The new year always begins with so much hope and this year is no different. I hope that my friends will be healthy and happy. I hope that we can solve some of the country’s big problems and more of the little ones. I hope that we can come together as a nation and a world and finally realize that we’re all in this together and that the deaths and atrocities are a stain on the human race. I hope that I can be a better person, a better friend, a better spouse, a better parent, and a better teacher.
But hope can only get you so far. At some point, you have to fight for what you believe in and for what you want done. On that point, this will be a year of fighting. Fighting for justice. For the right of everyone to have a healthy body, a healthy mind, and a full stomach. For the right to exercise the vote. For the right to free speech. For a free, quality education. For economic growth that begins to close the gap between wealth and not-so-wealthy. For clean air and water. For facts.
There will be challenges as soon as this week because Congress will begin moving towards legislation that will ultimately strip 20 million people of their health insurance. The assaults on Medicare and Social Security are sure to follow as will the foreign policy meanderings that will be endemic to an administration that only sees raw power as worthy of respect.
The good news? That we will turn our attention and energies to fighting for what we believe in. That’s what this year will be about. More people voted against the agenda than for it. Never forget that.
Somehow, I don’t think Donald Trump or Republicans care about the financial impact of their planned Obamacare repeal. To them, the politics of repeal play better. It gives them something to brag about when they go back home to their constituents.
The nation’s hospital industry warned President-elect Donald Trump and congressional leaders on Tuesday that repealing the Affordable Care Act could cost hospitals $165 billion by the middle of the next decade and trigger “an unprecedented public health crisis.”
The two main trade groups for U.S. hospitals dispatched a letter to the incoming president and Capitol Hill’s top four leaders, saying that the government should help hospitals avoid massive financial losses if the law is rescinded in a way that causes a surge of uninsured patients.
The letter, along with a consultant’s study estimating the financial impact of undoing the Affordable Care Act, makes hospitals the first sector of the health-care industry to speak out publicly to try to protect itself from a sharp reversal in health policy that Trump is promising and congressional Republicans have long favored.
Current Republican presidential candidate and former Canadian citizen until a few months ago, Ted Cruz, got a rude awakening when he visited his friends at Fox News and got called out by Chris Wallace on his lie that Obamacare is a job killer.
“The fact checkers say you’re wrong,” Wallace told Cruz. “Since that law went into effect, the unemployment rate fell from 9.9% to 5% as 13 million new jobs were created, and 16.3 million people who were previously uninsured now have coverage. There are plenty of problems with Obamacare, but more people have jobs and health insurance.”
Naturally, Cruz went on to claim that fact checkers are liberally biased.
“Fact checkers are not fair and impartial,” Cruz responded. “They are liberal editorial journalists. And they have made it their mission to defend Obamacare.”
“Wait,” Wallace shot back. “There’s certainly no question that more people have jobs and more people health insurance.”
“Yes, there is question,” Cruz replied. “The fact is from 2008 to today, we’ve seen economic growth of 1.2% on average.”
Notice how he said “from 2008 to today” – that’s important. Cruz is lumping in 2008 and 2009 which were horrible years for jobs because that’s when the Great Recession began. Naturally, when you factor in those two disastrous years it’s going to make the year-to-year job growth percentages under President Obama appear to be much worse than they are. Especially when you consider that Obama wasn’t even president in 2008.
Also, Cruz can say whatever he wants, but it’s indisputable that the unemployment rate is down to 5 percent, that we’ve created over 13 million new jobs and over 16 million people have gained access to health insurance. Those aren’t numbers that were made up by a “biased” fact checker, they’re facts – period.
Like his predecessor before him, Paul Ryan promised a new tone in Washington when he took over the gavel from then Speaker John Boehner. And one of the places Republicans promised to be different was on Obamacare, promising to have an alternative plan available for the millions of Americans benefiting from Obamacare, before trying to repeal their healthcare.
Well, if you missed it, Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare again, and again, there was no plan in the unlikely event their repeal efforts were to succeed. Obviously, their repeal effort didn’t succeed, as President Obama vetoed the measure. But House Speaker Paul Ryan was asked about the plan on Sunday’s Face The Nation, and was forced to admit that there is no plan for healthcare if Obamacare is repealed.
“You said that you wanted the Republicans to offer an alternative to the president,” CBS host John Dickerson reminded Ryan in an interview that aired on Sunday. “One of the first things you did this year, though, was offer that [Obamacare] repeal.”
