Talking Benghazi with Chris Daniel today at 3:00 PST

I will be on the Chris Daniel radio show today at 3:00 pm PST to discuss the investigation into the Benghazi attack. You can listen on KMJ 580 AM here. I also discussed this issue on Fox and Friends here, and before that on Special Report here.

There is no fixing ObamaCare

Yesterday President Obama announced yet another major change to ObamaCare, allowing insurance companies to reinstate policies that ObamaCare itself forced them to cancel. This adds to a fast-growing list of ObamaCare “fixes” that were unilaterally decreed by the Obama administration, including the delay of the employer mandate and a slew of short-term exemptions to various ObamaCare rules that were awarded to select companies and unions.

Consider the current situation: millions of people who were told they could keep their healthcare plans have had those plans cancelled; millions more are unable to sign up for new plans on the malfunctioning website of the ObamaCare exchanges even though they will soon be fined if they don’t somehow get a plan; those who do manage to access the exchanges are realizing they must get coverage for unnecessary services such as maternity care for men; and businesses have downgraded workers from full-time to part-time status in order to avoid ObamaCare mandates.   

My friends, this is no way to run a government. The president cannot purport to remake one-sixth of the U.S. economy, throw people off their healthcare plans, drown businesses in a sea of impossible regulations, and then assume the authority to enforce, not enforce, or change the law at will. This does grievous harm to individual Americans, to the healthcare system, and to our tradition of governance based on the rule of law. We live in a constitutional republic, not an autocracy where the law is whatever the monarch says it is.  

The Obama administration’s mania for controlling the healthcare sector has created a crisis so profound that even convinced ObamaCare supporters in the president’s own party are speaking out. But the damage cannot be repaired by more administrative fixes. Democrats can still protect ObamaCare in Congress, but their willingness to do so is weakening with every new ObamaCare disaster. We must continue to chip away at this overreaching, ill-conceived law until it is repealed entirely and replaced with free-market reforms that work. For reform ideas that some colleagues and I have proposed, see here.

Separately, I appeared on Fox News’ Special Report yesterday to discuss the investigation into the attack on Benghazi. You can watch the video here.    

Interview on Benghazi with KMJ’s Chris Daniel at 3:00 PST

I’ll be speaking with KMJ’s Chris Daniel today at 3:00 pm PST about a letter I sent to Speaker Boehner regarding the investigation into the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. You can listen to the Chris Daniel show here, and you can read the letter here. For more information, see:

·         CNN article and video here.

·         Fox News Special Report video here, and a Special Report panel discussion (beginning at the 22:40 mark) here.

·         Daily Beast article by Eli Lake here.

ObamaCare's wretched rollout

Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), testified to the Ways and Means Committee this week on the Obama administration’s disastrous rollout of the ObamaCare exchanges and their malfunctioning website. Here are some examples of how her answers to my questions contradicted her previous statements: 

·         Ms. Tavenner’s conversation with Rep. Pitts during her August 1, 2013 testimony to Congress (Note that Rep. Pitts asked her about the ObamaCare exchanges, not the data hub):

Rep. Pitts: “Do the contractors who HHS is paying to build these exchanges have certain targets or milestones that they have to meet?”

Ms. Tavenner: “Absolutely.”

Rep. Pitts: “Can you tell us today that every contractor has met these targets and is on time?”

Ms. Tavenner: “Yes sir, I can.”

Ms. Tavenner’s answer to my question about that conversation: “If I remember the questions correctly, what Congressman Pitts was asking me related to the hub, and the hub was progressing on time and on schedule, [it] still is. The hub has actually operated pretty much flawlessly, and most of the questions were around the hub.”

 

·        Ms. Tavenner’s written testimony submitted for her October 29, 2013 appearance before the Ways and Means Committee: “CMS has a track record of successfully overseeing the many contractors our programs depend on to function. Unfortunately, a subset of those contracts for HeathCare.gov have not met expectations.”

Ms. Tavenner’s answer to my question about that testimony: “I don’t think I said that [the problem with HealthCare.gov] was due to a subset of contractors.”

