Tag Archives: Affordable Care Act

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Park closure blowback going to get serious

The National Park Service has closed its operations while the government shuts down much of its operations.

And we all know what that mean for tourists who spend time and money getting to these places of interest.

While waiting this morning at the VA hospital eye clinic to have my pupils dilated, I caught an item on the Fox News Channel that highlighted the plight. A group of World War II veterans was turned away initially from the World War II Memorial on the D.C. Mall, but then the vets essentially marched through the yellow police tape to pay their respects at the memorial built in their honor and in the memory of those who fell during that great conflict.

They had gone to Washington on one of those Honor Flights, which fly veterans to the nation’s capital to tour these sites. America Supports You-Texas — once run by Amarillo resident Jack Barnes — has been a huge participant in these events, for example.

Well, Fox News talking heads sought to lay the blame for the park closure on Senate Democrats and President Obama, ignoring one key element in this discussion — which is House Republicans’ fetish that seeks to get rid of a standing law, the Affordable Care Act.

Aside from who’s to blame for this, the impact of the park closures is real. It is a true-blue shame that veterans who have flown from across the country to visit this particular memorial were told they couldn’t pay their respects.

I suspect there will be plenty more outrage expressed at all sides in this tumultuous debate. They’d better get ready for some serious blowback.

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National attention span is so … fleeting

A colleague at work posed a most interesting question the other day.

“Why is it,” he wondered, “that Americans’ lose attention so quickly on crises deemed critical to our national security? Does anyone care these days about Syria?”

He’s talking about the national fixation on the government shutdown, which has supplanted the Syria crisis as Public Issue Topic No. 1.

Hmmm, I’m still thinking about that one.

It does seem like a long time ago, when it really was just a month ago, that we were worried sick about whether we were going to start bombing Syrian military targets in retaliation for that government’s use of chemical weapons on its citizens. President Obama issued the threat. The Russians stepped in and brokered a deal that appears to have persuaded the Syrians to turn their weapons over to United Nations inspectors. We aren’t going to bomb them after all — at least for the time being.

Never fear. Leave it to members of Congress to jerk our attention away from one crisis to another.

The House of Representatives’ Republican majority, led by its tea party wing, now has determined that the Affordable Care Act, an established law, is reason enough to shut down many agencies of the government. They hate it so much that they want to include defunding it in a bill that would have kept the government open and serving the people. That, of course, is a non-starter with the president.

Concern over Syria has subsided. Now we’re worrying about the future of our own federal government.

I’m waiting for the next crisis. Oh wait. That one’s coming soon. It’s called the “debt ceiling.”

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Paychecks, please, members of Congress

I watched President Obama spell out Monday afternoon which government functions would shut down and which would remain open.

Fine, I thought. I knew that. Then he got to the part about federal employees’ pay. Those who work in, say, our national parks system, wouldn’t get paid while the government closes down their operations, according to the president.

OK. Let me stipulate once more: The people responsible for this mess need to give up their pay right along with the folks who are working on the front lines of the federal government.

I have stated already that I place the bulk of the blame on this cluster bleep on congressional Republicans who keep looking for ways to defund a health care reform that’s already been enacted and affirmed by the highest court in the land. If they were not so adamant in their hatred of the Affordable Care Act, much of the government would be operating today.

But they don’t shoulder this responsibility alone. Democrats have been on the field too. So has the president and vice president. So, how about all of them giving back their pay while the government remains shuttered? They could really do the country a service by insisting that they not collect it when operations resume fully.

None of this will matter much to the government’s bottom line. Leadership, though, at times requires leaders to demonstrate that they are willing to pay the same price as those who depend on them for their own livelihood.

Damn few of these folks need the money they earn to put groceries on the table.

Give some of it back, ladies and gentlemen, while you’re messing around with our government.

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Don’t take the money, lawmakers

I have just one wish if and when the U.S. government shuts down on Tuesday, which most experts believe is a near-certainty.

It is that members of Congress forgo their salary for every day the government doesn’t function fully.

By that I mean all 535 members of both legislative chambers, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

They’re playing chicken with each other over the Affordable Care Act, which also is scheduled to kick in on Tuesday. The tea party cabal of the Republican Party wants to defund the ACA. It is pushing a funding bill that strips money from the act, which the Congress already has enacted and the Supreme Court already has affirmed. Failure to approve a funding bill that includes that provision puts the entire government in jeopardy.

The Senate will have none of what the House tea party wing wants. Neither will President Obama.