“How is than an alternative?” Dickerson wondered.
“It’s not,” Ryan replied, laughing. “It’s why we have to come up with an alternative. So, you’re right about that one.”
“Will you?” Dickerson pressed.
“Absolutely,” Ryan insisted. “My goal — I don’t know how far it will go given we have a filibuster and a guy named Obama who’s not going to replace Obamacare — but my goal is that, we as Republicans, if we don’t like these laws, don’t like the direction the country is going, I think we have to be more than just an opposition party.”
While Republicans continue to waste taxpayers money with yet another futile repeal effort, the health care reform known as Obamacare has topped 11.3 million national sign ups this enrollment season.
About 8.6 million people signed up for plans on HealthCare.gov since Nov. 1, and another 2.7 million signed up on the state-based exchanges, officials said.
Nearly 4 million people under age 35 nationally signed up for Obamacare plans. That number is important: The 18-to-34-year-old demographic is closely watched, because younger customers tend to spend more into the health plans than they cost in benefits. Almost 3 million of the sign-ups came from those young adults.
“We’re encouraged that marketplace consumers are increasingly young, engaged and shopping for the best plan,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell. “We have more work to do before the next deadlines, and our focus continues to be the consumer experience and educating consumers about available financial assistance and their choices.”
Republican presidential candidate, Carly Fiorina – remember her? She’s one of the borderline floor scrubbers in the Republican polls – is trying to punch upwards, waaaay upwards, trying to hit Ted Cruz – one of the top Republican leaders in the polls. I don’t know why Cruz and Trump are at the top of the Republican list, but they are and Carly has her eyes set on Cruz.
In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Carly placed Cruz squarely in her cross-hairs. When asked if Ted Cruz “would doom the Republicans’ chances in November” because he was responsible to shut down the government, Carly answered that Cruz did what he thought was politically beneficial for him in the government shutdown. And in her answer, Carly dropped the nugget that Obamacare was repealed.
NOTE: Obamacare was not repeal!
“Ted Cruz is just like any other politician,” Fiorina said. “He says one thing in Manhattan, he says another thing in Iowa.”
“He says whatever he needs to say to get elected, and then he’s going to do as he pleases… I think the American people are tired of the political class that promises much and delivers much of the same.”
As if this wasn’t tried before, Senate Republicans on Thursday wasted even more tax-payers’ time and money with yet another meaningless vote on a pointless legislation to defund Obamacare.
Not to be outdone, Democrats seized the debate to try to force votes on gun control legislation that could put some Republicans in a politically tough position as the country is reeling from arecent spate of mass shootings.
By voting to nullify Obamacare — the signature domestic accomplishment of the Obama administration — GOP congressional leaders fulfilled a longtime pledge to voters and rank-and-file members to get a repeal to President Barack Obama’s desk, even though he will veto it.
The bill would also cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood, the women’s health group that provides abortions and has long under GOP scrutiny. Republicans’ passions to cutoff taxpayer dollars to the organization increased in recent months when videos were released that purported to show Planned Parenthood executives selling the tissue of aborted fetuses to researchers
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While Americans are being massacred by shootings on a daily basis, these jokers in Congress cannot figure out a way to do their job and protect the homeland from ruthless thugs and their easy access to guns.
Instead of bucking the NRA and coming up with a simple background check legislation to make sure people who buy guns are not registered terrorists – an idea supported by a huge majority of Americans – Republicans bring us another attempt to repeal Obamacare, an effort that has been tried and failed well over 60 times.
He ran on a platform attacking Obamacare and other social issues like gay marriage etc., and promising to take away the people’s healthcare if given a chance as governor. Well, the people of Kentucky have spoken and voted for Republican Matt Bevin to be their next governor.
Bevin led Democrat Jack Conway, Kentucky’s two-term attorney general, 52 percent to 44 percent when the Associated Press called the race just after 8 p.m. Conway never trailed in a public poll this summer or fall, or during the run-up to Election Day, and Bevin even trailed in his campaign’s own internal polling. But the Republican kept the race close and Kentucky’s increasingly conservative lean swept him home.
Bevin’s victory upends a decades-long trend in Kentucky in which Democrats have seen success at the state level despite struggling in federal races. Bevin leaned on social issues, including Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis’s refusal to issue same-sex marriage licenses this summer, to energize conservative voters. Bevin also criticized Conway for not defending the state’s same-sex marriage ban in court as attorney general.
