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Leaked Emails: Boehner Worked With Reid to Save Lawmaker Subsidies
House Speaker John Boehner Monday called on colleagues to ban an exemption lawmakers and staff receive for health insurance, but he and his aides had worked for months with Democratic leaders to save the subsidies, leaked documents and emails show.
The documents were provided to Politico, which revealed Tuesday morning that Boehner and aides were working closely with Democratic rivals to protect the payments.
Roll Call had earlier reported that Democrats were mulling divulging the private communications between Boehner Chief of Staff Mike Sommers and Reid Chief of Staff David Krone as proof that Boehner was trying to protect the payments.
The revelations are sure to cause more friction between Boehner and more conservative members of the House of Representatives, who have been pressing for all Obamacare exemptions for Congress to be scrapped.
The documents show Boehner and his aides discussed the matter with the offices of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, and others. Further, the documents show that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell knew of the discussions.
A possible legislative solution was drafted, the documents show, and they continued to push for a solution from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Further, Boehner and Reid asked for a meeting with President Barack Obama to lobby him for help, the documents show. The meeting never happened, but a senior Boehner aide was able to speak to White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough about the Speaker’s wish to retain the employer subsidy.
Obamacare requires lawmakers and staff to join insurance exchanges, and the debate over whether they should continue collecting the employer contribution from the federal government has been the source of many heated discussions.
The OPM ruled that lawmakers and their staff could not receive employer payments once they went into the subsidies. The office reversed its decision, saying the employer payments could continue.
But Boehner put the issue into the government shutdown debate, attaching an amendment ending the subsidies to a House GOP funding bill.
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel told Politico the White House should solve the problem, and that “we always made it clear that House would not pass any legislative fix.”
He said Boehner was aware that Reid and the White House had been discussing the issue and that the speaker’s “fix is repealing Obamacare.”
Boehner’s office said the leak shows how concerned Democrats are.
“Any emails from Mr. Sommers will reflect the Speaker’s position: he voted against ObamaCare, and he wants to repeal Obamacare,” Steel said. “If the Senate Democrats and the White House want to make a ‘fix’ to the law, it would be their fix. The Speaker’s ‘fix’ is repeal. This is just a desperate act by Harry Reid’s staff to protect their own subsidy.”
Reid communications director Adam Jentleson, meanwhile, said his boss worked closely with Boehner and was grateful for his help.
Roll Call reported the communications could back up Democrats’ claims that Boehner’s decision to add an amendment revoking the contributions was a shot at vulnerable Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2014, such as Kay Hagan of North Carolina or Mark Pryor of Arkansas.
Senate Republicans actually do have the votes to stop Obamacare
“I want to be absolutely crystal clear — any bill that defunds Obamacare is dead. Dead.”
That was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) telling reporters last week that there would not be the votes to pass a House Republican plan to defund the health care law via the continuing resolution.
Something he and his colleagues might consider, however, is that that really cuts both ways.
Republicans have 46 members in the U.S. Senate, more than enough to defeat cloture on any continuing resolution that will ultimately result in Obamacare being funded.
To do so, they will first have to block a parliamentary maneuver by Reid to proceed to the continuing resolution in a manner that will allow the defund Obamacare language to be stripped out with a simple majority vote.
According to Breitbart.com’s Matthew Boyle, “They could refuse to grant cloture in the first place until a unanimous consent agreement is reached in the Senate that any amendment added to the bill post-cloture would also be subject to a 60-vote threshold. They could also require Reid to fill what is known as the ‘amendment tree,’ a list of amendments that is the maximum of what could be considered on a bill, with amendments other than that one, before agreeing to grant cloture.”
But, reports Boyle, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refuses to commit to using all the tools in his parliamentary toolbox to do just that. He would be well advised, however, that consciously voting to proceed to any bill that invariably winds up funding Obamacare — even if the amendment to strip the defund language is to be agreed to post-cloture — is just the same as proceeding to a bill where the defund language had already been removed.
