Bernie Sanders Wants to Expand Medicare to Everybody — Exactly What Its Architects Wanted

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By Zaid Jilani

BERNIE SANDERS DOESN’T just want to play defense on health care — he’s introducing a bill that would expand the Medicare program to everybody in America, creating a single-payer health care system.

Such a system would wipe out inefficiencies in our current, private insurance-run system, and polls very well — yet it is opposed by the health care industry and the Democratic and Republican establishments that relies on them for campaign cash.

But creating a “Medicare-for-all,” single-payer health insurance system for all Americans would be fulfilling the dream of those who created the Medicare system in the first place in 1965.

Medicare’s architects ended up compromising with Congress and establishing a system that offered public-run health insurance just for the elderly, but they never intended for only retirees to benefit from the program.

Medicare’s Roots and a Vision Unfulfilled

Yale political scientist Theodore Marmore, commenting on Medicare, once wrote that no “other industrial democracy” other than the United States “has compulsory health insurance for its elderly citizens alone, and none started a program with such a beneficiary group.”

The reason Medicare was offered only to senior citizens is a tale of legislative compromise, not intellectual intent.

Since Theodore Roosevelt ran on a platform of health insurance for all industrial workers as a presidential candidate for the Bull Moose Party in 1912, offering government-backed health insurance to workers has been a progressive cause. Franklin Roosevelt proposed guaranteeing a right to health care shortly before his death; his successor Harry Truman worked hard to pass a form of single-payer health insurance, but was defeated in Congress after a smear campaign led by the American Medical Association that associated the president’s plan with the Soviet Union.

Thus reformers decided to focus on the most sympathetic part of the population, which the health insurance industry had the least interest in covering: the elderly.

Robert Ball was the commissioner of Social Security under presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and one of the officials who was involved in the push to create Medicare. In 1995, he wrote a short history of how the Johnson administration and its allies in civic society passed Medicare for the journal Health Affairs.

For persons who are trying to understand what we were up to, the first broad point to keep in mind is that all of us who developed Medicare and fought for it — including Nelson Cruikshank and Lisbeth Schorr of the AFL-CIO and [Under Secretary for Health, Education, and Welfare] Wilbur Cohen, [long-time Social Security administration official] Alvin David, [the Health Insurance Benefits Advisory Council’s] Bill Fullerton, [Social Security Administration officials] Art Hess, Ida Merriam, Irv Wolkstein, myself, and others at the Social Security Administration — had been advocates of universal national health insurance.  We all saw insurance for the elderly as a fallback position, which we advocated solely because it seemed to have the best chance politically. Although the public record contains some explicit denials, we expected Medicare to be a first step toward universal national health insurance, perhaps with “Kiddicare” as another step.

After the passage of the initial program, Johnson administration officials didn’t wait long before calling for expanding health coverage. Johnson explained to Congress in his 1968 State of the Union address that he wanted a “child health program to provide, over the next five years, for families unable to afford it, access to health services from prenatal care of the mother through the child’s first year.” Cohen was tasked by the president to design the program, which Ball refers to above as “Kiddie Care.”

The war in Vietnam and Johnson’s fraying political coalition made Kiddie Care a vision that remained unfulfilled. Today, the United States continues to have the highest infant mortality rate in the industrialized world.

All that Sanders is trying to do is fulfill the original promise of Medicare, by expanding it to everyone.

GOP Lawmakers Now Admit Years of Obamacare Repeal Votes Were a Sham

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By Lee Fang

IT IS HARD to overestimate the role of the Affordable Care Act in the Republican resurgence.

Over the last seven years, the GOP has won successive elections by highlighting problems with Obamacare, airing more than $235 million in negative ads slamming the law, and staging more than 50 high-profile repeal votes. In 2016 every major Republican presidential candidate, including Donald Trump, campaigned on a pledge to quickly get rid of it.

Now in total control of Congress and the White House, some GOP legislators are saying that the political assault on Obamacare was an exercise in cynical politics, and that an outright repeal was never on the table.

“We have Republicans who do not want to repeal Obamacare,” said Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., on Sirius XM Patriot on Wednesday.

“They may have campaigned that way, they may have voted that way a couple of years ago when it didn’t make any difference,” Brooks continued. “But now that it makes a difference, there seems to not be the majority support that we need to pass legislation that we passed 50 or 60 times over five or six years.”