And the Republican Governors Association spent millions of dollars on ads tying Conway to President Obama on coal, health care, and other issues, a formula that the group rode to success in other red-state races over the past five years.
The same court that brought us corporations as people, unlimited political money, abortion restrictions, a step backwards in voting rights, and unequal pay has now thrown some serious bones to the left in the form of a stronger Affordable Care Act and a right to gay marriage. I’m sure that wherever they are, David Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor are smiling just as broadly as President Obama and millions of formerly marginalized United States citizens are across this land.
It just goes to show you that handicapping Supreme Court decisions based on the justices’ questions and demeanor during oral arguments is a dangerous, unpredictable sport. Remember that the Chief Justice asked only one substantial question during the health care arguments, but he surprised almost everyone by writing a rather forceful decision upholding the law. Justice Kennedy was widely seen as the bellwether on marriage equality, and he provided the fifth vote to recognize that dignity comes in many forms.
The Originalist Triplets from Different Mothers–Scalia, Thomas and Alito–certainly didn’t disappoint their right wing adherents by pointing out to us that laws should be read as written and that if marriage was a right, then why didn’t the nation recognize it until now? Never mind that the country didn’t recognize civil rights for African-Americans for over 100 years after the Civil War, and that was with an amendment specifically crafted to remedy that injustice. Justice Thomas’s career-defining quote about how slaves did not lose their dignity because the government allowed them to be enslaved was not only a jaw-dropping bit of incongruity, but also a shocking misunderstanding of what the word means.
But this is the danger of the originalist doctrine. It presumes to know exactly what the Framers meant not only in their time, but in ours. I’m no legal expert, but I’ve committed my professional life to teaching history and my reading is that those men who gathered in Philadelphia were a bit more flexible on legal interpretations than the originalists give them credit for.
Rather than be shocked at what American society has become, I think they would be pleased, perhaps even giddy, at the idea that we’ve become as multicultural, open, democratic and accepting as we are now. I would be disappointed if Madison, Washington, Hamilton or any of the others came to our century and said that we had completely misread the meaning of their words. After all, they included both the elastic clause and the ability to amend the constitution.
Meanwhile, Scalia, Thomas and Alito (and sometimes Roberts) would roll back civil rights laws and would have us believe that the Fourteenth Amendment, the one that guarantees every citizen equal protection of the law, has nothing to say about guaranteeing LGBT Americans, well, the equal protection of the law. or that four words in the health care law were meant as grenades that would blow it up rather than mechanisms to guarantee that less-well-off Americans could get affordable health care. Scalia especially seems to believe that the only rights that Americans have are the ones granted in 1787. How thoroughly regressive.
It’s worth noting that another group, Confederates, also believed they knew the true meaning of the Republic. They wanted to live in a country that allowed states to decide almost all aspects of public policy, protect slavery and Jim Crow, and to nullify federal laws they didn’t agree with. That’s why they broke away and were almost successful in creating such a country. Their loss still resonates in the south and it’s time to bring that era to a close. We shouldn’t destroy every vestige of it, but it’s past time to take down the flags and statues (and put them in museums where they belong), and to rename some streets. We’ll be a better country for it.
What history will more likely remember is the rock-solid support for humanity and progress that the four liberals–Sotomayor, Breyer, Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg–continue to fight for. Their opinions were subsumed under Kennedy and Roberts, but they should rightly be proud, and thanked, for their steadfast support for the citizens of this country.
As we move forward from last week, we need to remember that many states will be required to recognize marriages, but off the alter those states can continue to discriminate based on sexual orientation and use religious belief as a hammer against full equality. I certainly support religious values, but it’s time to recognize that Biblical prohibitions that discriminate, marginalize and promote hate are…wrong.
Bu that’s a discussion for the future. Right now I’m going to buy some rainbow sherbet, kick back, and celebrate America.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), speaks at the socially conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition "Road to Majority" conference in Washington D.C. on June 20, 2014. McCarthy is the Majority Leader-elect of the United States House of Representatives, elected on June 19, 2014 to replace outgoing Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who will leave the Leader position on July 31, 2014. (Photo by Jeff Malet)
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), speaks at the socially conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition “Road to Majority” conference in Washington D.C. on June 20, 2014. (Photo by Jeff Malet)
Republicans are in full control. They now control the House of Representatives and the Senate, and have promised their base to expect fast, sweeping changes to Obamacare when the new legislative session began in January. Much was said and many anticipated seeing a glimpse of the Republican healthcare plan, but so far, nothing. And from the looks of it, nothing will happen in the near future.