Yet, Senate Republicans appear to be content with playing dumb and pretending they will be voting to proceed to legislation that defunds Obamacare — when everyone already knows it in the end it will not.
For example Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said, “It doesn’t seem to make much sense to vote ‘no’ on a bill that contains the defund-ObamaCare provision. I don’t know anybody in our conference who’s for ObamaCare, so I think they’d vote ‘yes’ to get on a bill to defund it.”
That doesn’t sound like Senate Republicans are really committed to the defund strategy. But even if they aren’t — Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) called it “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of” — there is another case to be made for waging a filibuster.
It would strengthen the GOP’s hand. When it is clear that there are neither the votes to fund Obamacare nor to defund it in the Senate, it would force Reid and the White House to the negotiating table.
While many observers have suggested that Reid and Obama will never compromise, history suggests otherwise.
The continuing resolution passed in March 2011 was a compromise largely negotiated by House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) that resulted in some small cuts to the budget. Sequestration was another compromise in exchange for raising the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion in August 2011. The tax deal in December 2012 was yet another compromise in exchange for avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff.
This speaks not only to the willingness of Democrats to make a deal, but also to the utility of Republicans using these leverage points, whether they be continuing resolutions, debt ceiling increases, or otherwise, to achieve major concessions.
As Sen. Ted Cruz noted on Fox News in an interview with Neil Cavuto, “I know for sure that you lose 100 percent of the battle that you begin by surrendering, and all these Republicans who say we can’t win, if they want, these various pundits who want us to surrender, that will make sure we can’t win.”
Cruz is right. Consider the alternative offered by the Washington, D.C. establishment, which frowns upon any confrontation over the continuing resolution or debt ceiling. They fear anything that smacks of a government shutdown or risks default. They would apparently just have Obamacare opponents simply capitulate.
But surely to constituents of Republican senators — who have sworn up and down they oppose Obamacare — submission to a law that will force them onto government-run, taxpayer-funded health insurance is untenable.
They will intuitively understand what this fight is all about, and come 2014, 2016, and subsequent election cycles, they will likely collect political scalps, or attempt to, of any senator whom they perceive forced them onto Obamacare.
In a stark warning to senators, Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens defined the choice facing the so-called deliberative body: “The message for the Senate is very simple: If you vote to fund Obamacare via the continuing resolution, you will own the health care law. If you vote to invoke cloture on a continuing resolution that funds Obamacare, you will own it. And if you vote against a continuing resolution that defunds Obamacare, you will own it, too.”
So, the choice belongs to each and every senator. They can stand with the American people, and block cloture on any continuing resolution that funds Obamcare, or they can roll over and let it be implemented.
But they would be well-advised that should they surrender, the American people will not forget — and they are not forgiving.
Robert Romano is the senior editor of Americans for Limited Government.
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This Fight Is for You
The Heritage Foundation has been talking about defunding Obamacare for some time now, and people may be wondering why. Why did we put up a billboard in Times Square warning Americans that Obamacare will be hazardous to their health? Why won’t we give up this fight?
Because we are fighting for you.
We’re fighting for the grandmother who is counting on her trusted physician to guide her through the challenges of aging. Because Obamacare means you can’t necessarily keep your doctor if you like him, and it’s cutting down on the health care choices available to seniors.
We’re fighting for the couple who’s raising their own children while wondering how they’re going to care for their aging parents. Their premiums are going up and they’re wondering how they’ll afford it.
We’re fighting for the waiter who’s going to school and working full-time. Obamacare is causing many employers to cut back on workers’ hours so that they don’t have to provide them with health insurance. For many people, that means losing income and losing health insurance at the same time.
We’re fighting for the single mom who needs a steady job to support her kids. Obamacare is making jobs tougher to find, because a lot of businesses are saying they just can’t hire anyone new. The burden of the law’s mandates and regulations is making it too costly.
