Obama: ‘This Has Never Been a Government Takeover of Health Care’

(CNSNews.com) – In a Rose Garden press conference on Thursday, President Barack Obama reacted to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling upholding Obamacare subsidies, calling it “a victory for hard-working Americans,” adding that “this has never been a government takeover of health care.”

“This has never been a government takeover of health care despite cries to the contrary. This reform remains what it’s always been – a set of fairer rules and tougher protections that have made health care in America more affordable, more attainable and more about you, the consumer, the American people. It’s working,” said Obama in praising the high court ruling.

“Today is a victory for hard-working Americans all across this country whose lives will continue to become more secure in a changing economy because of this law,” said the president.

As CNSNews.com reported, the justices ruled 6-3 that the subsidies that people receive to make insurance affordable do not depend on where they live. "Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.

“Because of this law, and because of today’s decision, millions of Americans who I hear from every single day will continue to receive the tax credits that have given about eight in 10 people who buy insurance on the new marketplaces the choice of a health care plan that costs less than $100 a month,” said Obama.

“As the law’s provisions have gradually taken effect, more than 16 million uninsured Americans have gained coverage so far. Nearly one in three Americans who was uninsured a few years ago is insured today,” he said.

Via: CNS News

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[COMMENTARY] The White House’s Latest ObamaCare Lie

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was pitched and eventually sold to the American public on a foundation of lies. Many of the most egregious examples of the calculated mendacity of ObamaCare’s designers were exposed by the law’s very implementation, but a few of its more subtle deceptions and the duplicity of the law’s authors was revealed in a series of videos featuring the refreshingly honest Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and health care policy advisor Jonathan Gruber. It is fitting that, just days before the Supreme Court issues what might be its most far-reaching verdict regarding the ACA’s fraudulence, Gruber is again in the news.

As soon as the Affordable Care Act was implemented and revealed its hideous, multifarious visage to the public, the lies at the heart of the law became apparent even to observers committed to ensuring its success.

Premiums rose both for those on and off Affordable Care Act-related plans. Patients began losing their cherished and long-patronized doctors. The Supreme Court virtually rewrote the law when it ignored the administration and the solicitor general when it determined that the government had no right to penalize the public for failing to purchase health insurance. None of this would have come as a surprise to anyone who attended one of Gruber’s many lectures.

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes,” the health care policy advisor conceded, because “if CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.”

As for the substance of the case the Court will rule on before the end of the month in King v. Burwell, Gruber appeared to validate the claims of those who believe the law was intentionally crafted to deny states the subsidies they presently enjoy if they did not set up a state-run insurance exchange. “There’s a lot of responsibilities on the states to set up these exchanges, like we did in Massachusetts, to regulate them and run them,” Gruber insisted in 2011. “Will people understand that, gee, if your governor doesn’t set up an exchange, you’re losing hundreds of millions of dollars of tax credits to be delivered to your citizens?”

Via: Commentary Magazine

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Why does President Obama criticize the Supreme Court so much?

The Supreme Court in Washington. In his more than six years in the White House, Obama has to an unusual degree — for a serving president — offered strong opinions on how the court’s justices should decide cases central to his legacy. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

President Obama seemed to relish the chance to take yet another swipe at the Supreme Court justices who were deliberating a case that could determine the fate of his landmark health-care law.

“This should be an easy case,” he said earlier this month regarding the latest legal showdown over the Affordable Care Act. “Frankly, it probably shouldn’t even have been taken up.”

This time the president was taking questions from reporters at a recent summit of world leaders in Germany. The case before the court would decide whether millions of Americans who receive tax subsidies to buy health insurance on federal exchanges are doing so illegally.

In his more than six years in the White House, Obama has to an unusual degree — for a serving president — offered strong opinions on how the court’s justices should decide cases central to his legacy. In a few instances, those pointed opinions have sounded a lot like outright criticism.

Obama’s willingness to plunge into the court’s business reflects his background as a constitutional law lecturer, his irritation with the legal and political wrangling surrounding the landmark health-care law and his view of the court’s role in American society.

“There’s a view that liberals love the courts as the last bastion” for defending the rights of the powerless and underprivileged, said David Strauss, a law professor at the University of Chicago. “He’s never bought into that stuff. He believes that the courts are fine, but that politics should run the country.”

