Category: Guest Authors

Hire American Doctors Please

By Kevin Lynn

Outsourcing U.S. jobs to foreign markets followed by replacing local workers with foreign laborers has been the reality of the U.S. labor market for almost two decades.

Manufacturing was the start of outsourcing, and then employers moved on to back-room corporate operations such as credit card processing and call centers for customer service. This was followed by importation of workers from around the world for jobs in accounting, tech – and all the STEM fields – and health care. Still, some will be surprised to learn that even physicians have been negatively impacted by the importation of foreign labor.

Each year, hundreds of American graduates of medical schools do not match to hospital residencies. Under the current medical system, doctors who do not complete a residency cannot practice as doctors. While these doctors can reapply in successive years for resident positions, the chances of matching to a residency diminish as more years pass.

After a tremendous commitment to education of at least 20 years – that’s 12 years of public school followed by eight years of higher education – that doctors are shut out of their profession is mind-boggling. These are doctors too who are likely to have incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to obtain their medical degree. After completing a residency, an average doctor’s salary (primary care physician – family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics and psychiatry) is approximately $10,000 a month (higher for specialty fields), but without this salary, it’s impossible to service the huge debt load.

Even though they are highly educated, doctors cannot just readily choose another professional field. They have very specific training that doesn’t lend itself to other careers, and they may be seen as overqualified for many positions. As well, alternate careers may require more education, which a doctor already carrying perhaps half a million dollars in debt might be reluctant to grow further. Even if one were to go this route, for instance, to obtain teaching credentials, the typical teacher’s pay would be insufficient to cover the debt load – and live!

It’s a baffling situation, certainly given how much attention has been given to a reported doctor shortage in the United States that’s expected to get worse, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, which estimates a physician shortfall of between 35,000 to 88,000 by 2025. If there’s such a shortage, it’s difficult to understand how this year 1,927 U.S. medical school seniors and previous U.S. medical school graduates did not matriculate into residency training, according to the National Resident Matching Program, a nonprofit organization which matches the preferences of medical students to U.S. residency positions.

Further perplexing in the face of U.S. citizen doctors going unemployed is that at the same time, for years, non-U.S. citizen international medical graduates have filled U.S. residencies. Roughly 12 percent of the 30,000 residency positions in a year are given to foreign doctors.

For 2014 to 2018, non-U.S. citizen students/graduates of international medical schools who were given residency averaged 3,763 each year. For the same period, the number of U.S. medical school seniors and previous U.S. medical school graduates who did not obtain a residency averaged 1,894 each year.

Based on the math above, simply prioritizing American citizens who’ve graduated from medical school would ensure they all are placed into residencies, while still leaving slots for foreign doctors.

Many American citizens committed to a grueling, competitive education, expending significant resources of time and money, in order to become physicians. The country too made an investment in these future doctors through years of public education and the extension of loans. To not prioritize U.S. citizen medical school graduates over foreign doctors is a huge malinvestment that makes no sense.

Kevin Lynn is the is the Executive Director for Progressives for Immigration Reform and the founder of Doctors without Jobs.

Hire American Doctors Please

Lou Barletta Makes Jobs Priority

By Joe Guzzardi

On Election Day, Pennsylvanians will face an important moment of truth in the race for U.S. Senate. Voters will choose between the ineffectual two-term Democratic incumbent Bob Casey or his Republican U.S. House of Representatives challenger, four-term Lou Barletta.

Campaigns for high office feature embellished achievements and lofty promises for what the candidates will accomplish for their constituents. Forget the bluster. Look instead at the congressional voting records of Casey and Barletta. They reveal everything that Pennsylvanians need to know, the bad for Casey; the good for Barletta.

Casey portrays himself as a defender of American workers. But his voting pattern consistently proves that Casey has no interest in American workers’ well-being, but instead prefers to replace hard-working Americans with overseas workers via various employment-based visas, and amnesties that would provide the recipients with employment authorization documents. Visa holders and amnestied immigrants can then enter the U.S. labor market and compete head-to-head in a tough job environment with American citizens.

This year, Casey voted in favor of two separate amendments – one introduced by Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Susan Collins (R-ME), Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Angus King (I-ME), and the second by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Chris Coons (D-DE) – that would have granted amnesties to millions of illegally present immigrants.

In 2015, 2017 and again this year, Casey voted to increase the H-2B guest worker totals. The H-2B is a nonagriculture, temporary visa designed for seasonal employers and is used in landscaping, the leisure industry and other businesses for jobs that American teens and college students historically sought out to earn college tuition money.

