Obama invites 232 House Republicans to the White House; only 18 will attend, including Rep. Roskam

WASHINGTON-President Barack Obama invited all 200 House Democrats to the White House and will meet with them on Wednesday. All 232 House Republicans were invited to a Thursday meeting with the president at the White House. But they all won’t be coming. A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner said a group of 18 GOP House leaders, including Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) will be attending.

Boehner spokesman Brian Buck said, “Earlier today it was communicated to the speaker’s office that the president would be inviting the full House Republican Conference to a gathering at the White House tomorrow. Nine days into a government shutdown and a week away from breaching the debt ceiling, a meeting is only worthwhile if it is focused on finding a solution.

“That’s why the House Republican Conference will instead be represented by a smaller group of negotiators, including the elected leadership and certain committee chairmen. It is our hope that this will be a constructive meeting and that the president finally recognizes Americans expect their leaders to be able to sit down and resolve their differences. Timing of the meeting will be announced by the White House.”

Below is a list of meeting participants from the House:

Elected Leaders
Boehner, Cantor, McCarthy, McMorris, Rodgers, Walden, Lankford, Jenkins,Foxx, Southerland, Wagner, Roskam, Sessions

Chairmen
Ryan, Camp, Upton, Hal Rogers, Hensarling,McKeon

Via: Voices

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Big glitch: Obamacare site must reset passwords on registrants

Americans who took time to register for Obamacare at Healthcare.gov have been given a tough pill to swallow: Phone support has told individuals that passwords are being reset to fix many of the login problems and “glitches” that President Obama has acknowledged.

Recent registrants of Obamacare have been told that they will have to create new usernames, technology website Ars Technica reports. Apparently, many logins never made it into the website’s database, causing accounts to be “stuck in authentication limbo.”

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SEE ALSO: Obama now says Obamacare will bring months of ‘glitches’

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Users who make the requested changes to exit the limbo status still aren’t guaranteed that those changes will be saved in the system.

Sean Gallagher, who writes for Ars Technica, notes that it took him four minutes just to get to the signup page, but that contractors are scrambling to fix such problems.

Via: Washington Times

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POLL: DEMOCRATS LOSE LEAD IN CONGRESSIONAL GENERIC BALLOT

In another edition of the polls the media won't cover, between September 29 and October 6, Democrats have lost a four point lead in Rasmussen's generic ballot that asks voters if they would vote for a Democrat or Republican in the upcoming midterm elections. That poll is now tied at 40% - 40%. At the end of last month, Democrats led 42% - 38%.

The media continue to run headlines that read, "Poll Shows GOP Taking Share of Shutdown Blame," which is true. Most polls show Republicans are at a single-digit deficit when compared to Democrats (still, a vast improvement over the 2-to-1 deficit the GOP faced in '95). But all that matters is what happens on Election Day.

If you back up a little further, Obama and his media's entire shutdown strategy is all about 2014. The media want to give Obama a third-term, which is an accurate way of describing what will happen if Democrats retake the House.

Like this Rasmussen poll, most polls show that Democrats are only hurting themselves a wee-bit more than Republicans. But midterm House races are hyper-local base elections. Which means that another story the media won't tell is what a GOP surrender would do to turnout in the 2014.

Context matters, and while the media ignore inconvenient polls and try to scare the GOP into handing Obama a victory, the story the media won’t tell is what a surrender will do to the GOP's electoral chances if the base feels betrayed and stays home.

When you are in political trouble, you hold on to your base. That is Politics 101. That is why Obama is doing what he's doing and why Democrats are doing what they are doing.

Everyone is in political trouble, but the only Party the media are trying to coax into a full collapse is the GOP.

 Via: Breitbart

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Reality check: The United States has added two times more debt than wealth in the past two years

It’s mighty tempting to look at the current shutdown/debt-ceiling fight as some kind of perverse abstraction, and to dismiss all of the hijinks on Capitol Hill and in the White House as exhibitions happening merely for their own political sakes — i.e., to completely divorce it all from the real reason we’re actually here right now. We are a stone’s throw away from$17 trillion in national debt, with absolutely zero plans to even just stop aggressively addingto that number, let alone come anywhere close to simply breaking even. So many liberals are so blithely convinced that ‘we face no impending debt crisis’ and that the simple legislative act of once again raising the debt ceiling has no substantive reason to devolve into such a circus — but here’s a handy little chart to consider, first posted by the Weekly Standard from the Senate Budget Committee:

…When the Treasury department started using so-called extraordinary measures to avoid a breach of the debt ceiling in May, 2011, the debt limit stood at $14,294 billion.

“Today it stands at $16,699 billion, which was reached when Treasury started using extraordinary measures in May of this year.  That’s a $2,405 billion increase in 2 years.

“Meanwhile, the economy, as measured by GDP only increased by $1,199 billion between the second quarter of 2011 and the second quarter of this year.

Read: The amount of debt we incurred over the past two years was double the amount of wealth we added to our GDP; or, the rate at which our debt is growing is two times the rate at which our economy is growing — and Democrats’ only proffered solutions to this entirely unsustainable scenario are 1) increasing government spending and 2) raising taxes. Awesome.