To sum up: Ms. Tavenner told Congress on August 1, 2013 – just two months before the exchanges became operational – that all the contractors creating the exchanges were meeting their targets and were on time. Then for her October 29 appearance before Congress, she submitted written testimony blaming the critical problems with the exchanges and the website on a subset of contractors. When I asked her about that, she denied having said it. Additionally, when asked by me and several other congressmen how many people have managed to get through all the HealthCare.gov glitches and actually enroll in the exchanges, Ms. Tavenner refused to answer, saying CMS would not release those numbers until mid-November.

Just for fun, let’s end with one more quote, this one from President Obama himself:

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

For more on Ms. Tavenner’s testimony and the ObamaCare rollout, listen to my interview with John Batchelor here. And don’t forget to check the Nunes Digest for your weekend reading here.

The Nunes Digest returns

The Nunes Digest, which was on hiatus during the government shutdown, is back in operation. Click here for your weekend news reading.

Shutdown aftermath

During our recent government crisis, I argued that the strategy of defunding ObamaCare through government spending bills would succeed in shutting down the government but would not succeed in ending or delaying ObamaCare. Now that the strategy has played out with little success, the Wall Street Journal – America’s largest conservative newspaper – offers this assessment:

For weeks [Senator Ted] Cruz scolded his fellow Republicans as the "surrender caucus" and closet supporters of ObamaCare because they wouldn't support his strategy to tie a vote to fund the government to defunding ObamaCare. His GOP colleagues thought the Cruz strategy was futile, and politically dumb, as it proved to be. Yet now even Mr. Cruz is admitting that there are limits to what Republicans can achieve when they control only one house of Congress. Maybe he's learning, or maybe his earlier accusations were, well, less than sincere.

Speaking of admissions, one of the ringleaders of the shutdown caucus conceded Wednesday that he always knew ObamaCare couldn't be defunded this year. "Well, everybody understands that we're not going to be able to repeal this law until 2017 and that we have to win the Senate and win the White House," Michael Needham of the Heritage Action political operation told Fox News.

That's also true, but wait. If the defund cause was always futile as some of us argued, why spend weeks pursuing a strategy he knew would fail? And why run ads declaring the opposite, as Heritage Action did, in Congressional districts held by Republicans who actually oppose ObamaCare? Mr. Needham and his allies claim to be tribunes of the people, but they're the ones who treated the public like rubes by misleading it about what was politically possible.

Rich Lowry, editor of the most widely read conservative magazine, National Review, makes a similar argument:

. . . [T]he defunders gave Sen. Harry Reid the shutdown confrontation that he was more than happy to fight, because he knew it would be such a potent partisan tool for his side. The defunders stormed the barricades at their strongest point. They exhibited no willingness to distinguish among bad options or appreciation for what was really achievable.

At best, their approach was a high-risk, low-reward strategy. As it turns out, there wasn't even any reward.

 

. . . Sen. Ted Cruz, the very able point man for the defunders, kept the strategy afloat longer than most people would have expected, but even he could never explain persuasively the path from a shutdown to the desired end of a signing ceremony in the White House defunding the president’s signature piece of legislation.

With the shutdown behind us, it’s worth considering which steps conservatives should now take in our fight for smaller, more effective government.

As for ObamaCare, I have warned for years that the program would be disastrous. Its awful rollout was predictable and inevitable. In my opinion, instead of trying to repeal ObamaCare through legislative gimmicks that are doomed to fail, Congress needs to develop free-market alternatives that will dramatically improve healthcare without relying on heavy-handed government intervention. Along with representatives in the House and Senate, I have proposed an initiative – the Patient’s Choice Act – that would achieve these goals. I am encouraging my colleagues in Congress either to support this act or present their own proposals to replace ObamaCare.

We must also continue our fight against the ruinous debt that jeopardizes our economy and our children’s future. The Congressional Budget Office now predicts that American debt will exceed 100 percent of our annual economic output in less than 25 years. The 75-year projections are even more alarming. Paying these bills would require an amount of money equal to the combined 2009 gross domestic product – every single dollar – of the entire planet. Once again, I believe the best strategy is not to rely on legislative tricks, but to convince the American people that we conservatives have a responsible plan to balance the budget, reduce our debt, and reform entitlement programs that are careening toward insolvency.

For more information on the end of the shutdown, listen to my conversation with conservative, nationally syndicated talk radio host John Batchelor here.