I consider the righties within the House GOP ranks to be the major culprits, but I don’t want just them to skip their salaries. I also am angry with all of them for taking us to this brink yet again.

Realistically, I understand that lawmakers aren’t likely to give up their salary, which amounts to about $175,000 annually, plus a few perks and benefits, such as first-class public transportation. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, one of the ringleaders of the defund ACA movement says he won’t give up his money.

Whatever.

My own feeling is that if lawmakers don’t want the government to work for us, they shouldn’t allow it to pay their salaries.

Dip into your piggy banks, lawmakers.

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A few words about presidential prerogative

I have posted a blog that calls attention to the results of the 2012 presidential election.

The Affordable Care Act was the unwritten issue on the ballot, along with President Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Obama was re-elected. Romney sought to make the ACA an issue in the election. He failed.

The earlier blog note drew some attention from a friend who said we should honor the views of the 435 House of Reps members, most of whom ran on the issue of smaller government. I took issue with my friend.

I have long believed in presidential prerogative. We elect only one individual at-large in this country: the president. The vice president is elected too, of course, but that person’s fortunes depend on the person at the top of the ticket. Presidents occasionally make decisions with which I disagree, such as appointments to the Supreme Court. But that’s their call, given that voters elect them knowing what they’re getting. If a president tilts to the left, we can expect liberal judges; if they tilt to the right, we expect conservative judges. The majority speaks and the president is able to pick qualified individuals with whom he feels comfortable.

Thus, given that President Obama was re-elected it is my view that we need to take a different approach to settling this ACA debate. How about, as another friend suggested, tinker with the law, amend it, fix what’s wrong with it — as Congress did with Medicare — and make it better?

It makes no sense for Congress to seek to defund a law that it approved in 2010. The Supreme Court received a challenge to the law’s constitutionality; it chose to hear the case and then it ruled, narrowly, that the law meets constitutional muster. The ACA stands.

Of course, some ACA foes in Congress had the nerve to suggest that a slim majority of non-elected judges didn’t actually mean the law is constitutional. They forgot that the Constitution gives the court to make those rulings and doesn’t stipulate that it must be any margin greater than a simple majority.

So, now that the law still stands, the president has the authority to implement it. Yes, the Constitution also grants Congress the right to pull money from the law. However, I get back to my original point: The 2012 presidential election seemed to have settled the Affordable Care Act debate when Barack Obama got more votes than Mitt Romney and was allowed to remain president of the United States.

As the saying goes: Elections have consequences.

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Obamacare vs. Affordable Care Act

An interesting new poll has revealed a curious element of the public opinion about the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare”.

When you ask Americans if they favor “Obamacare,” 47 percent of them say they oppose it. When you ask them if their views of the Affordable Care Act, the number drops 36 percent.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101064954

“Obamacare” was the name hung on the ACA by its opponents who sought to put a derisive label on the health care reform overhaul approved by Congress in 2010. “Obamacare” has become the pejorative term of choice for those in politics and the media (such as Fox News) to use when discussing the ACA, which hasn’t even been implemented fully.

The Affordable Care Act is the legislation’s official name. It is used by those who support it. Although it’s interesting to me that President Obama occasionally uses the “Obamacare” term to describe it, all the while taking note that “Obamacare” is the critics’ term of choice.

I’m beginning to think, though, that these public opinion surveys are becoming almost as detailed as baseball statistics. You can find a stat for almost any category of hitting, pitching, fielding or base-running performance in the Grand Old Game. The same appears to be happening with public opinion polling.

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Debt ceiling battle getting serious

The Affordable Care Act takes effect soon, which won’t end the fight to end it.

Before we get back to that old fight, another old battle — a much more critical one — is being waged in Washington, D.C. It’s about the debt ceiling. Failure to increase it by Oct. 17 could send the nation into default on its obligations. Does anyone really and truly understand the cataclysm that will occur if we fail to pay our bills?

Congress has the authority to increase the amount of money the federal government can borrow to, um, pay its bills and meet its financial obligations. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives, though, is attaching a laundry list of demands on any bill to increase the debt ceiling. The list includes items that have nothing to do with the debt ceiling. They include approval of the Keystone pipeline project and federal tort reform.

President Obama says he won’t negotiate over the “full faith and credit of the United States of America.” He contends — correctly in my view — that the GOP-led House is “blackmailing” the president over the nation’s financial obligations.

President Reagan went through this as well. He scolded Republicans who ran the Senate for threatening the nation’s economic well-being by blocking efforts to increase the debt ceiling. GOP Senate leaders relented and listened to the Gipper.