Listen to Rep. Brooks’s comments below:

Likewise, Rep. Pat Meehan, R-Pa., one of the lawmakers who came into power by riding the anti-ACA Tea Party wave in 2010, and who once elected pledged to “repeal, defund, delay, and dismantle Obamacare,” recently conceded in a candid interview with the Delaware County Daily Times that previous repeal efforts were a sham.

Asked if the years of votes against the ACA were simply “ceremonial,” since Republicans knew that any serious repeal bill would be vetoed by President Barack Obama, Meehan responded “yes.”

“I don’t think anyone would quarrel with the idea that they were largely position votes,” Meehan continued. “They were as political as they were anything else because there was a recognition that those were unlikely to be moved.”

Republicans expected Hillary Clinton to win the election last year, and had not planned for being in a position to actually pass a repeal effort this year, said Meehan. But after Trump’s victory, the GOP leadership thought something had to be done on their campaign promises, and that’s why they attempted to move forward with the American Health Care Act.

Listen to Rep. Meehan’s comments below:

Other Republican lawmakers have made similar remarks in recent days.

“You know, I think maybe its easier to run on these platitudes, run on a platform like this,” said Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., when asked by local radio station News Talk 1290 if Republicans ran on repeal “simply to get elected or re-elected.”

Bacon, admitting that he supports provisions of the law, including coverage for pre-existing conditions, noted that governing can be very different from campaigning. “Sometimes things sound easier when you’re running,” Bacon added.

Another candid comment came from Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who told reporters last Friday that the dozens of repeal votes were cast in the past without any plan for viable legislation.

“Sometimes you’re playing fantasy football and sometimes you’re in the real game,” Barton told Talking Points Memo.

“We knew the president, if we could get a repeal bill to his desk, would almost certainly veto it. This time we knew if it got to the president’s desk it would be signed.”

Even House Speaker Paul Ryan, shortly after his legislation to overhaul the health care system was pulled from a vote, said that Republicans weren’t ready to meet promises on repealing and replacing Obamacare — an implicit concession that previous repeal votes were merely symbolic.

“We were a 10-year opposition party, where being against things was easy to do,” Ryan said, adding that his party wasn’t prepared to be the “governing party.”

“We will get there,” Ryan added, “but we weren’t there today.”

After the defeat of Ryan’s legislation last week, the speaker called Obamacare the “law of the land” that will remain “for the foreseeable future.”

Following the embarrassing admission, conservative donors and some White House officials have mounted a campaign to revive a repeal effort, though there are few details about the type of repeal effort would muster support among the hard-right conservatives and moderates who sank the last attempt.

Indigenous and Environmental Groups Sue to Block Trump's Keystone XL Permit

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By Mike Ludwig

Environmental and Indigenous groups filed two lawsuits yesterday challenging the Trump administration's recent decision to issue a cross-border permit for the Keystone XL pipeline that would bisect the nation and carry carbon-heavy crude oil from the tar sands of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

Last week, President Trump issued a ceremonial "presidential permit" to TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline, and instructed the State Department to reverse a 2015 decision by the Obama administration to deny a federal permit needed for construction. The State Department quickly issued the permit, which is now being challenged by environmental groups.

Tom Goldtooth, director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, one of the groups challenging the permit, said President Trump is breaking "established environmental laws" and treaties with Native Americans in his attempt to push the pipeline through.

"Indigenous peoples' lands and waters are not here to be America's environmental sacrifice zone," Goldtooth said in a statement.

Opposition to fossil fuel infrastructure projects like major oil pipelines has become central to the movements for climate justice and Native rights. Over the past seven months, the Native-lead resistance organized by the Standing Rock Sioux and others to the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota inspired people to action around the country and the world, and resistance to the pipeline's southern leg in Louisiana has also taken form.

The Indigenous Environmental Network joined the North Coast Rivers Alliance in challenging Trump's Keystone XL permit under several federal environmental laws, including laws protecting endangered species and bald eagles. The groups also say the State Department's federally required review of the pipeline's environmental impacts is inadequate and was prepared by a contractor with substantial conflicts of interest due to its close ties with the oil and gas industry.

In a separate lawsuit filed on Thursday, six environmental groups argue the State Department's environmental review, now three years old, is inadequate and out of date. The groups also say the Trump administration broke the Administrative Procedures Act, the law governing how federal agencies establish regulations, by "arbitrarily" reversing the Obama-era decision to block the pipeline. The Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, which is expected to issue its own permit for the pipeline soon, is also named as a defendant. 