Via: Hot AIr

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Administration: Penalties for Obamacare Kick in on Valentine's Day

You'll have to get coverage by Valentine's Day or thereabouts to avoid penalties for being uninsured, the Obama administration confirmed Wednesday.

That's about six weeks earlier than a Mar. 31 deadline often cited previously.
The explanation: health insurance coverage typically starts on the first day of a given month, and it takes up to 15 days to process applications.

You still have to be covered by Mar. 31 to avoid the new penalties for remaining uninsured. But to successfully accomplish that you have to send in your application by the middle of February. Coverage would then start on Mar. 1.

The Jackson Hewitt tax preparation company first pointed out the wrinkle with the health care law's least popular requirement.

An administration official confirmed it. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

It's the latest tweak involving complex requirements of President Barack Obama's health care law, known as the Affordable Care Act. Previous adjustments have ranged from the momentous to the mundane. The biggest one was a one-year delay of a requirement that larger employers offer coverage, announced this summer. More recently, the administration has postponed some Spanish-language capabilities of its enrollment website, as well as full functionality on the site small businesses use to sign up.

Brian Haile, senior vice president for health policy at Jackson Hewitt, said government agencies initially had different interpretations of the enrollment deadline. The Health and Human Services department, which is taking the lead in implementing the law, kept referring to a Mar. 31 deadline. But the Internal Revenue Service, which handles most of the financial aspects, suggested that the deadline had to be in February.

"There were inconsistencies," said Haile, adding it took several inquiries by Jackson Hewitt over the last few weeks to clear up the uncertainty.

Via: Newsmax

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Supreme Court wades into campaign finance law’s sea of complexity

WASHINGTON — A sharply divided Supreme Court appeared ready Tuesday to strike down overall limits on how much individuals can give to federal candidates and parties.

In one of the new term’s most politically charged cases, conservative justices made clear their skepticism about the current contribution limits. The tenor of the hour-long oral argument suggested that an eventual 5-4 decision could result that strikes down the aggregate limits, which currently restrict an individual to giving $123,200 to candidates and parties over a two-year election cycle.

“You can’t pretend that that is pursued with no First Amendment cost,” Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. told Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr.

The Obama administration’s top lawyer, Verrilli insisted that “aggregate limits combat corruption,” and he warned that “the risk of corruption is real” as money flows through the political pipelines. Federal candidates, parties and committees reported raising and spending more than $7 billion during 2011 and 2012, according to the Federal Election Commission.

But while Verrilli acknowledged the contribution limits are “not free of First Amendment cost,” Roberts pressed harder, noting that the limits effectively restrict how many candidates a donor can express support for through a campaign contribution. Roberts added that no one would think of applying that to other forms of political expression, like newspaper articles.

Via: McCLatchyDC

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Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/10/08/204717/supreme-court-wades-into-campaign.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/10/08/204717/supreme-court-wades-into-campaign.html#storylink=cpy

OBAMACARE HAS ‘RAPED MY FUTURE,’ COLLEGE GRAD SAYS IN VIRAL LETTER

A 26-year-old university graduate penned an open letter this week expressing her deep displeasure with President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, saying it has “raped” her future — and now the letter is going viral.

Ashley Dionne, a recent college graduate, posted the letter detailing her experience with Obamacare on conservative radio host Dennis Prager’s Facebook page Monday. She said she received her bachelor’s degree in 2009 and went back to school for a second degree, but hasn’t been able to get more than 32 hours of work a week.

An anti-Obamacare letter penned by a recent college graduate is now going viral. (Image source: Facebook)

The letter was reposted by Prager later that night and has since been shared more than 1,000 times on Facebook.

Dionne told college news website Campus Reform she wrote the letter to warn the public of the problems with the Affordable Care Act.

“I wanted to get my message about Obamacare out, because I’m being directly and negatively affected by it, but I know it’s not just me,” Dionne said. “Obamacare will make my life more difficult.”

She added, “It will hurt more people than it will help.”

Via: The Blaze

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D.C. mayor Gray confronts Reid on Capitol steps over shutdown’s impact on city

An unusual confrontation took place on the U.S. Capitol steps Wednesday when District Mayor Vincent C. Gray crashed a news conference held by Senate Democrats and asked Majority Leader Harry Reid to exempt the city from the ongoing shutdown.

“Sir, we are not a department of the government,” Gray told Reid moments after the mayor concluded his own press event about 50 yards from where Reid held one. “We’re simply trying to be able to spend our own money.”

“I’m on your side, don’t screw it up, okay? Don’t screw it up,” Reid (Nev.) told his fellow Democrat.

The intraparty tension comes after the Republican-controlled House voted last week to pass a bill allowing the District to use its locally raised tax funds to maintain operations until Dec. 15. But Democrats, including Reid and President Obama, have held fast in opposition to piecemeal funding bills, saying Republicans must come to a deal to fund the entire government, not just favored segments.

The District government has tapped a $144 million contingency cash reserve fund to keep its 32,000 employees on the job since the federal shutdown took effect Oct. 1. But the city has frozen many of its outgoing payments in order to conserve the contingency account, which is expected to be exhausted sometime next week.

At their own news conference on the Capitol grounds Wednesday, Gray and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) highlighted the partisan contradictions while detailing the drastic effect of the cash crunch on the District government — including schools, health care, services for the disabled and senior programs.

Via: Washington Post

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