On border and interior enforcement, Casey has a poor record. In 2015, during the unprecedented Central American border surge, Casey voted against an amendment that called for the expedited removal of Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Honduran aliens who are now, presumably, living in the U.S. interior and unlikely ever to go home. Casey also voted against fellow Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey’s bill to defund sanctuary cities, municipalities that refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Customs officials, and instead release convicted criminal aliens back into local communities.

Compare Casey’s disappointing record on subverting American workers, leaving America’s border and interior vulnerable, and endorsing the release of violent criminal aliens to Barletta’s.

During the current Congress, Barletta voted four times to mandate E-Verify, the federal program that ensures every new employee is legally authorized to work in the U.S. Barletta cosponsored four bills, and voted in favor of two other bills, that would have defunded sanctuary cities.

Moreover, Barletta cosponsored legislation that would reduce amnesties, control border surges, end asylum fraud and close loopholes in asylum claims. Asylum fraud is a grave concern to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Importantly, after asylees win their case or 180 days pass without a decision, they automatically become work authorized.

As for which candidate is the tougher fighter, remember that in 2006, as Hazleton’s mayor, Barletta stood up to the ACLU and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense fund when they challenged his Illegal Immigration Relief Act that allowed the city to deny business permits to employers who hire illegal immigrants and gave the city authority to fine landlords up to $1,000 for renting to illegal immigrants.

A Federal District Court, and then a U.S. Appeals court, ruled against Barletta, shameless judicial activism run amok. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not take up the case, and Hazelton had to reimburse the ACLU $1.4 million, despite that aiding and abetting illegal immigrants – hiring and providing shelter to them – is a federal felony.

On Nov. 6, American voters will decide whether to reward obstructionist, expansionist, ultra-liberals like Casey with another undeserved six years or send pro-U.S. worker, pro-American values candidates like Barletta to the U.S. Senate. The nation’s future hangs in the balance.

Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated, Pittsburgh-based columnist who has written about government for more than 30 years. Contact Joe at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

 

 

Tom Wolf Immoral Approach To Poverty

By Lowman S. Henry

Among the flurry of bills passed at the end of the legislative session in October was one that established a pathway to prosperity for hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians. This opportunity to escape from the plantation of poverty has been shattered by Governor Tom Wolf who vetoed the bill out of fidelity to an immoral belief in perpetual government dependency.

At issue is a requirement for healthy, adult Medicaid recipients without children to find part-time work or participate in job training programs to continue receiving benefits. The goal is to help able-bodied, able-minded adults receive the job training and placement assistance they need to enter or re-enter the work force.

This policy has many benefits. First and foremost it restores financial independence to individuals and helps them gain control over their own lives. As Nathan Benefield of the Commonwealth Foundation explained “work is the most effective way to alleviate poverty.” Government programs, as evidenced by the failed decades-long “war on poverty,” trap people in perpetual dependency rather than foster financial freedom.

Other states, notably Kentucky, Indiana and Arkansas, have received approval from the federal government allowing them to implement Medicaid work requirements. The Commonwealth Foundation points out 17 states have adopted laws requiring able-bodied adults without dependents to work part-time or volunteer part-time to continue receiving food stamps. As a result, program participants in Kansas saw their incomes rise by 127 percent and in Maine food stamp recipients were able to exit the program after their incomes more than doubled.

This would be an especially opportune time for implementing work requirements. Due to the surging Trump economy employers are having a difficult time finding workers to fill available jobs. The Lincoln Institute’s recent Keystone Business Climate Survey found 49% of state businesses have open positions and 28% saying they are having significant difficulty finding qualified employees. So a Medicaid work/job training requirement would have the dual benefit of helping individuals prepare for and find work while supplying employers with workers to fill open positions.

Additionally, moving able-bodied adults into the workforce would then allow the commonwealth to target available resources to those most in need. The bill vetoed by Governor Wolf would actually have prioritized Medicaid funding for children, seniors and for individuals with disabilities. By reducing the number of people on Medicaid it also would have helped ensure adequate funding of the program for years to come.

Given the obvious benefits of this policy why did it end with a Governor Wolf veto? Part of it is politics: Democrats count on the votes of those dependent on social welfare programs. The party’s messaging this election year has been built on scare mongering over health care. The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has been an abysmal failure that has resulted in skyrocketing premiums, fewer insurance options, and reduced patient health care choices. Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a system that actually works has become fodder for endless demagoguery by Democrat candidates.