That view was especially clear in 2012 when the justices were reviewing the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality. At the time Obama argued that the court hadn’t overturned a law on a major economic issue, such as health care, since its battles with President Franklin D. Roosevelt over the New Deal. “Let me be very specific,” Obama said. “We have not seen a court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on an economic issue, like health-care” for decades.

Via: Washington Post

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A handful of states could set up ACA Exchanges after King v. Burwell

It’s been difficult not to notice that a lot of states are having terrible experiences with their ObamaCare exchanges. In fact, a recent Washington Post article reports that “Nearly half of the 17 insurance marketplaces set up by the states and the District under President Obama’s health law are struggling financially.”

In a previous post, we mentioned that this fact should hinder attempts from state officials to establish a state exchange in the event that King v. Burwell eliminates the federal subsidies.

Regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision, nothing will change for the 16 states already running their own exchange. Also, Arizona recently passed legislation prohibiting the establishment of an exchange, so that 17 states will not be directly affected by King.

Thus, 33 states would lose federal subsidies if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs. At least 16 of these states appear to be led by officials who will make a strong push to establish an exchange in order to retain the subsidies.

If you happen to live in one of these states, it may be in your interest to contact state officials and tell them not to establish an ObamaCare exchange, even if King strikes down the federal subsidies.

After all, this is a problem the federal government created. It would be irresponsible to call on state governments to clean up a mess they didn't create. If state leaders end up caving into the pressure to establish an exchange, then ObamaCare repeal will become an even more arduous mission than it already is.

Via: Freedom Works

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The Supreme Court’s Obamacare reading lesson: What 4 words mean to millions

A general view of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington June 15. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an effort by Iraq to revive a lawsuit against dozens of companies for allegedly conspiring with former leader Saddam Hussein's government to subvert the U.N. oil-for-food program and deprive Iraqi citizens of humanitarian aid.

The four words “established by the state” could come to mean the difference between affordable health insurance and no insurance to millions of people in the coming days. Those 6.4 million people probably never suspected four words could determine whether they can afford a doctor’s visit and have to put off needed care.

Those four words are the crux of the latest Supreme Court challenge to the federal Affordable Care Act, King v. Burwell, on which the court will rule by the end of this month. A ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would endanger a key mechanism in the sweeping health care law that makes health insurance affordable to millions of Americans.

Those 6.4 million people live in the 34 states, including Maine, that opted not to establish their own online health insurance marketplaces where residents could shop around for the best insurance plan and qualify for federal subsidies to defray the cost. They relied instead on HealthCare.gov — a system that mostly worked well once the federal website overcame its disastrous 2013 rollout.

They don’t receive health insurance through their jobs or through a government program. They’re low- to middle-income people who required federal assistance in order to bring their monthly premiums down to a manageable level.

They include nearly 61,000 in Maine who depend on that federal assistance to cover, on average, $337 per month of their health insurance premium, or 78 percent of the cost. Their premiums cost them, on average, $97 per month with the assistance factored in. Before the Affordable Care Act, Maine residents who bought from the individual insurance market paid $336 per month on average.

But the King v. Burwell plaintiffs argue that these 61,000 Maine residents and millions of others aren’t eligible for federal help to defray their premiums because of four words. The text of the Affordable Care Act, they argue, makes subsidies available only to people purchasing insurance from a marketplace “established by the state.”

There’s a strong argument to make that the King v. Burwell case should never have been taken seriously as a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act. It relies on what amounts to a drafting error. It contorts an expansive federal law to mean what Congress clearly never intended. There’s enough context in other parts of the law,supporting analyses and regulations to indicate that those four words never represented Congress’ intent.

Nevertheless, policymakers must plan for a Supreme Court decision that could invalidate 6.4 million people’s assistance.

Such an outcome would likely affect more than just the 6.4 million people who receive subsidies. It could destabilize the individual insurance market in those 34 states without insurance exchanges. The Urban Institute has projected a negative ruling could force 8.2 million to join the ranks of the uninsured next year and force individual market premiums up 35 percent in those 34 states as millions of healthy people leave an insurance market rendered unaffordable. In other words, much of the Affordable Care Act — designed deliberately, with each element depending on another — could come tumbling down, likely the plaintiffs’ intent.