This time around, House GOP leaders are telling a Democratic president to stick it in his ear.

I am not going to accept the notion that Reagan’s approving the debt ceiling 18 times during his presidency was more acceptable then because the national debt was so much smaller than it is today. The consequences of failing to act are just as grave now as they were during President Reagan’s tenure.

The major difference between then and now — as I see it — is that one major party has been hijacked by individuals who see themselves as institutional reformers. I see them as attempting to destroy the very government they took an oath to serve.

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Tea party support hits the skids

This is a most interesting report: The Gallup Poll organization says 22 percent of Americans support the tea party movement, which I’ve taken to calling the “insane wing” of the Republican Party.

The Gallup survey gives the tea party its near-lowest rating since the movement hit its peak around the time of the 2010 mid-term elections.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/324771-tea-party-hits-a-low-point-

It begs the question: Why are tea party darlings in the U.S. Senate, such as Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, getting so much air time and print space? I think it’s because they’ve been yapping the loudest and have discovered some secret formula for getting their faces on national television.

Gallup isn’t exactly a lefty-leaning polling group. The Gallup group actually tends to lean to the right, but its findings often are cited as being authoritative.

Cruz is the latest tea party golden boy to hog the spotlight, blabbering on for 21-plus hours in an attempt to derail the Affordable Care Act in the Senate. He ended up voting with the rest of them to keep funding the ACA, which seems to suggest that his Senate floor gabfest was all for show.

I’m suspecting that showboating is beginning to wear thin among Americans who want their federal government to actually do something on their behalf.

That, of course, is anathema to the tea party wing of the Republican Party.

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Cruz loves sound of his own voice

I applauded Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., some months back for actually filibustering the nomination of CIA Director John Brennan, not because I approved of his reasons, but because he actually took to the U.S. Senate floor and talked until he ran out of verbal gas.

Now another tea party golden boy, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is blabbering his brains out as I post this blog item. I have to hand it to Ted the Tattler: He, too, is yapping about this and that in an effort to derail the Affordable Care Act. Again, I disapprove of his reasons, but I have to hand it to the guy for actually filibustering.

http://news.msn.com/us/senate-moves-toward-test-vote-on-obamacare

The filibuster has become a misused instrument. Senators can “filibuster” something simply by lodging an objection. They object to a bill and then go about their business. Paul and Cruz have restored some form of “integrity” to the process.

Here, though, is where I get rankled at Ted Cruz. The new guy loves the sound of his own voice. Of that I am utterly convinced. I truly wonder whether he is motivated by something other than listening to himself talk in front of a national audience.

Do you remember when he denigrated the character of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel? He questioned whether Hagel, a Vietnam War combat veteran, had become an agent of foreign governments hostile to the United States? Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called Cruz down on the spot and said he never should question the character of someone such as Hagel, with whom McCain served in the Senate. McCain’s admonition went in one of Cruz’s ears and out the other. Cruz hasn’t shut his mouth … yet.

I’ve already wondered out loud why some members of Congress get so much air time on TV. Cruz, so new to the national spotlight, is basking in that limelight a little too comfortably to suit me. I’m wondering now if someone in the Senate is going to challenge this guy’s blustering and loudmouthed actions publicly.

He’s been in national office all of nine months and I’m sick of the sound of his voice already.

Then again, maybe that’s just me.

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Leave health care act alone, poll says

Would it surprise you to learn that a new poll says that Americans do not want Congress to defund the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare”?

It surprised me.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/most-americans-against-defunding-obamacare-cnbc-survey-4B11231267?ocid=msnhp&pos=7

CNBC’s latest survey suggests, therefore, that congressional Republicans are playing with fire in their attempt to gut a law that Congress approved, President Obama signed and the Supreme Court affirmed.

They contend the law is “failed.” How they know that is beyond me, given that it hasn’t even been implemented yet. Those all-knowing GOP lawmakers, though, are prescient enough to predict what they do not yet know.

The stakes in this game are getting a bit too rich for my stomach. The House has approved a spending measure that takes money away from Obamacare. The president will have none of it. Neither will the Democrats who run the Senate. Failure to approve the spending measure, thus, means the government could shut down.

All this is a precursor to an even bigger battle over whether to boost the nation’s debt ceiling. The tea party goofballs within the GOP don’t want to do that. Never mind that their patron saint, President Reagan, raised the debt ceiling 18 times during his two terms in office (1981-89).

Yep, Republicans are playing with fire, which is going to burn them. I don’t care about that. I do care about suffering the damage myself, especially if my retirement income starts flying out the window.