Tar sands oil is one of the "planet's most environmentally destructive energy sources" and is expected to contribute to climate disruption, according to the six groups' complaint. Tar sands crude is particularly heavy and viscous, making it very difficult to clean up in the event of a spill. The pipeline would carry more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil from Canada's tar sands across the country each day. 

"The Trump administration broke the law by arbitrarily approving the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline," said Anthony Swift, a project director at the National Resources Defense Council, of the groups that filed the lawsuit. "And it ignored public calls to update and correct a required environmental impact statement that should have led to one conclusion: Piping some of the dirtiest oil on the planet through America's heartland would put at grave risk our land, water and climate."

Under President Obama, the State Department took years deliberating over the Keystone XL permit before ruling in 2015 that the pipeline was contrary to national interests, such as combating global warming. During those years of deliberation, Keystone XL became a political football in Congress and, for environmentalists, a potent symbol of the dangers posed by fossil fuels. Protesters swarmed Washington to oppose it.

Trump is now undoing Obama's climate legacy piece by piece. Earlier this week, the Trump administration formally began the process of dismantling carbon fuel and energy standards designed to help the United States fulfill international climate agreements and stave off the worst effects of anthropogenic climate disruption.

The president has also lifted environmental restrictions on coal mining and called on federal agencies to expeditiously approve permits for the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines.

Environmentalists have pledged to challenge Trump's assault on environmental and climate protections in court and warned Republicans in Congress that voters would punish them in the midterms for rolling back Obama-era environmental regulations aimed at reducing air and water pollution.

Both lawsuits against Trump's Keystone XL permit were filed in a federal district court in Montana and seek an immediate injunction, which could stall construction of the pipeline.

The lawsuits are not the pipeline's only roadblocks. State regulators have yet to approve a plan for the pipeline's path in Nebraska, where the project is not popular among landowners.

Keystone XL and other pipelines have come to represent a political ideology that recklessly values private profits over people and the future of the Earth, and activists are expected to resist their construction outside of court as well. Indigenous activists will continue to be on the front lines.

"For too long, the US government has pushed around Indigenous peoples and undervalued our inherent rights, sovereignty, culture and our responsibilities as guardians of Mother Earth and all life, while fueling catastrophic extreme weather and climate change with an addiction to fossil fuels," Goldtooth said. 

Jeff Sessions admits crime is near historic lows despite his past warnings

Attorney general, who has described ‘dangerous permanent trend’ in crime rates, acknowledges improvement but says: ‘Hope is not a strategy’

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By Jamiles Lartey

Jeff Sessions, who has warned of an American crime epidemic since taking on the role of attorney general, admitted to a crowd in St Louis consisting mostly of law enforcement members that US crime remains near historic lows, despite a recent uptick.

“Murder rates are half of what they were in 1980. We have driven the violent crime rate down to almost half of what it was at its peak,” Sessions said. Sessions has previously said a recent crime increase was indicative of a “dangerous permanent trend”, a contention criminologists have said has “no evidence” to support it.

But, Sessions’ brief concession was really just a prelude to a larger point. The attorney general reiterated fears that he has expressed since his nomination by Donald Trump that the country is on a path to a more violent future.

“While we can hope for the best, hope is not a strategy. When crime rates move in the wrong direction, they can move fast,” Sessions said.

Sessions’ remarks were delivered just a few miles from Ferguson, Missouri, where nearly three years ago, the death of Michael Brown inspired a wave of protests and activism against the excessive use of force by police officers.

A justice department report in the wake of the unrest uncovered rank racial discrimination by the police department and exploitation by the city bureaucracy aimed at black residents. Sessions has previously said that he hasn’t read the report, or other similar ones produced by the Obama-era justice department, and that he would like his department to not produce or follow any more like them because of their impact on the morale of law enforcement.

“Unfortunately, in recent years, law enforcement as a whole has been unfairly maligned and blamed for the unacceptable deeds of a few bad actors,” Sessions said on Friday.

Sessions noted his recent call for US prosecutors to ramp up their efforts against violent and drug criminals as an example of the type of strategy he is directing law enforcement to adopt.

St Louis had the most murders in the US per capita in 2015 and has been one of the most dangerous cities in the country for more than a decade. It has also seen increased drug activity recently, probably inspiring Sessions’ visit to push the administration’s narrative that crime rates will soon be out of control.