Via: Banger Daily News

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Feds: Ending Obamacare Would Cost $137 Billion

Repealing President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul would increase the federal budget deficit by $353 billion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office said.

Ending the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would increase spending on Medicare while reducing outlays for health- insurance subsidies, Medicaid and coverage for poor children, the agency said in a report Friday. Repealing the law would probably boost the economy as more people sought work to get health insurance, reducing the net cost to $137 billion, the CBO said.

The report is a blow for Republican lawmakers who have sought to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act ever since its passage in 2010. If the law were undone, about 19 million more people would become uninsured in 2016, rising to 24 million by 2025, the CBO said.

“An end to the ACA’s subsidies for health insurance coverage would generate gross savings,” the CBO said in its report. “The net savings from repealing the law’s coverage provisions would increase more slowly than the net costs of repealing the act’s other provisions.”

Congressional Republicans replaced the former director of the CBO, Douglas Elmendorf, earlier this year with Keith Hall, a former official under President George W. Bush. Elmendorf, who had been appointed to the budget office by Democrats, estimated in July 2012 that repealing Obamacare would cost about $109 billion through 2022, without including broader effects on the economy.

Via: Newsmax

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Hidden Costs of Health Benefit Mandates

The upcoming King v. Burwell ruling, with its ramifications for the Affordable Care Act, has health-insurance costs back in the spotlight. Health-care mandates in particular have been an ongoing source of controversy. But states have been quietly passing their own health-insurance benefit mandates —requirements that insurers cover specific treatments and conditions — for decades, and there's much we can learn from them.

The number of state-level health-insurance mandates has steadily grown since the 1960s, with the average state imposing nearly 40. This growth surged recently due to the ACA's "Essential Health Benefits." The scope of the services targeted by these mandates varies widely, from cancer screening and prenatal care to acupuncture and chiropractic services.

Some mandated services seem essential to an adequate health-insurance plan, while others are of questionable benefit. What they all have in common is that they increase the cost of insurance by raising premiums for the people and employers who buy it. And higher premiums lead to other hidden costs as well.

In new research for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, we find evidence that new state health-insurance mandates distort state economies by leading to the existence of more large firms and fewer small firms.

The key to understanding how state mandates affect firm size lies in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974. Under ERISA, employers who self-insure (that is, directly bear the cost of paying their employees'benefit claims instead of buying coverage from an insurance company) are exempt from state health-insurance mandates. While technically a firm of any size is able to self-insure its health plan, in practice it is only the largest employers who opt for this form of coverage. This is because any form of insurance is more cost-effective when risk is pooled over a larger population.

A large employer can easily absorb the cost of one employee's expensive cancer treatment, because the costs are relatively insignificant when spread out among its many more fortunate workers. However, if a small business had to pay the entire cost of the same cancer treatment, it could go bankrupt.

These incentives are clearly illustrated by breaking down the self-insurance rate by firm size. Approximately 84 percent of employees at large firms (employers with at least 1,000 workers) are covered via self-insurance plans, compared with only 13 percent of employees at small firms (fewer than 50 employees).

Because it is easier and cheaper for large firms to self-insure, and thus escape state health-benefit mandates, they face less of a burden than small firms. This grants them a competitive advantage in the form of lower labor costs. The result is surprising: We find that each state health-benefit mandate leads to about 3,000 fewer small firms (with, for instance, 15 workers each), but about 20 more large firms with 1,000 or more workers. The overall level of employment is essentially unchanged.

If there is no change in overall employment, just a shift in the size of the firm employing the average worker, why should we care? While it may seem harmless, the shift could actually have serious implications for the overall productivity of our economy. Take job growth, for example. A recent study found that new, small firms (as opposed to larger, more established firms) were the primary creators of new jobs. Given these results, we should be wary of any policy which places heavy burdens on small employers.

Via: Real Clear Policy

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Extra Interviewer Thanks Obama: You ‘Saved My Finances and My Life’

At the top of what has to be one of President Barack Obama’s all-time friendliest interviews,Extra correspondent Jerry Penacoli thanked the president for the Affordable Care Act. Seated in the White House Rose Garden, the interviewer declared, “You pretty much saved my finances and my life.”

Pencil spent years suffering from a variety of ailments that required expensive treatment, including melanoma and thyroid cancer. The lifetime limits on his health insurance meant that he would have had to pay a large portion on the cost out of pocket — until Obamacare passed and outlawed those limits.

