CEI Today: IRS employees on Obamacare, ozone court ruling, and European austerity

IRS EMPLOYEES ON OBAMACARE – MATT PATTERSON

IRS Employees on Obamacare: “Not For Me, Thanks”

IRS employees aren’t big fans of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—at least, not as far as it concerns their own healthcare plans. The National Treasury Employees Union is asking its members to oppose legislation introduced by Congressman Dave Camp that would force employees to use the ACA’s insurance exchanges instead of their current Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.

OZONE RULING – WILLIAM YEATMAN

Globalwarming.org: D.C. Circuit Renders a Welcome Decision on Ozone NAAQS

In a ruling announced last Monday, Mississippi et al. v. EPA, the D.C. Circuit Court upheld President Bush’s 2008 ozone primary National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), despite the fact that it was less stringent than what the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee had recommended. This is the rare case whereby affording EPA administrator relatively more authority is a good thing, because the alternative is worse.

EUROPEAN AUSTERITY – MATT MELCHIORRE

Openmarket.org: The HuffPo’s Sloppy Austerity Analysis

In countries that actually cut spending and taxes, quarterly government interest payments as a proportion of revenues—measured with a median value in order to parse out temporary volatility— increased on average by 2.6 percent during each quarter since austerity’s implementation. In countries that carried out what Gongloff implicitly advocates: increasing spending and taxes, this figure was 4.7 percent. Cutting the size of government, it turns out, actually slows the increase in public debt burden on government finances.