Sessions paid lip service to crime prevention efforts and programs as something his justice department was “looking at”, but devoted the majority of his remarks in St Louis to enforcement.

That struck community advocates as misguided, or at least the wrong point of emphasis. “One outreach worker can do more to reduce crime in a neighborhood than five police officers can,” said James Clark, vice-president of community outreach for the St Louis not-for-profit group Better Family Life.

“If we continue to lay the issue of crime and violence at the feet of the police department, then that’s a very short-sighted, not well thought-out approach.”

The St Louis city alderman Jeffrey Boyd added: “Let’s remind ourselves of when Ronald Reagan came into office and there was this war on drugs campaign, and then Bill Clinton came in with ‘three strikes you’re out’. It didn’t help the African American community or the poor community. It ended up being a disaster generations later,” Boyd said, noting the disproportionate impact that mass incarceration has had on the black community.

Boyd lost three male relatives to gun violence in 2015 alone and represents the area of the city the Guardian identified in January as the most violent neighborhood in the nation.

“I would have been more excited if he was coming here to say we’re going to put more money into prevention,” Boyd said, emphasizing the value of programs such as the city’s current multimillion-dollar initiative to pull down abandoned structures and replace them with green space. “Eliminating slum and blight is always a great opportunity to minimize some of the violence in the neighborhood because it takes away hiding spaces.”

Clark’s Better Family Life (BFL) emphasizes a similar approach to the drug and violence problems that trouble the city, especially its northern, predominantly black neighborhoods.

“It takes a grassroots, hands-on approach to stabilize the hardest-hit neighborhoods in the St Louis Metropolitan area,” Clark said.

“We’ve started a lightbulb campaign because, of course, if you have a light on, if the whole block is lit up, then prostitution is less likely, drug usage is less likely, and crime is less likely.” BFL also engages in what Clark calls triage in the most vulnerable neighborhoods, offering drug treatment, condom distribution and general outreach.

Borrowers 'Chilled to the Bone' as DOE Reneges on Student Loan Forgiveness

Young people who took low-paying, public-sector jobs with promise of loan forgiveness now 'hosed'

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By Lauren McCauley

In a troubling development for the countless people saddled with student debt, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) may be reneging on a promise made to over 550,000 such borrowers who were led to believe that their loans would be forgiven after ten years of work in the public service.

Responding to an ongoing lawsuit from four borrowers, the DOE has given no explanation but says that approval letters sent to individuals who signed up for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program are not in fact "binding," the New York Times reported Thursday.

Times reporter Stacy Cowley wrote:

In a legal filing submitted last week, the Education Department suggested that borrowers could not rely on the program's administrator to say accurately whether they qualify for debt forgiveness. The thousands of approval letters that have been sent by the administrator, FedLoan Servicing, are not binding and can be rescinded at any time, the agency said. 

The filing adds to questions and concerns about the program just as the first potential beneficiaries reach the end of their 10-year commitment—and the clocks start ticking on the remainder of their debts.

The program, established in 2007, covers individuals who work for 10 years at an approved place of employment, such as a nonprofit or government organization. After an individual makes 120 monthly loan payments, the program ostensibly "forgives the remaining balance." As much as a quarter of the U.S. workforce could potentially qualify for the loan forgiveness, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

However, for the 553,000 who have gone through the process, submitting forms to check their workplace eligibility and then receiving a note of approval, that guarantee is in doubt as they may now unexpectedly owe thousands of dollars to pay off those debts.

Journalist David Dayen compared the move to the Bonus Army scandal, when roughly 43,000 Depression-era World War I veterans and their supporters stormed Washington D.C. to demand payment on cash vouchers given to them for their service before they were forcibly driven out by Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur under order from President Herbert Hoover.

Another reader pointed out on Twitter:

Blair Reeves‏ @BlairReeves

Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly young, took public-interest jobs for lower pay relying on their govt’s promise. Now, hosed.

That same reader added, "This should chill every millennial with debt to the bone."

The program encourages individuals to resubmit the forms each year and with each job change, to make sure they still qualify. But, as Cowley notes, "some of those approved borrowers might get bad news because it is unclear whether the certifications are valid."

The reporting continues:

[Plaintiff Jamie] Rudert submitted the certification form in 2012 and received a letter from FedLoan affirming that his work as a lawyer at Vietnam Veterans of America, a nonprofit aid group, qualified him for the forgiveness program. But in 2016, after submitting his latest annual recertification note to FedLoan, he got a denial note. 