“One of the goal for the Affordable Care Act was not just to help people get insurance for people who didn’t have it, it was to give better protections to those who already had insurance,” Obama told Penacoli on Thursday. “You were a perfect example of someone who could be caught with debilitating bills, or, alternatively, not being able to get the care you need.”

RELATED: Obama: I Respond to People Who Write In Just to Call Me an Idiot

Throughout the discussion, Obama continued to use Penacoli’s story as a prime example of why the Affordable Care Act should be kept intact pending this month’s Supreme Court decision. The two men also discussed such hard-hitting topics as what it’s like to raise teenage daughters and who Obama is rooting for in the NHL Stanley Cup (“Blackhawks!”) and NBA finals (“both teams are playing incredible basketball.”).

Via: Mediaite

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[VIDEO] If SCOTUS guts subsidies, voters want Congress to fix Obamacare

As the Supreme Court prepares to unveil its decision on King v. Burwell, which could gut health care subsidies to millions of Americans on the exchanges–a point that some in the media say could harm Republicans. Hence, why some on the Hill are saying they might temporarily extend those subsidies if the Court nixes them. King is similar to another case–Halbig V. Burwell–that virtually argued the same thing:

Whether the Internal Revenue Service may permissibly promulgate regulations to extend tax-credit subsidies to coverage purchased through exchanges established by the federal government under Section 1321 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Last summer, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley and the Washington Examiner’sPhilip Klein outlined the background for the case–and the consequences if the Court rules that the IRS does not have the authority to extend the subsidies. 

Via Turley:

The Halbig case challenges the massive federal subsidies in the form of tax credits made available to people with financial need who enroll in the program. In crafting the act, Congress created incentives for states to set up health insurance exchanges and disincentives for them to opt out. The law, for example, made the subsidies available only to those enrolled in insurance plans through exchanges “established by the state.”

But despite that carrot — and to the great surprise of the administration — some 34 states opted not to establish their own exchanges, leaving it to the federal government to do so. This left the White House with a dilemma: If only those enrollees in states that created exchanges were eligible for subsidies, a huge pool of people would be unable to afford coverage, and the entire program would be in danger of collapse.

Indeed, the Halbig plaintiffs — individuals and small businesses in six states that didn’t establish state exchanges — objected that, without the tax credits, they could have claimed exemption from the individual mandate penalty because they would be deemed unable to pay for the coverage. If the courts agree with them, the costs would go up in all 34 states that didn’t establish state exchanges, and the resulting exemptions could lead to a mass exodus from Obamacare.

The administration attempted to solve the problem by simply declaring that even residents of states without their own exchanges were eligible for subsidies, even though the law seemed to specifically say they were not. The administration argues that although the statute’s language does limit subsidies to residents of places with exchanges “established by the state,” that wording actually referred to any exchange, including those established by the federal government.

Via: Hot Air

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Obama: Notice You Haven’t Heard Any Obamacare Horror Stories Lately?

In a round of questions following his remarks on the G7 Summit in Germany Monday morning, President Barack Obama dismissed the King v Burwell Supreme Court case as a tortured misreading of the law, and added, “Anyway, the thing’s working!”

“Part of what’s bizarre about this whole thing is we haven’t had a lot of conversation about the horrors of Obamacare because none of them have come to pass,” Obama said, citing significantly higher insured rates and lower health care costs. “None of the predictions about how this wouldn’t work have come to pass.”

The King case questions whether the federal premium subsidies were meant to be part of the law; an ambiguous sentence suggests they might have been withheld to pressure states into creating their own exchanges. But most involved in the writing and passing of the Affordable Care Act say it was a vestigial idea long abandoned by the time the law was passed.

If the subsidies were overturned, however, it would wreak havoc in the health care industry, if not the economy in general. One reporter asked why Obama didn’t have a Plan B in this event.

He responded that the ACA was a complex and interconnected piece of legislation that would be difficult to untangle, though he added that Congress could just fix the ambiguous sentence.

“This would be hard to fix,” he said. “Fortunately, there’s no reason to have to do it. It doesn’t need fixing.”

Via: Mediaite

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Obamacare ruling a time bomb for Democrats?

