they accepted me.”
Williams, who had not spoken to Carson since Politico’s story went online, insisted that it was “shoddy journalism” and oversold what Carson himself had claimed.
“It gives journalism a bad name,” said Williams. “It only fits into Dr. Carson’s narrative of a witch hunt.”
On Friday afternoon, conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, and Sean Hannity criticized the coverage that had made Carson out as a dissembler. But at least one of his rivals sense a political opportunity in the scrum.
“Well, I think it’s really the beginning of the end,” said Donald Trump in an interview.
In two of his books — the popular “Gifted Hands” as well as a newer book entitled “You Have a Brain” — Carson tells the West Point story as part of his aspirational life that began in poverty in Detroit and continued through a decorated career as a world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon.
Now we know that story is, at best, somewhat misleading. It is of course possible that Carson was either led to believe he might have been given a scholarship to the military academy if he had applied or simply misunderstood a conversation he participated in. That is the direction the Carson team appears to be headed, saying in a statement of his meeting with then-Gen. William Westmoreland: “He can’t remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson’s performance as ROTC City Executive Officer.”
Regardless of whether the West Point story is a simple misunderstanding or something more nefarious, what it will do is raise this simple question: What else in Ben Carson’s remarkable biography might not be totally, 100 percent accurate?
Even before the West Point story broke, Carson was dealing with suggestions that his recounting of his tough childhood highlighted by a terrible temper and a series of altercations with his mother — among other people — might not be true.
A CNN report, which was based on interviews with nine people who knew Carson as a young man, argues that the violent portrait he paints of himself doesn’t jibe with the person they knew. “All of the people interviewed expressed surprise about the incidents Carson has described,” reads the CNN story. “No one challenged the stories directly. Some of those interviewed expressed skepticism, but noted that they could not know what had happened behind closed doors.”
Carson spent Thursday insisting that the people who were directly involved in these purported attacks weren’t the people that CNN had spoken to and, therefore, the report had no merit.
Now, with the West Point story raging, Carson will come under even more pressure to explain some of the fuzzier parts of his personal biography. And if any other inconsistencies or outright falsehoods come out amid that heightened scrutiny, it could spell curtains for a Carson campaign that has just moved into the pole position in the Republican primary race.
With question over West Point offer, Ben Carson feels the glare of the front-runner’s spotlight
Timothy M. Phelps
retired Baltimore neurosurgeon Ben Carson has reached the top in several recent national polls, he is also experiencing new scrutiny as a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.
On Friday, his name dominated political news with a Politico report that his campaign “admits fabricating a West Point scholarship” in his autobiography, though that reference was later taken out of the story. The story also quoted a West Point spokeswoman as saying the famous military academy had no record of an application from Carson.
Barry Bennett, Carson’s campaign manager, said in an interview that Carson’s book,“Gifted Hands,” was accurate when Carson wrote, “I was offered a full scholarship to West Point.”
“I would not have used the word ‘full scholarship.’ I would have said ‘nomination,’ but it’s not a fabrication, it’s not a lie,” Bennett said in an interview. At West Point, tuition and other expenses are paid by the government.
Bennett said that Carson, who he said was the top high school Junior ROTC officer in Detroit, was offered a nomination to West Point by ROTC officials in the city. He said he did not have names, but that the campaign and others are trying to locate them to corroborate Carson’s story.
Later, Carson told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that his account of the West Point episode “could have been more clarified. I told it as I understood it.”
Also, Theresa Brinkerhoff, the chief of media relations at West Point, said that a comment she made to Politico was “misconstrued.”
Politico wrote that West Point had no record of Carson applying to the academy, but Brinkerhoff said in an interview that the academy does not keep records beyond three years if a candidate does not attend the school. The academy has no way of knowing whether Carson applied, Brinkerhoff said.
In the end, Bennett confirmed that Carson had not applied. In his book, Carson wrote that he never had any interest in any career other than medicine. “I remembered the scholarship offer from West Point. A teaching career? Business? None of these areas held any real interest,” he said.
Clearly, however, Carson has left an impression that the offer to go to the academy came from West Point itself. On Facebook in August, Carson took a question from someone named Bill, who “wanted to know if it was true that I was offered a slot at West Point after high school. Bill, that is true. I was the highest student ROTC member in Detroit and was thrilled to get an offer from West Point. But I knew medicine is what I wanted to do. So I applied to only one school.”
Carson went to Yale.
Carson was also involved in a contentious interview Friday morning on CNN. Anchor Alisyn Camerota badgered him about reports by the network that it had been unable to locate some childhood friends or family members Carson mentions having assaulted in his autobiography.
In his book, Carson says he once tried to stab a person he refers to as Bob. On Friday, Carson told CNN that person was really a family member by another name who did not want to be identified. Other childhood friends mentioned in the book could decide for themselves whether to come forward, he said.
Bennett said the political attacks were a function of national polls over the past week showing him ahead of Donald Trump and all other Republicans for the nomination.
“Somewhere, there is a panicked candidate running for the Republican presidential nomination who is spreading a lot of dirt,” Bennett said.
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Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey
Employment Level
147,287,000
Series Id: LNS12000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Employment Level
Labor force status: Employed
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
136559(1)
136598
136701
137270
136630
136940
136531
136662
136893
137088
137322
137614
2001
137778
137612
137783
137299
137092
136873
137071
136241
136846
136392
136238
136047
2002
135701
136438
136177
136126
136539
136415
136413
136705
137302
137008
136521
136426
2003
137417(1)
137482
137434
137633
137544
137790
137474
137549
137609
137984
138424
138411
2004
138472(1)
138542
138453
138680
138852
139174
139556
139573
139487
139732
140231
140125
2005
140245(1)
140385
140654
141254
141609
141714
142026
142434
142401
142548
142499
142752
2006
143150(1)
143457
143741
143761
144089
144353
144202
144625
144815
145314
145534
145970
2007
146028(1)
146057
146320
145586
145903
146063
145905
145682
146244
145946
146595
146273
2008
146378(1)
146156
146086
146132
145908
145737
145532
145203
145076
144802
144100
143369
2009
142152(1)
141640
140707
140656
140248
140009
139901
139492
138818
138432
138659
138013
2010
138451(1)
138599
138752
139309
139247
139148
139179
139427
139393
139111
139030
139266
2011
139287(1)
139422
139655
139622
139653
139409
139524
139904
140154
140335
140747
140836
2012
141677(1)
141943
142079
141963
142257
142432
142272
142204
142947
143369
143233
143212
2013
143384(1)
143464
143393
143676
143919
144075
144285
144179
144270
143485
144443
144586
2014
145224(1)
145266
145742
145669
145814
146221
146352
146368
146600
147283
147287
1 : Data affected by changes in population controls.
Civilian Labor Force Level
156,397,000
Series Id: LNS11000000
Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Civilian Labor Force Level Labor force status: Civilian labor force Type of data: Number in thousands Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
142267(1)
142456
142434
142751
142388
142591
142278
142514
142518
142622
142962
143248
2001
143800
143701
143924
143569
143318
143357
143654
143284
143989
144086
144240
144305
2002
143883
144653
144481
144725
144938
144808
144803
145009
145552
145314
145041
145066
2003
145937(1)
146100
146022
146474
146500
147056
146485
146445
146530
146716
147000
146729
2004
146842(1)
146709
146944
146850
147065
147460
147692
147564
147415
147793
148162
148059
2005
148029(1)
148364
148391
148926
149261
149238
149432
149779
149954
150001
150065
150030
2006
150214(1)
150641
150813
150881
151069
151354
151377
151716
151662
152041
152406
152732
2007
153144(1)
152983
153051
152435
152670
153041
153054
152749
153414
153183
153835
153918
2008
154063(1)
153653
153908
153769
154303
154313
154469
154641
154570
154876
154639
154655
2009
154210(1)
154538
154133
154509
154747
154716
154502
154307
153827
153784
153878
153111
2010
153404(1)
153720
153964
154642
154106
153631
153706
154087
153971
153631
154127
153639
2011
153198(1)
153280
153403
153566
153526
153379
153309
153724
154059
153940
154072
153927
2012
154328(1)
154826
154811
154565
154946
155134
154970
154669
155018
155507
155279
155485
2013
155699(1)
155511
155099
155359
155609
155822
155693
155435
155473
154625
155284
154937
2014
155460(1)
155724
156227
155421
155613
155694
156023
155959
155862
156278
156397
1 : Data affected by changes in population controls.
Labor Force Participation Rate
62.8%
Series Id: LNS11300000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Labor Force Participation Rate
Labor force status: Civilian labor force participation rate
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
67.3
67.3
67.3
67.3
67.1
67.1
66.9
66.9
66.9
66.8
66.9
67.0
2001
67.2
67.1
67.2
66.9
66.7
66.7
66.8
66.5
66.8
66.7
66.7
66.7
2002
66.5
66.8
66.6
66.7
66.7
66.6
66.5
66.6
66.7
66.6
66.4
66.3
2003
66.4
66.4
66.3
66.4
66.4
66.5
66.2
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.1
65.9
2004
66.1
66.0
66.0
65.9
66.0
66.1
66.1
66.0
65.8
65.9
66.0
65.9
2005
65.8
65.9
65.9
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.1
66.0
66.0
2006
66.0
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.2
66.3
66.4
2007
66.4
66.3
66.2
65.9
66.0
66.0
66.0
65.8
66.0
65.8
66.0
66.0
2008
66.2
66.0
66.1
65.9
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.0
66.0
65.9
65.8
2009
65.7
65.8
65.6
65.7
65.7
65.7
65.5
65.4
65.1
65.0
65.0
64.6
2010
64.8
64.9
64.9
65.2
64.9
64.6
64.6
64.7
64.6
64.4
64.6
64.3
2011
64.2
64.2
64.2
64.2
64.2
64.0
64.0
64.1
64.2
64.1
64.1
64.0
2012
63.7
63.9
63.8
63.7
63.8
63.8
63.7
63.5
63.6
63.7
63.6
63.6
2013
63.6
63.5
63.3
63.4
63.4
63.5
63.4
63.2
63.2
62.8
63.0
62.8
2014
63.0
63.0
63.2
62.8
62.8
62.8
62.9
62.8
62.7
62.8
62.8
Unemployment Level
9,110,000
Series Id: LNS13000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Level
Labor force status: Unemployed
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
5708
5858
5733
5481
5758
5651
5747
5853
5625
5534
5639
5634
2001
6023
6089
6141
6271
6226
6484
6583
7042
7142
7694
8003
8258
2002
8182
8215
8304
8599
8399
8393
8390
8304
8251
8307
8520
8640
2003
8520
8618
8588
8842
8957
9266
9011
8896
8921
8732
8576
8317
2004
8370
8167
8491
8170
8212
8286
8136
7990
7927
8061
7932
7934
2005
7784
7980
7737
7672
7651
7524
7406
7345
7553
7453
7566
7279
2006
7064
7184
7072
7120
6980
7001
7175
7091
6847
6727
6872
6762
2007
7116
6927
6731
6850
6766
6979
7149
7067
7170
7237
7240
7645
2008
7685
7497
7822
7637
8395
8575
8937
9438
9494
10074
10538
11286
2009
12058
12898
13426
13853
14499
14707
14601
14814
15009
15352
15219
15098
2010
14953
15121
15212
15333
14858
14483
14527
14660
14578
14520
15097
14373
2011
13910
13858
13748
13944
13873
13971
13785
13820
13905
13604
13326
13090
2012
12650
12883
12732
12603
12689
12702
12698
12464
12070
12138
12045
12273
2013
12315
12047
11706
11683
11690
11747
11408
11256
11203
11140
10841
10351
2014
10236
10459
10486
9753
9799
9474
9671
9591
9262
8995
9110
Unemployment Rate U-3
5.8%
Series Id: LNS14000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Rate
Labor force status: Unemployment rate
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
4.0
4.1
4.0
3.8
4.0
4.0
4.0
4.1
3.9
3.9
3.9
3.9
2001
4.2
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.3
4.5
4.6
4.9
5.0
5.3
5.5
5.7
2002
5.7
5.7
5.7
5.9
5.8
5.8
5.8
5.7
5.7
5.7
5.9
6.0
2003
5.8
5.9
5.9
6.0
6.1
6.3
6.2
6.1
6.1
6.0
5.8
5.7
2004
5.7
5.6
5.8
5.6
5.6
5.6
5.5
5.4
5.4
5.5
5.4
5.4
2005
5.3
5.4
5.2
5.2
5.1
5.0
5.0
4.9
5.0
5.0
5.0
4.9
2006
4.7
4.8
4.7
4.7
4.6
4.6
4.7
4.7
4.5
4.4
4.5
4.4
2007
4.6
4.5
4.4
4.5
4.4
4.6
4.7
4.6
4.7
4.7
4.7
5.0
2008
5.0
4.9
5.1
5.0
5.4
5.6
5.8
6.1
6.1
6.5
6.8
7.3
2009
7.8
8.3
8.7
9.0
9.4
9.5
9.5
9.6
9.8
10.0
9.9
9.9
2010
9.7
9.8
9.9
9.9
9.6
9.4
9.5
9.5
9.5
9.5
9.8
9.4
2011
9.1
9.0
9.0
9.1
9.0
9.1
9.0
9.0
9.0
8.8
8.6
8.5
2012
8.2
8.3
8.2
8.2
8.2
8.2
8.2
8.1
7.8
7.8
7.8
7.9
2013
7.9
7.7
7.5
7.5
7.5
7.5
7.3
7.2
7.2
7.2
7.0
6.7
2014
6.6
6.7
6.7
6.3
6.3
6.1
6.2
6.1
5.9
5.8
5.8
Employment -Population Ratio
5.9%
Series Id: LNS12300000
Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Employment-Population Ratio Labor force status: Employment-population ratio Type of data: Percent or rate Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
64.6
64.6
64.6
64.7
64.4
64.5
64.2
64.2
64.2
64.2
64.3
64.4
2001
64.4
64.3
64.3
64.0
63.8
63.7
63.7
63.2
63.5
63.2
63.0
62.9
2002
62.7
63.0
62.8
62.7
62.9
62.7
62.7
62.7
63.0
62.7
62.5
62.4
2003
62.5
62.5
62.4
62.4
62.3
62.3
62.1
62.1
62.0
62.1
62.3
62.2
2004
62.3
62.3
62.2
62.3
62.3
62.4
62.5
62.4
62.3
62.3
62.5
62.4
2005
62.4
62.4
62.4
62.7
62.8
62.7
62.8
62.9
62.8
62.8
62.7
62.8
2006
62.9
63.0
63.1
63.0
63.1
63.1
63.0
63.1
63.1
63.3
63.3
63.4
2007
63.3
63.3
63.3
63.0
63.0
63.0
62.9
62.7
62.9
62.7
62.9
62.7
2008
62.9
62.8
62.7
62.7
62.5
62.4
62.2
62.0
61.9
61.7
61.4
61.0
2009
60.6
60.3
59.9
59.8
59.6
59.4
59.3
59.1
58.7
58.5
58.6
58.3
2010
58.5
58.5
58.5
58.7
58.6
58.5
58.5
58.6
58.5
58.3
58.2
58.3
2011
58.4
58.4
58.4
58.4
58.4
58.2
58.2
58.3
58.4
58.4
58.5
58.5
2012
58.5
58.5
58.6
58.5
58.6
58.6
58.5
58.4
58.6
58.8
58.7
58.6
2013
58.6
58.6
58.5
58.6
58.7
58.7
58.7
58.6
58.6
58.2
58.6
58.6
2014
58.8
58.8
58.9
58.9
58.9
59.0
59.0
59.0
59.0
59.2
59.2
Unemployment Rate 16-19 Years Old
17.7%
Series Id: LNS14000012
Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Rate – 16-19 yrs. Labor force status: Unemployment rate Type of data: Percent or rate Age: 16 to 19 years
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
12.7
13.8
13.3
12.6
12.8
12.3
13.4
14.0
13.0
12.8
13.0
13.2
2001
13.8
13.7
13.8
13.9
13.4
14.2
14.4
15.6
15.2
16.0
15.9
17.0
2002
16.5
16.0
16.6
16.7
16.6
16.7
16.8
17.0
16.3
15.1
17.1
16.9
2003
17.2
17.2
17.8
17.7
17.9
19.0
18.2
16.6
17.6
17.2
15.7
16.2
2004
17.0
16.5
16.8
16.6
17.1
17.0
17.8
16.7
16.6
17.4
16.4
17.6
2005
16.2
17.5
17.1
17.8
17.8
16.3
16.1
16.1
15.5
16.1
17.0
14.9
2006
15.1
15.3
16.1
14.6
14.0
15.8
15.9
16.0
16.3
15.2
14.8
14.6
2007
14.8
14.9
14.9
15.9
15.9
16.3
15.3
15.9
15.9
15.4
16.2
16.8
2008
17.8
16.6
16.1
15.9
19.0
19.2
20.7
18.6
19.1
20.0
20.3
20.5
2009
20.7
22.3
22.2
22.2
23.4
24.7
24.3
25.0
25.9
27.2
26.9
26.7
2010
26.0
25.6
26.2
25.4
26.5
26.0
25.9
25.6
25.8
27.3
24.8
25.3
2011
25.5
24.1
24.3
24.5
23.9
24.8
24.8
25.1
24.5
24.2
24.1
23.3
2012
23.5
23.8
24.8
24.6
24.2
23.7
23.7
24.4
23.8
23.8
23.9
24.0
2013
23.5
25.2
23.9
23.7
24.1
23.8
23.4
22.6
21.3
22.0
20.8
20.2
2014
20.7
21.4
20.9
19.1
19.2
21.0
20.2
19.6
20.0
18.6
17.7
Average Weeks Unemployed
33.0%
Series Id: LNS13008275
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Average Weeks Unemployed
Labor force status: Unemployed
Type of data: Number of weeks
Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
13.1
12.6
12.7
12.4
12.6
12.3
13.4
12.9
12.2
12.7
12.4
12.5
2001
12.7
12.8
12.8
12.4
12.1
12.7
12.9
13.3
13.2
13.3
14.3
14.5
2002
14.7
15.0
15.4
16.3
16.8
16.9
16.9
16.5
17.6
17.8
17.6
18.5
2003
18.5
18.5
18.1
19.4
19.0
19.9
19.7
19.2
19.5
19.3
19.9
19.8
2004
19.9
20.1
19.8
19.6
19.8
20.5
18.8
18.8
19.4
19.5
19.7
19.4
2005
19.5
19.1
19.5
19.6
18.6
17.9
17.6
18.4
17.9
17.9
17.5
17.5
2006
16.9
17.8
17.1
16.7
17.1
16.6
17.1
17.1
17.1
16.3
16.2
16.1
2007
16.3
16.7
17.8
16.9
16.6
16.5
17.2
17.0
16.3
17.0
17.3
16.6
2008
17.5
16.9
16.5
16.9
16.6
17.1
17.0
17.7
18.6
19.9
18.9
19.9
2009
19.8
20.2
20.9
21.7
22.4
23.9
25.1
25.3
26.6
27.5
28.9
29.7
2010
30.3
29.9
31.6
33.3
33.9
34.5
33.8
33.6
33.4
34.2
33.9
34.8
2011
37.2
37.5
39.2
38.7
39.5
39.7
40.4
40.2
40.2
39.1
40.3
40.7
2012
40.1
40.0
39.4
39.3
39.6
40.0
38.8
39.1
39.4
40.3
39.2
38.0
2013
35.4
36.9
37.0
36.6
36.9
35.7
36.7
37.0
36.8
36.0
37.1
37.1
2014
35.4
37.1
35.6
35.1
34.5
33.5
32.4
31.7
31.5
32.7
33.0
Not In Labor Force
2,109,000
Series Id: LNU05026642
Not Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Unadj) Not in Labor Force, Searched For Work and Available
Labor force status: Not in labor force
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Job desires/not in labor force: Want a job now
Reasons not in labor force: Available to work now
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
1207
1281
1219
1216
1113
1142
1172
1097
1166
1044
1100
1125
1157
2001
1295
1337
1109
1131
1157
1170
1232
1364
1335
1398
1331
1330
1266
2002
1532
1423
1358
1397
1467
1380
1507
1456
1501
1416
1401
1432
1439
2003
1598
1590
1577
1399
1428
1468
1566
1665
1544
1586
1473
1483
1531
2004
1670
1691
1643
1526
1533
1492
1557
1587
1561
1647
1517
1463
1574
2005
1804
1673
1588
1511
1428
1583
1516
1583
1438
1414
1415
1589
1545
2006
1644
1471
1468
1310
1388
1584
1522
1592
1299
1478
1366
1252
1448
2007
1577
1451
1385
1391
1406
1454
1376
1365
1268
1364
1363
1344
1395
2008
1729
1585
1352
1414
1416
1558
1573
1640
1604
1637
1947
1908
1614
2009
2130
2051
2106
2089
2210
2176
2282
2270
2219
2373
2323
2486
2226
2010
2539
2527
2255
2432
2223
2591
2622
2370
2548
2602
2531
2609
2487
2011
2800
2730
2434
2466
2206
2680
2785
2575
2511
2555
2591
2540
2573
2012
2809
2608
2352
2363
2423
2483
2529
2561
2517
2433
2505
2614
2516
2013
2443
2588
2326
2347
2164
2582
2414
2342
2302
2283
2096
2427
2360
2014
2592
2303
2168
2160
2130
2028
2178
2141
2226
2192
2109
Not In Labor Force Searched For Work and Available, Discouraged Reasons For Not Currently Looking
698,000
Series Id: LNU05026645
Not Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Unadj) Not in Labor Force, Searched For Work and Available, Discouraged Reasons For Not Currently Looking
Labor force status: Not in labor force
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over
Job desires/not in labor force: Want a job now
Reasons not in labor force: Discouragement over job prospects (Persons who believe no job is available.)
