Tag Archives: Obamacare

News

Democrats refuse another offer from Republicans to avoid government shutdown

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As expected, the Senate Democrats rejected the compromise on Tuesday.

Last Night, Senate Democrats Voted Along Party Lines To Shut Down The Government Rather Than Agree To Delay Obamacare’s Individual Mandate And Surrender Their Special Insurance Subsidies. “In an extraordinary back-and-forth between the House and Senate that extended late into the night, Democrats beat back attempt after attempt to gut President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. After Senate Democrats rejected the House’s year-long delay of Obamacare and a repeal of the medical device tax on Monday afternoon, Democrats returned to the floor after 9 p.m. to kill another House GOP proposal. The second measure would have kept the government open in exchange for delaying the health care law’s individual mandate and eliminating federal health care contributions for lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides. (Burgess Everett and Manu Raju, “Government Shutdown Update: Senate Rejects House Plan – Again,” Politico, 9/30/13)

According To The Congressional Budget Office, Delaying The Individual Mandate By One Year Would Reduce The Federal Budget Deficit By $35 Billion. “CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting H.R. 2668 would reduce federal deficits by roughly $36 billion over the 2014-2018 period and by roughly $35 billion over the 2014-2023 period.” (Cost Estimate Of H.R. 2668: An Act To Delay The Application Of The Individual Health Insurance Mandate, To Delay The Application Of The Employer Health Insurance Mandate, And For Other Purposes, Congressional Budget Office, 9/6/13)

A July Poll Found That 77 Percent Of Registered Voters Support Delaying The Individual Mandate Or Repealing It Entirely. (Morning Consult Poll, 2,076 RV, MOE 2%, 7/24-26/13)

Member of Congress And Their Staff Are Required To Enroll In ObamaCare’s Exchanges. “Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, then succeeded in adding a measure to Obama’s health care bill three years ago requiring members of Congress and employees in their offices to leave the Federal Employee Health Benefits program and start buying their insurance through the state exchanges that open Tuesday under the Obamacare law.” (Laurie Kellman, “GOP demanded lawmakers pay more for health care,” The Associated Press, 10/1/13)

But OPM Granted Congress The Ability To Provide Subsidies, Which Are Not Available For Other Americans, To Help Purchase Insurance Though The Exchanges. “But the statute means that about 11,000 Members and Congressional staff will lose the generous coverage they now have as part of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). Instead they will get the lower-quality, low-choice “Medicaid Plus” of the exchanges. The Members-annual salary: $174,000-and their better paid aides also wouldn’t qualify for ObamaCare subsidies. That means they could be exposed to thousands of dollars a year in out-of-pocket insurance costs…And now the White House is suspending the law to create a double standard. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that runs federal benefits will release regulatory details this week, but leaks to the press suggest that Congress will receive extra payments based on the FEHBP defined-contribution formula, which covers about 75% of the cost of the average insurance plan. For 2013, that’s about $4,900 for individuals and $10,000 for families.” (Editorial, “Congress’s ObamaCare Exemption,” The Wall Street Journal, 8/5/13)

I listened to a recent episode of the Weekly Standard podcast, and guest Bill Kristol was advising the GOP to make exactly this proposal, saying that it was a strong move by the Republicans. I agree. We now have vulnerable Democrats going on record in favor of special perks for themselves and their staff, as well as the hated individual mandate. As soon as people see the sticker shock of being forced to buy insurance, or pay a fine, we are going to have a valuable tool in the 2014 elections. The left-wing media isn’t going to be able to protect the Democrats from their own votes.

UPDATE: The Weekly Standard approves of what the GOP is doing.

News

House Republicans offer deal: delay Obamacare for a year, no government shutdown

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This new House bill is a good compromise – even Tea Party stalwart Ted Cruz has endorsed it.

Excerpt:

During a speech on the Senate floor Monday afternoon, Texas senator Ted Cruz endorsed the latest House bill to fund the government. This continuing resolution would not defund Obamacare, as Cruz has demanded for months, but it would delay Obamacare’s individual mandate by one year and end employer subsidies for members of Congress and their staff.

During his speech, Cruz praised the House of Represenatives for trying to compromise and criticized Senate majority leader Harry Reid for refusing to negotiate. Senator John Cornyn, Cruz’s Republican colleague from Texas, then pointed out that the House will reportedly pass a continuing resolution that will include a delay the individual mandate and the Vitter amendment.

Cruz said that the Senate should pass “whatever” the House passes this evening.

“If the House of Representatives asks tonight I believe this Senate should come back immediately and pass the continuing resolution the House–whatever the House passes,” Cruz said. “I don’t know what it will be, but it will be yet another good faith effort to keep the government running and to address the trainwreck of a law that is Obamacare. And I very much hope that this body begins to listen to the people.”

Cruz’s comments mark an apparent shift in his position on defunding Obamacare. During his 22-hour speech on Obamacare last week, Cruz said he could not support a compromise.