Every one of you is working hard to support your family, stay healthy, and make the best choices you can make. Obamacare is only getting in the way.
So no matter what anyone says, we’re going to keep fighting. Harry Reid is threatening to use all sorts of procedural gimmicks to keep Obamacare going. But Americans are catching on that this law is the reason their spouses don’t have health insurance any more, or their kids’ doctor isn’t in their network any more. They’re seeing how unfair and harmful it is.
And we can’t just sit by and let Obamacare take away the health plans we like, the doctors we like, and the freedom to make our own health care choices.
We won’t stop fighting. You can count on it.
Read the Morning Bell and more en español every day at Heritage Libertad.
Exposed: Harry Reid should not be allowed to manipulate Senate rules to further stifle Senators’ freedoms
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) accidentally drew back the curtain on fabricated tales of Republican obstructionism and revealed the dark secret of Democrats who have been promoting “gridlock” in the U.S. Senate for nearly a full four years. It happened so quickly anyone who blinked missed it.
Upon filing for Senate consideration of the Transaction Account Guarantee (TAG) Act, Sen. Reid immediately “filled the tree” by offering the maximum amount of amendments permitted under the rules and filed cloture on the bill before any other Senator could speak, offer debate or filibuster the bill.
Senator Reid essentially asked the Senate to consider a bill then immediately asked to end consideration on that bill, all within the space of a mere two minutes. Some have speculated this parliamentary slight-of-hand may have made history with its sheer speed.
While proclaiming the need for filibuster “reform” and complaining of its over use by the minority, Senator Reid continues to apply these tactics, limiting debate and preventing Senators of both parties from submitting their own ideas through amendments. His actions essentially produce a “majority filibuster” which prevents the voices of citizens throughout every one of the 50 states from being heard through their Senators.
Yet, even while setting a new speed record, Sen. Reid’s tyrannical control of the calendar is nothing new. Reid has spent the last four years turning such bold obstruction into regular operating procedure for the Senate – with Tuesday marking the sixth-ninth time Sen. Reid has launched a majority filibuster.
These actions are atrocious in their violation of the purpose of the Senate in our federal government and their steamrolling of two key rights of all Senators.
On the official Senate website, the Senate Historian notes: “All senators have two traditional freedoms that, so far as is known, no other legislators worldwide possess. These two freedoms are the right to unlimited debate and an unlimited opportunity to offer amendments, relevant or not, to legislation under consideration.”
Since Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has successfully manipulated standing Senate rules to severely stifle (and in many cases, entirely eliminate) the second of these unparalleled freedoms by routinely “filling the amendment tree,” only one of those freedoms remains. With Reid’s iron-fisted control of the process — frequently preventing even Senators from his own political party from offering their own amendments — it is no wonder Senators of all stripes question the wisdom of removing their remaining freedom. In fact, it is a wonder Majority Leader Reid does not face a mutiny from within his own party.
But the story gets much, much worse. Because Reid cannot capture enough votes (despite a Democratic majority of 55 Senators) to institute his radical rules change under the existing rules (which requires 60 votes), he has proposed a method that ignores the rules entirely. Instead, Reid’s grand plan is to pretend the “Standing Rules of The Senate” simply do not exist during the first day of a new Congress – and only during the first day.
This runs into a major problem through a simple reading of Rule V, Section 2, which itself clearly states that (emphasis added): “The rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress unless they are changed as provided in these rules.” Furthermore, this rule was initially adopted, at the will of the Senate itself, in recognition of the Senate’s unique place in our legislature.
For Majority Leader Harry Reid to completely ignore the rules in order to re-write the rules (something he promised he would never do) in the name of political expediency would violate matchless freedoms of every U.S. Senator while also violating the Constitution itself.