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
236
267
258
331
280
309
266
203
253
232
236
269
262
2001
301
287
349
349
328
294
310
337
285
331
328
348
321
2002
328
375
330
320
414
342
405
378
392
359
385
403
369
2003
449
450
474
437
482
478
470
503
388
462
457
433
457
2004
432
484
514
492
476
478
504
534
412
429
392
442
466
2005
515
485
480
393
392
476
499
384
362
392
404
451
436
2006
396
386
451
381
323
481
428
448
325
331
349
274
381
2007
442
375
381
399
368
401
367
392
276
320
349
363
369
2008
467
396
401
412
400
420
461
381
467
484
608
642
462
2009
734
731
685
740
792
793
796
758
706
808
861
929
778
2010
1065
1204
994
1197
1083
1207
1185
1110
1209
1219
1282
1318
1173
2011
993
1020
921
989
822
982
1119
977
1037
967
1096
945
989
2012
1059
1006
865
968
830
821
852
844
802
813
979
1068
909
2013
804
885
803
835
780
1027
988
866
852
815
762
917
861
2014
837
755
698
783
697
676
741
775
698
770
698
Total Unemployment Rate U-6
11.4%
Series Id: LNS13327709
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (seas) Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of all civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers
Labor force status: Aggregated totals unemployed
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Percent/rates: Unemployed and mrg attached and pt for econ reas as percent of labor force plus marg attached
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
7.1
7.2
7.1
6.9
7.1
7.0
7.0
7.1
7.0
6.8
7.1
6.9
2001
7.3
7.4
7.3
7.4
7.5
7.9
7.8
8.1
8.7
9.3
9.4
9.6
2002
9.5
9.5
9.4
9.7
9.5
9.5
9.6
9.6
9.6
9.6
9.7
9.8
2003
10.0
10.2
10.0
10.2
10.1
10.3
10.3
10.1
10.4
10.2
10.0
9.8
2004
9.9
9.7
10.0
9.6
9.6
9.5
9.5
9.4
9.4
9.7
9.4
9.2
2005
9.3
9.3
9.1
8.9
8.9
9.0
8.8
8.9
9.0
8.7
8.7
8.6
2006
8.4
8.4
8.2
8.1
8.2
8.4
8.5
8.4
8.0
8.2
8.1
7.9
2007
8.4
8.2
8.0
8.2
8.2
8.3
8.4
8.4
8.4
8.4
8.4
8.8
2008
9.2
9.0
9.1
9.2
9.7
10.1
10.5
10.8
11.0
11.8
12.6
13.6
2009
14.2
15.2
15.8
15.9
16.5
16.5
16.4
16.7
16.7
17.1
17.1
17.1
2010
16.7
17.0
17.1
17.2
16.6
16.4
16.4
16.5
16.8
16.6
16.9
16.6
2011
16.1
16.0
15.9
16.1
15.8
16.1
16.0
16.1
16.3
15.9
15.6
15.2
2012
15.1
15.0
14.5
14.6
14.8
14.8
14.9
14.7
14.7
14.4
14.4
14.4
2013
14.4
14.3
13.8
13.9
13.8
14.2
13.9
13.6
13.6
13.7
13.1
13.1
2014
12.7
12.6
12.7
12.3
12.2
12.1
12.2
12.0
11.8
11.5
11.4
Employment Situation Summary
Transmission of material in this release is embargoed until USDL-14-2184
8:30 a.m. (EST) Friday, December 5, 2014
Technical information:
Household data: (202) 691-6378 • cpsinfo@bls.gov • www.bls.gov/cps
Establishment data: (202) 691-6555 • cesinfo@bls.gov • www.bls.gov/ces
Media contact: (202) 691-5902 • PressOffice@bls.gov
THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- NOVEMBER 2014
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 321,000 in November, and the unemployment
rate was unchanged at 5.8 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
Job gains were widespread, led by growth in professional and business services, retail
trade, health care, and manufacturing.
Household Survey Data
In November, the unemployment rate held at 5.8 percent, and the number of unemployed
persons was little changed at 9.1 million. Over the year, the unemployment rate and
the number of unemployed persons were down by 1.2 percentage points and 1.7 million,
respectively. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult men rose to 5.4 percent
in November. The rates for adult women (5.3 percent), teenagers (17.7 percent), whites
(4.9 percent), blacks (11.1 percent), and Hispanics (6.6 percent) showed little change
over the month. The jobless rate for Asians was 4.8 percent (not seasonally adjusted),
little changed from a year earlier. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little
changed at 2.8 million in November. These individuals accounted for 30.7 percent of
the unemployed. Over the past 12 months, the number of long-term unemployed declined
by 1.2 million. (See table A-12.)
The civilian labor force participation rate held at 62.8 percent in November and has
been essentially unchanged since April. The employment-population ratio, at 59.2
percent, was unchanged in November but is up by 0.6 percentage point over the year.
(See table A-1.)
The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to
as involuntary part-time workers), at 6.9 million, changed little in November. These
individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time
because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time
job. (See table A-8.)
In November, 2.1 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force,
essentially unchanged from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.)
These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work,
and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as
unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the
survey. (See table A-16.)
Among the marginally attached, there were 698,000 discouraged workers in November,
little different from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.)
Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe
no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.4 million persons marginally attached
to the labor force in November had not searched for work for reasons such as school
attendance or family responsibilities. (See table A-16.)
Establishment Survey Data
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 321,000 in November, compared with an
average monthly gain of 224,000 over the prior 12 months. In November, job growth
was widespread, led by gains in professional and business services, retail trade,
health care, and manufacturing. (See table B-1.)
Employment in professional and business services increased by 86,000 in November,
compared with an average gain of 57,000 per month over the prior 12 months. Within
the industry, accounting and bookkeeping services added 16,000 jobs in November.
Employment continued to trend up in temporary help services (+23,000), management
and technical consulting services (+7,000), computer systems design and related
services (+7,000), and architectural and engineering services (+5,000).
Employment in retail trade rose by 50,000 in November, compared with an average
gain of 22,000 per month over the prior 12 months. In November, job gains occurred
in motor vehicle and parts dealers (+11,000); clothing and accessories stores
(+11,000); sporting goods, hobby, book, and music stores (+9,000); and nonstore
retailers (+6,000).
Health care added 29,000 jobs over the month. Employment continued to trend up in
offices of physicians (+7,000), home health care services (+5,000), outpatient care
centers (+4,000), and hospitals (+4,000). Over the past 12 months, employment in
health care has increased by 261,000.
In November, manufacturing added 28,000 jobs. Durable goods manufacturers accounted
for 17,000 of the increase, with small gains in most of the component industries.
Employment in nondurable goods increased by 11,000, with plastics and rubber products
(+7,000) accounting for most of the gain. Over the year, manufacturing has added
171,000 jobs, largely in durable goods.
Financial activities added 20,000 jobs in November, with half of the gain in insurance
carriers and related activities. Over the past year, insurance has contributed 70,000
jobs to the overall employment gain of 114,000 in financial activities.
Transportation and warehousing employment increased by 17,000 in November, with a
gain in couriers and messengers (+5,000). Over the past 12 months, transportation
and warehousing has added 143,000 jobs.
Employment in food services and drinking places continued to trend up in November
(+27,000) and has increased by 321,000 over the year.
Construction employment also continued to trend up in November (+20,000). Employment in
specialty trade contractors rose by 21,000, mostly in the residential component. Over
the past 12 months, construction has added 213,000 jobs, with just over half the gain
among specialty trade contractors.
In November, the average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose
by 0.1 hour to 34.6 hours. The manufacturing workweek rose by 0.2 hour to 41.1 hours,
and factory overtime edged up by 0.1 hour to 3.5 hours. The average workweek for
production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at
33.8 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)
Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 9 cents
to $24.66 in November. Over the year, average hourly earnings have risen by 2.1 percent.
In November, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory
employees increased by 4 cents to $20.74. (See tables B-3 and B-8.)
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for September was revised from +256,000
to +271,000, and the change for October was revised from +214,000 to +243,000. With
these revisions, employment gains in September and October combined were 44,000 more
than previously reported.
_____________
The Employment Situation for December is scheduled to be released on Friday,
January 9, 2015, at 8:30 a.m. (EST).
__________________________________________________________________________________
| |
| Upcoming Changes to the Employment Situation News Release |
| |
|Effective with the release of January 2015 data on February 6, 2015, the U.S. |
|Bureau of Labor Statistics will introduce several changes to The Employment |
|Situation news release tables. |
| |
|Household survey table A-2 will introduce seasonally adjusted series on the labor |
|force characteristics of Asians. These series will appear in addition to the not |
|seasonally adjusted data for Asians currently displayed in the table. Also, in |
|summary table A, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for Asians will replace|
|the not seasonally adjusted series that is currently displayed for the group. |
| |
|Household survey table A-3 will introduce seasonally adjusted series on the labor |
|force characteristics of Hispanic men age 20 and over, Hispanic women age 20 and |
|over, and Hispanic teenagers age 16 to 19. The not seasonally adjusted series for |
|these groups will continue to be displayed in the table. |
| |
|The establishment survey will introduce two data series: (1) total nonfarm |
|employment, 3-month average change and (2) total private employment, 3-month |
|average change. These new series will be added to establishment survey summary |
|table B. Additionally, in the employment section of summary table B, the list |
|of industries will be expanded to include utilities (currently published in |
|table B-1). Also, hours and earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees |
|will be removed from summary table B, although these series will continue to be |
|published in establishment survey tables B-7 and B-8. A sample of the new summary |
|table B is available on the BLS website at www.bls.gov/ces/cesnewsumb.pdf. |
|__________________________________________________________________________________|
__________________________________________________________________________________
| |
| Revision of Seasonally Adjusted Household Survey Data |
| |
|In accordance with usual practice, The Employment Situation news release for |
|December 2014, scheduled for January 9, 2015, will incorporate annual revisions in|
|seasonally adjusted household survey data. Seasonally adjusted data for the most |
|recent 5 years are subject to revision. |
|__________________________________________________________________________________|
Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs
5,7314,5304,3584,483125
Job leavers
89082979483844
Reentrants
3,0652,8092,8712,773-98
New entrants
1,1691,1051,0631,0641
Duration of unemployment
Less than 5 weeks
2,4392,3832,4732,52956
5 to 14 weeks
2,5852,5082,3122,39078
15 to 26 weeks
1,7421,4161,4171,43114
27 weeks and over
4,0442,9542,9162,815-101
Employed persons at work part time
Part time for economic reasons
7,7237,1037,0276,850-177
Slack work or business conditions
4,8694,1624,2144,064-150
Could only find part-time work
2,4992,5622,4472,4536
Part time for noneconomic reasons
18,85819,56119,76920,004235
Persons not in the labor force (not seasonally adjusted)
Marginally attached to the labor force
2,0962,2262,1922,109–
Discouraged workers
762698770698–
– Over-the-month changes are not displayed for not seasonally adjusted data.
NOTE: Persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race. Detail for the seasonally adjusted data shown in this table will not necessarily add to totals because of the independent seasonal adjustment of the various series. Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of January data.
Employment Situation Summary Table B. Establishment data, seasonally adjusted
ESTABLISHMENT DATA
Summary table B. Establishment data, seasonally adjusted
Footnotes (1) Includes other industries, not shown separately. (2) Data relate to production employees in mining and logging and manufacturing, construction employees in construction, and nonsupervisory employees in the service-providing industries. (3) The indexes of aggregate weekly hours are calculated by dividing the current month’s estimates of aggregate hours by the corresponding annual average aggregate hours. (4) The indexes of aggregate weekly payrolls are calculated by dividing the current month’s estimates of aggregate weekly payrolls by the corresponding annual average aggregate weekly payrolls. (5) Figures are the percent of industries with employment increasing plus one-half of the industries with unchanged employment, where 50 percent indicates an equal balance between industries with increasing and decreasing employment. (p) Preliminary
EMBARGOED UNTIL RELEASE AT 8:30 A.M. EST, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2014
BEA 14-59
* See the navigation bar at the right side of the news release text for links to data tables,
contact personnel and their telephone numbers, and supplementary materials.
National Income and Product Accounts
Gross Domestic Product: Third Quarter 2014 (Second Estimate)
Corporate Profits: Third Quarter 2014 (Preliminary Estimate)
Real gross domestic product -- the value of the production of goods and services in the United
States, adjusted for price changes -- increased at an annual rate of 3.9 percent in the third quarter of
2014, according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the second
quarter, real GDP increased 4.6 percent.
The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for
the "advance" estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, the increase in real GDP was 3.5
percent. With the second estimate for the third quarter, private inventory investment decreased less than
previously estimated, and both personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and nonresidential fixed
investment increased more. In contrast, exports increased less than previously estimated (see
"Revisions" on page 3).
The increase in real GDP in the third quarter reflected positive contributions from PCE,
nonresidential fixed investment, federal government spending, exports, residential fixed investment, and
state and local government spending that were partly offset by a negative contribution from private
inventory investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, decreased.
The deceleration in the percent change in real GDP reflected a downturn in private inventory
investment and decelerations in exports, in nonresidential fixed investment, in state and local
government spending, in PCE, and in residential fixed investment that were partly offset by a downturn
in imports and an upturn in federal government spending.
The price index for gross domestic purchases, which measures prices paid by U.S. residents,
increased 1.4 percent in the third quarter, 0.1 percentage point more than in the advance estimate; this
index increased 2.0 percent in the second quarter. Excluding food and energy prices, the price index for
gross domestic purchases increased 1.6 percent in the third quarter, compared with an increase of 1.7
percent in the second.
_____
FOOTNOTE. Quarterly estimates are expressed at seasonally adjusted annual rates, unless otherwise
specified. Quarter-to-quarter dollar changes are differences between these published estimates. Percent
changes are calculated from unrounded data and are annualized. "Real" estimates are in chained (2009)
dollars. Price indexes are chain-type measures.
This news release is available on BEA's Web site along with the Technical Note and Highlights related
to this release. For information on revisions, see "The Revisions to GDP, GDI, and Their
Major Components."
_____
Real personal consumption expenditures increased 2.2 percent in the third quarter, compared
with an increase of 2.5 percent in the second. Durable goods increased 8.7 percent, compared with an
increase of 14.1 percent. Nondurable goods increased 2.2 percent, the same increase as in the second
quarter. Services increased 1.2 percent, compared with an increase of 0.9 percent.
Real nonresidential fixed investment increased 7.1 percent in the third quarter, compared with an
increase of 9.7 percent in the second. Investment in nonresidential structures increased 1.1 percent,
compared with an increase of 12.6 percent. Investment in equipment increased 10.7 percent, compared
with an increase of 11.2 percent. Investment in intellectual property products increased 6.4 percent,
compared with an increase of 5.5 percent. Real residential fixed investment increased 2.7 percent,
compared with an increase of 8.8 percent.
Real exports of goods and services increased 4.9 percent in the third quarter, compared with an
increase of 11.1 percent in the second. Real imports of goods and services decreased 0.7 percent, in
contrast to an increase of 11.3 percent.
Real federal government consumption expenditures and gross investment increased 9.9 percent
in the third quarter, in contrast to a decrease of 0.9 percent in the second. National defense increased
16.0 percent, compared with an increase of 0.9 percent. Nondefense increased 0.4 percent, in contrast to
a decrease of 3.8 percent. Real state and local government consumption expenditures and gross
investment increased 0.8 percent, compared with an increase of 3.4 percent.
The change in real private inventories subtracted 0.12 percentage point from the third-quarter
change in real GDP after adding 1.42 percentage points to the second-quarter change. Private
businesses increased inventories $79.1 billion in the third quarter, following increases of $84.8 billion in
the second quarter and $35.2 billion in the first.
Real final sales of domestic product -- GDP less change in private inventories -- increased 4.1
percent in the third quarter, compared with an increase of 3.2 percent in the second.
Gross domestic purchases
Real gross domestic purchases -- purchases by U.S. residents of goods and services wherever
produced -- increased 3.0 percent in the third quarter, compared with an increase of 4.8 percent in the
second.
Gross national product
Real gross national product -- the value of the goods and services produced by the labor and
property supplied by U.S. residents -- increased 3.8 percent in the third quarter, compared with an
increase of 4.6 percent in the second. GNP includes, and GDP excludes, net receipts of income from the
rest of the world, which decreased $1.6 billion in the third quarter, in contrast to an increase of $1.4
billion in the second; in the third quarter, receipts decreased $1.1 billion, and payments increased $0.5
billion.
