Politics

[mean]

Nobody was. Especially Cantor! Could this be perceived as shifting the GOP vastly further right by democratic voters who might otherwise skip the midterms?

[smh]

Nobody was. Especially Cantor! Could this be perceived as shifting the GOP vastly further right by democratic voters who might otherwise skip the midterms?

I take it you mean Democratic voters? I was wondering the same thing. Are there open primaries in Virginia?

[grovester]

Still, the Cantor defeat is surprising. I wasn't expecting it.

HIs pollster had him up by 34 points the week prior.

[phuqueue]

Nobody was. Especially Cantor! Could this be perceived as shifting the GOP vastly further right by democratic voters who might otherwise skip the midterms?

I take it you mean Democratic voters? I was wondering the same thing. Are there open primaries in Virginia?

There are open primaries and a Dem who had been beaten by Cantor in the past was encouraging Dem voters to go out and vote for Brat. No idea whether Dem voters actually made the difference, though. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/0 ... 63196.html

[mean]

Well, I was thinking more about the potential for a democratic electorate terrified of a tea partyfied GOP to turn out in larger numbers than usual for the actual midterms.

[LenexatoKCMO]

Well, I was thinking more about the potential for a democratic electorate terrified of a tea partyfied GOP to turn out in larger numbers than usual for the actual midterms.

The ones who give enough of a shit to notice this development are already likely to vote the midterm. You need something way more dramatic than this to get the rest of the masses off their couch for a mid term. Maybe if Hitler had won a primary.

[mean]

I was thinking pretty much the same thing, although a coworker (democrat, obviously) mentioned he'd be voting in a midterm for the first time due to perceiving Cantor's ouster as part of an ongoing rise of the far right or whatever. I doubt that it will energize much turnout but I figure, whatever gets people to the polls.

[grovester]

Absolutely on a specific local level it will bring out more moderate voters. In the more mundane, run of the mill R vs. D, not so much.

[KCMax]

This could have parallels in KS, where nutbag Milton Wolf is running from the far right to oust incumbent and Beltway insider Senator Pat Robets. Roberts has let his constituent services slide a bit and had to fight to stay on the ballot because of residency laws, when he pretty much lives in DC full-time.

[grovester]

This could have parallels in KS, where nutbag Milton Wolf is running from the far right to oust incumbent and Beltway insider Senator Pat Robets. Roberts has let his constituent services slide a bit and had to fight to stay on the ballot because of residency laws, when he pretty much lives in DC full-time.

And if that happens, then all of a sudden the November election is a toss-up.

[FangKC]

New report destroys Brownback's lame bid to blame Obama for Kansas budget crisis
BY YAEL T. ABOUHALKAHTHE KANSAS CITY STAR

New facts clearly show Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and his aides have gone way overboard in trying to blame President Barack Obama for the state’s fiscal crisis of plummeting revenues and lowered bond ratings.

A just-released comprehensive report by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government says that Kansas suffered the third largest decline of U.S. states in individual income tax revenues from January through April 2014 when compared with 2013.

Overall, the average decline for U.S. states with income taxes was 7 percent for those four months.

But Kansas was down a hefty 24 percent — with only Ohio (31 percent) and North Dakota (28 percent) faring worse.

The news gets even worse:

For the United States, personal income tax receipts were down 16 percent in April of 2014 compared to 2013, the report says.

For Kansas, however, those revenues were down a stunning 50 percent. They fell from $453 million in April of 2013 to $227 million in 2014. (All state revenue figures for this and past years can be found here, on the Kansas Division of the Budget website.)

...

Still, the average decline of 7 percent for the first four months of this year, as noted earlier, was far less than the 24 percent blow suffered by Kansas.

Yes, Kansas deeply cut its income tax rates effective in 2013, thanks to Brownback and the Republican-controlled Legislature.

However, the reductions in income tax revenues for the first five months of the year in Kansas are far worse than predicted.

State officials had estimated those receipts would be down 15 percent for the year. But by the end of May, they were running 25 percent less than expected — or a staggering $282 million under expectations.

Put the blame for lower income tax collections where it belongs: On Brownback and the Legislature.

And don’t forget that income tax rates are scheduled to go even lower in the next few years, which could put Kansas in an even bigger world of financial hurt.

http://tinyurl.com/mh3qm4k

[FangKC]

Most pay less than $50 monthly for Obamacare in Kansas, Missouri

The majority of consumers in Kansas and Missouri who purchased health insurance on the Affordable Care Act's exchanges paid out-of-pocket monthly premiums of less than $50, a new analysis shows.

