Archives for October 2013

Successful attempts to restore government funding and raise the debt ceiling are still a way off, but Louisiana Rep. John Fleming Republicans are getting closer to defining the terms by which President Obama and the Democrats will hold serious talks.

“What we have achieved and it doesn’t sound like much, but with President Obama this is quite a breakthrough.  We’ve achieved the goal…to get the president to negotiate on negotiating,” said Louisiana Rep. John Fleming.

Fleming stresses that firm details on any common ground are very premature, but he did offer some educated guesses on where the two sides could be headed.

“We could perhaps have a temporary increase in the debt limit, which would give us time to have more substantive negotiations.  Hopefully, in exchange for a year-long increase in the debt ceiling, we would also get reforms in our entitlement programs and other savings and maybe even get some relief in sequester,” said Fleming.

Asked what he would like to see in those areas, Fleming says means testing for programs like Medicare could be involved.

“I believe what they’re looking at is charging wealthier Medicare recipients higher premiums.  There’s also a discussion about using ‘chained CPI’ for Social Security,” he said.  Fleming says those are two ideas Obama has proposed in previous budgets that Republicans embrace and could well be the foundation for a deal.

On sequestration, Democrats want to roll back all the cuts while Fleming wants to rescind the reductions in military spending.

“Even before sequestration, leading up to it, there was already a $500 billion over 10 years cut to the military.  So this was a cut on top of a cut and it hurt our readiness and training,” said Fleming.

The congressman remains a fierce critic of Obamacare and backed efforts to defund and delay the new law.  Even though that strategy appears to be a non-starter with Democrats, Fleming urges House Speaker John Boehner and other negotiators to keep pushing for a delay.

“My primary desire would be a delay of full implementation of Obamacare for one year,” said Fleming, so said the massive problems with the Obamacare exchanges only adds more sense to that idea.

Moderate Republicans like Maine Sen. Susan Collins are trying to find common ground by giving up on defunding or delay but agreeing to scrap the Medical Device Tax contained within the new laws.  Fleming hates the tax but isn’t sure that’s a great legislative plan.

“Many of us conservatives are concerned that we don’t want to be nibbling around the edges improving a terrible law, a law that is structurally flawed,” said Fleming.

As the partial government shutdown continues, the Capitol Steps take some time to lampoon the Tea Party position in this debate with their new song, “Fund, Fund, Fund” set to a popular Beach Boys hit.  Our guest is Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review discuss what the latest Terry McAuliffe scandal says about the front-runner in the Virginia governor’s race.  They expose Harry Reid’s blatantly false narrative of the military benefits scandal.  And they explain why conservatives might not want to get too excited about the trucker protest around the Capital Beltway.

The technical problems with the Obamacare insurance exchanges are no surprise, are further evidence the whole program should be delayed or scrapped and Americans will be even more horrified when they can get somewhere on the website, according to health care policy expert Grace-Marie Turner.

The first 10 days of the Obamacare insurance exchanges have been a technological and public relations mess for the administration.  Many Americans have suffered through hours of stalled or crashed websites, no reporter has yet been able to navigate the site and many people have entered personal information that online security experts believe could make them targets for identity theft.

None of this comes as a shock to Turner, who heads the highly-respected Galen Institute.

“I am absolutely not surprised.  Of course, we know the federal government is running the exchanges for about 35 of the states and the other states were setting up their own exchanges.  All of them basically have to do the same thing.  it is just a gargantuan undertaking to not only figure out how to set up a new website that gathers a tremendous amount of information from individuals; their name, their birth date, where they work, their Social Security number, the names and birth dates of their children, how much they earn, their health habits.  All of this has to be gathered just for people to be able to apply to see if they are eligible for coverage and then to pick a plan,” said Turner.

“Then all that has to be assimilated with federal databases, with the IRS, with Treasury, with Health and Human Services, with state databases to see if you’re eligible or on Medicaid, with Homeland Security to see if they’re actually a citizen, with the Peace Corps for some reason,” she said, noting the administration engaged in a massive rush job to get the exchanges up by the start of October.

