ObamaCare Exemption for Congress: Then and Now

The President, through the federal Office of Personnel Management, has declared that members of Congress and their staffs can receive employer subsidies for exchange-based insurance. Before you nod off, let me say what that means: Congress is effectively exempt from Obamcare.

I was alerted via twitter that Alex Seitz-Wald  writing at Salon said the "right was confused by its own lie," and linked to my post back in April explaining the controversy. 

Thanks for admitting I was right, guys. It's goofy to claim that because I said Congress was not exempt then, that what has developed now must mean they are still not exempt. I admit that unlikeMichael Cannon, I didn't expect this.

Obamacare is an insidiously complex piece of legislation, with dozens of policy pieces and conflicting goals.  All of those pieces were put in place to gain the support of some faction of Congress, even in many cases of a single Senator.

The system of subsidized exchanges was designed to make moderates happy, and to get the insurance lobby to support the bill's passage.

There was the Cornhusker Kickback to get the vote of Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, the Louisiana Purchase to nab Louisiana's Senator Mary Landrieu, and so on.

Another amendment was offered by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, to shame Democrats -- which of course proved impossible. S.3174 -- Grassley's "Health Reform Accountability Act," would have required the President and his little helpers, members of Congress, and their staffs to buy insurance on the exchanges if they wanted to have the government pay part of it.  

Via: Freedom Works

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STUDY: SAME NUMBER OF AMERICANS OUT OF WORK AS IMMIGRANT WORKERS REFORM BILL WOULD BRING

A new study from the Center for Immigration Studies found that 57.5 million working-age Americans are either unemployed or currently out of the labor market, a figure that matches what some estimate to be the number of immigrant workers that would be brought into the country by the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” immigration bill.

“The number of working-age (16 to 65) native-born Americans who are not working — unemployed or out of the labor market — stood at 57.5 million in the second quarter of 2013, a figure that has barely budged in the last three years,” CIS’s Steven Camarotawrote. “Partly on the grounds that there are not enough workers in the United States, the Gang of Eight Immigration bill (S.744) that recently passed the Senate would double future legal immigration." 

"Yet the more than 57 million working-age natives not working is 17 million larger than in the second quarter of 2000," Camarota explained. "The large increases in future legal immigration in S.744 seem out touch with the realities of the U.S. labor market.”

According to Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the Senate bill would bring in 57 million new workers to compete with those out-of-work Americans for jobs that are already scarce in President Barack Obama’s lagging economy.

On a conference call with reporters announcing that estimate of 57 million new workers in May, Sessions said that he thinks “this is a matter of humanitarian interest.”

“It’s an important matter, even, of civil rights,” Sessions said then. “The obligation we have as American policymakers in Congress to consider what is in the long-term national interest of America.”

Sessions asked that with approximately “47 million on food stamps, shouldn’t we be working to make sure every single American citizen now dependent on social services of the government be provided with the first opportunity to achieve a good job with a decent pay with a retirement plan and a healthcare plan? That’s got to be our goal.”

Sessions added that while legal immigration is good, the massive and unprecedented increase in numbers during a bad economy would have drastic consequences for out-of-work Americans. “This is a number that exceeds the population of the state of California, our largest state,” Sessions said. “It’s a very, very significant impact on our economy and the American people.”

Via: Breitbart

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'Duck Dynasty' Star Blasts Abortion Culture: 'What in the World Happened to Us?'

In a video featuring Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson, the TV star - in what appears to be a religious sermon - declares his pro-life stance on the issue of abortion.  When discussing the ethics of, and that there's even a debate on, the issue, he asks, "What in the world happened to us?"

"Listen, from the time you started inside your mother's womb, Thomas Jefferson had it right, you have the God-given right to life for crying out loud. You're this long (pointing to his finger). You're a week old inside your mother. They suck you out of there when you're about like that (point to finger again). You wouldn't be here tonight!

"And, when you got to be the size of my thumb, they suck you out. You wouldn't be here.  Then, you grow a little bigger, like my fist - and finally eight, nine months later you come out.

"And we debate whether it's a - some woman's right to tear you out of there a piece at a time! C'mon! You have a God-given right to live. And of all places, inside your mother - what in the world happened to us?"

Via: CNS News

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Illegal Aliens Demand Free Organ Transplants

Illegal immigrants have boldly demanded everything from civil rights in the U.S. to driver’s licenses and government benefits such as welfare and discounted tuition at public universities, so why stop there?

Now they want American taxpayers to finance their organ transplants! This is even more brazen than the discrimination lawsuits illegal aliens have filed against law enforcement agencies—both federal and local—in the U.S. over the years. To make their point, the illegal immigrants have gone on a hunger strike outside an Illinois hospital demanding free organ transplants for themselves and their fellow undocumented comrades.

This insanity is taking place outside a prestigious Chicago-area hospital, according to news reports, but it’s only a matter of time before it spreads nationwide. Dozens of demonstrators and hunger strikers have gathered outside the medical facility chanting through bullhorns and waving large signs to protest the hospital’s policy that patients must be in the U.S. legally to qualify for an organ transplant procedure.  One large, yellow sign captured in a newspaper photo says “we are also human!”

All of the protestors are from Mexico, according to the news report, and all need either a liver or kidney transplant that they can’t afford to pay for. They obviously don’t have health insurance or they wouldn’t be staging this show. So the illegal aliens want Uncle Sam to step up the plate and pick up the tab. Kidney and liver transplants costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and could run into the millions if there are complications.

The U.S. government already spends upwards of $4 billion a year to provide the millions of illegal immigrant who live here with medical care, according to figures released by a nonpartisan organization dedicated to researching both legal and illegal immigration. Most of that money goes to hospital emergency rooms and free clinics that treat the uninsured.

This has created a huge burden for hospitals nationwide that get stuck with the exorbitant cost of treating uninsured illegal immigrants. A few years ago a Florida hospital spent more than a quarter of a million dollars to fight a lawsuit from an uninsured illegal immigrant returned to his native country after racking up a $1.5 million bill. The case involved a Guatemalan Mayan farm worker who was hospitalized for 3 ½ years at the Stuart facility with severe brain injuries sustained in a car wash.

After receiving a judge’s permission, the hospital put him on a plane back to Guatemala and a legal battle ensued. The same hospital also spent a substantial amount of money treating a brain damaged illegal immigrant from Mexico for two years and, in congressional testimony, the facility’s administrator said more than half of the hospital’s births were to illegal aliens.

Via: Judicial Watch

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