Ultimately, this boils down to three observations. One, the pervasiveness of majority filibuster and obstructionism of their own agenda has helped slow action in the Senate. Two, this atrocious behavior by the Senate Majority Leader snatches away exceptionally unique freedoms and rights of Senators from both sides of the aisle, and all deprived Senators should demand reform. And three, Majority Leader Reid’s proposal, if carried through, would irreparably depart from the rules and Constitutional provisions guiding our “most deliberative” legislative body.
This is the essence of the current debate between totalitarian forms of government and conservatives: whether existing rules can be ignored for political or popular expediency, or whether the rules must be followed in order to protect the unique freedoms and force compromise which truly moves our nation forward.
Regardless of what reforms are needed in the Senate, the rules are the rules – and those rules must be followed in order to bring about credible, positive and lasting improvement.
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Socialism in the USA, the tipping point has been reached
November 7, 2012
By: David Light
The far left, socialists and communists have attacked the USA from within for years and, with this election, have succeeded in changing our once great Republic, into a Socialist state. The tipping point has been reached.
Many factors contributed to our demise, the indoctrination of our youth being just one of them. Radicals of the sixties became entrenched in our colleges and universities and left leaning unions corrupted our K-12 school teachers (not all, but enough). Curriculums were changed, substituting social welfare subjects for history, thus eliminating any reference our children may have had of the greatness of our Country’s past and the meaning of our Constitution, our Republic and our capitalist society.
The conscious willingness by our leaders to refuse to protect our borders has destroyed the fundamental of assimilation that was the hallmark of our formal immigration policy. We have now become a come one, come all squatter society that is creating a drain on our once great economy. By failing to restrict voting to citizens only, the far left has created just another block to pander to.
The administration has spent millions advertising their mortgage bailouts, free phones, food stamp, disability and welfare programs in order to create an ever increasing entitlement society, the basis of a Socialist state.
This election has also been a tipping point for the left leaning media. Not even pretending to perform investigative reporting on Fast and Furious, and the Benghazi attack, and actually hiding damaging information from the public, they have become just another arm of the far left establishment. A candidate fighting and beating an incumbent is extremely difficult, but at the same time, by having your campaign being sabotaged by the MSM, it becomes nearly a hopeless task.
We now have entrenched in our national political structure, far left ideologues who are students of Cloward-Piven, and Saul Alinsky, proponents of the theory of doing whatever it takes to achieve a goal. For months the President’s campaign bombarded the airways in the swing states with character assassination ads and the President lied repeatedly in the debates with no rebuke from the media. No one will ever know the effects of the Romney votes that mysteriously came up Obama on a number of touch screens across the country or other shenanigans perpetrated by the myriad of voter registration organizations formerly known as ACORN.
And, although the House of Representatives is still in the hands of the opposition party, it has been weakened by the seemingly unlawful acts of Harry Reid in the Senate who has blocked every attempt by the House to get a budget passed, a legal requirement that would negate the necessity for continuing resolutions raising the debt ceiling in order to keep the government running. This tactic is being used to demonize those heartless Republicans when they fight to keep our taxes and spending down. Additionally, the President has taken it upon himself to create legislation through Executive orders and EPA and other agency regulations, thus circumventing Congress, a tactic many believe is unconstitutional.
Can any of this be reversed? No one knows, but the tipping point has been reached.
Suggested by the author:
- The MSM, Barack Obama, Saul Alinsky, and the price of denial
- Election 2012: President Barack Obama wins re-election
- Newark Mayor Booker softens criticism of Obama campaign tactic
- Democrat Nazi tactics asking Americans to spy and dig up dirt on Republicans
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Did You Know that Harry Reid Got Rich Pimping Out HOs?
“The word’s out he (Mitt Romney) hasn’t paid any taxes in 10 years. Let him prove he has paid taxes. Because he hasn’t.”
Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid
For several days now I have been fighting the temptation to write about Senator Harry’s Reid’s despicable remarks on the floor of the United States Senate.