“They were still letting contracts for this this July.  This law was passed three-and-a-half years ago.  They were just getting around to letting the contracts.  Even some of the physical equipment like switches to let all these computers talk to each other, were not ordered until this summer,” said Turner.  “It’s an example of when the federal government tries to run something.  They try to re-engineer one-sixth of our economy.  They just can’t do it.”

The exchange problems are only the start of the misery, according to Turner.  She says once people get to check out different plans on the exchanges, the stark realities of this new system will kick in.

“I think a lot of people think they’re going to get free insurance.  This is not just some online shopping, you’re required by the federal government to buy this insurance and it’s going to be very expensive, even with the subsidies.  People are not expecting to have to spend $100, $200, $300, $400 a month for health insurance for the rest of our lives, even for some of these policies that seem to be what the government considers to be the more affordable ones,” said Turner.

“Then on top of that, they’re very likely to have deductibles of several thousand dollars as well as co-payments on top of the premiums.  Once people start to see the cost of this, there are going to be a lot of second thoughts,” Turner said.  “I think there’s going to be a lot of sticker shock.”

President Obama and Democrats in Congress are not only blaming Republican opposition to Obamacare for the current fiscal divides but also blame the GOP for the very rocky rollout of the exchanges because of staunch opposition every step of the way.  Turner says the GOP has nothing to do with the problems.

“It’s ludicrous.  The administration has well over a trillion dollars to spend on this program and has had all sorts of slush funds.  It’s given out money right and left.  For them to blame the Republican Congress for the fact that they didn’t get around to letting the contracts for the switching equipment for the exchanges until July, how on earth is that the fault of a Republican Congress?” said Turner.

By all accounts, web traffic has been in the millions, but the actual application and enrollment numbers appear to be exceptionally low.  Turner is curious not only to see the enrollment numbers in the coming months but what type of patients are enrolling.

“What really is going to matter in the sustainability of these exchanges is who is enrolling.  The people who are most likely to enroll and pay these high prices are those with a lot of health problems.  If that happens then I think you’re going to start to see a death spiral for these exchanges,” said Turner, who says the administration has to have young, healthy people buy coverage to prevent premium costs from shooting through the roof.

“Young people are already being required to pay a much higher premium than their health status would suggest they should and than they would in an open, competitive market.  Those are the very people you most want to get in and they’re the ones who are going to have to pay the highest relative premium to their health status,” said Turner.

“They’re penalizing the very people that they need to get into these.  I think that over the long term, that the way this is set up is designed not to work,” she said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see CNN’s Wolf Blitzer call for a one-year delay of Obamacare after online exchange nightmares.  They also groan as Senate Dems have no interest in a short-term debt ceiling hike.  And they slap their foreheads as the Associated Press fails to fact-check a story accusing Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe of lying to federal officials.

Football star-turned-broadcaster Craig James is suing to get his job back at Fox Sports, alleging network executives fired him after one appearance because of support for traditional marriage that he expressed while running for U.S. Senate in 2012.

James was a member of the famous ‘Pony Express’ backfield at Southern Methodist University in the early 1980s.  He went on to a successful NFL career and then transitioned into a broadcasting career for the next 20 years.  He left ESPN in 2011 to run for an open U.S. Senate seat in Texas.  He lost in the Republican primary in a race eventually won by Ted Cruz.

During one of the primary debates last year, the candidates were asked whether they support benefits for same-sex couples in civil unions that would be similar to those afforded traditionally married couples.  In addition to stating he believed engaging in a homosexual lifestyle was a choice, he firmly opposed offering special benefits to gay couples and said their decisions would result in consequences.

“They are going to have to answer to the Lord for their actions,” said James, a devout Christian.

In August of this year, James was sought out and hired by Fox Sports Southwest to do postgame commentary for an hour each Saturday night.  One day after his first appearance, he received a call informing him his employment had been terminated.

A subsequent Dallas Morning News report on the firing quoted an unnamed Fox Sports source as saying, “We just asked ourselves how Craig’s statements would play in our human resources department.  He couldn’t say those things here.”

“Fox Sports did fire me and they did issue a statement to the Dallas Morning News that said that my comments and my biblical belief on the definition of marriage would not fly in their HR department,” said James, who says even though the “comments” referenced by Fox Sports did not specifically refer to his stand on marriage, it’s clear his marriage comments were at issue.