Current-dollar GDP
Current-dollar GDP -- the market value of the production of goods and services in the United
States -- increased 5.3 percent, or $227.0 billion, in the third quarter to a level of $17,555.2 billion. In
the second quarter, current-dollar GDP increased 6.8 percent, or $284.2 billion.
Gross domestic income
Real gross domestic income (GDI), which measures the value of the production of goods and
services in the United States as the costs incurred and the incomes earned on that production, increased
4.5 percent in the third quarter, compared with an increase of 4.0 percent (revised) in the second. For a
given quarter, the estimates of GDP and GDI may differ for a variety of reasons, including the
incorporation of largely independent source data. However, over longer time spans, the estimates of
GDP and GDI tend to follow similar patterns of change.
Revisions
The upward revision to the percent change in real GDP primarily reflected upward revisions to
private inventory investment, to personal consumption expenditures, and to nonresidential fixed
investment that were partly offset by a downward revision to exports and an upward revision to imports.
Advance Estimate Second Estimate
(Percent change from preceding quarter)
Real GDP............................... 3.5 3.9
Current-dollar GDP..................... 4.9 5.3
Real GDI............................... -- 4.5
Gross domestic purchases price index... 1.3 1.4
Corporate Profits
Profits from current production
Profits from current production (corporate profits with inventory valuation adjustment (IVA) and
capital consumption adjustment (CCAdj)) increased $43.8 billion in the third quarter, compared with an
increase of $164.1 billion in the second.
Profits of domestic financial corporations increased $20.3 billion in the third quarter, compared
with an increase of $33.3 billion in the second. Profits of domestic nonfinancial corporations increased
$22.5 billion, compared with an increase of $134.3 billion. The rest-of-the-world component of profits
increased $1.0 billion, in contrast to a decrease of $3.6 billion. This measure is calculated as the
difference between receipts from the rest of the world and payments to the rest of the world. In the third
quarter, receipts were unchanged, and payments decreased $1.0 billion.
Taxes on corporate income decreased $4.8 billion in the third quarter, in contrast to an increase
of $45.7 billion in the second. Profits after tax with IVA and CCAdj increased $48.6 billion, compared
with an increase of $118.4 billion.
Dividends decreased $3.9 billion in the third quarter, compared with a decrease of $0.5 billion in
the second. Undistributed profits increased $52.5 billion, compared with an increase of $118.8 billion.
Net cash flow with IVA -- the internal funds available to corporations for investment -- increased $25.1
billion, compared with an increase of $133.4 billion.
The IVA and CCAdj are adjustments that convert inventory withdrawals and depreciation of
fixed assets reported on a tax-return, historical-cost basis to the current-cost economic measures used in
the national income and product accounts. The IVA increased $16.8 billion in the third quarter,
compared with an increase of $11.9 billion in the second. The CCAdj increased $1.2 billion, in contrast
to a decrease of $0.8 billion.
Gross value added of nonfinancial domestic corporate business
In the third quarter, real gross value added of nonfinancial corporations increased, and profits per
unit of real gross value added increased. The increase in unit profits reflected an increase in unit prices
that was partly offset by an increase in unit nonlabor costs; unit labor costs were unchanged.
* * *
BEA's national, international, regional, and industry estimates; the Survey of Current Business;
and BEA news releases are available without charge on BEA's Web site at www.bea.gov. By visiting
the site, you can also subscribe to receive free e-mail summaries of BEA releases and announcements.
* * *
Next release -- December 23, 2014 at 8:30 A.M. EST for:
Gross Domestic Product: Third Quarter 2014 (Third Estimate)
Corporate Profits: Third Quarter 2014 (Revised Estimate)
* * *
Release dates in 2015
Gross Domestic Product
2014: IV and 2014 annual 2015: I 2015: II 2015: III
Advance.... January 30 April 29 July 30 October 29
Second..... February 27 May 29 August 27 November 24
Third...... March 27 June 24 September 25 December 22
Corporate Profits
Preliminary... .. May 29 August 27 November 24
Revised....... March 27 June 24 September 25 December 22
Story 1: Obama’s Cadillac Tax Crashes and Burns Killing Obamacare and Injuring MIT Professor Gruber — Rest In Peace — Obamacare Is Shovel Ready — Videos
ObamaCare a Trojan Horse for Single-Payer
Obama lies about “cadillac” plan taxation
36 Times Obama Said You Could Keep Your Health Care Plan | SuperCuts #18
ACA Architect Confession: Created Lies For Obama
Obamacare – Concerns “Cadillac Tax” Forcing Employers To Cut Back Health Plans
What is the “cadillac tax?”
Obamacare’s Cadillac Tax Pushing People To Plans With High Deductible- Union You Got What You Wanted
Obamacare – Concerns “Cadillac Tax” Forcing Employers To Cut Back Health Plans
The Five: Large Employers Cite ObamaCare “Cadillac” Tax In Reducing Benefits
SMOKING GUN! Gruber Admits Obama Was in Room During Planning of Cadillac Lie
GRUBER: “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.”
GRUBER; Deceive Americans Critical to Pass Obamacare-Calls us ‘Stupid Americans’; Part 1 of 3
Gruber Remarks Puts Obama Administration on Scramble; Part 2 of 3
Jonathan Gruber: States Which Do Not Set Up an Exchange Do Not Get Tax Subsidies
BookTV: Jonathan Gruber, “Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works”
Jonathan Gruber admits Obamacare is inherently unaffordable
Obamacare – Concerns “Cadillac Tax” Forcing Employers To Cut Back Health Plans
Krauthammer rips Jonathan Gruber: “We’re hearing the true voice of liberal arrogance”
Megyn Slams ObamaCare Architect Who Declined to Appear on ‘Kelly File’
Democrats Loved Jonathan Gruber Before They Forgot Who He Was
Sen. Harry Reid, 2009: Gruber Is One Of The ‘Most Respected Economists’ Out There
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in a December 2009 floor speech on Capitol Hill lauded Jonathan Gruber as one of the most “respected economists in the world” as Reid cited facts defending the Senate’s Obamacare bill.
Nancy Pelosi In 2009: Americans Should Read Jonathan Gruber’s ObamaCare Analysis
Nancy Pelosi In 2009: Americans Should Read Jonathan Gruber’s ObamaCare Analysis (November 5, 2009)
AHEC 2013 Conference
As part of the 24th Annual Health Economics Conference hosted by PennLDI, Mark Pauly and Jonathan Gruber were featured in the Plenary Panel discussing the role of economics in shaping (and possibly reshaping) the ACA. See below for the conference agenda with links to working papers. See the full AHEC agenda: http://ldi.upenn.edu/ahec2013/agenda
Jonathan Gruber at Noblis – January 18, 2012
The Noblis Technology Tuesday speaker series covers a broad spectrum of political, technical and innovative ideas. Noblis is a nonprofit science, technology, and strategy organization that brings the best of scientific thought, management, and engineering expertise with a reputation for independence and objectivity. The opinions expressed in this video are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Noblis.
Jonathan Gruber spoke to a Noblis audience on January 18, 2012 Few experts know more about America’s dire need of health care reform than Gruber. And of that short list, he is the only one prepared to enter the pages of a comic book to make the case. To be clear: Gruber is not an expert; he is “the” expert. An award-winning MIT economist and the director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, he was a key architect of the ambitious health care reform effort in Massachusetts and is a member of the Health Connector Board now implementing it; in 2006 he was named by “Modern Healthcare” as the nineteenth most powerful person in health care in the United States. In 2008 he was a consultant to the Clinton, Edwards, and Obama presidential campaigns. The national legislation passed by Congress in 2009 derives directly from Gruber’s insights learned during the Massachusetts health care debate.
Honors Colloquium 2012 – Jonathan Gruber
Dr. Jonathan Gruber is a Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992. He is also the Director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a Research Associate. He is an Associate Editor of both the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Health Economics. In 2009 he was elected to the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Dr. Gruber received his B.S. in Economics from MIT, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. Dr. Gruber’s research focuses on the areas of public finance and health economics. He has published more than 140 research articles, has edited six research volumes, and is the author of Public Finance and Public Policy, a leading undergraduate text, and Health Care Reform, a graphic novel. In 2006 he received the American Society of Health Economists Inaugural Medal for the best health economist in the nation aged 40 and under. During the 1997-1998 academic year, Dr. Gruber was on leave as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department. From 2003-2006 he was a key architect of Massachusetts’ ambitious health reform effort, and in 2006 became an inaugural member of the Health Connector Board, the main implementing body for that effort. In that year, he was named the 19th most powerful person in health care in the United States by Modern Healthcare Magazine.
BookTV: Jonathan Gruber, “Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works
Jonathan Gruber, economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the health care program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, presents his thoughts on health care. Mr. Gruber a leading architect of Massachusetts’ health care reform also consulted with Congress and President Obama on the creation of the Affordable Care Act, signed into law by the President in 2010.
Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber suddenly recast as bit player after uproar
Nancy Pelosi, fellow Democrats scramble to distance themselves from MIT professor, economist
For years, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Jonathan Gruber was deemed an architect of Obamacare and his economic modeling was cited regularly by the health care law’s defenders on Capitol Hill and in legal briefs defending the Affordable Care Act in federal courts.
But after tapes surfaced of the economist saying “stupid” voters needed to be bamboozled and the books cooked to get the legislation passed in 2010, Democrats are scrambling to reduce Mr. Gruber to a bit player — and raising questions about whether he needs to be expunged from their defense strategy as they face yet another Supreme Court review.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who as speaker in 2009 posted an Obamacare “myth buster” citing Mr. Gruber, vehemently distanced herself from him Thursday.
“I don’t who he is. He didn’t help write our bill,” she said, but added that Mr. Gruber’s comments were a year old and he had recanted them.
In the comments that have just come to light, Mr. Gruber said the health care bill was written in a “tortured” way to ensure the Congressional Budget Office didn’t score the individual mandate as a tax, even though the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld the mandate as constitutional under Congress’ taxing power.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Mr. Gruber said at the time. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass.”
Mr. Gruber said this week that he regretted the remarks. But House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said Thursday that American voters are “anything but stupid” and oppose the health care system’s overhaul for valid reasons.
Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican selected as the next Senate majority leader, said Mr. Gruber made a classic “Washington gaffe — when a politician mistakenly tells you what he really thinks.”
However, Mr. Gruber’s explanation in 2012 of how Obamacare’s subsidies should be paid put the Justice Department in a tough spot.
In legal briefs submitted last year to a federal district court in Virginia, Obama administration attorneys cited Mr. Gruber in a case defending their ability to pay subsidies to enrollees regardless of whether they are part of state-run or federally run health care exchanges.
“According to the calculations of one health care economist, without the minimum coverage provision and subsidized insurance coverage, premiums for single individuals would be double the amount anticipated under the ACA,” the Justice Department wrote in a legal brief last November, citing Mr. Gruber’s work in a footnote.
The Supreme Court decided this month to take up the case, King v. Burwell, after the challengers lost to the administration in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Neither the Justice Department nor the White House responded to questions about Mr. Gruber — who declined to comment for this story — and his role in their legal strategy.
But Sam Kazman, general counsel for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is funding the administration’s opponents in the King case, said Mr. Gruber’s 2012 remarks about subsidies bolster their own arguments.
Mr. Gruber at the time said subsidies would flow only to states that set up their own exchanges.
“What’s important to remember politically about this is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits — but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill,” the economist told an audience.
That would mean consumers in most states wouldn’t be eligible for subsidies, which would puncture a big hole in Obamacare. The Obama administration has argued that even though the law says subsidies go to state exchanges, they also should include states that have opted for the federal exchange.
Mr. Kazman said the Gruber comments create a major problem for Mr. Obama.
“He’s not toxic to us,” Mr. Kazman said in an interview Thursday. “We may give him an award for public service.”
In a parallel case before the D.C. Circuit, the administration tried to downplay Mr. Gruber in its latest court filings. On Nov. 3, the Justice Department said in a footnote that “post-enactment statements by a non-legislator are entitled to no weight.”
“In any event, Professor Gruber has since clarified that the remarks on which plaintiffs rely were mistaken,” the attorneys told the D.C. Circuit, which has suspended its proceedings until the Supreme Court weighs in.
“Tellingly,” Mr. Carvin said in a reply brief, “the government also ignores that Jonathan Gruber — the ACA architect whose work it cited in every brief below but is nowhere mentioned now — articulated the incentive purpose of [subsidies] as early as 2012.”
Mr. Gruber has made hundreds of thousands of dollars off Obamacare, serving as a consultant to the Department of Health and Human Services and to states that used health care grant money to pay him for his services.
Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who closely tracks the health care law, said the controversy has been overblown.
“This whole thing just puzzles me,” he said. “He wasn’t a legislator. He didn’t write the bill. He didn’t vote on the bill.”
Transcending Obamacare: An Introduction To Patient-Centered, Consumer-Driven Health Reform
Avik Roy
Today, the Manhattan Institute is publishing my 20,000-word, 68-page health reform proposal entitled “Transcending Obamacare: A Patient-Centered Plan for Near-Universal Coverage and Permanent Fiscal Solvency.” It represents a novel approach to health reform: neither accepting Obamacare as is, nor requiring the law’s repeal to move forward. And yet its ambition is to permanently solve our health care entitlement problem, while also expanding coverage for the uninsured.
As most Apothecary readers know, I’ve long been critical of Obamacare, the so-called Affordable Care Act. The law expands Medicaid, the worst health insurance program in the developed world. It significantly drives up the underlying cost of health insurance for those who shop for coverage on their own. And regardless of what John Roberts has to say about it, Obamacare’s individual mandate—forcing most Americans to buy government-certified health coverage—is an injury to the Constitution.
But I’ve also long supported the principle of universal coverage. Universal coverage, done right, is a core part of a conservative worldview that values equality of opportunity for the sick and the poor. If 10 of the 11 freest economies in the world can establish universal coverage, it’s not impossible for the United States to do so in a way that is consonant with economic freedom.
Switzerland and Singapore: Market-based health reform models
The most market-oriented health care systems in the developed world—those ofSwitzerland and Singapore—have much to teach us about how to achieve universal coverage in a way that spends far less than what the U.S. does. In 2012, U.S. government entities spent $4,160 per capita on health care. That’s more than twice as much as Switzerland, and nearly five times as much as Singapore.
And that brings us right back to Obamacare. The vast majority of the law is misguided and misconceived. But a handful of its provisions can provide the basis of constructive health care reform: in particular, its use of Swiss-style means-tested tax credits to subsidize private health insurance premiums. Most importantly, those tax credits are applied to insurance plans that people shop for on their own, substantially expanding the market for individually purchased health coverage.
The Swiss system is far from perfect, as I have discussed on many occasions. But the basic idea in Switzerland is to offer premium subsidies to the people who really need them. In Switzerland, one-fifth of the population gets subsidized health coverage. In the U.S., around four-fifths do. That’s the difference between a safety net and an entitlement leviathan.
Conservative health reform after Obamacare
One of the fundamental flaws in the conservative approach to health care policy is that few—if any—Republican leaders have articulated a vision of what a market-oriented health care system would look like. Hence, Republican proposals on health reform have often been tactical and political—in opposition to whatever Democrats were pitching—instead of strategic and serious.
Those days must come to an end. The problems with our health care system are too great. Health care is too expensive for the government, and too expensive for average Americans.
In 2012, as the Romney campaign came to a close, Rich Lowry, the editor ofNational Review, asked me to write an article with my thoughts about the best path forward for conservative health care reform. I outlined a four-step plan to take the entire gamish of government health care programs and reform them into something consumer-driven and fiscally sustainable: (1) deregulate Obamacare’s insurance exchanges, including repeal of the individual mandate, while preserving guaranteed issue for individuals with pre-existing conditions; (2) migrate future retirees onto the reformed exchanges; (3) repeal Obamacare’s employer mandate; (4) migrate Medicaid acute-care and dual-eligible enrollees onto the exchanges.
“After these four relatively simple steps,” I wrote, “we would be left with a health-care system that would look a lot like Switzerland’s. Rises in premium subsidies could be held to a sustainable growth rate to ensure their long-term fiscal stability. And Americans might finally have the opportunity to purchase insurance for themselves, gain control of their own health-care dollars, and enjoy a wide range of low-cost, high-quality coverage options.”
A few months later, former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin and I wrote a similar piece for Reuters, which elicited a broad range of responses from both the left and the right.
It became clear that I had to do more than write op-eds, that I had to develop this idea in detail, with credible fiscal and economic modeling.
Modeling market-based health reform
So, over the last 18 months, I’ve done just that. Stephen Parente, a health economist at the University of Minnesota, and his team modeled the fiscal and coverage impact of the bulk of my proposed set of reforms. (I then modeled the remainder, using analyses from the Congressional Budget Office, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the like.)
The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, where I am a Senior Fellow, raised money to fund Parente’s work on this project. Steve and his team and I went back and forth for months, refining and tweaking the proposal until it met five non-negotiable goals. The end result had to:
Reduce the deficit without raising taxes
Expand coverage meaningfully above ACA levels
Repeal the individual mandate
Reduce the cost of private health insurance
Improve health outcomes for the poor
Based on our modeling, the plan, over a thirty-year period, reduces federal spending by $10.5 trillion and federal revenue by $2.5 trillion, for a net deficit reduction of $8 trillion. We project that it will expand coverage by more than 12 million individuals over its first decade, despite the fact that it repeals the individual mandate. It reduces the cost of private-sector insurance policies by 17 percent for single policies and 4 percent for family policies.
But the most dramatic improvement, we estimate, is in the Medicaid population. A group that today receives substandard care and substandard access to care will see a dramatic increase in provider access and health outcomes, based on Parente-developed indices that measure these things.
Breaking free of the repeal-or-reform debate
Importantly, while this plan is compatible with “repealing and replacing” Obamacare, it does not require the repeal of Obamacare. To achieve the former, you would repeal Obamacare and replace it with a universal system of state-based health insurance exchanges. To achieve the latter, you’d reform the pre-existing ACA exchanges, and gradually migrate future retirees and Medicaid enrollees onto the reformed exchanges.
In this way, perhaps the plan can attract interest from both the right and the center.
Both clips reveal a gleefully dismissive attitude toward public concerns about the law, and offer a telling reminder of the attitude that played a crucial role in shaping and selling the law to the public.
In the first video, recorded in March of 2010, just a few days before the law would pass the House, Gruber argues that the public does not really care about the uninsured. What it cares about is cost control. Therefore, he says, the law had to be sold on the basis of its cost control.
Yet as Gruber admits in the video, the bill was not primarily focused on cost control—the bill “is 90% health insurance coverage and 10% about cost control.” Indeed, the problem with cost control, he says, is that “we don’t know how” to do it.