[…]Monday evening, the Club for Growth endorsed the House compromise but Heritage Action opposed it.

Not sure how I feel about this compromise, because this Wall Street Journal article makes it sound like a good deal.

Excerpt:

Air traffic control will continue, in addition to airport and airplane safety inspections.  All Federal Highway Administration activities will also continue.

[…]The IRS will cancel audit appointments.

[…]The Department of Education could have to delay its issuing of competitive and formula grant awards later this year.

[…]Workplace dispute cases would not be resolved until after the shutdown, as the National Labor Relations Board would halt all case handling.

[…]Agency functions that protect national security and ensure human safety are exempt from the shutdown. Military operations, border security, coastal protection (including the Coast Guard), law enforcement, criminal investigations, counter-terrorism efforts and care of prisoners are all expected to continue. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. Marshals Service will all continue to function. The Transportation Security Administration will continue to staff airports.

On Friday, the Pentagon warned that a government shutdown could force the Defense Department to furlough about 400,000 civilian workers, delay military contracts and defer training.

The move would impact about half the department’s 800,000 civilian employees, most of whom were required to take six unpaid days off earlier this year as a result of the automatic spending cuts imposed under so-called sequestration.

Because of the unique role the Pentagon plays in protecting the country, defense officials are planning to exempt large numbers of people and projects. All active duty military personnel will not be furloughed – and large numbers of civilians supporting the war in Afghanistan and other essential military initiatives will stay on the job.

Pentagon leaders created a long list of exemptions, including counseling services for sexual assault victims, some child care facilities, and some base cafeterias.

[…] The U.S. Postal Service will continue to function as usual.

Social Security payments will continue to go out, and the administration is expected to continue taking applications for benefits, as in plans released Friday. In that plan, the agency said it will furlough 18,006 of its 62,343 workers.

Medicare and Medicaid payments will also continue, although the programs could encounter difficulty if the shutdown stretches into weeks.

[…]Food and Drugs: The Food and Drug Administration will continue its review of imports into the U.S., according to the Department of Health and Human Services’ plan released Friday.

Inspection of meat, poultry and egg products will continue, as these functions fall under the category of human safety. The HHS will furlough 40,512 workers, 52% of its staff.

Disease: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will cease disease surveillance, which could be particularly problematic as flu season approaches.

Medical care of inpatients and emergency outpatient care will continue.

The National Institutes of Health clinical center will not accept new patients into clinical research, but it will continue to provide medical services for current patients. In the 1995-96 shutdowns, calls placed to NIH’s disease hotline were not answered, according to the CRS report.

Obamacare: The Affordable Care Act will continue to be funded.

Other: Handling of hazardous waste, disaster assistance and power grid maintenance will continue.

On balance, it doesn’t sound like the catastrophe that the left-wing media make it out to be, at least for a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are refusing to negotiate.

News

Obamacare health insurance exchanges impose massive penalties on married couples

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Hans Bader explains on the Competitive Enterprise Institute blog.

Excerpt: (links removed)

On the Obamacare health insurance exchanges, being married can cost you a lot. Get divorced (or avoid getting married, if you live together), and you save $7,230 per year if you are a fairly typical 40-year-old couple with kids (example: the husband working full-time, and the wife working part time, with the husband making $70,000, and the wife making $23,000). If you are a 60-year-old couple with equal incomes and no kids, and you make $62,041 a year, you save $11,028 a year by getting divorced or remaining unmarried. These are the amounts of money you will lose if you get married, since you will lose this amount of taxpayer subsidies due to Obamacare’s discriminatory treatment of married versus unmarried couples. That’s the reality confirmed by an Obamacare “calculator” provided by the pro-Obamacare Kaiser Family Foundation showing how Obamacare’s “tax credits” work.

It’s not the first time that the Democrats have introduced additional marriage penalties:

The tax increases Obama demanded in the fiscal cliff deal also contain a “marriage penalty,” although only for upper-income households (since the maximum rate kicks in at $450,000 for married couples — that is, $225,000 for each spouse — versus $400,000 for singles). Obamacare’s new tax on investment income, which applies to married couples making above $250,000 per year, also contains marriage penalties (for example, if an unmarried couple makes $390,000 — $195,000 for each partner — they owe no investment tax, even if all of their income is investment income, and even if a married couple with the same income would pay the Obamacare investment tax on a significant portion of their income).

Historically, the effect of marriage penalties has been most profound for working-class people, who are punished severely for getting married by the welfare state. As Rep. Thomas Petri (R-Wisc.) has noted, “The decline in marriage and the rise in the number of children born to unmarried mothers are concentrated among lower-income families. One reason is that lower-income couples will often lose money if they get married. Many federal benefits such as food stamps and the earned income tax credit phase out as income rises. Under federal law, if two individuals earning the minimum wage choose to marry, combining their incomes results in the loss of some $7,000 in federal benefits. The result: Fewer marriages, more births outside marriage and reduced prospects for rising into the middle class.”

