Home / obamalawless
Showing posts with label obamalawless. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obamalawless. Show all posts
Obama IRS rewriting Obamacare now that it is clear that states aren't doing what was intended

Obama IRS rewriting Obamacare now that it is clear that states aren't doing what was intended

Congress wrote the Obamacare law to achieve a particular result, but things haven't worked out quite as intended. In this case, Democrats wrote the law to put pressure on states to adopt the health insurance exchanges, but apparently Democrats thought that the pressure would be so great that states would have to adopt the exchanges. They never really planned for the exchanges not being set up. From the Cato Institute:
It turns out that ObamaCare makes an essential part of its regulatory scheme—an $800 billion bailout of private health insurance companies—conditional upon state governments creating the health insurance “exchanges” envisioned in the law.

This was no “drafting error.” During congressional consideration of the bill, its lead author, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), acknowledged that he intentionally and purposefully made that bailout conditional on states implementing their own Exchanges.

Now that it appears that as many as 30 states will not create Exchanges, the law is in peril. When states refuse to establish an Exchange, they are blocking not only that bailout, but also the $2,000 per worker tax ObamaCare imposes on employers. If enough states refuse to establish an Exchange, they can effectively force Congress to repeal much or all of the law.

That might explain why the IRS is literally rewriting the statute. On May 24, the IRS finalized a regulation that says the law’s $800 billion insurance-industry bailout will not be conditional on states creating Exchanges. With the stroke of pen, the IRS (1) stripped states of the power Congress gave them to shield employers from that $2,000 per-worker tax, (2) imposed that illegal tax on employers whom Congress exempted, and (3) issued up to $800 billion of tax credits and direct subsidies to private health insurance companies—without any congressional authorization whatsoever. . . .

"Obama misses new budget deadline"

"Obama misses new budget deadline"

What is the point of these rules if the Obama administration is never going to even try to follow them? It is like the Obama administration doesn't think that the rules apply to them.
The Obama administration has missed another annual budget deadline, failing to send Congress a mid-session budget review before July 16.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) confirmed Monday that the deadline for the review, due every year on that date, was not met this year.

“There will be a mid-session review and timing is still being determined,” spokeswoman Moira Mack said.

Last year, OMB issued its mid-session review on Sept. 1. The document is supposed to contain revised spending, tax collection and deficit numbers to update the February budget proposal.

Releasing documents late has become a regular event at OMB. Obama this year released his 2013 budget past deadline for the third year in a row. Under the law, the budget is to be released on the first Monday in February, but came out on Feb. 13 this year.

The Obama administration also delayed the release of the budget last year, waiting until Feb. 14. . . .

Instead of passing new laws the Obama administration just unilaterally redoes the law itself: This time welfare reform

Instead of passing new laws the Obama administration just unilaterally redoes the law itself: This time welfare reform

From Fox News:
. . . Republicans are accusing the Obama administration of unilaterally gutting welfare reform after the Department of Health and Human Services quietly notified states that they may seek a waiver for the program's strict work requirements.

HHS made the announcement in a policy memo Thursday, news that slipped well below the radar amid a raucous day on the presidential campaign trail. But a few prominent GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill picked up on the change, and accused the administration of overhauling one of the most important bipartisan agreements of the past several decades.

"President Obama just tore up a basic foundation of the welfare contract" Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, D-Ohio, said in a statement. He also called the move a "blatant violation of the law."

Mitt Romney on Friday spoke up on the change, saying: "President Obama now wants to strip the established work requirements from welfare." He said "the linkage of work and welfare is essential to prevent welfare from becoming a way of life."

How exactly the HHS change will play out is unclear. In Thursday's policy directive, the department said the states may seek a waiver from the work component of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program, in order to "test alternative and innovative strategies, policies and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families." . . . But HHS is suddenly allowing for more flexibility in a program known -- and in many circles, lauded -- for its rigid framework. . . .

Meanwhile, the Obama administration finally is stopping its "go on food stamps" ads.

. . . The Spanish-language radio ads composed a 10-part miniseries called "Hope Park." In it, the characters were shown persistently trying to convince a character named "Diana" to go on food stamps -- known these days as SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- even though her husband works and she doesn't think she needs it.

"I don't need help from anyone," Diana says in Episode 4. "My husband makes enough to take care of us."

But her friends are persistent, and by Episode 10 Diana is enrolled and singing the program's praises.

The ads drew criticism at a time when one in seven are already enrolled.

The food stamp rolls have swelled since the recession, growing roughly 40 percent since 2009. As of April, more than 46 million people were in the program, which costs $80 billion a year.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, slammed the campaign as a push to enroll individuals who don't feel they need it. . . .