“Barack Obama’s not a stupid man, okay?” Gruber said in his remarks at the College of the Holy Cross on March 11, 2010. “He knew when he was running for president that quite frankly the American public doesn’t actually care that much about the uninsured….What the American public cares about is costs. And that’s why even though the bill that they made is 90% health insurance coverage and 10% about cost control, all you ever hear people talk about is cost control. How it’s going to lower the cost of health care, that’s all they talk about. Why? Because that’s what people want to hear about because a majority of American care about health care costs.”
Elsewhere in the same speech, Gruber says:
“The only way we’re going to stop our country from being a latter day Roman Empire and falling under its own weight is getting control of the growth rate of health care costs. The problem is we don’t know how.”
Remember, this is what Gruber was saying as the law was still being debated. It didn’tpass in the House, the critical step before hitting President Obama’s desk, until more than a week later. And what Gruber was saying, even before the bill was law, was that supporters had intentionally emphasized parts of the bill that were relatively minor, and that were not certain to even produce their intended effects.
This is not lying, exactly; the bill did in fact include some attempts at cost control, although as Gruber said, it was unclear at the time if or how well they would work. And Gruber may well have been right that the public was more concerned with cost control than expanding coverage. But, especially in combination with the other video released this week, it indicates that Gruber believed that the law’s advocates were not being completely straight with the public, that supporters of Obamacare were telling the public what they believed the public wanted to hear instead of giving them the full story, and that they were doing so on the understanding that telling the full story would make the bill impossible to pass.
What it shows, in other words, is Gruber openly embracing a strategy of messaging manipulation and misleading emphasis even while the bill was still being debated. If the public understood the bill clearly, he believed, they would reject it. It was more important to pass the bill.
Another video, posted today by The Daily Signal, shows Gruber taking a similarly dismissive attitude toward public concerns about the bill. At a meeting with the Vermont House Health Care Committee, Gruber is presented with a question about whether systems like those described in a report by Gruber and Harvard health economist William Hsiao, might result in “ballooning costs, increased taxes and bureaucratic outrages” as well “shabby facilities, disgruntled providers” and destructive price controls.
Gruber’s response begin with: “Was this written by my adolescent children by any chance?” The Signal quotes two-term Vermont state senator and Reagan-adviser John McClaughry as saying that the question had been submitted “by a former senior policy adviser in the White House who knew something about health care systems.”
Gruber’s response is intended as a joke, and it reveals little about the health care law (the reforms in question are specific to Vermont). But it says plenty about Gruber, and the flippant, arrogant way he treats concerns and criticism.
This is the person whom the White House relied on to help craft the bill; he was paid handsomely to model its effects (a fact he did not disclose, even when asked), and he was in the room when important decisions were made about how it would work. He claims to have helped write specific portions of the law himself. Gruber was not the sole architect of the law, but he was one of its biggest single influences on both its design and on how the media, which quoted him repeatedly, reported and understood the law.
The White House and its allies are desperately trying to distance themselves from Gruber right now by downplaying his role in the law’s creation. But the record of his involvement is clear enough: At The Washington Post, Ezra Klein has variously described Gruber as “one of the key architects behind the structure of the Affordable Care Act” and “the most aggressive academic economist supporting the reform effort.” The New York Times in 2012 described his role as helping to design the overall structure as well as being “dispatched” by the White House to Congress to write the legislative text. Gruber’s work was cited repeatedly by the White House, Democratic leadership, and the media.
So when he describes the thinking about how the law was crafted and sold to the public, it’s worth taking note. This is the posture of one of the law’s authors and chief backers. It’s part of the spirit in which the law was created and passed. Gruber’s ideas were embedded in the law’s structure and language, and so was his attitude.
The White House is denouncing comments from key Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber that a lack of transparency and the stupidity of voters helped in the passage of the health care law and is instead pointing a finger at Republicans.
“The fact of the matter is, the process associated with the writing and passing and implementing of the Affordable Care Act has been extraordinarily transparent,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said during a news briefing in Myanmar, according to a transcript provided by the White House.
Story Continued Below
“I disagree vigorously with that assessment,” Earnest responded when asked about Gruber’s claim that Obamacare wouldn’t have passed if the administration was more transparent and voters more intelligent.
He added, “It is Republicans who have been less than forthright and transparent about what their proposed changes to the Affordable Care Act would do in terms of the choices are available to middle class families.”
Earnest said the president “is proud of the transparent process that was undertaken to pass that bill into law.”
The response from the White House comes as a third video of Gruber criticizing the intelligence of American voters has surfaced.
“We just tax the insurance companies, they pass on higher prices that offsets the tax break we get, it ends up being the same thing. It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” Gruber said in remarks from 2012 that aired Wednesday evening on “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.”
Gruber has been causing headaches for the White House as conservatives have had a field day that began with comments the MIT professor made in 2013.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass,” Gruber said at the time, according to one of the videos that has recently come to light.
In another video clip of a separate event, while talking about tax credits in the Affordable Care Act, he said, “American voters are too stupid to understand the difference.”
Gruber apologized for the comments during an appearance earlier this week on MSNBC’s “Ronan Farrow Daily”:
(Also on POLITICO: Ted Cruz out on a limb on Obamacare repeal)
“I was speaking off the cuff, and I was basically speaking inappropriately, and I regret having made those comments.”
Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi dismissed Gruber’s role in Obamacare on Thursday, telling the press, “I don’t know who he is. He didn’t help write our bill.”
Many outlets were quick to point out that Pelosi cited Gruber in a “Health Insurance Reform Mythbuster” on her official website in 2009.
House Speaker John Boehner released a statement Thursday, slamming Gruber for his comments.
“If there was ever any doubt that ObamaCare was rammed through Congress with a heavy dose of arrogance, duplicity, and contempt for the will of the American people, recent comments by one of the law’s chief architects, Jonathan Gruber, put that to rest,” the top Republican said.
The statement continues, “The American people are anything but ‘stupid.’ They’re the ones bearing the consequences of the president’s health care law and, unsurprisingly, they continue to oppose it.” http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/jonathan-gruber-obamacare-voters-white-house-response-112856.html
Informally, a Cadillac plan is any unusually expensive health insurance plan, usually arising in discussions of medical-cost control measures in the United States.[1][2][3][4] The term derives from the Cadillac automobile, which has represented American luxury since its introduction in 1902,[1] and as a health care metaphor dates to the 1970s.[1] The term gained popularity in the early 1990s during the debate over the Clinton health care plan of 1993,[1] and was also widespread during debate over possible excise taxes on “Cadillac” plans during the health care reforms proposed during the Obama administration.[1] (Bills proposed by Clinton and Obama did not use the term “Cadillac”.)
Criticisms of these plans generally center on the small or nonexistent co-pays, deductibles, or caps that encourage the overuse of medical care, driving the cost up for the uninsured or those on other plans, which some say necessitates aCadillac tax.[citation needed]
A study published in Health Affairs in December 2009 found that high-cost health plans do not provide unusually rich benefits to enrollees. The researchers found that only 3.7% of the variation in the cost of family coverage in employer-sponsored health plans is attributable to differences in the actuarial value of benefits. Only 6.1% of the variation is attributable to the combination of benefit design and plan type (e.g., PPO, HMO, etc.). The employer’s industry and regional variations in health care costs explain part of the variation, but most is unexplained. The researchers conclude “…that analysts should not equate high-cost plans with Cadillac plans, but that in fact other factors—industry and cost of medical inputs—are as important in predicting whether a plan is a high-cost plan. Without appropriate adjustments, a simple cap may exacerbate rather than ameliorate current inequities.”[5]
How ObamaCare Taxes Affect You: New Taxes, Hikes, Breaks, Credits, and Other Changes
Here’s a full list of ObamaCare Taxes. The 21 new ObamaCare tax hikes and breaks impact us all, but which ObamaCare taxes will you actually pay? Find out how the tax related provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) will affect you, your family, your business, and your tax returns for 2013 and beyond.
The Bottom Line on the ObamaCare Tax Plan
The new tax related provisions in theAffordable Care Act(ObamaCare) include tax hikes, limits to deductions, tax credits, tax breaks, and other changes. While a few of the changes directly affect the average American, tax increases primarily affect high earners (those making over $200,000 as an individual or $250,000 as a family), large businesses (those making over $250,000), and the health care industry, while tax credits primarily affect low-to-middle income Americans and small businesses.
Here are some quick facts to help you understand how ObamaCare affects taxes:
• For the majority of the 85% of Americans with health insurance the percentage of income paid in taxes won’t change much, if at all. However, some of the changes may directly or indirectly affect specific groups.
• The majority of the 15% of Americans without health insurance will primarily be affected by the Individual Mandate (the requirement to buy health insurance), the Employer Mandate (the requirement for large employers to insure full-time employees), and Tax Credits (tax credits reduce premium costs for individuals, families, and small businesses).
• Many Americans will be affected by changes to new limits on medical tax deduction thresholds MSAs, FSAs, and HSAs.
• Small businesses will not be required to provide health insurance, but will gettax credits to reduce premium costs if they choose to offer group plans.
• Even if you won’t see higher taxes under the Affordable Care Act, it doesn’t mean there aren’t costs associated with the law. You’ll still need to buy health insurance, unless you qualify for Medicaid or an exemption, and that will cost you money.
• As a rule of thumb those who make less pay less and those who make more pay more, both in regard to health insurance costs and taxes under theAffordable Care Act.
• The Congressional Budget Office has shown that the revenue generated from the new taxes, along with cuts to spending, will help to pay for the Affordable Care Act’s many provisions, fund tax credits and lower the deficit by 2023.Learn More.
Why Does ObamaCare Create New Taxes?
ObamaCare includes many new benefits, rights, and protections including the requirement for health insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions. It also expands access to affordable health insurance to almost 50 million low-to-middle income men, women, and children across the country by offering reduced premiums via tax credits and expanding Medicaid and CHIP. Expanding the quality, affordability and availability of health insurance (along with other aspects of the law) come at a high cost. Assuming all tax provisions remain in place, the revenue generated from these new taxes help to cover the costs of the program and reduces the deficit. Learn more about the new benefits, rights, protections offered by the Affordable Care Act.
A Quick Overview of Key Taxes in the Affordable Care Act
Before we get to the full list of taxes here is a quick overview of the key tax related provisions that may affect those without insurance, those who plan to go without insurance, and those who are struggling to afford insurance now.
Individual Mandate (new tax): Americans who can afford to must obtain minimum essential health coverage for 2014, get an exemption or pay a per month fee.
Employer Mandate (new tax): Come 2015 large employers must insure full time employees or pay a per employee fee. Over half of Americans get their insurance through work and the largest group of uninsured is currently the working poor.
Taking all the tax provisions in the ACA into account ObamaCare technically provides the greatest middle class tax cut to healthcare in history.
Full List of All Taxes in ObamaCare / All Taxes in the Affordable Care Act
The following list of new ObamaCare taxes collectively raise over $800 billion by 2022. Here is a complete list of new fees and taxes contained withinObamaCare:
ObamaCare Taxes That Most Likely Won’t Directly Affect the Average American
• 2.3% Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers 2014
• 10% Tax on Indoor Tanning Services 2014
• Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax Hike
• Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals which fail to comply with the requirements of ObamaCare
• Tax on Brand Name Drugs
• Tax on Health Insurers
• $500,000 Annual Executive Compensation Limit for Health Insurance Executives
• Elimination of tax deduction for employer-provided retirement Rx drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D
• Employer Mandate on business with over 50 full-time equivalent employees to provide health insurance to full-time employees. $2000 per employee $3000 if employee uses tax credits to buy insurance on the exchange (marketplace). (pushed back to 2015)
• Medicare Tax on Investment Income 3.8% over $200k/$250k
• Medicare Part A Tax increase of .9% over $200k/$250k
• Employer Reporting of Insurance on W-2 (not a tax)
• Corporate 1099-MISC Information Reporting (repealed)
• Codification of the “economic substance doctrine” (not a tax)
ObamaCare Taxes That (may) Directly Affect the Average American
• 40% Excise Tax “Cadillac” on high-end Premium Health Insurance Plans 2018
• An annual $63 fee levied by ObamaCare on all plans (decreased each year until 2017 when pre-existing conditions are eliminated) to help pay for insurance companies covering the costs of high-risk pools.
• Medicine Cabinet Tax
Over the counter medicines no longer qualified as medical expenses for flexible spending accounts (FSAs), health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs), health savings accounts (HSAs), and Archer Medical Saving accounts (MSAs).
• Additional Tax on HSA/MSA Distributions
Health savings account or an Archer medical savings account, penalties for spending money on non-qualified medical expenses. 10% to 20% in the case of a HSA and from 15% to 20% in the case of a MSA.
• Flexible Spending Account Cap 2013
Contributions to FSAs are reduced to $2,500 from $5,000.
• Medical Deduction Threshold tax increase 2013
Threshold to deduct medical expenses as an itemized deduction increases to 10% from 7.5%.
• Individual Mandate (the tax for not purchasing insurance if you can afford it) 2014
Starting in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance must pay an income tax surtax at a rate of 1% or $95 in 2014 to 2.5% in 2016 on profitable income above the tax threshold. The total penalty amount cannot exceed the national average of the annual premiums of a “bronze level” health insurance plan on ObamaCare exchanges.
• Premium Tax Credits for Small Businesses 2014 (not a tax)
• Advanced Premium Tax Credits for Individuals and Families 2014 (not a tax)
• Medical Loss Ratio (MRL): Premium rebates (not a tax)
The link below provides a full list of ObamaCare Taxes by the IRS.
Let’s take a look at how ObamaCare’s taxes affect certain income groups.
ObamaCare Taxes for High Earners and Large Businesses
Most of the new taxes are on high-earners (individuals making over $200,000 and families making over $250,000), large businesses (over 50 full-time equivalent employees making over $250,000), and industries that profit from healthcare. Essentially those who will see gains under ObamaCare are required to put money back in the program via taxes.
FACT: Tax increases generally affect single filers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) above $200,000 and married couples filing jointly above $250,000. Some of the tax increases don’t kick in until single AGI hits $400,000 and married filing jointly AGI hits $450,000.
ObamaCare Taxes for the Average American With Health insurance
For most of the 85% of Americans with health insurance, making less than $250,000, most of the new taxes won’t mean much of anything although certain taxes below will affect specific individuals and families.
ObamaCare Taxes for the Average American Without Health insurance
The 15% of Americans without health insurance will be required to obtain health insurance (Individual Mandate) or will face a “tax penalty”.
The good news is that many uninsured will be exempt from the Individual mandate due to income, offered cost assistance through the marketplaceincluding Tax Credits (also available to small businesses), qualify for Medicaid, or will get insurance through work (the Employer Mandaterequires large employers to insure full-time employees by 2015). Adults who are under 26 will be able to stay on their parents plan as well, this will help to limit the number of young people who will pay the fee. Both the employer and individual mandates are part of our “shared responsibility” to expand the quality and affordability of health insurance in the United States as a trade for our new benefits, rights and protections.
ObamaCare Taxes for Small Businesses
Small businesses with less than 25 full-time equivalent employees will have access to tax credits to reduce premium costs of group plans.
ObamaCare Taxes for Specific Groups With Health Insurance
Here are a few changes that my affect specific groups of Americans with health insurance:
• Other tax provisions such as changes medical deduction thresholds, HSAs, MSAs, and FSAs may impact some Americans by limiting tax deductions.
• The Medical Loss Ratio (MLR or 80/20 rule) will mean that some Americans may get rebates if health insurance companies spend on non-healthcare related expenses.
• Tax provisions like the 10% tanning bed tax, taxes on drug companies, taxes on medical devices and taxes on health insurance companies selling insurance on and off the exchange may affect the amount of money we pay for some health care related goods and services, but will not have a significant impact on our daily lives.
• The employer mandate has caused some companies to cut down full-time workers to part-time to avoid providing benefits, however major employers like Disney and Walmart have actually increased their full-time workforce in response to the looming 2015 deadline.
• Overall the benefits tend to outweigh the costs for the average American as even those who pay a little more, get a lot more in return due to the increased quality of their health insurance.
Will I pay More Taxes and High Premiums Because of ObamaCare?
As mentioned above premium rates and the taxes you will have to pay are primarily based on income. Aside from income premium prices are based on which plan you choose, family size, age, smoking status and geography. Subsidies reduce the overall rate of your premiums (however smoking is calculated after subsidies). Come 2018 there will be a 40% excise tax on high end health insurance plans.
Aside from the tax provisions that require Americans to obtain insurance and subsidize it’s costs, ObamaCare also includes a few tax related provisions that work as consumer protections including requirements for better reporting and the Medical Loss Ratio.
ObamaCare Tax Rebates
Some consumers in both individual and group markets will see tax rebates due to ObamaCare’s Medical Loss Ratio (MLR). Health insurance companies will have to provide rebates to consumers if they spend less than 80 to 85% of premium dollars on medical care.
Medical Loss Ratio (MLR)
The Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) means that Insurance companies are now required to spend at least 80% of premium dollars (85% in large group markets) on medical care and quality improvement activities. Insurance companies that are not meeting this standard will be required to provide rebates to their consumers. The MLR isn’t a tax, but it does have implications in regards to filing taxes and rebates can be given in the form of reduced premiums. See our page on ObamaCare Health Insurance Regulations for more details.
ObamaCare Income Tax Penalty For Not Having Insurance “Individual Mandate”
Starting in 2014, most people will have to have insurance or pay a “penalty deducted from your taxable income”. For individuals, penalty starts at $95 a year, or up to 1% of income, whichever is greater, and rise to $695, or 2.5% of income, by 2016.
For families the tax will be $2,085 or 2.5% percent of household income, whichever is greater. The requirement can be waived for several reasons, including financial hardship or religious beliefs. If the tax would exceed 8% of your income you are exempt, also some religious groups are exempt. That tax cannot exceed the cost of a “bronze plan” bought on the exchange.
Many individuals who are exempt from the mandate to buy insurance will still be eligible for free or low-cost insurance through the health insurance marketplace.
While some states, including Alabama, Wyoming and Montana, have passed laws to block the requirement to carry health insurance, those provisions do not override federal law. Get more information on the ObamaCare Individual Mandate.
The Individual Mandate is officially called the “individual shared responsibility provision”.
What Are ObamaCare Tax Credits?: Advanced Premium Tax Credits
Premium tax credits are a form of cost assistance that reduce premium costs for coverage purchased onyour State’s “health insurance marketplace” for individuals, families, and small businesses.
Advanced Premium Tax Credits for Individuals and Families
Individuals and families will have access to Advanced premium tax credits on the marketplace. Tax Credits are deducted from your premium cost by your health insurance provider and are adjusted on your Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI). You can choose how much advance credit payments to apply to your premiums each month, up to a maximum amount. If the amount of advance credit payments you get for the year is less than the tax credit you’re due, you’ll get the difference as a refundable credit when you file your federal income tax return. If your advance payments for the year are more than the amount of your credit, you must repay the excess advance payments with your tax return.
Aside from premium tax credits individuals and families can also get lower cost sharing on out-of-pocket expenses like coinsurance, copays, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums through the marketplace.
