George Allen for United States Senate
Please visit and “like” my wife’s Facebook page, Susan Allen! Today Susan visited children at Jill’s House in Vienna, a place that provides respite for children with intellectual disabilities and their families.
Please visit Jill’s House to learn more!
Congratulations to all the Republican candidates who won their primaries yesterday! Susan and I look forward to working hard on the campaign trail through the final stretch to help get out the vote and win in November!
If you’re in Northern Virginia, be sure to tune in to WTNT AM 730 at 5:35 pm today to listen to my interview with Andy Parks!
Hope everyone around Virginia and all along the east coast is safe after the earthquake this afternoon.
Today is primary Election Day – remember to get to the polls and cast your vote. Virginia Republicans have a lot of excellent candidates who are ready to lead!
As Americans face 9% unemployment and a stagnant economy, government regulatory agencies have grown by 16%. If you needed any more evidence that Washington is doing more harm than good, while most Americans are cutting back in the face of lowered expectations, government regulatory agencies are booming.
Regulation Business, Jobs Booming Under Obama
Investors.com
By John Merline
August 15, 2011
If the federal government’s regulatory operation were a business, it would be one of the 50 biggest in the country in terms of revenues, and the third largest in terms of employees, with more people working for it than McDonald’s, Ford, Disney and Boeing combined.
Under President Obama, while the economy is struggling to grow and create jobs, the federal regulatory business is booming.
Regulatory agencies have seen their combined budgets grow a healthy 16% since 2008, topping $54 billion, according to the annual “Regulator’s Budget,” compiled by George Washington University and Washington University in St. Louis.
That’s at a time when the overall economy grew a paltry 5%.
Meanwhile, employment at these agencies has climbed 13% since Obama took office to more than 281,000, while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6%.
Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute, found that between March 2010 and March 2011 federal regulatory jobs climbed faster than either private jobs or overall government jobs. (See chart.)
Regulatory production is way up, too, if you measure that by the number of rules federal agencies churn out.
The Obama administration imposed 75 new major rules in its first 26 months, costing the private sector more than $40 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation study. “No other president has imposed as high a number or cost in a comparable time period,” noted the study’s author, James Gattuso.
The number of pages in the Federal Register — where all new rules must be published and which serves as proxy of regulatory activity — jumped 18% in 2010.
Higher healthcare costs under ObamaCare are burdening employers and destroying jobs. We need to repeal and replace this $1.5 trillion healthcare monstrosity and focus on making health insurance more portable, affordable and gives patients control, not government bureaucrats.
Employers shifting healthcare costs to workers
The Hill
By Sam Baker
August 18, 2011
As healthcare costs continue to rise, businesses are increasingly passing on the added burden to their employees.
Higher cost-sharing for employees is the primary way in which employers are trying to control their own healthcare spending, according to a new survey from the National Business Group on Health. The organization, which mostly represents large companies, said more than half of the employers it surveyed plan to make employees cover a greater share of their health costs.
Businesses are shifting away from co-pays, where employees pay a fixed dollar amount for healthcare services and the plan picks up the rest. Instead, they’re charging workers a percentage of the total costs. That can help make consumers more aware of the total cost of the healthcare they use.
“We are clearly seeing a march toward a more aggressive consumerist system,” said Helen Darling, the president of the National Business Group on Health.
Darling said Thursday that shifting from co-pays to coinsurance is “a more subtle way to increase what the consumer pays.” She predicted that eventually, only governments and unions will keep offering fixed co-pays.
Employers are expecting their healthcare costs to rise slightly more than 7 percent next year, according to the survey — roughly the same increase that businesses budgeted for this year.
Businesses are also looking ahead to figure out how they’ll need to adjust their policies because of healthcare reform. Especially generous plans will be taxed heavily beginning in 2018, and some of the law’s popular benefits will likely increase the cost of insurance.
Wonderful time this afternoon with some outstanding northern Virginia leaders!
As we mark the 30th consecutive month with unemployment above 8%, the fact that some continue to call for higher taxes shows just how out-of-touch Washington has become. The best way to increase revenues is with new jobs, not higher taxes. My Blueprint for America’s Comeback would help create millions of jobs by increasing our competitiveness, unleashing our energy resources & reining in out-of-control spending.
Jobless Claims in U.S. Top Forecast
Bloomberg.com
By Shobhana Chandra
August 18, 2011
More Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, signaling the labor market is struggling two years into the economic recovery.
Jobless claims climbed by 9,000 to 408,000 in the week ended Aug. 13, the highest in a month, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News projected a rise in claims to 400,000, according to the median forecast. The number of people on unemployment benefit rolls rose, while those receiving extended payments fell.
Companies like Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (BK) are paring staff, one reason consumers are limiting their spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. Unemployment at 9.1 percent helps explain why Federal Reserve policy makers last week pledged to hold interest rates at a record low until at least mid-2013 to spur growth.
“People continue to get laid off,” David Semmens, a U.S. economist at Standard Chartered Bank in New York, said before the report. “The uncertainty in the economic outlook is continuing to give hiring managers sleepless nights and is keeping businesses from expanding. We have an incredibly long way to go” to get a healthy labor market, Semmens said.
Jobless benefits applications were projected to rise from the 395,000 initially reported for the prior week, according to the median forecast of 41 economists in a Bloomberg survey. Estimates ranged from 390,000 to 420,000.
Stock-index futures held earlier losses after the report. The contract on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index maturing in September fell 2.2 percent to 1,163.40 at 8:39 a.m. in New York. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.1 percent from 2.17 percent late yesterday.
This evening on ESPN radio 94.1 FM in Hamption Roads good friend Tony Mercurio and I gave our picks for this weekend’s NASCAR race, the Pure Michigan 400.
My Picks: Chesterfield County’s Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth
Tony: Kyle Busch, Jimmy Johnson, Jeff Gordon
