Heller Wants All Congressional Staff in Obamacare Exchanges

Sen. Dean Heller is asking the Office of Management and Budget to require all congressional staff to get health care through the new exchanges.

The Nevada Republican’s letter comes one day after two other Senate Republicans announced legislation to require senior executive branch officials and all congressional staff to get their health care through the Obamacare exchanges. Those senators were Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming and David Vitter of Louisiana.

The full letter appears below:

The Honorable Elaine Kaplan

Acting Director

Office of Personnel Management

1900 E Street, NW

Washington, D.C. 20415

Dear Acting Director Kaplan:

I write to you today expressing my disappointment with your agency’s proposed rule to amend the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program regarding coverage for Members of Congress and their staff. Rather than seizing this opportunity to clearly mandate that all Congressional staff, including Committee and Leadership, be subject to the consequences of ObamaCare, you simply perpetuated this uncertainty. This is a missed opportunity for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which currently administers and operates Congressional health care, to ensure that all Congressional staff, including Committee and Leadership, play by the same rules as the American taxpayer.

Since my time on the House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee, I pushed for legislation to include all Members of Congress and their dependents in the exchanges. As details became clearer as to who would be exempt from the legislation, I asked that all Congressional staff, the President, and political appointees be included under the exchanges so we could avoid this exact issue we face today. As you issue your final rule in order to comply with Section 1312 of the Affordable Care Act, I encourage you to clarify this issue once and for all and require in addition to Members of Congress that all Congressional staff – Committee and Leadership – to go into the exchanges. In the absence of such a regulatory certainty, Congress should provide a legislative fix that will determine who is and who is not covered under the exchanges. I have cosponsored legislation with Senator David Vitter (R-LA), requiring Leadership and Committee staff, as well as the executive branch, to be included under the health care exchanges so that the application of this section of the Affordable Care Act can finally be determined. I will continue to push both Senate and House Leadership for consideration of this legislation.

By no means should those who wrote this massive health care law be exempt from the health care exchanges. When the Administration issued its draft rule determining how this law applies to staff, this principle should have been made very clear. Let me reiterate my deep concern for the implementation of the health care exchanges. However, if every American must be subject to ObamaCare, then all Members of Congress and their staff, you, and all political appointees must be included in this onerous mandate as well.

Sincerely,

DEAN HELLER

U.S. Senator

Via: Roll Call
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OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TARGETS PRIVATE SCHOOLS

This article was originally published by the Heartland Institute.

Several commentators have justly piled on the Obama administration’s craven legal challenge to a Louisiana voucher program that offers a way out of rotten schools for predominantly black, poor children. The U.S. Department of Justice’s charge? Vouchers may change, by minuscule percentages, the ratio of black to white children at some schools. Therefore, it’s better to keep all kids in failing schools. Cato’s Andrew Coulson wryly notes this effectively tells black parents their choices hurt black people.

Furthermore, as The Wall Street Journal writes, “The evidence from around the country is that vouchers enhance racial integration. Public school attendance is mainly determined by geography, so segregated neighborhoods produce segregated schools.”

There’s more at work here, however. The Obama administration’s Louisiana lawsuit is part of a habit of seeking to control states and private institutions. This spring, for example, the DOJ also demanded that Wisconsin impose more regulations on and inspections of private voucher schools, alleging this was necessary to alleviate discrimination against special-needs students although literally no evidence of this exists. And, of course, although no federal budget has existed since the president took office, each time it surfaces he attempts to use it to cancel vouchers for more poor, predominantly black students in Washington, DC.

Consider also the effects of the president’s signature initiative, Obamacare, on private schools, which are largely religious. They’re worried. Depending on how legal challenges play out, the health care law may force religious schools to hire employees whose morality conflicts with their mission, and to pay for medical procedures that violate their First Amendment freedom of conscience. Imagine a Catholic school being forced to hire a Buddhist religion teacher, or a Mormon school being forced to pay for abortions.

It is increasingly clear that, voucher regulations or no voucher regulations, private schools offer no safe place to tuck children as long as the federal government persists in overstepping the bounds of law and rationality to impose autocrats’ wills on everyone.

Via: Human Events

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A Devastating Affirmative-Action Failure

The Los Angeles Times recently published a devastating case study in the malign effects of academic racial preferences. The University of California, Berkeley, followed the diversocrat playbook to the letter in admitting Kashawn Campbell, a South Central Los Angeles high-school senior, in 2012: It disregarded his level of academic preparation, parked him in the black dorm — the “African American Theme Program” — and provided him with a black-studies course.

The results were thoroughly predictable. After his first semester, reports the Times:

[Kashawn] had barely passed an introductory science course. In College Writing 1A, his essays — pockmarked with misplaced words and odd phrases — were so weak that he would have to take the class again.

His writing often didn’t make sense. He struggled to comprehend the readings for [College Writing] and think critically about the text.

“It took awhile for him to understand there was a problem,” [his instructor] said. “He could not believe that he needed more skills. He would revise his papers and each time he would turn his work back in having complicated it. The paper would be full of words he thought were academic, writing the way he thought a college student should write, using big words he didn’t have command of.”

Via: National Review Online

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Obama Administration: Its Incompetence Is Historic By Michael Barone

Evidence of the astonishing incompetence of the Obama administration continues to roll in.

It started with the stimulus package. One-third of the money went to public employee union members -- a political payoff not very stimulating to anyone else. Billions went to green energy loans, like the $500 million that the government lost in backing the obviously hapless Solyndra.

Infrastructure projects, which the president continues to tout, never seem to get built. He's been talking about dredging the port of Charleston, for example, to accommodate the big container ships coming in when the Panama Canal is widened.

The canal widening is proceeding on schedule to be completed in 2014. The target date for dredging the port of Charleston: 2024.

Then there's Obamacare. Barack Obama has already said the administration will not enforce the employer mandate, will not verify eligibility for insurance subsidies and will not require employer-provided policies to cap employees' out-of-pocket costs.

The Constitution's requirement that the president take care to faithfully execute the laws apparently does not apply.

Obamacare administrators continue to miss deadlines set by the health-care law -- 41 of 82 of them, according to Forbes' Avik Roy's reading of Congressional Research Service report.

Then there's the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. According to the law firm Davis Polk, the administration as of July had missed 62 percent of the deadlines in that law.

All of which indicates incompetence in drafting or in implementing the legislation -- likely both. We have a president who delights in delivering partisan speeches to adoring audiences but doesn't seem interested in whether his administration gets results.

Via: Real Clear Politics

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Al Sharpton: Obama is 'the new Kennedy because of Dr. King'

Rev. Al Sharpton's love for President Obama was on full display Wednesday, when he said on MSNBC that he told Obama that he "is the new [President] Kennedy because of Dr. [Martin Luther] King."

Sharpton made the comments to MSNBC host Richard Liu on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington led by King. It was on this day in 1963 that King delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech.

"A lot of the media is trying to make [Obama] the new King," Sharpton said. "He's the result of King. He's the President Kennedy of today, the President Johnson of today."

When Liu asked what the anniversary meant to Obama, Sharpton said he thinks "it puts a sense of obligation on him that he is manifesting the dreams and wishes of many and that history is calling him to take a real stand that would show that the sacrifices and pain was not for nothing and that he must continue this struggle."

Sharpton said that Obama was not a civil rights leader, but as president he could lay out policies that would further the work of civil rights leaders.

Via: Washington Examiner

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