“It has to be.  When I gave that answer, that was 15 months before I took this job.  Clearly I’m being punished for that and that’s just something that’s not right.  That’s why I’m taking the time to make sure people understand the seriousness of this matter.  This isn’t about me, Craig James.  This is about an American who was fired from a major corporation, one that we’ve really come to trust, the irony of this thing it being in the Fox family.  (I was) fired because I have a biblical belief and I have that right in this country,” said James.

In a subsequent statement issued several days later, Fox Sports moved away from its original rationale.

“At Fox Sports we respect all points of view, and despite reports to the contrary, the decision to no longer use Craig James in our college football coverage was simply because he was not a good fit for Fox Sports,” the statement said. “Mr. James, while both experienced and knowledgeable, is a polarizing figure in the college sports community. Regrettably, the decision to use him was not properly vetted, and as a result he will no longer provide commentary on Fox Sports Southwest’s college football coverage.”

James says that explanation is rendered toothless by the first statement and the way Fox Sports enthusiastically announced his addition to their team.

“After the storm hit and they’ve now since tried to cover this up and rewrite history, they’re saying I’m polarizing.  That doesn’t hold water because the Friday before I went on the air, Fox issued a national press release that was very complimentary, flattering of me and my talents and said I would be an asset to their coverage.  It’s a classic case of, ‘Let’s cloud and distort what really happened here to take away from the heat that’s going to come our way,'” said James.

James stands behind the comments on marriage that he stated in last year’s debate and says the state of Texas clearly agrees with him.

“We have a law here in Texas.  A few years ago, we voted on it, where the definition of marriage is between a man and a woman and it was nearly 75-76 percent  who support that belief, so it’s not like I have some unique feeling or belief on what marriage is in this country,” said James.

“I also said during that debate and on that issue that this is a choice.  We all have choices to make in life.  The choices that I choose to do, I will be judged for those by God.  That’s my belief.  That’s based on the Lord that I worship.  Everyone, all of us will be judged on Judgment Day according to their choices and things that they’ve done in their life.  That’s not my business, not to judge, because the Bible tells me, ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged,'” said James, quoting Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:1.

“I think the blowback on (his comments) have come because we’re at a fork in the road right now in this country.  I really believe the message I’m trying to get out to like-minded believers or for those who enjoy having a faith, regardless of your faith, is to stand up and be heard.  Be bold and be passionate because the other side’s being bold and passionate about their positions in life,” he said.

In his suit, James is seeking to be reinstated as part of the Fox Sports Southwest team.  He admits returning now is highly unlikely and would be rather awkward, but says he’s ready to honor the contract that he signed.

“The reason I would go back is because it would be the right thing to do.  I agreed to do a job for Fox Sports and I was prepared to do it and I am prepared to do it.  We are looking for Fox to own up to what they’ve done, admit they made a mistake and that you can’t punish someone in this country for their religious beliefs.  So put me back on the air and let’s move on,” said James.

James is represented in this religious discrimination case by Liberty Institute.  Attorney Justin Butterfield says this case is in the early stages.  The legal team is gathering evidence and will soon determine what claims to file.

“What we’re doing at this stage is we’re just seeking depositions from Fox Sports personnel we believe to have been involved in firing Craig James to find out exactly what claims we need to bring,” said Butterfield, who says he cannot estimate the burden of proof necessary to win until they determine exactly how the case will proceed.  He does say that this sort of religious discrimination is on the rise in America.

“We definitely do see more and more religious persecution in the United States.  At Liberty Institute, we created a document called “The Survey of Religious Hostility in America.”  It is a catalog of all the instances of religious hostility, people who are persecuted, fired, imprisoned because of their religious beliefs.  We have seen just a drastic increase in this type of persecution in the United States,” said Butterfield.

James insists the battle for religious freedom is more important than what this public fight might mean for his future job prospects.  Nonetheless, he says he is concerned that he will be branded in a negative light because of all this.

“Unfortunately, Fox and their actions, their careless and reckless behavior in how they handled my exit, my firing, has really put a burden on me.  If you talk about polarizing, now I’ve got people who have painted me in a position of being anti-gay and being a judgmental person.  I’m not that, and my life and its history has proven that out through my actions,” said James, who notes he never had an issue with a teammate or media colleague because of differing beliefs.