The decision was retroactive, he was told. None of his previous work for the group would be considered valid for the loan forgiveness program.  What changed? Mr. Rudert said he did not know. After filing a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he received a reply from FedLoan saying that his application "had initially been approved in error."

In December, Rudert and the American Bar Association filed suit against the DOE charging that the agency acted "arbitrarily and capriciously."

"The idea that approvals can be reversed at any time, with no explanation, is chilling for borrowers," Cowley observed, and is incredibly worrisome for the "first wave of qualified workers will be eligible to submit applications for debt forgiveness in October."

While the scandal falls under the purview of the Obama administration, many fear that recently-installed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will be no friend of student borrowers. One of DeVos' first acts earlier this month was to reverse an Obama-era guidance which limited fees debt collectors could charge on student loans.

Tax amnesty reveals new depths of Indonesian corruption

The program fell short of its lofty collection goals but showed a harsh light on the pervasiveness of tax evasion among the country's elite

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By JOHN MCBETH

Indonesia’s ongoing wave of economic nationalism, which has left prospective foreign investors wondering whether they are welcome at all, apparently doesn’t extend to wealthy Indonesians bringing home cash and other assets stashed in offshore havens.

Indeed, when the country’s historic nine-month tax amnesty ended today, only 146 trillion rupiah (US$11 billion) in assets had actually been repatriated from such favored havens as Singapore, Hong Kong, and the British Virgin and Cayman islands.

That’s a far cry from the Rp1,000 trillion (US$75 billion) officials expected to flood back into the country in a fit of patriotic fervor, but the target was always going to be unreachable because around half of the overseas holdings are in buildings and apartments.

If the government has been disappointed at the final outcome, the three-phase exercise has been an intriguing exercise in the light it has shone on how much money wealthy Indonesians have stashed abroad, dribbling it home when it is needed.

Targeted in Jakarta’s 1997-98 riots, Indonesian-Chinese in particular have always had a reason to look for overseas bolt-holes because of the discrimination they continue to endure as a consequence of their disproportionate hold on the economy.

But as the Panama Papers showed, ethnic Indonesian tycoons aren’t much different. “This is a hostile environment for private investment,” says one foreign executive. “Private investors have always been squeezed and they’re being squeezed even more now. No-one trusts the tax department.”

Many who joined the amnesty did so out of fear of being caught up in the implementation next year of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Automatic Exchange of Information initiative that will allow tax authorities greater access to their overseas assets.

Another incentive was a pledge that tax inspectors would not investigate the source of previously undeclared funds, even if they are the suspected fruit of corruption. That has not gone down well with the OECED and protesting workers, who feel it favors the cheat and penalizes the compliant.

For all the early skepticism, and a shortfall in expectations, the amnesty has still turned out to be the most successful of its kind in history, exceeding Italy’s 2009 program which unearthed 80 billion euros in assets and 4 billion euros in extra tax revenue.

Overall, the Indonesian government collected 112 trillion rupiah (US$8.4 billion) in redemption payments, down from its target of 165 rupiah trillion (US$12.4 billion), but sufficient to help plug a yawning gap in projected tax revenues.

Much of the lucre – 97 trillion rupiah (US$7.3 billion) — came during the first phase of the amnesty between last July and September when there was only a 4% tax on overseas assets, compared with 2% if the money was wired back into domestic bank accounts for a mandated three years.

With the tax rates rising from to 3%-6% and 5%-10% during the second and third phases, the final three months garnered only 2 trillion rupiah to add to the 103 trillion rupiah taken between July and December.

Collecting data on a total of 4,800 trillion rupiah (US$360 billion) in previously undeclared assets has provided an illuminating insight into what Indonesians have secreted away offshore – and accumulated at home in the form of untaxed real estate.

Most surprising for officials was the amount of newly-disclosed domestic assets, which topped Rp3,600 trillion (US$270 billion), far exceeding the Rp1,033 trillion (US$77.6 billion) kept abroad by those who participated in the amnesty — 73% of it in Singapore.

One of the reasons for that is taxpayers had only focused in the past on their income and not on fixed assets. Many were alarmed to discover that while the amnesty tax rate was low, it was still too much to pay on undeclared property inherited decades ago and, in some cases, now worth millions of dollars.