Eligibility for Tax Credits
In general, you may be eligible for the credit if you meet all of the following:
buy health insurance through the Marketplace;
are ineligible for coverage through an employer or government plan;
are within certain income limits;
file a joint return, if married; and
cannot be claimed as a dependent by another person.
If you are eligible for the credit, you can choose to:
Get It Now: have some or all of the estimated credit paid in advance directly to your insurance company to lower what you pay out-of-pocket for your monthly premiums during 2014; or
Get It Later: wait to get all of the credit when you file your 2014 tax return in 2015.
How Will Advanced Premium Tax Credits Affect My Health Insurance Costs?
Under the Affordable Care Act health insurance that costs less than 8% of your MAGI is considered affordable. Although the law doesn’t guarantee lower costs, premium tax credits help to ensure that more Americans will have access to affordable insurance.
s a rule of thumb most Americans will pay between 1.5% and 9.5% on their Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) when using tax credits to buy a basic Silver Plan on the marketplace.
If the lowest-priced coverage available to you would cost more than 8% of your household income are exempt from the individual mandate.
The amount you pay is on a sliding scale based on your income. Use the chart below to get an idea of what you and your family may pay for insurance purchased through the Health Insurance Marketplace. Make sure to check outObamaCare Subsidies for more detailed information on Premium Tax Credits.
The 2013 Federal Poverty Level Guidelines below are used to Determine if your percentage of the poverty level for both taxes and cost-assistance.
Household Size
100%
133%
150%
200%
300%
400%
1
$11,170
$14,856
$16,755
$22,340
$33,510
$44,680
2
15,130
20,123
22,695
30,260
45,390
60,520
3
19,090
25,390
28,635
38,180
57,270
76,360
4
23,050
30,657
34,575
46,100
69,150
92,200
5
27,010
35,923
40,515
54,020
81,030
108,040
6
30,970
41,190
46,455
61,940
92,910
123,880
7
34,930
46,457
52,395
69,860
104,790
139,720
8
38,890
51,724
58,335
77,780
116,670
155,560
For each additional person, add
$3,960
$5,267
$5,940
$7,920
$11,880
$15,840
This following table is an example of how premium tax credits work. Please note that the numbers below are purely for example and don’t reflect your personal rates.
Health Insurance Premiums and Cost Sharing under PPACA for Average Family of 4
For “Silver Plan”
Income % of federal poverty level
Premium Cap as a Share of Income
Income $ (family of 4)
Max Annual Out-of-Pocket Premium
Premium Savings
Additional Cost-Sharing Subsidy
133%
3% of income
$31,900
$992
$10,345
$5,040
150%
4% of income
$33,075
$1,323
$9,918
$5,040
200%
6.3% of income
$44,100
$2,778
$8,366
$4,000
250%
8.05% of income
$55,125
$4,438
$6,597
$1,930
300%
9.5% of income
$66,150
$6,284
$4,628
$1,480
350%
9.5% of income
$77,175
$7,332
$3,512
$1,480
400%
9.5% of income
$88,200
$8,379
$2,395
$1,480
In 2016, the FPL is projected to equal about $11,800 for a single person and about $24,000 for family of four. Use the Kaiser ObamaCare Cost Calculator for more information. DHHS and CBO estimate the average annual premium cost in 2014 to be $11,328 for family of 4 without the reform. Source: Wikipedia
ObamaCare Employer / Employee Taxes
ObamaCare’s taxes mean large employers will have to provide health insurance to their employees and will see a raised Medicare part A tax, small businesses may be eligible for tax breaks.
Medicare part A Tax Hike for Employers and Employees
The Medicare part A tax is paid by both employees and employers who earn over a certain amount. ObamaCare’s Medicare tax hike is a .9% increase (from 2.9% to 3.8%) on the current total Medicare part A tax. This tax is split between the employer and employee meaning that they will both see a .45% raise. Small businesses making under $250,000 are exempt from the tax. Employees making less than $200,000 as an individual or ($250,000) as a family are also exempt. Employers must withhold and report an additional 0.9 percent total on employee wages or compensation that exceed $200,000.
Tax Penalty for Not Providing Full-time Workers with Health Insurance the “Employer Mandate”
Employers with over 50 full-time equivalent employees must either insure their full-time employees or pay a penalty or “employer shared responsibility fee”. The penalty is $2000 per employee. If however, at least one full-time employee receives a premium tax credit because coverage is either unaffordable or does not cover 60 percent of total costs, the employer must pay the lesser of $3,000 for each of those employees receiving a credit or $750 for each of their full-time employees total.
Employers with under 25 full time employees, whose average income doesn’t exceed $50,000, can apply for tax credits of up to 50% for insuring their employees.
Tax Credits for Small Businesses
Small businesses with under 25 full-time equivalent employees with average annual wages of less than $50,000 can apply for tax breaks of up to 50% of their share of employee premium costs via ObamaCare’s Small Business Health Options Program (accessible through your State’s Health Insurance Marketplace). The credit can be as much as 50% of employer premiums (35% for not-for-profits in 2014). The credit is only available if the employer is paying at least 50% of the total premiums.
Small Business Health Options Program
Employers with 50 or fewer employees, you can purchase affordable insurance through the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) even if they don’t qualify for tax credits.
Reporting
Along with the new law there are new requirements for reporting.
Effective for calendar year 2015, you must file an annual return reporting whether and what health insurance you offered your employees. This rule is optional for 2014. Learn more.
Effective for calendar year 2015, if you provide self-insured health coverage to your employees, you must file an annual return reporting certain information for each employee you cover. This rule is optional for 2014. Learn more.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2013, you must withhold and report an additional 0.9 percent on employee wages or compensation that exceed $200,000. Learn more.
Aside from having to adhere to the “employer mandate” ObamaCare also imposes taxes and fees that are unique to big business. ObamaCare taxes some medical device manufactures, drug companies and health insurance companies. Beginning in 2013, medical device manufacturers and importers must pay a 2.3% tax on the sale of a taxable medical device. This raises $29 billion over a 10 years. However, many states are asking to delay the medical device excise tax to protect jobs in states that produce the devices. An annual fee for health insurers is expected to raise more than $100 billion over 10 years, while a fee for brand name drugs will bring in another $34 billion.
Employers that have employees who earn more than $200,000 will have to look at the potential for additional Medicare withholding due to the Medicare part A tax.
Employers that issued 250 or more W-2 forms in 2012 must report the cost of employer-sponsored health coverage for 2013 on the 2013 W-2 forms.
Medical Device Excise Tax
There is a 2.3% medical excise tax on medical device manufacturers and importers on the sale of taxable medical devices. Section 4191 of the Internal Revenue Code imposes an excise tax on the sale of certain medical devices by the manufacturer or importer of the device. The tax applies to sales of taxable medical devices after Dec. 31, 2012. You can learn more from the official IRS page on the Medical Device Tax.
What Increases Do the ObamaCare Taxes Include for The $200k/$250k Earners?
ObamaCare Medicare Part A Payroll Tax
Starting in 2013, individuals with earnings above $200,000 and married couples making more than $250,000 will see an increase in the Medicare part A payroll tax. It’s an increase of 2.35%, up from the current 1.45% ( a .9% Medicare part A payroll tax hike), on adjusted income over the threshold.
ObamaCare Unearned Income Tax
This group will also pay a 3.8% unearned income (capital gains) tax on interest, dividends, annuities, royalties, rents, and gains on the sale of investments over the threshold.
Taxable income under the $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 threshold for families is subject to the same benefits and tax cuts as those who make under the threshold.
ObamaCare Home Sales Tax / ObamaCare Real Estate Tax Increase
ObamaCare increases taxes on unearned income by 3.8% and this can add additional taxes to the sales of some homes, but many limitations apply which means it won’t affect most sellers. The 3.8% capital gains tax typically doesn’t apply to your primary residence. It also doesn’t usually apply to homes you have owned for over 5 years or on profits of less than $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for couples due to a capital gains tax exclusion rule for sales of a primary home.
In short the ObamaCare home sales tax isn’t something that most of us will pay, it is a tax is aimed at those selling non-primary residences in short term periods for profit and not at the average American buying and selling their primary residence.
ObamaCare Medical Expense Deductions
ObamaCare increases the medical expense deduction threshold. Unreimbursed medical expense deductions will now be available only for those medical expenses in excess of 10% of AGI, which has been raised from 7.5%. There is a temporary exemption for individuals ages 65 and older and their spouses from 2013 through 2016.
ObamaCare “Cadillac” Tax
Starting in 2018, the new health care law imposes a 40% excise tax on the portion of most employer-sponsored health coverage (this excludes dental and vision) that exceed $10,200 a year and $27,500 for families. The tax has been dubbed a “Cadillac” tax because it hits only high-end “gold”, “platinum” and high-end health care plans not purchased on the exchange. The tax raises over $150 billion over the next 10 years.
New ObamaCare Taxes Summary
Going through the new ObamaCare taxes line by line is, in itself, taxing. The bottom line is that a majority of Americans will find themselves paying less for better healthcare, while higher-earners will pay tax rates closer to what they did in the Clinton years. ObamaCare pays for most of itself via the above taxes, reforms to Medicare, and health care as a whole, as well as cutting out billions in wasteful spending.
ObamaCare Taxes Moving Forward into 2014
We hope this helps you to understand the new ObamaCare taxes and how they work. Many of the ObamaCare’s taxes won’t be fully implemented until 2022, but most will be in effect by 2014. ObamaCare helps all Americans get access to quality affordable healthcare, and new benefits, rights and protections. Make sure to look out for ObamaCare tax breaks, credits, subsidies and breaks on up front costs moving forward into 2014. As we learn more we will update our full ObamaCare tax list.
Story 1: Part II More On Jonathan Gruber, Basically PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) on Healthcare, Obamacare and Lack of Transparency — The American Voters Were Not Stupid And Rejected Democrats Who Supported Obamacare By Voting Them Out of Office — But The Democratic Progressive Elitist Establishment Are Liars and Losers — Stupid Is As Stupid Does — Death Knell of Socialized Medicine — Repeal Obamacare Now! — Videos
Stupid Is As Stupid Does
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO [Congressional Budget Office] scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass….Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
~Jonathan Gruber
Stupid is as stupid does, Mrs. Blue..
How Did The Media Cover Jonathan Gruber
SMOKING GUN! Gruber Admits Obama Was in Room During Planning of Cadillac Lie
Gruber’s ObamaCare Remarks?
CNN airs New Video of Jonathan Gruber: Exploit the Lack of American Voters’ Economic Understanding
Trey Gowdy on Gruber comments
Megyn Kelly: Democrats Committed Fraud By Not Representing Obamacare as a Tax
Greater Boston Video: Jonathan Gruber Pushes Back
Krauthammer rips Jonathan Gruber: “We’re hearing the true voice of liberal arrogance”
GRUBER: “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.”
The Worst of Jonathan Gruber
Flashback: Obama: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.
The Changing Touchstone of Transparency
Nets Ignore ObamaCare Architect Crediting Law’s Passage On ‘The Stupidity Of The American Voter’
Megyn Slams ObamaCare Architect Who Declined to Appear on ‘Kelly File’
WHY IS OBAMA NOT IN PRISON FOR STEALING TAXPAYER MONEY?
ObamaCare: Bill’s architect Gruber admits lies, deception necessary because Americans are stupid
Dems including Harry Reid, Sebelius, and Obama admit Single Payer Healthcare is ultimate goal
Democrats Push for a Single Payer Health Care System Katie Pavlich Charles Payne 8 12 13
Socialize Medicine! – Influential Democrat Calling For Single Payer System Amid Obamacare Trouble
“If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” – Barack Obama
Jon Stewart on You Can Keep Your Plan. Period.
Jonathan Gruber on MSNBC says he “regrets” calling the American voter stupid
Conversation: “Health Care Reform,” The Comic Book
Gruber Files- Harvard University
The Cadillac Tax
Obama admits he DID raise taxes
Obamacare’s Cadillac Tax Pushing People To Plans With High Deductible- Union You Got What You Wanted
Jonathan Gruber brags about the “basic exploitation” of American voters
What is the “cadillac tax?” M3 Insurance HCR
Unions & Cadilac Health Care Plans
Obama’s Health Care Lies And Reversals
Obama lies about “cadillac” plan taxation.
Rep Joe Courtney Discusses “Cadillac Tax” with Neil Cavuto on Fox Business News Channel
HealthCare Reform – Modified Community Rating Part 1 – Federal Marketplace
HealthCare Reform – Modified Community Rating Part 2 – Federal Marketplace
Community Rating – How the Affordable Care Act Impacts Small Business Owners
Forrest Gump TRAILER
Honest Trailers – Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump’s most beautiful quote
Funeral Toll & Peal, Mount Angel Abbey
When a monk passes away during the night, the toll is sounded early the following morning. It is repeated after the funeral Mass, when the monks process down to the cemetery, and ends with a peal of all the bells. These are the last few tolls of the sequence on the largest bell in the Pacific Northwest.
Please pray for the eternal repose of the soul of this monk, that he may enter into everlasting life with Christ.
Martin Luther King – For whom the bell tolls
Nancy Pelosi says she doesn’t know who Jonathan Gruber is. She touted his work in 2009.
Many have pointed out since then that Pelosi’s office has cited Gruber’s work in the past. That’s notable, but it’s very unlikely Pelosi herself wrote those press releases herself or even participated in their drafting.
But then there’s this: Pelosi herself has also mentioned Gruber and his work — back in November 2009, at the height of the Obamacare debate.
Here’s the transcript, via Nexis:
Q: As you know, the Republicans released their health- care bill this week. And I wanted to get your comment on the bill, and specifically on the CBO analysis that it would cost significantly less than the Democratic plan and that it would lower premiums.
PELOSI: Let me just say this. Anything you need to know about the difference between the Democratic bill and the Republican bill is that the Republicans do not end the health insurance companies’ discrimination against people with preexisting conditions. They let that stand. That’s scandalous, the fact that it exists. I don’t understand why they have not heard the American people, who have said preexisting conditions should not be a source of discrimination.
And secondly, the Republican plan ensures about 3 million more people than now, and ours does 36 million people. So that’s a very big difference in that.
We’re not finished getting all of our reports back from CBO, but we’ll have a side by side to compare. But our bill brings down rates. I don’t know if you have seen Jonathan Gruber of MIT’s analysis of what the comparison is to the status quo versus what will happen in our bill for those who seek insurance within the exchange. And our bill takes down those costs, even some now, and much less preventing the upward spiral.
So again, we’re confident about what we set out to do in the bill: middle class affordability, security for our seniors, and accountability to our children.
Pelosi’s office told the Washington Post that the minority leader meant that she didn’t know Gruber personally.
“She said she doesn’t ‘know who he is,’ not that she’s never heard of him,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said.
Hammill added: “We’ve cited the work of dozens upon dozens of economists over the years. As the leader said today, Mr. Gruber played no role in drafting our bill.”
Pelosi clearly wants to distance herself and Obamacare from Gruber, given Gruber’s controversial comments about “the stupidity of the American voter,” and Democrats are going to argue that Gruber wasn’t instrumental in the bill. But, as an architect of the Massachusetts health-care law and a consultant to the White House on Obamacare, he’s been regularly cited by Democrats as an authority on this issue — including, apparently, by Pelosi.
This Philly-Based Investment Adviser Has Become Obamacare’s Digital Menace
Sam Stein
You could pardon Rich Weinstein for gloating. These past few days, he’s enjoyed the type of journalistic high that comes with unearthing a particularly meaty scoop.
Except Weinstein is no journalist. He’s a Philadelphia-based investment adviser approaching 50 who, until a half-year ago, was unknown to the political world. A set of videos he found of Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist who played an important role in drafting the Affordable Care Act, changed all that. The videos have become rich context for a legal challenge to the law now heading to the Supreme Court, and they’ve made Weinstein the celebration of conservative circles.
“This is going to sound a little cocky and I don’t want it to be,” Weinstein told The Huffington Post Tuesday in one of the the media interviews he’s given on his feat. “But I’m not partially responsible for finding those clips. I’m completely responsible.”
Weinstein’s story, in some respects, would be the stuff of a made-for-TV movie — if the director is a member of the tea party and eager to dramatize the Affordable Care Act’s unraveling (those two points, admittedly, are redundant).
Weinstein, who runs his own company, and his family lost their health insurance after Obamacare forced higher standards for policies. On the exchange, the only plan with similar benefits was twice the cost of his old one. Irritated, he began looking into who put together the Affordable Care Act, searching Google with the term “ACA architects.” Days consumed with researching old videos became nights.
“Remember when the husbands used to come home at night in the ’50s and ’60s and grab a newspaper and read it?” said Weinstein. “Well, I’m like that with the iPad. It was a lot of time. For the past year, I put a lot of time into this.”
His break came last winter. An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma, outlined a long-shot legal argument that said a direct interpretation of Affordable Care Act precluded giving subsidies to people on federally run exchanges. Weinstein had seen that argument before, albeit from a different vantage point. Months earlier, he had stumbled across video of Gruber stating that the subsidies to help low-income Americans buy insurance are reserved for state-established exchanges, if only to give states an incentive to establish an exchange
Weinstein had a smoking gun, but no one to show it to.
“I’ve got the tinfoil hat,” Weinstein said, excusing the reporters who ignored his early entreaties. “People in the media must be overwhelmed with idiots like me who think they have something.”
So he took time off — three to four months — and watched his kids play lacrosse. Then, in July, two conservative justices on a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the subsidies for those shopping on federally run exchanges were, indeed, illegal. People were talking about the issue again.
Weinstein dropped comments about his Gruber video onto The Washington Post’s Volokh Conspiracy blog. Eventually, Ryan Radia, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, noticed and turned it into a blog post.
Dominos began to fall. Weinstein’s first video was included in the legal challenge to Obamacare. And that challenge — King v. Burwell — ended up making its way to the Supreme Court. “Which is crazy,” Weinstein said. “Crazy because I found it. Not crazy because it is a crazy legal case.”
This week, another of Weinstein’s videos emerged. This one is of Gruber saying that a bit of budgetary deception helped Obamacare pass in Congress (“call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever,” said the professor). This, too, found its way into the mainstream conversation. Gruber on Tuesday went on MSNBC to apologize for his language, though he may have return. Weinstein said he has another video of a similar comment that he will soon release.
Should the Supreme Court ultimately rule against subsidies being available on federally run insurance exchanges, it would, in some ways, make the perfect ending to a conservative-inspired Horatio Alger story.
“I’m kind of a nobody,” said Weinstein. “And, I think, people who are out there, just the average person who gets hacked off about something or has an interest about something, I think I’m a perfect lesson that any one person can make a difference. Anybody. Even guy with the tinfoil hat in his mom’s basement.”
Except life and politics aren’t that simple. There is texture. Weinstein doesn’t live in his mom’s basement. He just says it for rhetorical flair. For those who would like to dismiss him as a knee-jerk partisan, he’s not that, either. He voted for Bill Clinton, he said, before he cast a ballot for Ross Perot and, most recently, Mitt Romney. Certainly, he’s no longer a “nobody” in the fight against Obamacare. Elements of the conservative movement have geared up to both promote and protect his work.
