Tag Archives: political parties

Yet Another

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…Alinsky-esque distraction by the Ctl-Left.  This one is on the matter of Obamacare subsidies to health coverage providers to compensate them “for reducing out-of-pocket costs for some low-income consumers who sign up for plans on the exchanges.”

The Obama administration paid billions of our tax dollars to these providers, the amount for this year alone looks to be in the neighborhood of $7 billion, with the annual payout looking to rise to $16 billion in 10 years.

The House has sued to block further payments because no funds were appropriated for them, and so they’re illegal.  A number of State AGs are seeking to intervene in the suit.

More than a dozen Democratic state attorneys general took legal action Thursday seeking to preserve billions of dollars in federal subsidy payments….

It’s a fair debate to have in the courts, although, absent appropriation, there’s no money to spend, and so it would seem illegal to spend.

Now comes the cynical distraction.  New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said,

Millions of families across the country—including hundreds of thousands right here in New York—rely on these subsidies for their basic health care[.]

As if that’s relevant to the legality of the matter.  The courts should allow the spending independently of the law because tear-jerking.

Schneiderman is demonstrating the intellectual, legal, and moral bankruptcy of the Ctl-Left’s demands.  They’re wholly unable to present a case, and so they stoop to emotionalism.

Foolish

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President Donald Trump is willing to talk to the Progressive-Democrats in Congress in order to achieve tax reform, and it might seem like a good idea.  In the present situation, though, it’s a waste of time.

As the Trump administration reached across the aisle on tax reform for the first time Wednesday, Democrats communicated some requests of their own regarding the tax overhaul. Those requests included a middle class tax cut and that the overall bill not be part of a reconciliation package….

Of course the Progressive-Democrats don’t want a tax reform to be part of a reconciliation bill.  That way they can hold true reform hostage to their Big Government demands.  This is just Lucy offering to hold the football for Charlie Brown so she can jerk it away at the last moment.

It’s a waste of time to try to deal with a party that, at least since then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) said he’d refuse to work with a President Mitt Romney, refuses to work with or cooperate with Republicans in Congress or the White House (vis., “revise Obamacare our way, or we won’t talk to you”).

Senate Democrat Obstructionism, More of

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Present Donald Trump, as many of you are aware, has nominated 10 conservative persons to judgeships in a number of Federal districts and Federal appellate courts.  Senate Progressive-Democrats are, of course, objecting.  One of those nominees (David Stras) is a Minnesota judge nominated to the 8th Circuit.  Senator Al Franken (D, MN) is…concerned…because nobody consulted him on the matter, and he’s threatening to block Stras.  There’s no petty, precious arrogance there.  Mm, mm.  Not a bit.

Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) is more broadly “concerned.”

[A]s long as we have the [blue-slip] authority, we’ll use it if necessary.

“Blue slip authority” is the courtesy the Senate extends to Senators of the State from which a nominee hales: either of those Senators can issue a “blue slip” that withdraws the nominee from consideration until the slip issuer is satisfied regarding whatever concern led him to issue the slip.

However, the blue slip authority isn’t an authority.  It has no locus in law or Senate rules; it’s merely custom. It’s time for Republicans to move ahead on nominations regardless of any blue slips that might be launched like kites in the winds blowing from the Left.

It’s time to start ignoring the Progressive-Democrats’ knee-jerk #NeverTrumpNoWay attitude and ride over it.

Going Soft

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Senate pseudo-Republicans are balking at one good item that was contained the House-passed American Health Care Act: repeal of Obamacare’s trillion dollars’ worth of taxes.  These guys actually don’t see the value of that repeal.  Senator Susan Collins (R, ME) is typical:

I don’t see how you can repeal all of the pay-fors…and still meet the goal of providing health-insurance coverage for people who truly need assistance[.]

Aside from the false premise of needing Federal government “pay-fors” as a default position, rather than a last result, the Lady from Maine and her fellows plainly either don’t understand free market principles, or they have no confidence in free markets.

One path for the Senate could be a repeal of the taxes but a delay in the effective dates.

This is the only legitimate point of discussion on the repeal of these taxes.  The AHCA makes the repeal retroactive to 1 Jan 2017.  It’s the repeal that’s important, not its date of effectivity.  Effective 1 Jan 2018 is fine, so is a date (certain) in 2019, to the extent health coverage providers, businesses, and individual citizens need time to plan and prepare.  The repeal itself, however, must be inarguable.

I’ve decried the House’s Freedom Caucus of No, but the Caucus of Squish in the Senate is going too far in the other direction.  These folks need to do the job they were sent to the Senate to do vis-à-vis Obamacare and our nation’s health provision and health coverage industries.  Failing to repeal the Obamacare taxes in addition to the reductions in other business and personal taxes that have been proposed is unacceptable.  If the Caucus of Squish fails to do this, its members need to be replaced at the next available elections for each of them.

If that costs the Republican Party control of the Senate, well—how will we tell the difference?  The Caucus of Squish is, with its timidity, worse even than the Progressive-Democratic Party.

The Freedom Caucus of No

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Daniel Henninger had some thoughts in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal on this group’s first 100 days; read the whole thing.  I’m interested in one aspect of the No-ers’ first 100 days that Henninger was too polite to say out loud.  Henninger pointed out

Back in 2016, Speaker Paul Ryan and the House leadership held public hearings, conducted negotiations inside the House conference, and published texts of the proposed legislation to repeal and reform ObamaCare. The American Health Care Act that emerged from this process had both a political and policy purpose.

Its political purpose was to create a bill that could survive the House, survive the Senate, survive a conference and make it to Mr Trump’s desk to fulfill one of his and the party’s biggest political promises.

The policy purpose was to lay a foundation on which Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and his SWAT team of reformers, such as Indiana Medicaid specialist Seema Verma, could help Congress clean up the rest of ObamaCare over the next two years—moving away from the 2010 law’s 2,000 pages of legal babel and toward a market-based system.

But no (to coin a phrase).

The Freedom Caucus rose to say none of these pieces of the president’s legislative agenda could move forward until it got what it wanted: elimination of ObamaCare’s 10 essential health benefits.

The No-ers didn’t hold out for this sort of thing during those prior negotiations.  No, they waited until the American Health Care Act was before the public, hoping to extort concessions from President Trump and/or from their supposed fellow Republicans in the House.

The No-ers, with their behavior, have betrayed their own constituents by sticking them with continued Obamacare, a steaming swamp these persons have been pretending to want to get rid of.

If the Freedom Caucus of No welched on their 2016 agreement regarding health care, how can they be trusted with anything today?