The report, released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, offers a breakdown of what consumers paid on the federally facilitated marketplaces, including Kansas and Missouri.

In Kansas, 52 percent of consumers paid less than $50 for insurance coverage on the exchange. That's after they received tax credits, which are available for low- to middle-income consumers.
The average premium price in Kansas was $290, but about 78 percent of consumers received tax credits. That reduced the average out-of-pocket premium price to $67.

In Missouri, 57 percent of consumers paid less than $50 for insurance coverage on the exchange.

The average monthly premium price was $344. More people in Missouri received tax credits — about 85 percent of consumers on the exchanges. Those credits reduced the average out-of-pocket premium price to $59.

http://tinyurl.com/lpgzvu5

[NDTeve]

yet most will have a nice audit heading their way

[chaglang]

yet most will have a nice audit heading their way

Source?

[aknowledgeableperson]

May not be an audit involved but there is a concern about income levels and the subsidy. There is not a general decline in the subsidy to a rise in income. I think it is at about $80,000. One dollar below full subsidy, at the level no subsidy. A family could figure that their projected income come close to but will fall below the threshold. An extra overtime shift here or a little bit bigger than expected raise or a job change with a slightly higher salary and wham. A tax bill over $2,000.

[chaglang]

Hmmm. Sounds like they'd wind up doing the reverse income engineering everyone else does in April.

[KCMax]

May not be an audit involved but there is a concern about income levels and the subsidy. There is not a general decline in the subsidy to a rise in income. I think it is at about $80,000. One dollar below full subsidy, at the level no subsidy. A family could figure that their projected income come close to but will fall below the threshold. An extra overtime shift here or a little bit bigger than expected raise or a job change with a slightly higher salary and wham. A tax bill over $2,000.

How is this different from any other tax credit?

[aknowledgeableperson]

Not sure about all tax credits but many decline on a sliding scale. In the ACA case it is all and then nothing after a certain point. But with regards to the other credits you usually claim them with a tax return and the claim is based on actual numbers. For the health care credit one estimates beforehand and claims the credit. The problem is the estimate may end up being lower than actual therefore the denial of all or part of the credit claim. After-the-fact credit vs Before-the-fact credit.

From Time Magazine: The Hidden Cliffs in Obamacare by Steven Brill

A hypothetical couple whom we’ll call Barbara and Harry Jones are 52 years old and have two children, and their household income is $94,200. She’s a freelance marketing consultant and he’s a plumber, so neither has health insurance from an employer. They live in Lancaster, Ohio, and they signed up for Obamacare just in time to make the deadline at the end of March.

Great news: based on their income, Barbara and Harry will get an annual $2,904 subsidy from the government to help pay an insurance bill that will be $12,288 a year for moderately good coverage. Obviously, the Joneses are not poor. But health care is now so expensive that President Obama’s law was designed to give even them help buying insurance.

Alice and Bob Smith (another hypothetical couple) and their two children live next door to the Joneses in Ohio. They too work in jobs–day care for her, light construction for him–that don’t provide health insurance. Their income is $94,300–meaning they’re keeping up with the Joneses and, in fact, beating them by $100. The Smiths will get no subsidy at all.

Now that enrollment in Obamacare has ended for the year, some of the quirks–maybe they should be called potholes–embedded in the complicated and heavily lobbied law are going to start to become visible. First among them may be the “cliff” problem that penalizes the Smiths to the tune of $2,904 for making $100 more than the Joneses.
...
Even steeper cliffs are possible. Suppose the Johnsons, each 63 years old, live in Florida and their kids are grown. They make $62,040 (four times the poverty line for a family of two adults) from the charter-boat business they run. They’ll get a subsidy of $9,024 to pay for their insurance. But they will lose it all if in 2014 they sell just one extra charter. If they make a dollar more (or $100 or $1,000 more) the entire $9,024 federal subsidy goes away. If their over-the-ceiling earnings are $100, that’s like a 9,024% tax on that $100.
...
“For hourly workers or freelancers who cannot predict their income with complete accuracy, this could be an anvil that comes down on them next year,” says Barry Cohen, an insurance broker in Lancaster who helped me model various scenarios. A middle-class couple, Cohen notes, could get a surprise $5,000 or $10,000 tax bill next April because they received a subsidy but then earned just a few dollars more than they estimated, pushing them above the income ceiling.
...
However, when it came to who would get subsidies and who would not, the people who wrote the law provided for no sliding scale. Once the Smiths or the Johnsons score an extra construction job or boat charter that pushes their earnings over 400% of the poverty line, they get nothing. One way to have chiseled the subsidy cliff into a gentler slope would have been to keep some set of gradually declining premium subsidies for those earning over 400%. But when the staffers calculated the cost of extending the premium to people like the Smiths or the Johnsons, it was intolerably high.