And then there is the continued adherence to a failed ideology by Tom Wolf and his fellow believers in the welfare state. As Arthur Books, President of the American Enterprise Institute so aptly put it in his book The Conservative Heart:

“They treat work as punishment, view struggling people as liabilities to manage, and focus on unequal distribution of incomes instead of unequal and insufficient opportunities. As a result, progressive politicians try to help the poor with government redistribution programs that frequently exacerbate the problem. These intrusions lower opportunity, reduce ability to create actual private sector work, leave more people dependent on the state, and effectively split the country into two Americas even more quickly.”

Brooks concludes: “They have made the poor worse off and that is immoral.”

And so it is.

Lowman S. Henry is Chairman CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly Lincoln Radio Journal.

Tom Wolf Immoral Approach To Poverty

 

Trump Tariffs Are Bad For Economy

By Rocco J. Polidoro

An economics professor at Temple University in the late 1970s taught us that the Economy is relative to each person differently. He said if your neighbor is unemployed and struggling then that’s a Recession. But if you are unemployed and struggling then that’s a Depression. Trump supporters are over-looking his divisiveness and his polarization in our Country by focusing on just the Economy. They say the Economy is doing great, so they are all looking the other way. But is the Economy really doing great ? The stock market is doing well and its been doing well for almost the past 9 years. However if you are not invested in the stock market, are you doing well ? And yes the unemployment rate is low but if you are unemployed, retired or disabled, is that low rate helping you ?

Trump supporters think that the lower tax rates are helping every one. Economist estimate that the average worker is saving about $1200 a year under the new tax law. But here’s the rest of the story. According to a Bank of America economist, gas & oil prices are up about 30% this year. And that is eating up about 25% of those tax savings. The Trump tariff war is driving up costs on many products for Americans such as cars, motorcycles, washing machines and other appliances. And these product increases are eating up some of the tax savings too. An economist at Forbes said that with the deregulation of banking rules, interest rates on mortgages, car loans, equity loans and credit cards are rising and these increases will be eating up some of those tax savings.

And its no surprise that deregulations in the financial industry are driving up costs for Americans. The financial industry donated a lot of money to Trump and republican lawmakers, and we now have to pay for that. So when this year is finally over, some economist believe that we will probably be paying more in these added costs than what we were saving with the tax rate reductions.

Finally the US Bureau of Economic Analysis recently reported that the US trade deficit increased by another $22 Billion, a 7% increase in August alone. The Trump tariff war is actually making the trade deficit worse. And this will mean that American farmers and factory workers will see reductions in their productivity as time goes on. So when Trump supporters say that the Economy is doing well, its a smoke screen and not a complete picture of the whole Economy.

Mr. Polidoro is a resident of Springfield

Trump Tariffs Are Bad For Economy

Un-investable Would Have Been Result Of Wolf Policy

By David N. Taylor

Even after two decades in Harrisburg, the cynicism of some politicians can still surprise me.

This afternoon, Governor Tom Wolf will hold a bill signing ceremony for Senate Bill 1056, now Act 72 of 2018. Even as we express our gratitude to Sen. Michelle Brooks (R-Mercer), Rep. Frank Ryan (R-Lebanon), and all of our legislative allies, Act 72 became necessary ONLY due to the actions of Governor Wolf and his Department of Revenue.

In the quiet of the Friday before Christmas, the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue published a policy change covering depreciation of capital investments, disallowing all depreciation on assets subject to 100 percent federal bonus depreciation. Furthermore, cost recovery of the asset would only be allowed at the time the asset would be sold or otherwise disposed of. For many manufacturers, this would never happen. Simply put, the tax policy changes enacted unilaterally by the Wolf Administration made Pennsylvania un-investable.

At the time, a Revenue spokesman wrote in an email that the new policy is needed to spare the General Fund from lower collections. Under the change, Pennsylvania businesses would have overpaid hundreds of millions in taxes, endured greater administrative burdens by having separate state and federal compliance records, and been an outlier among states with this new policy, forfeiting capital investments the federal changes were designed to encourage. Manufacturers, which are inherently capital-intensive, would have been particularly hard hit.