The article goes on to explain why Obamacare penalizes does who work, but I want to stick with the Democrat antipathy to marriage.

Radical feminism opposes marriage

Why do Democrats want traditional marriage to go away? Well, because Democrats are radical feminists, and radical feminists want marriage to go away.

Here’s a research paper written in 2003 from the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt: (footnote numbering and links removed)

In her 1996 book In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age, Judith Stacey, Professor of Gender Studies and Sociology at the University of Southern California, consigned traditional marriage to the dustbin of history. Stacey contended that “Inequity and coercion…always lay at the vortex of that supposedly voluntary `compassionate marriage’ of the traditional nuclear family.” She welcomed the fact that traditional married-couple families (which she terms “The Family”) are being replaced by single-mother families (which she terms the postmodern “family of woman”):

Perhaps the postmodern “family of woman” will take the lead in burying The Family at long last. The [married nuclear] Family is a concept derived from faulty theoretical premises and an imperialistic logic, which even at its height never served the best interests of women, their children, or even many men…. The [nuclear married] family is dead. Long live our families!

Stacey urged policymakers to abandon their concern with restoring marital commitment between mothers and fathers and instead “move forward toward the postmodern family regime,” characterized by single parenthood and transitory relationships.

In 1996, Claudia Card, professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, continued the attack:

The legal rights of access that married partners have to each other’s persons, property, and lives makes it all but impossible for a spouse to defend herself (or himself), or to be protected against torture, rape, battery, stalking, mayhem, or murder by the other spouse…. Legal marriage thus enlists state support for conditions conducive to murder and mayhem.

Other radical feminists suggested that a culture of self-sufficiency and high turnover in intimate relationships is the key to independence and protection from hostile home life. Activist Fran Peavey, in a 1997 Harvard article ironically titled “A Celebration of Love and Commitment,” suggested that “Instead of getting married for life, men and women (in whatever combination suits their sexual orientation) should sign up for a seven-year hitch. If they want to reenlist for another seven, they may, but after that, the marriage is over.” Also in 1997, radical feminist author Ashton Applewhite, in her book Cutting Loose–Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well proclaimed: “Women who end their marriages are far better off afterward.”

Another feminist widely read during the 1990s was Barbara Ehrenreich, a former columnist with Time magazine who now writes for The Nation. Throughout her work, Ehrenreich extols single parenthood and disparages marriage. Divorce, she argues, produces “no lasting psychological damage” for children. What America needs is not fewer divorces but more “good divorces.” Rather than seeking to strengthen marriage, policymakers “should concentrate on improving the quality of divorce.” In general, Ehrenreich concludes that single parenthood presents no problems that cannot be solved by much larger government subsidies to single parents.

Ehrenreich writes enthusiastically about efforts to move beyond the narrow limits of the nuclear married family toward more rational forms of human relationship:

There is a long and honorable tradition of “anti-family” thought. The French philosopher Charles Fourier taught that the family was a barrier to human progress; early feminists saw a degrading parallel between marriage and prostitution. More recently, the renowned British anthropologist Edmund Leach stated, “far from being the basis of the good society, the family with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all discontents.”

While Ehrenreich recognizes that men and women are inevitably drawn to one another, she believes male-female relationships should be ad hoc, provisional, and transitory. She particularly disparages the idea of long-term marital commitment between fathers and mothers. In the future, children will be raised increasingly by communal groups of adults. These children apparently will fare far better than those raised within the tight constraints of the nuclear married family “with its deep impacted tensions.”

The paper goes on to explain how these messages have entered into college textbooks. College textbooks used in classes where young women are expected to agree with the textbooks in order to get their good grades. This is what your children will learn. It’s not what you think feminism is that matters – it’s what they think feminism is. And what they think is what the textbooks tell them to think – or else they get drummed out of the university. This is where the 42% out-of-wedlock birth rate came from. And why our children are growing up without fathers, and as a consequence of that, growing further and further away from God. Marriage is bad, feminists tell us, because husbands and their traditional roles are bad. So what are men for? To donate sperm and to pay taxes for welfare programs that make men and marriage superfluous. In the past, men married because they wanted the responsibility of the traditional male roles of protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader. If you want to know why men aren’t marrying now, look to the policies that have removed the respect and responsibility that men enjoyed within their family and from society for taking on these traditional roles. We have been replaced by government, and radical feminism is to blame.

You can read more about what radical feminists think about marriage here, and realize that this is animating Democrat policy-making. If you want marriage, make sure you don’t vote for a party that is trying to destroy it by every means possible – from redefinition, to divorce, to welfare, to exaggerations about domestic violence, to punitive taxation policies – and beyond. If you are a child of divorce, thank a Democrat. That was their intention – to deprive you of the stability you needed when you were growing up. One last point: it doesn’t really address the policy issue when pro-marriage conservatives think that the solution to the decline of marriage is to tell men to “man up”. That’s an easy solution for empty-headed church leaders, but it doesn’t reflect the real incentives that exist, thanks to policies pushed by the left.