(CNN)Democrats and Republicans are sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting to see what the Supreme Court will decide in King v. Burwell, the looming decisionabout the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as it has come to be known.

If the Supreme Court agrees with the challenge, an estimated 13 million people will lose their federal health insurance subsidies. The plaintiffs have argued that based on the literal reading of the legislation, the government is only supposed to provide citizens with subsidies in states that set up their own health care exchanges (a total of 16 states). The sentence in the law upon which their claim is based, The New York Times reported, was based on a sloppy error made during the drafting process. Regardless, the plaintiffs argue that in states where residents rely on federal subsidies (34 altogether), the law does not provide for subsidies.

Julian Zelizer

If the Supreme Court ruling takes away their subsidies, a substantial number of the citizens in those states will not be able to pay for their health care. Many younger and healthier Americans will take the risk and decide that they won't purchase insurance, a trend which would send prices skyrocketing. An ever-growing cycle would be devastating.

Via: CNN

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Obamacare Hasn't Cured People's Anxiety About Medical Costs

Americans still are worried about whether they can afford their medical bills.

May 21, 2015 Millions of Americans have enrolled in private health coverage through the Affordable Care Act in its first two years, but a lot of them still are worried about big medical bills.

Nearly 4 in 10 Americans who enrolled in an ACA-compliant individual health insurance plan in 2015—both on and off of Obamacare's marketplaces—said they still felt vulnerable to high medical costs, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Marketplace enrollees were generally positive about their insurance–74 percent rated their plan excellent or good—but cost remains a concern for a significant minority of them. For example: 36 percent said they were dissatisfied with their annual deductible. And 56 percent of people with Obamacare-compliant plans said they were very or somewhat worried about their ability to pay the health care services they need.

A big problem: Plans that tend to have the lowest monthly premiums also have the highest deductibles. Almost 90 percent of 2015 Obamacare enrollees signed up for either a bronze-level or silver-level plan, the cheapest coverage but which can have deductibles of thousands of dollars. That means people can still be on the hook for a good chunk of change if they actually rack up medical bills.

About 40 percent of those in the overall individual market were enrolled in high-deductible plans—which Kaiser defined as above $1,500 for an individual or $3,000 for a family—versus 43 percent in low-deductible plans. (The rest weren't sure). Just 35 percent of those in the high-deductible plans were happy with their deductible; 79 percent of low-deductible enrollees were.

Via: National Journal

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ObamaCare fallout? Supreme Court ruling sets up potential Obama, GOP battle

March 4, 2015: Demonstrators rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, as the court was hearing arguments in President Obama's healthcare overhaul.

The upcoming Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act could wipe out insurance for millions of people covered by the president’s health care plan, leaving states that set up their own health care markets scrambling to subsidize coverage for those left uninsured.

Twenty-six of the 34 states that would be hardest hit by the ruling have GOP governors. Twenty-two of the 24 Senate seats that are up for re-election in 2016 are currently held by Republicans. What that means is that it’s the GOP – and not the White House –that’s working on damage control.

President Obama’s landmark legislation offers subsidized private insurance to those without access to it on the job. In the Supreme Court case, opponents of the law argue that its literal wording allows the government to subsidize coverage only in states that set up their own health insurance markets.  

The justices will determine whether the law makes people in all 50 states eligible for federal tax subsidies -- or just those who live in states that created their own health insurance marketplaces. The question matters because about three dozen states opted against their own marketplace, or exchange, and instead rely on the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Healthcare.gov.

If the court rules against the Obama administration, insurance subsidies for people in those states would be in jeopardy.

If the court invalidates the subsidies in those states, the results would be “ugly,” former Kansas insurance commissioner Sandy Praeger told The Associated Press.

Via: Fox News

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Democrat-Led Colorado Backs Lawsuit Calling Obamacare Unconstitutional

Colorado has become the 20th state to support a federal lawsuit filed last week by a Texas doctor to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

It’s only the third state with a Democratic governor to do so.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, a Republican, signed onto an amicus brief last week, showing support for the effort to overturn the law based on the U.S. Constitution’s Origination Clause, which says that all bills that raise revenue must begin in the Senate.

Obamacare, the suit contends, began in the House of Representatives.

“If the Origination Clause means anything, it must mean that the ACA is unconstitutional,” the brief reads, as reported by the Colorado Observer.

