Lawmaker to refuse special Obamacare exemption

Just because the Obama administration is allowing members of Congress and their staff to be exempted from certain provisions of Obamacare doesn’t mean all lawmakers are going to accept what they are calling “special treatment.”

Republican West Virginia Rep. Shelley Moore Capito says she will not accept any health care subsidy made available to her that average Americans can’t receive.

Her comments come after the Office of Personnel Management announced last week that it will provide a subsidy of about 75 percent of the cost for the health care of members and staff.

Finding this outrageous, Capito says she plans to introduce legislation in the House called the No ObamaCare Subsidies for Congress Act of 2013 to “end this special treatment for Members of Congress.” The bill would affect lawmakers, and not staff, a source told The Daily Caller.

“As long as ObamaCare remains law, Members of Congress should not receive exchange subsidies that are not provided to other Americans,” said Capito, who is running for Senate in 2014.

The Obamacare fix for lawmakers and staff was made because the Affordable Care Act includes an amendment from a Republican senator that changes how the government currently covers most of the cost of health-care premiums for members and their staffers.

The new law mandates that members and staff must enter into exchanges or be covered by insurance “created” by law.

Lawmakers worried about a potential “brain drain” — Capitol Hill staffers leaving work because of the increased costs of health care — and therefore wanted the fix.

Via: The Daily Caller

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Repeating Detroit’s Error in Pennsylvania

Much has been said about why Detroit lies in critical condition, but one serious wound has been festering for decades: the unsustainable pension and health benefits that were secured for city employees by self-serving union bosses and their political collaborators.

These irresponsible promises constitute $11 billion of the once-great Motor City’s $20 billion in debt.

It’s a timely lesson in government guarantees gone wrong, yet it seems that few onlookers are taking notes. States and cities across the country face similar challenges and, should they choose to do nothing, may meet a fate like Detroit’s.

My home state of Pennsylvania provides an example of how pension problems develop and how lawmakers allow them to fester. The unfunded total in the state’s pension funds for teachers and state workers is a whopping $47 billion — and that’s assuming a 7.5 percent return on investment. More realistic estimates easily double this already staggering sum.

Who is responsible for running up this tab on the taxpayer dime? The culprits are the government-sector union bosses who demanded lavish benefits and the elected officials who gave them exactly what they wanted.

With a stock market riding high from the 1990s, a Republican governor and a Republican legislature increased pension benefits for teachers and state employees by 25 percent in May 2001 — including a retroactive increase. They also gave themselves a 50 percent bump in their pension benefit. Then, in 2002, government workers who’d already retired also received a pension increase.

The stock-market losses of 2003 barely gave legislators pause. Instead of instituting cost-saving reforms, the legislature delayed contributions into pension plans, increasing the long-term unfunded liability dramatically. Another bill delaying pension contributions passed in 2010, after the Great Recession, to much fanfare from leaders of government unions. Retirement benefits unavailable in the private sector were protected, and the costs were kicked down the road to future generations.

Via: National Review

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That’s a clown question, bro: Rodeo clowns asked to take ‘sensitivity training’

In the wake of a rodeo clown’s anti-Obama skit this weekend, the Missouri State Fair is forcing all clowns to undergo sensitivity training.

The state fair commission voted Monday to ratify the decision to ban the clown in question who wore an Obama mask as the rodeo announcer asked if the crowd wanted to see him get run down by a bull. The crowd enthusiastically approved, according to local media reports.

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SEE ALSO: President of Mo. Rodeo Cowboy Association resigns, cites rodeo clown

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But the state commission went further, saying it will require that before the Rodeo Cowboy Association can take part in any future state fair, “they must provide evidence to the director of the Missouri State Fair that they have proof that all officials and subcontractors of the MRCA have successfully participated in sensitivity training.”

Via: Washington Times

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EDITORIAL: Wearing out words They’re changing the name of the global-warming scam again

Global warming is a fantasy dreamed up by the left in the hope that it could frighten Americans into embracing a big-government agenda they would otherwise reject.

Organizing for Action, President Obama’s campaign machine declared Tuesday “climate change day,” encouraging everyone to pepper skeptical members of Congress at town-hall meetings with questions about why they won’t raise taxes to avert the doom of the planet.

Even the most agile of senators won’t be able to dodge these community organizers, because the League of Conservation Voters will spend $2 million filling the airwaves with an attack on any congressman who won’t get with the program.

The doomed planet movement has been losing momentum. Inconvenient scientific findings have confirmed the lack of any significant warming of dear old Earth over the past 16 years. It’s hard to scare people into action when nothing bad is happening. That’s why the White House has changed its vocabulary again — first “global warming” was changed to “climate change” — and now the correct name of the scam is “carbon pollution.” It’s a way to paint carbon dioxide as if it were black soot billowing out of industrial smokestacks. Carbon dioxide is actually what humans exhale, and it’s food for plants.

Federal employees who dare note the inconsistency of the global warming fairy tale are shunned. Five months into her job as head of the Department of Interior, Secretary Sally Jewell sent a clear message to her 70,000 employees. She doesn’t want to hear any dissent, the First Amendment be damned. “I hope there are no climate change deniers in the Department of Interior,” she warned a gathering of employees.

Via: Washington Times

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