Another way to chip at the cliff would have been to lower premium-subsidy percentages still more, beginning at the 300%-above-poverty level and gradually decreasing the subsidy to zero when 400% above poverty was reached. There would still be no payouts above 400%, but the declining slope of subsidies from 300% to 400% would have eliminated the cliff because those at 400% would be losing little by earning more. That would have pretty much evened up the fortunes of the Jones and Smith families. But as it is, the weakest part of the subsidy formula is that people who make three or four times the poverty level get subsidies that are arguably not enough to make their premiums affordable. In fact, the burden on those at the 300%-above-poverty level is another looming pothole in the details of the subsidy formula.

For example, even with their current $9,024 subsidy, the Johnsons in Florida, whose earnings are $62,040, are still paying about $5,000 a year in premiums (depending on the plan they choose). On top of that, they will also face a deductible and out-of-pocket costs of about $12,000. That means the Johnsons’ total medical costs (premium and amounts paid to meet the deductible) could take $17,000, or 27%, out of their $62,040 in pretax income. That’s better than the $26,000 it could cost them if they earn $63,000 and don’t get any subsidy. But it’s a stretch to call something that diverts 27% of a family’s pretax income the Affordable Care Act. After taxes, that’s probably about 50% of their disposable income.
...
Complicating things, as a recent report in the Washington Post notes, is a little-known problem with the notorious (but mostly fixed) Obamacare website. The site’s system for verifying the incomes people have claimed in order to get subsidies is so gummed up that it may take months or years for the government to verify who deserves what subsidies. Many Obamacare patients will have to submit additional documents or face demands that their subsidies be returned to the IRS. That won’t be popular either. “I’m already advising some clients who may be at or near the cliff to watch their incomes toward the end of the year,” says Cohen. “Maybe they can stop working overtime or take a month off. If not, they could get hammered with huge tax bills that they never expected.”

[FangKC]

Brownback appears to be in trouble. National media outlets are picking up on it. On Kansas City Week in Review, the general consensus is that while Kansas is a solidly Republican state, Brownback could be in real trouble. A poll shows him trailing Paul Davis, who has little name recognition in Kansas. The fact that a little-known state legislator is polling so strong against a long-time national politician, Brownback, is the reason for paying attention to polls, and this race. A comment was made on KCWIR is that Johnson County voters--concerned about education in Kansas--could decide Brownback's fate.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... ouble.html

Brownback's troubles seem to be, at least partially, based on education policy. The poll found that 73 percent of supporters for Davis said education was their top issue. Davis has actually made education one of his campaign's primary policy topics and his campaign has highlighted endorsements from teachers organizations. He's also repeatedly noted that he is the son of two teachers.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/p ... eyusa-june

The election outcome could fall on how moderates, women, and independents vote, which all favor Davis at this point.

... However, a new poll shows that if Republicans won the heart of America a decade ago, that is no longer the case. Kansas voters appear to be heartbroken by Governor Sam Brownback’s decisions as the state’s Governor.

A Survey USA poll conducted between June 19th and June 23rd shows Democrat Paul Davis leading the incumbent Republican Sam Brownback 47-41 percent. Brownback’s right-wing ideology has turned off most of the states voters. Moderates prefer Davis by a whopping 69-23 margin. Independents back Davis by 19 points. Women choose Davis by a decisive 51-37 spread. Even 26 percent of Republicans would sooner vote for Davis than endure another four years of Sam Brownback as the state’s Governor.

http://www.politicususa.com/2014/06/27/ ... nback.html

[FangKC]

New York Times
June 27, 2014

Yes, if You Cut Taxes, You Get Less Tax Revenue
Kansas Tax Cut Leaves Brownback With Less Money

http://tinyurl.com/mer8ne6