But exactly where the controversial law began is itself a point of controversy. The Observer notes that the U.S. Justice Department contends that it did indeed begin in the House, originally as H.R. 3590, which was concerned with housing tax credits for veterans. Once in the Senate, however, Obamacare opponents say its language was entirely stripped and replaced with what became the ACA.

“By a voice vote of 416-0, the House passed the bill on October 8, 2009, and the enrolled version was eight pages long,” the brief reads. “About one month later, on November 19, 2009, the Senate struck every single word of H.R. 3590, deleted any reference to members of the military or home-ownership tax breaks, and substituted a 2,074-page ‘amendment’ that we now know as the ACA.”

Pacific Legal Foundation is also challenging the law based on an Origination Clause argument in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the penalty for not signing up for health care under the new law is considered to be a tax.

Via: The Daily Caller

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Would You Have Voted for ObamaCare? Georgia Dem Gives AGONIZINGLY PAINFUL Answer

27 Seconds Is All It Takes to Realize This Is One of the Most Confusing Obamacare Answers Out There

By Mike Opelka, The Blaze

It was a simple question posed by NBC correspondent Kasie Hunt to Georgia Democratic Senate hopeful, Michelle Nunn.  Hunt was speaking with Nunn in a one-on-one interview and asked the question: “Would you have voted for the Affordable Care Act?”

The candidate’s answer was not a “yes” or “no.” In fact, it was so confounding that MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, during an appearance on “Morning Joe,” called it “terrible,” adding, “Boy, nothing screamed ‘practiced politician’ like that answer Michelle Nunn gave on health care.”

“It just doesn’t come across as credible,” he said.

What was Chuck Todd talking about? It might have been the initial 27 seconds of circuitous language heard from Nunn. Her exact words:

“At the time the Affordable Health Care Act was passed, I was, uh, working for Points of Light (a non-profit organization where Nunn served as CEO, earning $300,000/year) . So, I think it’s hard to go back…to look back retrospectively. But when I look at it, I think about…what do we need to do going forward? I look at it, I come at it from the perspective of someone who made payroll, who saw rising healthcare premiums, who believes we actually need to work together to make changes where it’s not working and improve the things that already are working.”

Nunn followed her initial response with more standard Democratic talking points about healthcare, citing the protections given to people with pre-existing conditions and children under 26 years old.

Via: The Blaze

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DNC Chairwoman: Benghazi Committee ‘Political Ploy’

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Wednesday accused House Republicans of creating a select investigative committee on the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, solely to motivate their base to turn out in the November midterm elections.

“Let’s call this what it is — it is nothing more than a political ploy because continuing to focus obsessively on repealing the Affordable Care Act has lost its luster, even among their own party members,” the Florida lawmaker said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Republicans selected Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., to lead the committee and gave their party seven slots on the 12-member panel, to just five for Democrats. House Democratic leaders sent a letter to Speaker John A. Boehner Tuesday night urging him to reconsider the committee’s partisan split.

Wasserman Schultz said she agrees with the request from Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., and believes they “should seriously consider not participating if the process is not going to be fair.”

If House Republicans “want to ensure that the investigation — which, like I said, I believe is really just an election-year turnout operation for their base — if they want to make sure it’s fair, there is no reason to reject the leader’s request to have the committee be evenly split.”

In response, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said, “Republicans want answers from a White House that spent more time politicizing this issue than trying to figure out how Americans died.”

The chairwoman pointed to the special election in Florida’s 13th District — which in the immediate aftermath served as a red flag for Democrats already concerned about turnout in November — as an example of the GOP’s own turnout issues, saying Republicans should have “run away” with the open-seat race.

Despite polling showing a challenging climate for Democrats, she said the party is headed for a successful midterm cycle, particularly when looking at the races individually, rather than at a macro level.

“We’re looking forward to the midterms,” Wasserman Schultz said, citing some gubernatorial opportunities in Pennsylvania, Florida and Maine. “We have opportunities in the Senate in Georgia and Kentucky, and keep a close eye on Mississippi. When it comes to our incumbent senators, the Republicans and pundits are pointing some of the vulnerable incumbents — these are challenging races, but we have incumbent members who have their finger on the pulse of their constituencies, know the people that they represent, and I think we’ll be successful in November.”

Via: Roll Call

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