Phil Kerpen, who founded the group American Commitment and formerly was vice president for the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, helped spread the second of Weinstein’s videos. Once Kerpen found out an article was in the works, he sent a tweet suggesting The Huffington Post was “doxxing” Weinstein for attacking Gruber. The tweet came just minutes after The Huffington Post asked Weinstein whether he had used an online alias before commenting on The Volokh Conspiracy.
But the real nuance is in the history and the policy details. Gruber was an architect of Obamacare. But he wasn’t the only architect. The staffs to former Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), among others, deserve their fair share of credit or blame, depending on one’s perspective.
On the issue of subsidies, the Gruber statement that Weinstein unearthed remains a gem for a reason. It’s because it’s rare (Gruber called it a “speak-o” — like a typo). There has been one other instance unearthed of Gruber discussing tax incentives as a means of compelling a state to set up an exchange.
For defenders of the law, that’s still thin gruel compared with the widely accepted belief during and after the crafting of the bill that subsidies would be universal. (The IRS ruled this way in May 2012, five months after Gruber’s speech.)
For critics, it’s proof enough.
“I don’t think he misspoke at all. I don’t think he was taken out of context and I don’t think he misspoke,” said Weinstein.
And then there is the issue of practical outcomes. Weinstein became a digital archaeologist after the cost of his insurance went up two-fold. Should a lawsuit succeed in eliminating subsidies for those buying insurance on federally run exchanges, it would result in many people confronting similar, or worse, price hikes. It’s an outcome that Weinstein admitted weighs on him, even as he keeps scanning the Web for more Gruberisms.
“It does,” Weinstein said. “But the way you say it makes it sound like nothing else will happen. Like it is a straight line. Subsidies are taken away and the world ends. And I think that’s not fair. I think there will most certainly be a disruption. No doubt about it. I think some states will go build their own exchanges quickly. But, I think the markets would find a way to adjust.”
“It does bother me,” he added later. “I get it. I’m not an evil person. I just think people should see these videos. I just think people should know what’s going on. “
Hearings floated as Hill Republicans seize on Gruber Obamacare comments
By Robert Costa and Jose A. DelReal
Congressional Republicans seized Wednesday on controversial commentsmade by a former health-care consultant to the Obama administration, with one leading House conservative suggesting that hearings could be called in response as part of the GOP effort to dismantle the law in the next Congress and turn public opinion ahead of the 2016 election.
“We may want to have hearings on this,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), an influential voice among GOP hardliners and a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in an interview at the Capitol. “We shouldn’t be surprised they were misleading us.”
The firestorm began when a video emerged showing Jonathan Gruber, a high-profile architect of the Affordable Care Act and one of its fiercest advocates, suggesting that the health reform law passed through Congress because of the “stupidity of the American voter” and a “lack of transparency” over its funding mechanisms. The remarks were originally made in 2013 during a panel discussion at the University of Pennsylvania but began heavy circulation on social media Monday.
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes,” Gruber said. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the ‘stupidity of the American voter’ or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”
Gruber apologized for his incendiary remarks in an on-air interview with MSNBC Tuesday afternoon, calling his comments inappropriate and saying he was speaking “off the cuff.” On Tuesday evening, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly aired a second video, of Gruber calling voters stupid, also from 2013.
The controversy has lit a fire under conservatives eager to dismantle the law and has raised eyebrows among the law’s defenders, who are concerned that such comments will further damage the law’s already shaky standing with American voters. It also comes after a sweeping electoral victory for Republicans last Tuesday, who won control of the Senate and bolstered the size of their majority in the House.
Jordan said House Republicans have been sending each other a blizzard of e-mails and text messages this week, and he expects the interest in “bringing [Gruber] up here to talk” will gain traction as members return to Washington. House Republicans will gather Thursday evening for their first series of votes since the election.
“I just had a colleague text me saying, ‘We’ve got to look into this!” Jordan said as he glanced at his phone outside the House floor Wednesday morning.
The chatter among lawmakers echoes the outrage among the conservative grassroots over the comments. Sen. Ted Cruz in a speech last week said targeting ACA must remain the party’s top priority. “Now is the time to go after and do everything humanely possible to repeal Obamacare,” he said.
House GOP leadership aides expressed new optimism that their desire to target the ACA could get some momentum. While rhetorically committed to full repeal, in order to keep the party’s right flank on board, the party is looking more seriously at undermining specific parts of the law as it navigates divided government next year. Those moves could include repealing the medical device tax; watering down a requirement that employers offer full time workers coverage, which takes effect in January; and changing the definition of a full-time worker from someone who works at least 30 hours a week to someone who works at least 40 — all proposals which could win some Democratic support.
On the other side of the Capitol, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who is slated to become chairman of the powerful Senate budget committee, also threw his support behind possible hearings. In a furious gaggle with reporters, Sessions said Gruber’s comments could make dealings with the White House more difficult, days after Republican leaders said they would seek areas of common ground.
“The strategy was to hide the truth from the American people,” Sessions said. “I’m not into this post-modern world where you can say whatever you want to in order to achieve your agenda. That is a threat to the American republic… This is far deeper and more significant than the fact that he just spoke.”
Other Senate Republicans expressed similar discomfort with Gruber, but warned conservatives to not get their hopes up about repealing the health-care law while President Obama remains in office, underscoring the tonal difference between the more rabble-rousing House GOP and the new and more even-tempered Republican Senate majority.
Heading into a party luncheon on Wednesday, retiring Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said the health care law “is going to still be there regardless because we don’t have the votes” to undo it.
“We can talk all we want but he is going to veto whatever we send him,” Coburn said. “That’s the reality.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he was unsure of how Senate Republicans would use the Gruber kerfuffle to go after the law, if at all. For the moment, he said, Republicans should focus on using the episode to highlight how the national press has covered the president’s signature policy.
“What Gruber said should be read and reported on by every news organization,” he said. “People should be aware of how this administration thinks.”
Several Democrats said Wednesday that they were unaware of Gruber’s comments and declined to speculate on whether there could be political consequences, underscoring how much of the discussion is being driven by Republicans. One, however, did distance herself from the arguably aloof phrasing used by Gruber. “I have not seen them,” said Sen. Patty Murrary (D-Wash). “But I do think voters are pretty smart.”
The challenge for Republicans will be balancing the conservative ire surrounding Gruber with the leaders’ political imperative to establish themselves as a governing congressional majority. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and incoming Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-Ky.) have pledged to bring another repeal bill to floor, but are also focused on achieving incremental legislative gains on Keystone XL and trade agreements.
POSTED AT 6:01 PM ON NOVEMBER 11, 2014 BY NOAH ROTHMAN
On Saturday, Newsbusters was the first major website to feature a video posted to YouTube by AmericanCommitment of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber boasting in 2013 how he helped deceive the public via a lack of transparency about that bill. Some readers were anxious about that video being made better known to the public since at the time the article was published, there were only a couple of dozen views of the video on YouTube.
Well they needn’t have worried because since then the video has gone over the top viral to the extent that Rush Limbaugh led his show talking about it at length this morning as did Sean Hannity on his radio show. In addition, the video made it into the mainstream media other than Fox News when Jake Tapper showed the video today on The Lead and The Hill has an article about it as well. As of this writing the video has over 177,000 views and growing fast. Reason today had an excellent analysis of the Gruber revelations:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Jonathan Gruber was, by most accounts, one of the key figures in constructing the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. He helped designed the Massachusetts health care law on which it was modeled, assisted the White House in laying out the foundation of the law, and, according to The New York Times, was eventually sent to Capitol Hill “to help Congressional staff members draft the specifics of the legislation.” He provided the media with a stream of supportive quotes, and was paid almost $400,000 for his consulting work.
Jonathan Gruber, in other words, knows exactly what it took to get the health care law passed.
And that’s why you should take him seriously when he says, in the following video, that it was critical to not be transparent about the law’s costs and true effects, and to take advantage of the “stupidity of the American voter” in order to get it passed:
Here’s the full quote:
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO [Congressional Budget Office] scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass….Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
This validates much of what critics have said about the health care law, and the tactics used to pass it, for years.
For one thing, it is an explicit admission that the law was designed in such a way to avoid a CBO score that would have tanked the bill. Basically, the Democrats who wrote the bill knowingly gamed the CBO process.
It’s also an admission that the law’s authors understood that one of the effects of the bill would be to make healthy people pay for the sick, but declined to say this for fear that it would kill the bill’s chances. In other words, the law’s supporters believed the public would not like some of the bill’s consequences, and knowingly attempted to hide those consequences from the public.
Most importantly, however, it is an admission that Gruber thinks it’s acceptable to deceive people if he believes that’s the only way to achieve his policy preference. That’s not exactly surprising, given that he failed to disclose payments from the administration to consult on Obamacare even while providing the media with supposedly independent assessments of the law.
…Gruber may believe that American voters are stupid, but he was the one who was dumb enough to say all this on camera.
Now that various MSM outlets have begun to pay attention to the Gruber Obamacare deception video, it will be fascinating to see what type of excuses will be made by the pundits to cover for what he admitted. Bonus points to Jonathan Cohn at New Republic or Politico or any of a vast number of liberal sources for whoever can dream up the most entertaining spin control to explain away this viral video.
p.s. Did I mention that Newsbusters was the first major website to feature this video?
Dr. Jonathan Gruber is a Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992. He is also the Director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a Research Associate. He is an Associate Editor of both the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Health Economics. In 2009 he was elected to the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Dr. Gruber received his B.S. in Economics from MIT, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. Dr. Gruber’s research focuses on the areas of public finance and health economics. He has published more than 140 research articles, has edited six research volumes, and is the author of Public Finance and Public Policy, a leading undergraduate text, and Health Care Reform, a graphic novel. In 2006 he received the American Society of Health Economists Inaugural Medal for the best health economist in the nation aged 40 and under. During the 1997-1998 academic year, Dr. Gruber was on leave as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department. From 2003-2006 he was a key architect of Massachusetts’ ambitious health reform effort, and in 2006 became an inaugural member of the Health Connector Board, the main implementing body for that effort. In that year, he was named the 19th most powerful person in health care in the United States by Modern Healthcare Magazine.
2012-01-09 Jonathan Gruber on Mitt Romney and Health Care Reform
Jonathan Gruber Once Again Says Subsidies Are Tied to State-Based Exchanges
Jonathan Gruber discusses health care law’s next step
Healthcare Reform 101 Part 1.
Healthcare Reform 101 Part 2.
Healthcare Reform 101 Part 3.
Jonathan Gruber on Obamacare: Part 1 of 3
Jonathan Gruber on Obamacare: Part 2 of 3
Crafting ObamaCare
Obamacare Architect: No State Exchange = No Subsidies; Blatant Enough
#GruberGate: Tale of the Tapes
Rush Limbaugh – MIT Gruber Lied about Obamacare
Rush Limbaugh: Jonathan Gruber says you are Life’s Lottery Winners – Eugenics
Gwen and Jonathan Gruber Talk Health Care with Chris Matthews
Obama 2008: Bypassing Congress Unconstitutional; I’ll Reverse It
Lec 1 | MIT 14.01SC Principles of Microeconomics
Meet Jonathan Gruber, the man who’s willing to say what everyone else is only thinking about Obamacare
By Jason Millman
Jonathan Gruber might not be a household name, but in the world of health care policy, he’s a pretty big deal. And now he’s also known as the guy who’s credited “the stupidity of the American voter” for the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
An old video surfaced this week of Gruber saying that a lack of transparency was one of the reasons Obamacare got through Congress in 2010. Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology health economist who’s credited as one of the intellectual godfathers of the Affordable Care Act, has apologized for speaking off the cuff, but critics of the law are eagerly highlighting his comments.
That’s because of what Gruber represents. He was one of the architects of the 2006 Massachusetts health care law, which became the basis for the ACA, and he helped craft the federal legislation that used a similar scheme of guaranteed coverage, financial assistance and insurance mandates. He was far from the only person who helped shape the ACA, but he has been one of its most vocal academic defenders in the nearly five years since it passed. (And he’s the only one to write a comic book about the law.)
It’s easy to see why Gruber’s comments get pored over by ACA opponents. There’s plenty of misunderstanding about what’s in the ACA and mistrust of the motivations for passing the law — just recall Nancy Pelosi’s infamous line about needing to pass the bill to find out what’s in it. So when someone like Gruber, who’s supposed to know the law inside and out, seemingly confirms critics’ worst suspicions, that makes for a powerful anecdote.
Gruber, who’s fiercely intelligent and passionate about the health reforms he helped create, also isn’t one to always sugarcoat things.
Earlier this year, a pretty important health policy study showed that the expansion of Medicaid coverage in Oregon was associated with a spike in emergency room visits. The research potentially undercut an argument by supporters of the law who said it would save money since giving more people health insurance meant patients would rely more on primary care providers, rather than expensive trips to the ER. And Gruber, commenting on the study, offered an uncomfortable truth.
“I would view [the study] as part of a broader set of evidence that covering people with health insurance doesn’t save money,” Gruber told the Washington Post at the time. “That was sometimes a misleading motivator for the Affordable Care Act. The law isn’t designed to save money. It’s designed to improve health, and that’s going to cost money.”
You may also remember Gruber from the last presidential campaign, when there was plenty of debate over just how similar Obamacare and Romneycare actually were to one another. It was Gruber who artfully cleared up the confusion. “They’re the same f—— bill,” he told Capital New York in what became a widely circulated interview three years ago. It’s probably what ACA supporters wanted to say all along, but only Gruber went ahead and did it.
His most potentially damaging comments surfaced just over the summer, when Gruber seemingly gave credence to the ACA challenge just taken up by the Supreme Court last week — a challenge that if successful couldtorpedo the law.
The case revolves around whether residents in states that refused to set up their own health insurance marketplaces should still be able to claim tax subsidies to help them afford their insurance. Opponents say no, Congress intentionally didn’t allow that under the law. Democrats say they never intended for people in these 36 states to not have access to the financial assistance.
Here was Gruber again, in January 2012, telling a health-care conference that states refusing to set up their own exchanges would deny their residents premium tax credits. The video wasn’t widely viewed until June of this year, but this is what he said at the time:
I think what’s important to remember politically about this, is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits. But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying to your citizens, you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these Exchanges, and that they’ll do it. But you know, once again, the politics can get ugly around this.
Here’s the video, with these comments near the 31:30 mark:
Critics of the law jumped on those comments as further validation of their challenge to the subsidies in the 36 states relying on the federal-run insurance marketplaces, or exchanges. Gruber later said that he misspoke, and that his own work always assumed all exchanges — whether run by the states or the federal government — would be eligible for subsidies.
Gruber’s latest comments have surfaced at an especially inopportune time for the Obama administration. The next enrollment period is approaching this weekend with lowered expectations, just as Republicans reclaimed the Senate and the Supreme Court agreed to hear a new Obamacare challengethat could seriously weaken the law.
The Democrats, realizing how harmful Gruber’s latest comments have become, are already out doing damage control. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean was on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” today to put distance between Gruber and the health-care law, saying he’s not even sure that Gruber ever met with President Obama.
“He’s a consultant, not the architect [of Obamacare,” Dean said. “I’m not excusing the language — it’s terrible.”
Jonathan Holmes Gruber is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992. He is also the director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a research associate. He is an associate editor of both the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Health Economics.
Gruber’s research has focused on public finance and health economics. He has published more than 140 research articles, and has edited six research volumes. He is a co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics, an associate editor of the Journal of Health Economics, and the author of Public Finance and Public Policy.[3] and Health Care Reform, a graphic novel delineating the Affordable Care Act.[citation needed]
Public service
During the 1997–1998 academic year, Gruber was on leave as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department. From 2003–06 he was a key architect of Massachusetts health care reform, also known as “Romneycare”. In 2006 he became an inaugural member of the Health Connector Board, the main implementing body for that effort. In that year, he was named the 19th most powerful person in health care in the United States by Modern Healthcare magazine. During the 2008 election he was a consultant to the Clinton, Edwards and Obama presidential campaigns.
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
In 2009–10 Gruber served as a technical consultant to the Obama Administration and worked with both the administration and Congress to help craft the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often referred to as the ACA or “Obamacare”.[4] The act was signed into law in March 2010, and Gruber has been described as an “architect”, “writer”, and “consultant” of the legislation. He was widely interviewed and quoted during the roll-out of the legislation. [5][6][7][8][9]
One heavily-scrutinized part of the ACA reads that subsidies should be given to healthcare recipients who are enrolled “through an Exchange established by the State”. Some have read this to mean that subsidies can be given only in states that have chosen to create their own healthcare exchanges, and do not use the federal exchange, while the Obama administration says that the wording applies to all states. This dispute is currently part of an ongoing series of lawsuits referred to collectively as King v. Burwell. In July 2014, two separate recordings of Gruber, both from January 2012, surfaced in which he seemed to contradict the administration’s position.[4] In one, Gruber states, in response to an audience question, that “if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits”,[14] while in the other he says, “if your governor doesn’t set up an exchange, you’re losing hundreds of millions of dollars of tax credits to be delivered to your citizens.”[15] When these recordings emerged, Gruber called these statements mistaken, describing them as “just a speak-o — you know, like a typo”.[14]
In a panel discussion about the ACA at the University of Pennsylvania in October 2013, Gruber stated that the bill was deliberately written “in a tortured way” to disguise the fact that it created a system in which “healthy people pay in and sick people get money”. He stated that this obfuscation was necessary, due to “the stupidity of the American voter or whatever”, in order to get the bill passed and that a “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.”[16] His comments caused controversy after a video of them was placed on YouTubein November 2014.[17][18][19][20]
Published works
On February 15, 2006, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published an article by Gruber entitled “The Cost and Coverage Impact of the President’s Health Insurance Budget Proposals”[21]
In a December 4, 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Medicine for the Job Market”, he claimed that expanding health insurance, even in difficult financial times would stimulate the economy.[22]
On February 9, 2011, the Center for American Progress published an article by Gruber titled “Health Care Reform Without the Individual Mandate,” analyzing the health insurance coverage impacts of alternative policy options for encouraging purchase of health insurance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including the mandate, a late penalty, and auto-enrollment.[23]
In 2006, Gruber received the American Society of Health Economists Inaugural Medal for the best health economist in the nation aged 40 and under.[25] He was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine in 2005.[26] In 2009 he was elected to the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association.
In 2011 he was named “One of the Top 25 Most Innovative and Practical Thinkers of Our Time” by Slate Magazine. In both 2006 and 2012 he was rated as one of the top 100 most powerful people in health care in the United States by Modern Healthcare Magazine.
Story 1: Part II More On Jonathan Gruber, Basically PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) on Healthcare, Obamacare and Lack of Transparency — The American Voters Were Not Stupid And Rejected Democrats Who Supported Obamacare By Voting Them Out of Office — But The Democratic Progressive Elitist Establishment Are Liars and Losers — Stupid Is As Stupid Does — Death Knell of Socialized Medicine — Repeal Obamacare Now! — Videos
Stupid Is As Stupid Does
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO [Congressional Budget Office] scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass….Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
~Jonathan Gruber
Stupid is as stupid does, Mrs. Blue..
