Obamacare Reg Treats Congress That Spent $3.5 Trillion as a ‘Small Business’

(CNSNews.com) - An Obamacare regulation issued by the Office of Personnel Management in October treats the U.S. Congress—which employs more than 11,000 staffers and which spent $4,329,000,000 on its own operations and $3,454,253,000,000 to fund the full government in fiscal 2013--as a “small business.”

OPM did this so that the Treasury can pay federal subsidies of up to $11,378 per year to help members of the House and Senate and their staff buy health-insurance plans in the Obamacare “Small Business Health Options Program” (SHOP) Marketplace set up for “small employers” in Washington, D.C.

The regulation treats this federal tax subsidy paid by the U.S. Treasury as if it were an “employer contribution” made by the owner of a small business.

Subsection D of Section 1312 of the 906-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is entitled: “MEMBERS OF CONGRESS IN THE EXCHANGE.”

It says: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, after the effective date of this subtitle, the only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are—(I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or (II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act).

Via: CNS News

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Pelosi reiterates that Obamacare is about ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday morning that Obamacare is a certain unalienable Right, which is no big surprise coming from the Left.

Pelosi was speaking at The Atlantic’s Washington Ideas Forum when she argued that the president’s health care law is “all about” a great many things, one of them being a core tenet of American life.

“This all about the people, about the seniors, about the children … it’s about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Pelosi said to a gathering at the Newseum, a Washington, D.C. museum of journalism and news. At the top of her remarks, Pelosi gave praise to freedom of the press, and she harked back to it as she continued her explanation of Obamacare-as-product of the Declaration of Independence.

“As we talk about the First Amendment, let’s go back even further than that — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A healthier life, the liberty to pursue your happiness so that you’re not job-locked because you have a preexisting condition or your child does, but you are free — that liberty to pursue your passion, whether you want to be a writer, a photographer, be self-employed, start a business, change jobs. This is a transformative initiative.”

And oh, what a transformative explanation.

This is not the first time the nation’s House minority leader has made these comments – not by a long shot – but it’s comical that she’s continuing to use it as a talking point. Pelosi’s ilk say that it’s Republican obstructionism to the law that will keep people off of health insurance “even if it means half the country dies,” and yet Obamacareis forcing insurance cancellations. So much for the “life” argument. And where is the “liberty” in having to payjacked-up premiums for the same health insurance?

Via Red Alert Politics

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Pelosi: Chicago Jesus Is A “President of Great Vision, Great Knowledge, Great Judgement”…

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Sunday dismissed Mitt Romney’s statement that President Obama’s second term is rotting away.

Pelosi said she missed Romney’s appearance on “Meet the Press,” during which the former GOP presidential candidate said Obama’s broken promise that everyone who liked their healthcare plan could keep it has undermined Obama’s presidency. 

“I don’t even know why Romney was on that show myself,” she said in an interview on MSNBC. “I want to know what about the future —what about the future. But the fact is that President Obama is a president of great vision, of great knowledge, of great judgment.”

Pelosi noted that Obama led the effort to overhaul the healthcare system, an effort in which former presidents have failed. 

The Associated Press reported Sunday that at least 3.5 million people who buy insurance on the individual market have received cancellation notices for existing plans. The administration has consistently noted that the individual market makes up 5 percent of people. 

“For 95 percent of the American people who have health insurance that is the case,” Pelosi said. “For the small number in the private market, they will do better.” 

For people with preexisting conditions, Pelosi called the healthcare law a “godsend, emphasis on the God.”

Pelosi predicted that the healthcare law, and its botched rollout, will not be an issue in the 2014 midterm elections. 

“I don’t even think of it as a political issue,” she said. “But for the American people this will be a giant plus.”

The minority leader reiterated her point that Democrats have a better chance of winning back the House in the midterms because fallout hitting Republicans due to the government shutdown. 

Heading into the House-Senate budget conference that has a December deadline to come up with a spending plan, Pelosi said revenue will need to be on the table and predicted Obama and others in the conference would hold firm.

“I think we will all stay there together,” she said. “If you have revenue on the table, you can come to a bigger agreement to reduce the deficit and grow the economy to do so in a fiscally sound way.”

Via: The Hill

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SHE IS STILL DRINKING THE KOOL-AID

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi today called the Obamacare website malfunctions “incidental” in the big picture and predicted that they would have no effect on the mid-term elections next year.

“The glitches technologically are incidental to the value of what the Affordable Care Act represents,” she said. “We will get through them. The Affordable Care Act is a great thing for our country and I think it’s going to work just fine … We find the glitches unacceptable, we want to get over it, but it’s not going to have any impact on the election.”

Via: Boston Herald

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Pelosi on pork project: ‘What difference does it make?’

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Thursday said she can’t answer for why pork-barrel items snuck into the debt and spending bill that passed Congress late Thursday, but said the press should stop focusing on that and instead look at the broader debt fight.

“What difference does it make?” Mrs. Pelosi said when she was asked repeatedly about the items, which include a $174,000 payment to the widow of the late multimillionaire Sen. Frank Lautenberg and a $2 billion maximum price increase on a dam project on the Ohio River that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had supported as an earmark in previous years.

The House Democratic leader said there were other reasons to be upset with the bill, including that it doesn’t spend as much as she wanted. But she said focusing on pork projects was missing the fight.

“If you want to have an objection to the bill, there are bigger things,” she said.

Via: Washington Times

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Nancy Pelosi’s Rank Hypocrisy Exposed by Syria Intervention Debate

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) spent the holiday weekend gaming out Syrian intervention scenarios with her 5-year-old grandson. The ranking House Democrat told a group of reporters assembled outside the White House on Tuesday that her grandson, just out of toddlerhood, expressed his concerns that eliminating the ability of Bashar al-Assad’s forces to use of chemical weapons on civilian population centers cannot be reasonably considered a vital national interest and American intervention is, at this time, unjustified. Of course, the child used slightly more universally understood terms to express his opposition to the forthcoming war. 

But Pelosi said that she supports intervention in Syria anyway, over the objections of her grandson. She defined America’s national interest in this case as the enforcement of the globally recognized prohibition on the battlefield use of chemical weapons. This, the first violation of this norm in the post-Cold War-era, demands a response that only the United States can deliver. Pelosi essentially told the press that the anti-war argument is a child’s argument:

The minority leader is joined today, albeit belatedly, by the GOP house leadership who expressed their support for the prerogative of the President of the United States to defend American interests with military force. Their support comes late, but that is better than never. That the GOP is supporting President Barack Obama at all is a miracle when one considers the precedents set by Democrats. One would expect the GOP to hold fast to their resistance to an unpopular military engagement championed by a president of the opposition party. It is a position not unlike Nancy Pelosi’s when Congress debated the ultimately successful Iraq “surge” in 2007.

Via: Mediaite.com

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