After all, he has already been called a “liar,” a “dirty liar,” and a “disgrace.” Jon Stewart called him “a really, really terrible person.” And his remarks have been called “outrageous,” “unfounded,” as well as “reckless and slanderous.”
But the more I read about what he said the clearer it became that the one person who couldn’t care less about what people called him was Harry Reid himself.
Yes, we all know that politics ain’t beanbag and that politicians can make sewer rats look good by comparison. But what kind of person can simply smile when he’s called such vile names? The word psychopath comes to mind.
If some drunk said what Harry Reid said in a bar, who cares? But this is the leader of the Democratic Party in the United States Senate. And he made his remarks not in a bar, but on the floor of the Senate. That takes a really, really special person.
I can understand why, as the political hack that he is, he would want to change the subject from slow growth and high unemployment to Mitt Romney’s tax returns. I can also understand why he’d want to focus attention on anybody but himself since he’s the leader of a party that can’t pass a budget and keeps racking up deficits to the tune of more than $1 trillion a year.
And it’s a safe bet that Harry didn’t come up with this all by himself. He clearly was just the dim-witted front man for the Obama campaign. So far, not one of the president’s top political advisors has renounced Harry Reid’s unsubstantiated comments. And they’ve been given plenty of opportunity.
And shame on the president. You may recall that he’s the one who told us that he was going to change the tone in Washington and to lead us into a post-partisan better place. There’s a lesson here: Never trust a Chicago pol no matter how endearing his phony smile might be. There’s an old saying about how sincerity is the most important element in all relationships — and once you learn how to fake it, you have it made. It’s supposed to be funny; Barack Obama took the line to heart.
Senator Reid says he got his information from an “extremely credible source,” someone who had invested with Bain Capital, the firm Romney once ran. But how would such a person – if he or she even exists – know anything about Mitt Romney’s taxes? Journalists might want to ask Senator Reid about that.
As an editorial in the Wall Street Journal put it: “But without any proof, Mr. Reid’s accusations are a smear from the fever swamps that say more about Mr. Reid’s ethics than they do about Mr. Romney’s taxes.”
But then what should we really expect from Harry Reid. After all, here is a career politician who lives in the Ritz Carlton in Washington and has millions hidden in illegal offshore accounts – money he accrued from pimping prostitutes back home in Nevada.
I know this because “the word’s out” about it. Besides, an “extremely credible source” told me.
Harry Reid Political Sewer Rat.
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Obama’s Second Term Transformation Plans
The 2012 election has often been described as the most pivotal since 1860. This statement is not hyperbole. If Barack Obama is re-elected the United States will never be the same, nor will it be able to re-capture its once lofty status as the most dominant nation in the history of mankind.
The overwhelming majority of Americans do not understand that Obama’s first term was dedicated to putting in place executive power to enable him and the administration to fulfill the campaign promise of “transforming America” in his second term regardless of which political party controls Congress. That is why his re-election team is virtually ignoring the plight of incumbent or prospective Democratic Party office holders.
The most significant accomplishment of Obama’s first term is to make Congress irrelevant. Under the myopic and blindly loyal leadership of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats have succeeded in creating an imperial and, in a second term, a potential dictatorial presidency.
During the first two years of the Obama administration when the Democrats overwhelming controlled both Houses of Congress and the media was in an Obama worshipping stupor, a myriad of laws were passed and actions taken which transferred virtually unlimited power to the executive branch.
The birth of multi-thousand page laws was not an aberration. This tactic was adopted so the bureaucracy controlled by Obama appointees would have sole discretion in interpreting vaguely written laws and enforcing thousands of pages of regulations they and not Congress would subsequently write.
For example, in the 2,700 pages of ObamaCare there are more than 2,500 references to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. There are more than 700 instances when he or she is instructed that they “shall” do something and more than 200 times when they “may” take at their sole discretion some form of regulatory action. On 139 occasions, the law mentions that the “Secretary determines.” In essence one person, appointed by and reporting to the president, will be in charge of the health care of 310 million Americans once ObamaCare is fully operational in 2014.
