The Heritage Insider: Federal employee pay needs fixing, the court wrongly delayed Texas voter ID, how the marriage penalty matters, bad ObamaCare revisionism, and why be on LinkedIn

July 30, 2016

 

 

Lawmakers could save taxpayers $333 billion over the next ten years if they would just bring federal worker compensation in line with the private sector. Under the logic of the Fifth Circuit’s Veasey v. Abbott decision, there are no vote integrity protections that could survive a challenge based on claims that the protections disparately impact minorities. Does that make any sense? The marriage penalty is real and does have a small effect on couples’ decisions. In spite of one recent report to the contrary, the evidence that ObamaCare has raised health care costs is overwhelming. LinkedIn might not be as popular as other social media platforms, but the people who are there and the reasons they are there set it apart. Plus, over 40 new studies, articles, speeches, videos, and events at The Insider this week. Visit to see what the conservative movement has been thinking, writing, saying, and doing to win battles for liberty.

 

Money on the table: Researchers have consistently found that federal employees receive much greater compensation than their private sector peers. The size of the compensation premium received by federal employees ranges from 16 percent (according to the Congressional Budget Office) to 61 percent (according to the American Enterprise Institute). Heritage Foundation researchers have estimated the premium to be between 30 percent and 40 percent. Whatever figure you use, there are savings to be achieved from reforming federal employee compensation. The Heritage Foundation’s Rachel Greszler and James Sherk have outlined a set of reforms that would save taxpayers $333 billion over the next ten years. Their reforms include limiting automatic pay increases, increasing performance bonuses, making it easier for managers to deny step increases to employees who do not meet performance standards, and switching from defined-benefit retirement plans to defined-contribution retirement plans. [The Heritage Foundation]

 

Courts will find racism, if that’s what they look for. There is much to dislike, writes Richard Epstein, in last week’s Fifth Circuit decision (Veasey v. Abbott) delaying the enforcement of a Texas Voter ID law, including the court’s ignoring of the value of such a law in combating organized voting-fraud rings. But the central problem with the court’s opinion, he says, is its failure to demonstrate that voter ID requirements disproportionately burden minorities: “[I]t is easy to draw up a story about how the extra burdens of the voter ID laws fall disproportionately on minority persons, given that persistent differences by race in education, employment, and health are the norm today (in part because of the misguided progressive policies that hamper charter school education, place minimum wage and union barriers against minority employment, and block the entry of low-class corporate healthcare providers in minority neighborhoods). And it is easier still to select individual instances where the burdens of compliance are higher than the norm. But the central point is that nothing in the majority opinion stated, let alone demonstrated, that minorities who suffer from educational, employment, or health disadvantages find it any more difficult than white individuals to get the appropriate IDs. The sole objection was that there were more minority individuals in this vulnerable group, so that the disparate impact claim is always made out once the standard demographic information is trotted out. By this dubious logic, it is possible to order the removal of existing safeguards against fraud because they too have a disparate impact.” [Hoover Institution]

 

The welfare state v. marriage. Does the “marriage penalty”—more generous means-tested assistance for unmarried couples with children than for married couples with children—discourage marriage? According to a study by W. Bradford Wilcox, Joseph P. Price, and Angela Rachidi, the marriage penalty does influence the decisions of couples “whose income falls closer to the upper threshold of the marriage penalty.” They “are about two to four percentage points less likely to be married if they face a marriage penalty in Medicaid eligibility or food stamps.” The authors go on to recommend a number of strategies for redesigning benefits to reduce or eliminate the marriage penalty. [American Enterprise Institute]

 

Bad ObamaCare revisionism: Two Brookings Institution scholars, Loren Adler and Paul Ginsburg, recently found that health insurance premiums are lower post-ObamaCare than pre-ObamaCare, a finding that is at odds with most of the other research on the question, including research by the Brookings Institution. There are a number of reasons for the divergent results, writes Brian Blase, including Adler and Ginsburg’s failure to account for subsidies provided to discount premiums, their use of inflated estimates of pre-ACA costs, and their use of problematic CBO premium projections. Yet, the most damning piece of evidence against Adler and Ginsburg’s findings is what has happened in the exchanges since ObamaCare passed. Blase writes that if premiums had indeed fallen “the exchanges would undoubtedly be more successful than they are.” He continues: “Thus far, the result is significantly worse than expected, with far fewer enrollees—particularly younger and healthier enrollees—than projected, and substantial market instability. Another Brookings Institution scholar, Stuart Butler, recognizes the problem, writing just two weeks ago that ‘the ACA might be more appropriately labeled the “Medicaid Expansion Act”’ because ‘enrollment in the ACA exchanges has been disappointing, with an estimated 10 million fewer people enrolled compared with earlier expectations.’” [Forbes]

 

Toolkit: Why should you be on LinkedIn? The answer in short, writes Jamie Pham, is that the platform provides less unprofessional chaff than the other social media platforms offer. In particular, LinkedIn can be used as a source for classifieds, for networking to find other like-minded individuals, and as an online resume. [ThirstyAgency]

 

 

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