Even worse, the policy change issued by Governor Wolf’s Department of Revenue was made retroactive to the start of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Any business that was bringing home earnings from overseas, as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was designed to encourage, would never consider Pennsylvania as a place for investment and expansion under this rule. Because of this, we will never know how much business investment Pennsylvania missed out on from December 23, 2017 through the legislative fix signed on June 28, 2018.

Senator Brooks and Representative Ryan were both champions in their respective chambers to fix this harmful rule-making by Governor Wolf’s Department of Revenue. We thank them for their hard work in explaining this complex tax issue to their colleagues and implementing a legislative remedy. Governor Wolf, who was Ed Rendell’s Secretary of Revenue, deserves no credit for solving a problem he caused.

President & CEO of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association

 

Un-investable Would Have Been Result Of Wolf Policy

Democrat Party Fascist Slide Is Happening

By Lowman S. Henry  

In politics everything is relative.

What the mainstream media and Left-wing activists term the ‘far right’ at one time was the sensible center. For example, cutting tax rates to allow the private sector economy to flourish was once done by President John F. Kennedy. It was none other than President Bill Clinton who told congress “the era of big government is over.” Both ideas today are considered to be ‘far right’ positions.

It is not that the inherent sensibility of such policies have changed, rather it is the fact the Democrat Party has marched steadily Leftward, so much so that even the once extreme politics of George McGovern today would be considered too conservative for most Democrats.

The Democrats’ march to the extreme Left accelerated under the Presidency of Barack Obama whose political ideology was informed by the noted communist Frank Marshall Davis. Davis advocated, among other statist policies, universal health care which became the template for the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare.

Barack Obama would have been a transformative president had not he enacted most of his socialistic policies via executive order rather than by legislation. The election of Donald J. Trump as his successor allowed many of those policies to be reversed. That Hillary Clinton would not be chief executive and able to make the Obama policies a permanent part of the national fabric gave rise to the wave of outrage that has swept through the American Left.

That outrage has fueled the Democrat Party’s plunge into the abyss of socialism. The Millennial generation, which was not witness to the atrocities wrought by totalitarian regimes and who have not been taught the lessons of history by our public education system, seem especially susceptible to socialistic promises of free college educations and so-called “universal basic incomes.”

And so it was that a millennial, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, stunned the Democrat Party establishment by defeating Congressman Joseph Crowley in the recent New York primary. Ocasio-Cortez ran as an avowed socialist and since her victory sought to portray herself as the face of the party’s future.

Congressman Crowley was seen as the most likely successor to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who has been both legislatively and politically ineffective. Crowley’s defeat sent shock waves through party’s establishment who now fear the radical socialism of candidates like Ocasio-Cortez will upend its chances of reclaiming a House majority this November.

Another example of how far the party has strayed from the mainstream was seen recently in California where U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein was deemed insufficiently liberal by party activists. State Senator Kevin de Leon easily defeated her for the party’s endorsement. That vote was propelled by so-called “progressive activists” who have accomplished the improbable task of moving the California Democrat Party even further to the Left.

Here in Pennsylvania the Costa Family is an Allegheny County institution. Senator Jay Costa serves as Minority Leader in the state Senate. Cousins Dom and Paul Costa represent state House districts. In last May’s primary they were defeated by challengers who had the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Likewise, Democrat Lt. Governor Mike Stack was defeated in his bid for re-nomination by the extreme Left-wing Mayor of Braddock John Fetterman. During a recent campaign visit to Pittsburgh the socialist U.S. Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, heaped praise on Fetterman. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Sanders told the assembled activists that Fetterman would “help usher in the Democratic Socialist agenda that he (Sanders) has been revolutionizing.”

Fetterman is now the running mate of incumbent Governor Tom Wolf. The Huffington Post has dubbed Wolf “the most liberal governor in America,” meaning state Democrats are running the most extreme Left-wing ticket they have ever nominated.

All this is playing out against the backdrop of a surging U.S. economy made possible by the pro-growth economic policies of the Trump Administration which include tax cuts and a roll-back of the regulatory excesses of the Obama years. With unemployment near record lows and Americans having more disposable income, the socialist agenda becomes less attractive to the middle of the political spectrum.

And so Democrats find themselves captive of their party’s most extremist elements precisely at a time the folly of their agenda is becoming more and more apparent to voters. Conservatives’ belief in equality of opportunity is proving to be successful. This makes the Left’s warm embrace of socialistic policies an electoral minefield for Democrats as the November elections approach.

Lowman Henry is chairman and CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly Lincoln Radio Journal. 

Democrat Party Fascist Slide