The same is true in the 2,319 pages of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act which confers nearly unlimited power on various agencies to control by fiat the nation’s financial, banking and investment sectors. The bill also creates new agencies, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, not subject to any oversight by Congress. This overall process was repeated numerous times with other legislation all with the intent of granting unfettered power to the executive branch controlled Barack Obama and his radical associates.
Additionally, the Obama administration has, through its unilaterally determined rule making and regulatory powers, created laws out of whole cloth. The Environmental Protection Agency on a near daily basis issues new regulations clearly out of their purview in order to modify and change environmental laws previously passed and to impose a radical green agenda never approved by Congress. The same is true of the Energy and Interior Departments among many others.
None of these extra-constitutional actions have been challenged by Congress. The left in America knows this usurpation of power is nearly impossible to reverse unless stopped in its early stages.
It is clearly the mindset of this administration and its appointees that Congress is merely a nuisance and can be ignored after they were able to take full advantage of the useful idiots in the Democrat controlled House and Senate in 2009-2010 and the Democrat Senate in the current Congress.
Additionally, Barack Obama knows after his re-election a Republican controlled House and Senate will not be able to enact any legislation to roll back the power previously granted to the Executive Branch or usurped by them. His veto will not be overridden as there will always be at least 145 Democratic members of the House or 34 in the Senate in agreement with or intimidated by an administration more than willing to use Chicago style political tactics.
The stalemate between the Executive and Legislative Branches will inure to the benefit of Barack Obama and his fellow leftists.
The most significant power Congress has is the control of the purse-strings as all spending must be approved by them. However, once re-elected, Barack Obama, as confirmed by his willingness to do or say anything and his unscrupulous re-election tactics, would not only threaten government shutdowns but would deliberately withhold payments to those dependent on government support as a means of intimidating and forcing a Republican controlled Congress to surrender to his demands, thus neutering their ability to control the administration through spending constraints.
Further:
This administration has shown contempt for the courts by ignoring various court orders, e.g. the Gulf of Mexico oil drilling moratorium, as well as stonewalling subpoenas and requests issued by Congress. The Eric Holder Justice Department has become the epitome of corruption as part of the most dishonest and deceitful administration in American history. In a second term the arrogance of Barack Obama and his minions will become more blatant as he will not have to be concerned with re-election.
Who will be there to enforce the rule of law, a Supreme Court ruling or the Constitution? No one. Barack Obama and his fellow-travelers will be unchallenged as they run roughshod over the American people.
Many Republicans and conservatives dissatisfied with the prospect of Mitt Romney as the nominee for president are instead focused on re-taking the House and Senate. That goal, while worthy and necessary, is meaningless unless Barack Obama is defeated. The nation is not dealing with a person of character and integrity but someone of single-minded purpose and overwhelming narcissism. Judging by his actions, words and deeds during his first term, he does not intend to work with Congress either Republican or Democrat in his second term but rather to force his radical agenda on the American people through the power he has usurped or been granted.
The governmental structure of the United States was set up by the founders in the hope that over the years only those people of high moral character and integrity would assume the reins of power. However, knowing that was not always possible, they dispersed power over three distinct and independent branches as a check on each other.
What they could not imagine is the surrender and abdication of its constitutional duty by the preeminent governmental branch, the Congress, to a chief executive devoid of any character or integrity coupled with a judiciary essentially powerless to enforce the law when the chief executive ignores them
Conservatives, Libertarians, the Republican Party and Mitt Romney must come to grips with this moment in time and their historical role in denying Barack Obama and his minions their ultimate goal. All resources must be directed at that end-game and not merely controlling Congress and the various committee chairmanships.
Continents of the World
Mb50's "Liquid Mud" Rant 