“I don’t know if I can go get another job.  It’s going to be difficult, but I have a secondary purpose for that.  My initial goal here is to get out and make sure folks understand what happened to me, that we all rally together so it doesn’t happen to them.  This is like a slippery slope.  If we were to brush it under the rug, it becomes an issue that some people might forget, but then all of a sudden you get a collection of these things and the slope is so slippery that that slope becomes policy and a change in the law and the the way things are handled here in this country.  We can’t allow that to happen,” said James.

Despite being embroiled in a very visible legal fight and cultural battle, James says his Christian faith is sustaining him well.

“My faith is awesome right now and I have great peace.  I know that peace is what comes from the Lord.  So I’m going to keep on speaking out about this.  Where it takes me we do not know, but I’m not going away and Fox isn’t going to get away with this,” he said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see President Obama is taking a big chunk of the blame for the government shutdown, although not as much as Congress.  They also scold the Defense Department for withholding death benefits to the families of slain service members even though Congress approved that funding.  And they rip the White House press corps for failing to ask a single tough question to President Obama on Tuesday and for failing to even mention the flawed Obamacare exchanges or keeping people out of national parks and memorials.

President Obama is deliberately inflicting pain upon the American people during the partial government shutdown and the matter may end up in the legal system, according to Iowa Rep. Steve King.

He also says Republicans are offering to fund the government over and over with no support from Democrats and claims that Obama would get his way if the House would vote simply isn’t true.

King is one of the most visible GOP members to help World War II veterans gain access to their memorial on the National Mall in Washington.  Just this week, he again demanded the National Park Service remove the barricades, not just for veterans but the public at large.  The effort was successful until heavy rains forced everyone away.  But King says Obama’s actions during the shutdown are deplorable.

“I think it’s the most spiteful act by a commander-in-chief in the history of this country,” said King.  “So what has happened is the president, I believe, ordered this out of the oval office because he wouldn’t take this kind of embarrassment if some subordinate did it.  So here’s what happened.  They borrow money from the Chinese to rent barricades brought in on forklifts and he called rangers off of furlough to put up barricades and to be there to guard the memorials.”

“This government shutdown is defined by Congress and not the president.  It says essential services shall stay open.  Non-essential services shall not.  There’s never been a service there at the memorial for the purposes of blocking people out.  The president has created a new function for the park service and that’s to keep Americans out of the memorials.  That’s not what you do with essential services and he has no lawful authority to do that.  That’s why we’re opening it up and this time he can take us to court,” said King.

As for the shutdown standoff, King says it’s hard to find common ground when the Democratic offer is to hold negotiations after Republicans relent on funding the government and raising the debt ceiling.

“It’s so hard to take that seriously when they say, ‘Well, give us what we demand and then we’ll negotiate with you afterwards.’  Why would anybody take people seriously who take that position?” asked King.  “He’s almost in a ludicrous position to be asserting that he refuses to negotiate with the House and he refuses to negotiate on the continuing resolution and he refuses to negotiate on the debt ceiling.”

“He’ll negotiate with Syria and Dictator Assad through Putin and using him as his intermediary.  At the same time he’ll open up negotiations with Iran, who we haven’t had diplomatic relations with since 1979.  But there are no diplomatic relations between the White House and the Congress,” he said.

King wasn’t specific about what Republicans would find acceptable in bipartisan negotiations, but he did speculate on how the impasse might end.

“I think you have to let the pressure build a little bit and pass these individual pieces of legislation to fund the components of government individually and force them to vote on it, if they have to do that long enough they’re going to start to feel the pressure and decide to get an agreement,” said King.

King is also firing back at falsehoods that he says are passing for truth in most of the media.  He says not only are there not enough votes in the House to pass the Democratic continuing resolution but previous votes show exactly what the House wants.

“They’re trying to run the government by polling or by opinion.  We actually have votes on the floor of the House of Representatives and the votes have said no funding for Obamacare over and over again,” said King.  “To repeal Obamacare fully, to cut off all funding for Obamacare fully, that’s the votes that win the majority in the House of Representatives.”