How Did The Media Cover Jonathan Gruber
SMOKING GUN! Gruber Admits Obama Was in Room During Planning of Cadillac Lie
Gruber’s ObamaCare Remarks?
CNN airs New Video of Jonathan Gruber: Exploit the Lack of American Voters’ Economic Understanding
Trey Gowdy on Gruber comments
Megyn Kelly: Democrats Committed Fraud By Not Representing Obamacare as a Tax
Greater Boston Video: Jonathan Gruber Pushes Back
Krauthammer rips Jonathan Gruber: “We’re hearing the true voice of liberal arrogance”
GRUBER: “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.”
The Worst of Jonathan Gruber
Flashback: Obama: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.
The Changing Touchstone of Transparency
Nets Ignore ObamaCare Architect Crediting Law’s Passage On ‘The Stupidity Of The American Voter’
Megyn Slams ObamaCare Architect Who Declined to Appear on ‘Kelly File’
WHY IS OBAMA NOT IN PRISON FOR STEALING TAXPAYER MONEY?
ObamaCare: Bill’s architect Gruber admits lies, deception necessary because Americans are stupid
Mainstream Media Mob Electronic Lynching of Dr. Ben Carson — Attempted Assassination Fails — Limbaugh Unmasked The Perpetrators — The Conservative Right Strikes Back — Videos
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The Pronk Pops Show Podcasts
Pronk Pops Show 570: November 6, 2015
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Pronk Pops Show 514: August 14, 2015
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Story 1: Mainstream Media Mob Electronic Lynching of Dr. Ben Carson — Attempted Assassination Fails — Limbaugh Unmasked The Perpetrators — The Conservative Right Strikes Back — Videos
Ben Carson Thanks ‘Biased’ Media After Raising $3.5 Million In One Week
Ben Carson On Biased Media and Trump This Week FULL Interview
Dr. Ben Carson Talks West Point With Bill O’Reilly
Scrutinizing Ben Carson – Donald Trump – O’Reilly Talking points
Ben Carson Holds Press Conference On West Point Scholarship False Claims (11-6-15)
November 6, 2015: GOP Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson addressed the media this evening on the alleged false claims he made in his book, “Gifted Hands”, including that he received a full scholarship offer to West Point and that he allegedly tried to stab a friend and hit his mother with a hammer.
Ben Carson strikes back at the press
Glenn Beck Exposes Obama’s Fraudulent History and Radicalized Beliefs
Report Questions Ben Carson’s West Point Story, Campaign Pushes Back – Cavuto
Ben Carson: “I was offered a full scholarship to West Point” (Oct 9, 2015) | Charlie Rose
Ben Carson thinks Egypt’s pyramids were built by Joseph
Carson: Egypt’s Pyramids Built To Store Grain
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson stood by his belief that Egypt’s great pyramids were built by the Biblical figure Joseph to store grain, an assertion dismissed by experts. (Nov. 5)
Ben Carson: How I Got into Politics (Oct. 9, 2015) | Charlie Rose
Dr. Benjamin Carson’s Amazing Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast with Obama Present
Fox News: Ben Carson Admits Story About Getting Into West Point Was NOT TRUE
Carson Campaign: Politico Story About West Point Acceptance Not True
The Politico, Lies about Ben Carson
Politico: Carson admits fabricating scholarship story
audio 11/6/15 RUSH LIMBAUGH: POLITICO & MEDIA TRYING TO TAKEDOWN BEN CARSON
Hillary’s Vicious Media Tools Now Getting Brutal On Ben Carson (Limbaugh)
Rush Limbaugh – November 6, 2015 Full Podcast
Rush Limbaugh Explains Why Trump And Carson Are Circling The Top Of The Tier
Rush Limbaugh: Trump is driving the GOP establishment insane
Rush Limbaugh: Only Trump or Carson can stop GOP donor agenda
Dr. Ben Carson’s response to a 10-year old boy-Amazing!
Dr. Carson’s amazing speech at CPAC 2014
INCREDIBLE: DR. BEN CARSON STOPS BY “THE VIEW” AND DEMOLISHES LIBERALISM
RUSH: Dr. Ben Carson Has Everyone In Democrat Party Scared To Death
RUSH LIMBAUGH NAILS IT ABOUT BEN CARSON
“There is not a single person in the media today that could wear Dr. Benjamin Carson’s uniform, whatever uniform he puts on in a day, a business suit, if it’s surgical scrubs, there’s not a single member of the media that could do anything close to what Ben Carson has done with his life. ”
Ben Carson: Debate audience picked up on media bias
Ben Carson on CNN: Full interview, part 1
Ben Carson on CNN: Full interview, part 2
Ben Carson on CNN: Full interview, part 3
Mark Levin – Obama the “Red Diaper Baby”
Unearthed: Obama Admits Mentor Was Communist Agitator Frank Marshall Davis
The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor
(CNN) Andy Martin’s discovery that Obama’s father is communist Frank Marshall Davis
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Van Jones: ‘Ben Carson Bewilders, I Think, Most Black Democrats’
Hillary’s Vicious Media Tools Now Getting Brutal On Ben Carson (Limbaugh)
audio 11/6/15 BEN CARSON TO CNN, “ASK HILLARY THE SAME QUESTIONS”
Poll: Ben Carson is 9 points ahead of Hillary! (Limbaugh)
Psychological Warfare, Credibility
Enemy of the State (1998)
Peggy Lee — Is That All There Is? 1969
Latest Polls
LIMBAUGH: CARSON IS VICTIM OF ‘ELECTRONIC LYNCHING’
Media ‘telling an outright lie’ in ‘an assassination attempt’
Talk-radio kingpin Rush Limbaugh shredded Politico and accused the news site and mainstream media of coordinating an “assassination attempt” against Dr. Ben Carson on Friday.
In fact, Limbaugh went even further, calling the onslaught of attacks an “electronic lynching being conducted against the Republican African-American candidate by a majority-white mainstream American liberal media.”
In a damning accusation Friday, Politico claimed Carson’s campaign “admitted he did not tell the truth” about having been accepted into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
A Carson spokesperson made a response to an inquiry by Politico into the veracity of a story in the surgeon’s autobiography, “Gifted Hands,” that the then-17-year-old was offered a full scholarship after a meeting in 1969 with Gen. William Westmoreland in 1969.
Dr. Ben Carson’s inspiring manifesto, “America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great” – $4.95 today only at the WND Superstore!
Politico reported West Point had no record of either Carson’s application or admission.
However, a Carson spokesman told the Daily Caller on Friday, “The Politico story is an outright lie.”
Doug Watts said, “The campaign never admitted to anything,” and Carson “[N]ever said he was admitted or even applied” to West Point.
“I want to show you how this works. I want to share with you some headlines that have run during the course of this program,” Limbaugh said, blasting Politico as a “liar,” and listing the following media reports Friday:
Several of the news outlets – including Politico – amended their original headlines with the Carson campaign called the Politico story “an outright lie.”
In a press conference late Friday, Carson ripped into combative reporters:
Dr. Carson explained that, as the top ROTC student in Detroit 50 years ago, he was invited to “a number of events because of my position.” In that role, he was invited to meet Gen. Westmoreland.
“That was also a time, as I recall, that several of the high brass told me that I would be somebody that they would be interested in in the military. It was an offer to me. I interpreted it as an offer. … They told me this was available to me because of my accomplishments and that they would be delighted for me to do it. And I told them immediately that my intention was to become a physician. It always has been, and I was very honored but I would not be pursuing that.”
Carson said he “made it clear” in his book that he, in fact, only applied to one college because he had just enough money for one application fee.
When relentlessly pressed about his childhood years, Carson told reporters, “My prediction is that all of you guys trying to pile on is actually going to help me, because, when I go out to these book signings and I see these thousands of people, they say, ‘Don’t let the media get you down. Don’t let them disturb you. Please continue to fight for us.’ They understand that this is a witch hunt. …
“Let me just say one thing. I do not remember this level of scrutiny for one President Barack Obama when he was running. In fact, I remember just the opposite. I remember people just [saying], ‘Oh well, we won’t really talk about that. We won’t talk about that relationship. Well, Frank Marshall Davis, we don’t want to talk about that. Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, we don’t really know him. You know, all the things that Jeremiah Wright was saying, oh, not a big problem.’
“[Obama] goes to Occidental College, doesn’t do all that well, and somehow ends up at Columbia University. His records are sealed. Why are his records sealed? Why are you guys not interested in why his records are sealed? Why are you not interested in that? Let me ask you that. Can somebody tell me why? … Now you’re saying that something that happened with the words ‘a scholarship was offered’ was the big deal, but the president of the United States, his academic records being sealed is not? Tell me how there’s equivalence there.”
Carson told reporters he wouldn’t “sit back and let you be completely unfair without letting the American people know what’s going on.”
He added, “And the American people are waking up to your games.”
http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/limbaugh-carson-is-victim-of-electronic-lynching/#sXtuGSojLqHGJlxX.99
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/limbaugh-carson-is-victim-of-electronic-lynching/#sXtuGSojLqHGJlxX.99
New front-runner Ben Carson faces closer scrutiny of his life story
By David Weigel and David A. Fahrenthold
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson — now making the transition from living legend to scrutinized candidate — faced new questions Friday about the way he tells his powerful life story.
For years, Carson has said he was offered a “full scholarship” to the U.S. Military Academy when he was a high-achieving high school Army ROTC cadet in the late 1960s. But Carson never applied to West Point, was never accepted and never received a formal scholarship offer. In fact, West Point does not offer scholarships; all cadets attend free.
The story was first reported Friday by Politico. Carson responded to the resulting controversy by saying that when he spoke of an “offer,” he referred to informal, verbal statements of encouragement from military leaders he met through the ROTC, the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps .
“I was told that because of my accomplishments, they would be able to manage to get me into West Point and that I wouldn’t have to pay anything,” Carson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network. He said he decided not to apply and went to Yale University instead to pursue medicine. “There was no application process [at West Point]. I never even started down that path,” Carson said.
Carson’s campaign cast the episode as new evidence of persecution of the candidate by the news media. Tension between Carson and the media came to a boil Friday night in Florida, where at a combative news conference the candidate asked why President Obama had not been subjected to such scrutiny.
The original Politico report declared that Carson had “fabricated” a story about “his application and acceptance” at West Point. It also claimed that the candidate had “admitted” the fabrication.
Carson’s campaign vehemently denied those statements.
The Politico story seemed to mischaracterize a small but key detail in the way Carson has told the story. In many cases, Carson implied only that he received a formal offer from West Point. He never said explicitly that he had been accepted or even that he had applied.
“It gives journalism a bad name,” said Armstrong Williams, Carson’s close friend and business manager. “It only fits into Dr. Carson’s narrative of a witch hunt” by the media.
By mid-afternoon, Politico posted a new version of its story that no longer included the wording that Carson had “fabricated” a part of his biography. Later in the day, the news site posted an editor’s note stating that the story should have made clear that Carson never claimed to have applied for admission to West Point.
“We continue to stand by the story,” Politico spokeswoman Lauren Edmonds said in a statement. “We updated it to reflect Ben Carson’s on the record response to the New York Times and other new details, which underscore the validity of our original reporting.”
As the day went on, conservative media voices chimed in to agree with Carson. “It’s almost like the Politico is the official leak machine for the Republican establishment,” Rush Limbaugh said on his syndicated radio show. Radio host and blogger Erick Erickson replaced an entire post about “the beginning of Ben Carson’s end” with one about a “demonstrably false” Politico report.
Carson, 64, achieved worldwide fame for his daring surgeries at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and for his story of rising out of poverty in southwest Detroit. This week, as Carson has challenged Donald Trump for the lead in the Republican presidential primary contest, there has been a new focus on Carson’s personal beliefs and on the way he tells his life story.
First, the Web site BuzzFeed posted a 17-year-old video of a commencement speech in which Carson offers an alternative theory about why the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids. In Carson’s telling, they were not built to be tombs, as historians and archeologists say. Instead, they were built for grain storage, in keeping with the biblical story of Joseph, in which the patriarch counseled the pharaoh to store up grain for years of famine.
Carson told CBS News this week that he still believes that the pyramids were granaries, saying the proof was in sealed chambers inside the structures. “You would need that if you were trying to preserve grain for a long period of time,” he said.
Then, CNN sought to verify a key part of Carson’s life story: that, as a young man in Detroit, he had committed acts of violence, including smashing a boy’s nose with a thrown rock, attempting to stab a friend in the abdomen and threatening his own mother with a hammer during an argument.
CNN interviewed nine people who knew Carson during his childhood and who said that the violent incidents did not fit their recollections of him.
Carson said CNN did not speak with the right people. “I was generally a nice person,” he told the network. “It’s just that I had a very bad temper. So unless you were the victim of that temper, why would you know?”
It was an unusually odd situation: a presidential candidate insisting, in the face of skepticism, that he really did have a history of violence.
The part of Carson’s life at issue Friday — the “offer” he got, or did not get, from West Point — is a story that Carson has told repeatedly in books, interviews and speeches.
He tells it in the context of his rapid rise through high school Army ROTC, which ended with him as the top-ranking cadet in Detroit.
“I was offered a full scholarship to West Point,” Carson wrote in his 1990 memoir, “Gifted Hands.” “I didn’t refuse the scholarship outright, but I let them know that a military career wasn’t where I saw myself going. As overjoyed as I felt to be offered such a scholarship, I wasn’t really tempted. The scholarship would have obligated me to spend four years in military service after I finished college, precluding my chances to go on to medical school.”
In that account and others, Carson seems to rely on loose, broad definitions for the words “offer” and “scholarship.”
In fact, applicants to West Point must be sponsored by a member of Congress or the secretary of the Army. If accepted, they attend tuition-free: There are no “scholarships” at West Point beyond the benefits that all cadets get.
Doug Watts, a spokesman for Carson’s campaign, said Carson never completed the process for acceptance by West Point and never had an official sponsor. Indeed, in “Gifted Hands,” Carson makes clear that he actually applied only to one school: Yale.
“Each college required a ten-dollar non-returnable entrance fee sent with the application,” Carson wrote. “I had exactly ten dollars, so I could apply only to one.”
Still, his campaign spokesman said, it was proper to say Carson had an “offer” of a scholarship because military leaders had told him that his acceptance would be a sure thing.
“He was told by the ROTC commander that he could have an appointment,” Watts said. “Dr. Carson rejected the offer, did not apply or pursue admission. Had he done so, and been accepted, that would have been tantamount to a scholarship, the same that all cadets receive.”
In one of his books, Carson also made a similar claim about a scholarship offer from another school.
“The University of Michigan had offered me a scholarship, but I wanted to go farther from home,” he wrote in his 1999 book, “The Big Picture.”
A spokesman for the University of Michigan, Rick Fitzgerald, said he could not confirm that account. The university no longer has records from that time. Carson’s camp said the scenario was similar to that involving West Point: He had decided to apply elsewhere and never submitted an application.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/newly-minted-frontrunner-ben-carson-faces-new-scrutiny-of-his-life-story/2015/11/06/8877e032-84b8-11e5-8ba6-cec48b74b2a7_story.html
Exclusive: Carson claimed West Point ‘scholarship’ but never applied
Republican hits POLITICO story, later admits to The New York Times he wasn’t offered aid.
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson on Friday conceded that he never applied nor was granted admission to West Point and attempted to recast his previous claims of a full scholarship to the military academy — despite numerous public and written statements to the contrary over the last few decades.
West Point has occupied a central place in Carson’s personal story for years. According to a tale told in his book, “Gifted Hands,” the then-17 year old was introduced in 1969 to Gen. William Westmoreland, who had just ended his command of U.S. forces in Vietnam, and the two dined together. That meeting, according to Carson’s telling, was followed by the offer of a “full scholarship” to the military academy.
Story Continued Below
West Point, however, has no record of Carson applying, much less being extended admission.
“In 1969, those who would have completed the entire process would have received their acceptance letters from the Army Adjutant General,” said Theresa Brinkerhoff, a spokeswoman for the academy. She said West Point has no records that indicate Carson even began the application process. “If he chose to pursue (the application process), then we would have records indicating such,” she said.
When presented by POLITICO with these facts, Carson’s campaign conceded he never applied.
“Dr. Carson was the top ROTC student in the City of Detroit,” campaign manager Barry Bennett wrote in an email to POLITICO. “In that role he was invited to meet General Westmoreland. He believes it was at a banquet. He can’t remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson’s performance as ROTC City Executive Officer.”
“He was introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC Supervisors,” Bennett added. “They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in ROTC. He considered it but in the end did not seek admission.”
In an interview with The New York Times following the POLITICO story, Mr. Carson said: “I don’t remember all the specific details. Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told that someone like me – they could get a scholarship to West Point. But I made it clear I was going to pursue a career in medicine.”
“It was, you know, an informal ‘with a record like yours we could easily get you a scholarship to West Point.’”
Carson would have needed to seek admission in order to receive an offer of free education from West Point. Also, according to West Point, there is no such thing as a “full scholarship” to the military academy, as Carson represented in his book.
An application to West Point begins with a nomination by a member of Congress or another prominent government or military official. After that, a rigorous vetting process begins. If offered admission, all costs are covered for all students; indeed there are no “full scholarships,” per se.
The statement from Carson’s campaign manager on Friday went on to say: “There are ‘Service Connected’ nominations for stellar High School ROTC appointments. Again he was the top ROTC student in Detroit. I would argue strongly that an Appointment is indeed an amazing full scholarship. Having ran several Congressional Offices I am very familiar with the Nomination process.
“Again though his Senior Commander was in touch with West Point and told Dr. Carson he could get in, Dr. Carson did not seek admission.”
Ben Carson has repeatedly claimed he was offered a full scholarship from West Point. He conveys the story in at least two other books, “You Have a Brain” and “Take the Risk.” Carson repeated his West Point claim as recently as Aug. 13, when he fielded questions from supporters on Facebook.
And in October, Carson shared the story with Charlie Rose: “I had a goal of achieving the office of city executive officer [in JROTC]. Well, no one had ever done that in that amount of time … Long story short, it worked, I did it. I was offered full scholarship to West Point, got to meet General Westmoreland, go to Congressional Medal dinners, but decided really my pathway would be medicine.”
The Carson campaign pushed back against POLTICO’s story after its publication, with Carson himself telling Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The Brody File” that the media “will go through all lengths trying to discredit me.” According to a tweet from the show, Carson said, of the mainstream media, “they’ll ask my kindergarten teacher, ‘did I ever wet my pants.’”
The concession from Carson’s campaign comes as serious questions about other points of fact in Carson’s personal narrative are questioned, including the seminal episode in which he claimed to have attempted to stab a close friend. Similarly, details have emerged that cast doubt on the nature of Carson’s encounter with one of the most prominent military men of that era.
The West Point spokeswoman said it certainly is possible Carson talked with Westmoreland, and perhaps the general even encouraged him to apply to West Point. However, she said, the general would have explained the benefits of a West Point education without guaranteeing him entry.