A piece written on Salon looked at this Republican quagmire and correctly called it a “massive deception” by congressional Republicans. The piece dug deep and uncovered the reason Republicans promised their version of the ‘Obamacare replacement,’ but failed to deliver. And according to Salon, the reason of course, is Politics.
Speaker John Boehner went on Fox News and promised that his party would agree on an Obamacare replacement plan and that it would come up for a vote before the year was out. “There will be an alternative,” he said, “and you’re going to get to see it.” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy also got in on the act, announcing the creation of “a new working group” consisting of Reps. Paul Ryan, Fred Upton, and John Kline that would “continue to build on patient-centered health care solutions with which to replace Obamacare.”
In keeping with the tired conventions of official Washington, these statements and actions were directed at the “hardworking taxpayers” who were at risk from “the fallout of Obamacare.” But the real intended audience was far smaller: the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court. The high court had, at that point, already agreed to hear arguments in King v. Burwell, the case that threatens to invalidate health insurance subsidies to the majority of states. Republicans obviously wanted the court to endorse the dodgy, bad-faith arguments brought by the plaintiffs, but they also had to consider the implications of a ruling against the ACA. If the subsidies were struck down, the insurance markets in those states would descend into chaos and put people’s lives at risk, and that might give the conservative justices pause.
So, they started sending every signal they could that the Republicans in Congress would be ready to cope with the pandemonium of a ruling against the ACA. McCarthy’s statement announcing the healthcare working group said that it would “develop a contingency plan… to enact in case the Supreme Court rules in King v. Burwell that Obamacare subsidies offered on the federal exchange are illegal.” The message was perfectly clear for those inclined to listen: don’t worry, pull the trigger, we got this.
The day before oral arguments in the case began in March, the three working group members published an op-ed laying out in determinedly vague terms the principles for their Obamacare “off-ramp” proposal. After the oral arguments, the working group released a statement saying “we will be ready to act” if the court rules for the plaintiffs. That was three months ago. The court’s ruling is expected to be released very soon. So where is the “contingency plan” majority leader McCarthy said would be forthcoming back in January?
Well, apparently he’s of a different mind now over whether it’s right and proper for the House working group to weigh in before the Supreme Court has actually released its ruling. According to the Wall Street Journal:
Mr. McCarthy told reporters Monday that Republicans would be prepared regardless of what the court decides, but that they would not unveil a proposal before a ruling.
“Don’t expect us to pre-determine the Supreme Court. We have to first see what their decision is and what we have to solve,” Mr. McCarthy said. Republicans still might release outlines of their response, but not a formal bill, an aide said.
Remember when Congressional Republicans were urging members of their party to avoid getting healthcare? It was a calculated effort on their part to make Obamacare fail if people refused to sign up.
Well, that didn’t work as over 12 million smart and health conscious Americans have already signed up. But this man – a Republican who listened and heeded the call to forgo healthcare – refused to enroll, and now he is going blind because he has no healthcare.
Lang, a 49-year-old resident of Fort Mill, has bleeding in his eyes and a partially detached retina caused by diabetes.“He will lose his eyesight if he doesn’t get care. He will go blind,” said Dr. Malcolm Edwards, the Lancaster ophthalmologist who examined Lang.
Lang is a self-employed handyman who works with banks and the federal government on maintaining foreclosed properties. He has done well enough that his wife, Mary, hasn’t had to work. They live in a 3,300-square-foot home in the Legacy Park subdivision valued at more than $300,000.
But he has never bought insurance. Instead, he says, he prided himself on paying his own medical bills.That worked while he and his wife were relatively healthy. But after 10 days of an unrelenting headache, Lang went to the emergency room on Feb. 25. He says he was told he’d suffered several mini-strokes. He ran up $9,000 in bills and exhausted his savings. Meanwhile, his vision worsened and he can’t work, he says.
That’s when he turned to the Affordable Care Act exchange. Lang learned two things: First, 2015 enrollment had closed earlier that month. And second, because his income has dried up, he earns too little to get a federal subsidy to buy a private policy.
Lang, a Republican, says he knew the act required him to get coverage but he chose not to do so. But he thought help would be available in an emergency. He and his wife blame President Obama and Congressional Democrats for passing a complex and flawed bill.
The irony of course is the loudest voices against Obamacare are now covered by Obamacare. Don’t believe me? Ask Ted Cruz.
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