It would be useful for someone to go through the studies that have looked at the benefits of the welfare reform and to see what the Obama administration is putting at risk.
Justice Department threatens reporter with retaliation?

Justice Department threatens reporter with retaliation?

CBS reports:
Two Louisiana congressmen are calling on the Justice Department to respond to a complaint that one of its attorneys tried to bar a newspaper reporter from quoting or recording the lawyer's comments at a public hearing in New Iberia. The Daily Iberian contends Justice Department attorney Rachel Hranitzky became "belligerent and threatening" after the reporter, Matthew Beaton, questioned why he couldn't quote her comments during a June 12 public hearing about the New Iberia Fire Department's hiring and promotion practices. The newspaper reported that Hranitzky told Beaton he would be asked to leave the City Hall hearing if he didn't comply with her directive. "Then (the Justice Department) can call your editors and publisher at the paper, and trust you don't want to get on the Department of Justice's bad side," the paper quoted Hranitzky as saying. . . .
Will DOJ punish this lawyer for these threats?
President violates oath and doesn't enforce the law, that is OK; State tries to help enforce federal law (which the Federal government doesn't have to deport or punish illegals), not OK

President violates oath and doesn't enforce the law, that is OK; State tries to help enforce federal law (which the Federal government doesn't have to deport or punish illegals), not OK

Charles Krauthammer as a useful piece in the Washington Post:


And there’s the rub: the Obama administration’s inability to distinguish policy from law. This becomes particularly perverse regarding immigration when, as Justice Antonin Scalia points out, what the administration delicately calls its priorities is quite simply a determination not to enforce the law as passed.
This is what makes so egregious the Obama claim that Arizona is impermissibly undermining federal law. “To say, as the court does,” writes Scalia regarding those parts of the law struck down by the majority, “that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of the Immigration Act that the president declines to enforce boggles the mind.”
Consider this breathtaking cascade: An administration violates its constitutional duty to execute the law by deliberately refusing to enforce it. It then characterizes its non-enforcement as simply establishing priorities. It then tries to strike down a state law on immigration on the grounds that it contradicts federal law — by actually trying to enforce it! . . . 
The same is true with other issues.
Obama’s presumption is Olympian. He takes America into a war in Libya with U.N. approval but none from Congress. Yet that awful Bush had the constitutional decency to twice seek and gain congressional approval before he initiated hostilities. The Department of Health and Human Services issues Obamacare regulations treading so heavily on the free-exercise rights of Catholic institutionsthat Obama’s own allies rebel. The new regulation concocted to tame the firestorm blithely orders private insurers to provide free contraceptives to employees of the objecting religious institutions. By what possible authority does a president order private companies to provide free services? To say nothing of the 1,200 Obamacare waivers granted with royal arbitrariness according to the (political) whims of an HHS secretary. . . .
Strassel has this piece in the WSJ (the whole piece has lots of examples):
Put another way: Mr. Obama proposes, Congress refuses, he does it anyway. 
For example, Congress refused to pass Mr. Obama's Dream Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for some not here legally. So Mr. Obama passed it himself with an executive order that directs officers to no longer deport certain illegal immigrants. This may be good or humane policy, yet there is no reading of "prosecutorial discretion" that allows for blanket immunity for entire classes of offenders. 
Mr. Obama disagrees with federal law, which criminalizes the use of medical marijuana. Congress has not repealed the law. No matter. The president instructs his Justice Department not to prosecute transgressors. He disapproves of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, yet rather than get Congress to repeal it, he stops defending it in court. He dislikes provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, so he asked Congress for fixes. That effort failed, so now his Education Department issues waivers that are patently inconsistent with the statute. 
Similarly, when Mr. Obama wants a new program and Congress won't give it to him, he creates it regardless. Congress, including Democrats, wouldn't pass his cap-and-trade legislation. His Environmental Protection Agency is now instituting it via a broad reading of the Clean Air Act. Congress, again including members of his own party, wouldn't pass his "card-check" legislation eliminating secret ballots in union elections. So he stacked the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with appointees who pushed through a "quickie" election law to accomplish much the same. Congress wouldn't pass "net neutrality" Internet regulations, so Mr. Obama's Federal Communications Commission did it unilaterally. 
In January, when the Senate refused to confirm Mr. Obama's new picks for the NLRB, he proclaimed the Senate to be in "recess" and appointed the members anyway, making a mockery of that chamber's advice-and-consent role. In June, he expanded the definition of "executive privilege" to deny House Republicans documents for their probe into the botched Fast and Furious drug-war operation, making a mockery of Congress's oversight responsibilities. . . .
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)