In “Gifted Hands,” Carson says he excelled in his ROTC program at Detroit’s Southwestern High School, earning the respect of his superiors — just a couple years after anger problems led him to try to murder a friend. He attained the rank of second lieutenant by his senior year of high school and became the student leader of the city’s ROTC programs.
In May of his senior year, he was chosen to march in the city’s Memorial Day parade.
“I felt so proud, my chest bursting with ribbons and braids of every kind. To make it more wonderful, we had important visitors that day. Two soldiers who had won the Congressional Medal of Honor in Viet Nam were present,” he wrote. “More exciting to me, General William Westmoreland (very prominent in the Viet Nam war) attended with an impressive entourage. Afterward, Sgt. Hunt” — his high school ROTC director — “introduced me to General Westmoreland, and I had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners. Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point.”
But, according to records of Westmoreland’s schedule that were provided by the U.S. Army, the general did not visit Detroit around Memorial Day in 1969 or have dinner with Carson. In fact, the general’s records suggest he was in Washington that day and played tennis at 6:45 p.m.
There are, however, several reports of an event in February of that year, similar to the one Carson described. Then, Westmoreland was the featured guest at a 1,500-person banquet to celebrate Medal of Honor recipient Dwight Johnson. The event drew prominent guests, including the governor at the time, the mayor of Detroit, the president of Ford Motor Company and nine previous Medal of Honor awardees, according to an Associated Press account of the event.
Carson, a leader of the city’s ROTC program at the time, may have been among the invited guests at the $10-a-plate event.
Carson’s later retelling of the events in this period of his life downplays his meeting with Westmoreland and that event’s link to a West Point acceptance. In his January 2015 book, “You Have a Brain,” — a book geared toward teenagers — Carson again recalls his rapid rise through his high school ROTC program to become the top student officer in the city.
“That position allowed me the chance to meet four-star general William Westmoreland, who had commanded all American forces in Vietnam before being promoted to Army Chief of Staff at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.,” he wrote. “I also represented the Junior ROTC at a dinner for Congressional Medal of Honor winners, marched at the front of Detroit’s Memorial Day parade as head of an ROTC contingent, and was offered a full scholarship to West Point.”
Carson has said he turned down the supposed offer of admission because he knew he wanted to be a doctor and attending West Point would have required four years of military service after graduation.
Cecil Murphey, who ghostwrote “Gifted Hands,” told POLITICO that his memory of Carson’s exchange with Westmoreland was hazy.
“My gut response is that it was not a private meeting, but there were others there,” he said in an email. “The general took a liking to Ben and opened doors.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/ben-carson-west-point-215598#ixzz3qkUVQcJd
Ben Carson admits he lied about West Point scholarship, insists stories about troubled childhood are true
Ben Carson admitted Friday that he lied about earning a prestigious scholarship to West Point while controversy over the validity of his troubled kid-to-renowned doctor narrative reached a crescendo.
The 2016 GOP candidate said he fabricated a part of his 1996 autobiography, “Gifted Hands,” in which he claimed he was given a “full scholarship” to the U.S. Military Academy just hours after he rebuked accusations that he lied about his violent outbursts as a child and teenager.
In the nearly 20-year-old book, Carson boasted about his transformation from rage-filled boy to refined neurosurgeon, describing how he once tried to hit his mother with a hammer and attempted to stab one of his friends to death.
His former classmates, however, said they don’t remember the Republican as a rough kid.
BEN CARSON STILL THINKS JOSEPH BUILT PYRAMIDS TO STORE GRAIN
“I don’t know nothing about that,” Gerald Ware, Carson’s classmate at Detroit’s Southwestern High School, told CNN. “It would have been all over the whole school.”
Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson claimed in his 1996 book that he had a violent childhood full of moments of ‘pathological anger.’
CNN spoke with nine people Carson grew up with. Not one remembered the Republican’s self-proclaimed violent outbursts.
While Carson slammed the CNN report, calling it a “bunch of lies” and “pathetic,” he did admit that there is at least one falsehood in the book: A story about how Gen. William Westmoreland offered the then-17-year-old a full-ride to West Point.
Carson said that as the leader of his high school’s Junior ROTC program, he attended a 1969 Memorial Day dinner for Congressional Medal of Honor winners. There, he met with General Westmoreland.
“Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point,” he wrote.
BEN CARSON OVERTAKES TRUMP IN NATIONAL POLLING AVERAGE
Carson may have met Westmoreland at the 1969 banquet — which was held in February, not May — but the general would not have promised the student a scholarship, West Point told POLITICO. All costs are covered for admitted West Point students, so “full ride” scholarships don’t exist.
Carson was “introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC Supervisors” at a banquet, Carson’s campaign manager Barry Bennett said. While they may have discussed application process, Carson never applied or received a scholarship.
Instead, he attended Yale University before going on to the University of Michigan’s medical school.
West Point said it has no records of Carson applying to or enrolling in the academy.
Carson admitted he “doesn’t remember all the specific details” of meeting Westmoreland.
“Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told someone like me – they could get a scholarship to West Point,” Carson told the New York Times.
Despite the scholarship lie, Carson defended the rest of the book Friday, saying all the stories about his violent childhood are true.
In the 19-year-old book, Carson claimed he once tried to strike his mother with a hammer as they argued over clothing. His brother Curtis stepped in and disarmed the boy before he could physically harm their mother.
Carson also said he physically attacked at least two of his school friends.
In the seventh grade he hit a boy named Jerry with a lock after he teased Carson for saying something “stupid” in English class.
Carson wrote that he was given a “full scholarship” to West Point.
“I swung at him, lock in hand. The blow slammed into his forehead, and he groaned, staggering backward, blood seeping from a three-inch gash,” Carson wrote.
Two years later, in the ninth grade, he tried to stab a friend who he identified in the book only as “Bob.” The blade stuck Bob’s belt buckle, breaking the blade and leaving the teen unharmed.
“I was trying to kill somebody,” Carson wrote of the knife attack, calling it a moment of “pathological anger.”
The teenage Carson ran to the bathroom after the failed stabbing and prayed. Since then, he has never had a problem with his temper, he claimed in the book.
Carson’s classmates remembered him as introverted and studious — someone who was more likely to be found in the library than in the middle of a schoolyard fight.
Carson’s classmates have described him as a quiet, shy student, not an angry young man.
“He was a quiet, shy kid, not too outgoing,” said his junior high and high school classmate Jerry Dixon. “Bennie stayed home a lot or went to the library to work.”
Dixon said he is not the Jerry the doctor-turned-politician beat with a lock — and said he had never even heard of such an incident.
Carson refused to reveal the names of his victims in a Friday interview on CNN, saying to name them would be “victimizing.”
He admitted that he changed the names in his autobiography, but maintained both “Bob” and “Jerry” are real people who will only be identified if they chose to come forward on their own.
“Tell me what makes you think you’re going to find those specific people?” Carson asked CNN’s Alisyn Camerota. “What is your methodology? Because I don’t understand it.”
Carson’s campaign adviser Armstrong Williams also refused to identify the candidate’s alleged victims or provide any kind of documentation showing disciplinary actions for his claimed school fights.
“Why would anyone cooperate with your obvious witch hunt?” Armstrong Williams wrote to CNN in an email last week, the day before Halloween. “No comment and moving on…… Happy Halloween!!!!!”
Donald Trump quickly weighed in on his rival’s controversy.
“The Carson story is either a total fabrication or, if true, even worse-trying to hit mother over the head with a hammer or stabbing friend!” he tweeted Thursday.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ben-carson-violent-childhood-called-question-article-1.2425591
Ben Carson Says He Was Never Accepted to West Point
Ben Carson prepared to board his campaign bus after appearing at a book signing in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Thursday.Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images
A report on Friday said Ben Carson had acknowledged never having applied to West Point, raising questions about his repeated assertions that he had turned down a scholarship to attend the military academy.
According to the report, in Politico, West Point had no record that Mr. Carson, who has been leading in some national polls in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, had applied. When Politico approached Mr. Carson’s campaign with the information, his campaign manager, Barry Bennett, in a statement, explained that Mr. Carson had considered an offer to receive help getting an appointment to the academy, but he did not apply.
In repeated references to West Point over the years, Mr. Carson has strongly implied that he had a standing offer to attend.
In his statement, Mr. Bennett said, “Dr. Carson was the top R.O.T.C. student in the City of Detroit.”
Referring to Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the Army chief of staff at the time, Mr. Bennett added: “In that role he was invited to meet General Westmoreland. He believes it was at a banquet. He can’t remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson’s performance as R.O.T.C. city executive officer.”
“He was introduced to folks from West Point by his R.O.T.C. supervisors,” Mr. Bennett said. “They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in R.O.T.C. He considered it but in the end did not seek admission.”
In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, Mr. Carson said: “I don’t remember all the specific details. Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told that someone like me – they could get a scholarship to West Point. But I made it clear I was going to pursue a career in medicine.”
“It was, you know, an informal ‘with a record like yours we could easily get you a scholarship to West Point.’”
Mr. Carson has recounted the episode of being offered a scholarship at various points in telling his triumphant personal story. (Technically, West Point does not offer scholarships; it is free to attend.)
In his recent book, “You Have a Brain,” Mr. Carson described how he decided which college to attend: “I still had the scholarship offer from West Point as a result of my R.O.T.C. achievements.”
More recently, in a Facebook post in August responding to a question, he wrote that he had been “thrilled to get an offer from West Point.”
“But I knew medicine is what I wanted to do. So I applied to only one school. (it was all the money I had). I applied to Yale and thank God they accepted me. I often wonder what might have happened had they said no.”
The revelation came just a couple of days after a CNN report questioned the accuracy of Mr. Carson’s accounts of violent episodes in his youth, which are central to his often-told story of personal redemption through faith and hard work, one that has made him a favorite of evangelical Christian voters. On Friday, shortly before the Politico report was published, Mr. Carson attacked the CNN report as a “bunch of lies.”
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/06/ben-carson-west-point/
Ben Carson defends his telling of an informal offer from West Point
By David Weigel
Ben Carson defended his long-told story of a “scholarship” to West Point today, responding to scrutiny by saying that he merely had received an “informal” offer of a free ride to the military academy.
“Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told that someone like me [could] get a scholarship to West Point,” Carson told the New York Times. “It was, you know, an informal ‘with a record like yours we could easily get you a scholarship to West Point.'”
Allies of the former neurosurgeon, who has slowly risen to the top of 2016 Republican primary polls, had been making a similar case all day. The argument — which depends on a careful parsing of verbs — is that he never applied, even after being told he’d be a sure-thing candidate. The point, which found many takers in conservative media, was that the controversy could be dismissed as a witch hunt.
That reasoning came together Friday morning, after Politico published a story titled “Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship.” After confirming that Carson had never applied to West Point, and that a meeting Carson described with Gen. William Westmoreland apparently did not happen when the candidate had claimed, the story quoted Carson campaign manager Barry Bennett’s new explanation.
“He was introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC Supervisors,” Bennett said. “They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in ROTC. He considered it but in the end did not seek admission.”
[The Fix: Ben Carson didn’t get a ‘full scholarship’ from West Point. That’s a big problem for his campaign.]
West Point cadets must be sponsored by a member of Congress or the Secretary of the Army. But Doug Watts, a spokesman for the campaign, said that Carson never completed — nor claimed to have completed — the process for acceptance into West Point, and those never had an official sponsor.
“He was told by the ROTC Commander that he could have an appointment,” explained Watts. “Dr. Carson rejected the offer, did not apply or pursue admission. Had he done so, and been accepted, that would have been tantamount to a scholarship, the same that all cadets receive.”
In an interview, Carson’s close friend Armstrong Williams argued that Politico had written a false headline off of Bennett’s accurate quote.
“In the story itself, the campaign does not say Dr. Carson applied to West Point,” Williams said of Politico. “Dr. Carson boasts about his scores in ROTC. Westmoreland encourages him to apply. As Dr. Carson says, they were impressed by his scores, but he never applied. They said to him, we could get you in. This guy got into Yale — obviously he could have got in. The headline was a fabrication.”
Carson, whose steady rise to the top of presidential primary polls has started to draw media scrutiny his way, is depending on a loose interpretation of the word “scholarship.” There is no tuition at West Point; there is no equivalent of a “scholarship” as generally understood at most universities. In his memoir “Gifted Hands” and in anecdotes about the offer, Carson never says that he “applied,” only that some “scholarship” came his way after a meeting with Westmoreland and “congressional medal winners.”
“I was offered a full scholarship to West Point,” Carson wrote. “I didn’t refuse the scholarship outright, but I let them know that a military career wasn’t where I saw myself going. As overjoyed as I felt to be offered such a scholarship, I wasn’t really tempted. The scholarship would have obligated me to spend four years in military service after I finished college, precluding my chances to go on to medical school.”
That description of the offer came with its own problems — it is not, for example, impossible for a West Point graduate to complete his service, then become a doctor. But Carson’s allies insist that the gap between “applying” and being offered a “scholarship” debunks the Politico story. Indeed, in “Gifted Hands,” Carson repeatedly described how he had only $10 to submit with a college application, limiting his choices.
“Each college required a ten-dollar non-returnable entrance fee sent with the application,” Carson wrote. “I had exactly ten dollars, so I could apply only to one.”
In an August 2015 Facebook post, Carson described that situation again, to tell a questioner that he applied only to Yale.
“I was the highest student ROTC member in Detroit and was thrilled to get an offer from West Point,” wrote Carson. “But I knew medicine is what I wanted to do. So I applied to only one school. (It was all the money I had). I applied to Yale and thank God they accepted me.”
Williams, who had not spoken to Carson since Politico’s story went online, insisted that it was “shoddy journalism” and oversold what Carson himself had claimed.
“It gives journalism a bad name,” said Williams. “It only fits into Dr. Carson’s narrative of a witch hunt.”
On Friday afternoon, conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, and Sean Hannity criticized the coverage that had made Carson out as a dissembler. But at least one of his rivals sense a political opportunity in the scrum.
“Well, I think it’s really the beginning of the end,” said Donald Trump in an interview.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/06/ben-carsons-allies-defend-west-point-story-he-got-an-offer-did-not-apply/
Ben Carson’s ‘West Point’ story isn’t totally accurate. Here’s why that could be a problem.
By Chris Cillizza
Ben Carson’s admission Friday to Politico that he had not been offered and accepted a full scholarship to West Point could be a major problem for a presidential candidate whose appeal is almost entirely built on his remarkable personal story.
In two of his books — the popular “Gifted Hands” as well as a newer book entitled “You Have a Brain” — Carson tells the West Point story as part of his aspirational life that began in poverty in Detroit and continued through a decorated career as a world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon.
Now we know that story is, at best, somewhat misleading. It is of course possible that Carson was either led to believe he might have been given a scholarship to the military academy if he had applied or simply misunderstood a conversation he participated in. That is the direction the Carson team appears to be headed, saying in a statement of his meeting with then-Gen. William Westmoreland: “He can’t remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson’s performance as ROTC City Executive Officer.”
Regardless of whether the West Point story is a simple misunderstanding or something more nefarious, what it will do is raise this simple question: What else in Ben Carson’s remarkable biography might not be totally, 100 percent accurate?
Even before the West Point story broke, Carson was dealing with suggestions that his recounting of his tough childhood highlighted by a terrible temper and a series of altercations with his mother — among other people — might not be true.
A CNN report, which was based on interviews with nine people who knew Carson as a young man, argues that the violent portrait he paints of himself doesn’t jibe with the person they knew. “All of the people interviewed expressed surprise about the incidents Carson has described,” reads the CNN story. “No one challenged the stories directly. Some of those interviewed expressed skepticism, but noted that they could not know what had happened behind closed doors.”
Carson spent Thursday insisting that the people who were directly involved in these purported attacks weren’t the people that CNN had spoken to and, therefore, the report had no merit.
Now, with the West Point story raging, Carson will come under even more pressure to explain some of the fuzzier parts of his personal biography. And if any other inconsistencies or outright falsehoods come out amid that heightened scrutiny, it could spell curtains for a Carson campaign that has just moved into the pole position in the Republican primary race.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/06/ben-carson-didnt-get-a-full-scholarship-west-point-thats-a-big-problem-for-his-campaign/
With question over West Point offer, Ben Carson feels the glare of the front-runner’s spotlight
Timothy M. Phelps
retired Baltimore neurosurgeon Ben Carson has reached the top in several recent national polls, he is also experiencing new scrutiny as a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.
On Friday, his name dominated political news with a Politico report that his campaign “admits fabricating a West Point scholarship” in his autobiography, though that reference was later taken out of the story. The story also quoted a West Point spokeswoman as saying the famous military academy had no record of an application from Carson.
Barry Bennett, Carson’s campaign manager, said in an interview that Carson’s book,“Gifted Hands,” was accurate when Carson wrote, “I was offered a full scholarship to West Point.”
“I would not have used the word ‘full scholarship.’ I would have said ‘nomination,’ but it’s not a fabrication, it’s not a lie,” Bennett said in an interview. At West Point, tuition and other expenses are paid by the government.
Bennett said that Carson, who he said was the top high school Junior ROTC officer in Detroit, was offered a nomination to West Point by ROTC officials in the city. He said he did not have names, but that the campaign and others are trying to locate them to corroborate Carson’s story.
Later, Carson told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that his account of the West Point episode “could have been more clarified. I told it as I understood it.”
Also, Theresa Brinkerhoff, the chief of media relations at West Point, said that a comment she made to Politico was “misconstrued.”
Politico wrote that West Point had no record of Carson applying to the academy, but Brinkerhoff said in an interview that the academy does not keep records beyond three years if a candidate does not attend the school. The academy has no way of knowing whether Carson applied, Brinkerhoff said.
In the end, Bennett confirmed that Carson had not applied. In his book, Carson wrote that he never had any interest in any career other than medicine. “I remembered the scholarship offer from West Point. A teaching career? Business? None of these areas held any real interest,” he said.
Clearly, however, Carson has left an impression that the offer to go to the academy came from West Point itself. On Facebook in August, Carson took a question from someone named Bill, who “wanted to know if it was true that I was offered a slot at West Point after high school. Bill, that is true. I was the highest student ROTC member in Detroit and was thrilled to get an offer from West Point. But I knew medicine is what I wanted to do. So I applied to only one school.”
Carson went to Yale.
Carson was also involved in a contentious interview Friday morning on CNN. Anchor Alisyn Camerota badgered him about reports by the network that it had been unable to locate some childhood friends or family members Carson mentions having assaulted in his autobiography.
In his book, Carson says he once tried to stab a person he refers to as Bob. On Friday, Carson told CNN that person was really a family member by another name who did not want to be identified. Other childhood friends mentioned in the book could decide for themselves whether to come forward, he said.
Bennett said the political attacks were a function of national polls over the past week showing him ahead of Donald Trump and all other Republicans for the nomination.
“Somewhere, there is a panicked candidate running for the Republican presidential nomination who is spreading a lot of dirt,” Bennett said.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-ben-carson-20151106-story.html
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