In the end, the tax office was forced to change the rules on land valuation from the end of 2015 to the actual time of acquisition — or at a level which made the payment more affordable for salaried workers and retirees on modest incomes.

Worryingly, however, while the amnesty may have unearthed three million new taxpayers and increased overall revenue collection, non-amnesty revenues reached only 83% of the Finance Ministry’s 2016 objective, even less than in 2015 and 2014.

“Weak fiscal revenues continue to pose a downside risk to lower economic growth,” the World Bank warned in its March quarterly report. “Lower revenue collection could constrain fiscal spending and much-needed infrastructure investment.”

This isn’t good news for Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who made it clear from the start that the real benefit would be the information the amnesty turns up, which hopefully will allow for wider tax collection in the future.

Rather than worry about targets, the former World Bank managing director said the whole idea has been to create confidence, restore trust in the fairness of the tax system and, in doing so, expand the tax base.

Such a reality check was sorely needed, even if it is an admission of widespread tax evasion among the 118 million-strong work force. In the past two years, the government has set unrealistic tax objectives for a country with a tax-to-GDP ratio of 11% – one of the lowest in the region.

Sri Mulyani wants to eventually expand compliance to 15%, beyond the global average of 14.8%. But that will depend on whether the government can ram through a four-year tax reform agenda, including a list of quick-fire measures by the end of this year.

Few Indonesians trust tax officials, who have long had a reputation for so-called “hunting in the zoo” – squeezing and often black-mailing vulnerable tax-payers – instead of tracking down fat-cat tax evaders and widening the pool.

More taxpayers may also mean less tolerance for the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, whose blatant theft of state funds, evidenced by the ongoing US$173 million electronic identity card scandal, doesn’t draw the public outrage it deserves.

A finance minister in the previous Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono government, Sri Mulyani knows this better than most after her efforts to reform the tax office were forestalled when she was unfairly hounded out of office in 2010 over the Bank Century bailout scandal.

She spent six years at the World Bank’s Washington headquarters before being lured back by President Widodo, anxious to secure her help in managing the tax amnesty and finding other ways to get the economy back on a stronger growth track.

The president is widely believed to have offered the country’s cleanest and most capable public servant a shot at the vice-presidency in 2019 to lure her back from her $400,000-plus, tax-free job, in Washington, which friends said she had become bored with anyway.

Critics complain the finance minister has become more of a politician than an economist this past year, but only time will tell if she has succeeded in achieving what she set out to do: getting her fellow citizens to put their trust in the taxman, the one person they have always feared.

US sanctions North Koreans it links to weapons, financial networks

Washington announces sanctions against 11 North Koreans and one North Korean company that the US Treasury says are working in Russia, China, Vietnam and Cuba as agents of Pyongyang

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The United States on Friday sanctioned 11 North Koreans and one North Korean company for their links to the country’s weapons programs, banks and commodities trade, the US Treasury said.

It said the people were working as agents of North Korea’s government in Russia, China, Vietnam and Cuba to provide financial support or help procure weapons for previously sanctioned companies.

“Today’s sanctions are aimed at disrupting the networks and methods that the Government of North Korea employs to fund its unlawful nuclear, ballistic missile, and proliferation programs,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. “I urge our partners and allies to take similar measures to cut off its funding.”

Friday’s actions by the administration of President Donald Trump do not represent a major ramp-up in North Korea sanctions and were issued under authorities established by former presidents George W. Bush, a Republican, and Barack Obama, a Democrat.

Two North Koreans based in China and one North Korean based in Cuba were blacklisted for ties to Korea Ryonbong General Corporation, a previously sanctioned company that “specializes in acquisition for North Korean defense industries and support to Pyongyang’s military-related sales,” the statement said.

Another worked for a North Korean trading company in Dalian, China, the US Treasury said.

It said six North Koreans based in Vietnam, China and Russia were sanctioned for their ties to North Korean banks.

One person on the sanctioned list worked as a North Korean government official who was trying to establish a cargo shipping route between North Korea and Vietnam, Treasury said.

The US measures on Friday block any property those on the sanctions list may have in the United States and bar Americans from dealing with them.

The Trump administration is considering sweeping sanctions aimed at cutting North Korea off from the global financial system in order to counter Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile threat, as well as increased pressure on Chinese banks and firms that do business with North Korea. The administration is conducting a broad review of North Korea policy, expected to be completed in coming weeks.