The congressman says House Republicans have voted to fund the government in every recent vote, with the exception of Obamacare and sometimes just a portion of Obamacare.  He says the notion that Republicans shut down the government is dead wrong.

“It’s an unbelievable, bald-face lie.  There is no vote they can point their finger to that could be such a thing.  We have always voted to fund it all except Obamacare.  But they make it up as they go along and the Sunday shows let them get away with it.  I was on one.  There’s so much misinformation out there, there was not time for me to correct it all,” said King.

With much of the National Mall blocked off for public access, the National Park Service is allowing a major pro-immigration reform rally to take place on those same grounds.  Iowa Rep. Steve King calls that a major double standard on the part of the Obama administration during this government shutdown and vows to do everything possible to prevent that legislation from getting through the House this year.

The National Park Service has become one of the most visible examples of the partial government shutdown.  Workers have been called off furlough to barricade previously and guard open spaces and memorials on the National Mall.  Some veterans have been allowed to see their memorials but the general public has been locked out.

It’s a different story for supporters of immigration reform.  They have been green-lighted for today’s rally on the National Mall, with the National Park Service saying the freedom of speech lives on even if the government is shut down.

“Isn’t that bizarre, the essential service of providing a place for illegal aliens to demonstrate in our capital?  We’re going to throw a lot of park officers and security personnel of all kinds out there to keep order and pick up litter.  In another world, ICE would be there instead,” said King, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“By the way there will be a lot of litter to pick up down there along the mall.  We’ve seen it in the past.  But when the tea parties show up, you can’t find even a cigarette butt laying out there.  They police the grounds.  When they’re finished, there may be some grass that’s been walked on but there won’t be any litter.  I hope there’ll be a little assimilation taking place as the protesters come here and run up the bill during the furlough of our park officers and security personnel,” said King.

Immigration passed the U.S. Senate months ago in the form of the bipartisan ‘Gang of Eight’ bill.  House Republicans have advanced four bills out of the Judiciary Committee.  King admits they are “pretty good” but he still opposes them because he cannot see an end game that doesn’t involve the granting of “amnesty” to millions and millions of people in the country illegally.

“I have asked all Republicans on the committee, ‘Tell me how these bills can get through the Senate and to the president’s desk and signed into law without the Gang of Eight’s amnesty being attached to it?’  And the answer that I get is, ‘Well, that’s what you’re supposed to help us with,'” said King.  “I want to help them with that by resisting the idea that we should try to pass anything because it sets us up for a conference.  If there’s a conference committee formed, of course the Senate’s Gang of Eight bill goes on the table and they start injecting thing from that rejected Gang of Eight immigration bill from the Senate.

“I don’t think any good can come from immigration legislation coming to the floor this fall.  I’m going to continue to make my point that it divides Republicans.  It erodes the rule of law.  It encourages illegal immigration.  It’s the wrong message to send and, by the way, it’s a political loser for Republicans.  They should know that by now even though it was the opposite assertion after the election,” said King.

House Republicans are publicly divided on immigration policy and reports from earlier in the year suggest GOP leaders are largely supportive of the Senate’s framework.  King says if the House does move forward on this legislation, opponents won’t know about until it’s too late to rally public opposition.

“If they decide to push it, they will already rounded up as many votes as they can kind of on the quiet.  They will have whipped their votes and then those of us who oppose this will find out about it as late as possible.  They’re not going to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to plan to do this in three weeks so if you want to get your troops all ready, we’ll line up against each other and go for it.’  It’s the other way.  It’s kind of a stealth maneuver,” said King.

Even if a bill is brought forward on short notice, King says the opposition from amnesty critics will be fierce.

“I know who the people are who stand for the rule of law and border security and they understand that what happens if there’s anything that passes the House, all John Boehner has to do is name a conference committee and we are very close to sunk,” he said.

But King says that strategy is not set in stone.  In fact, he believes leadership might adhere to a more conservative tack as a result of the current government funding shutdown.

“We’ve gotten stronger as a conference and John Boehner’s stronger today than he was a week ago.  And I want him to be strong.  We need to focus on this continuing resolution and this partial shutdown.  We need to focus on the debt ceiling and this idea that somehow there’s something urgent about immigration is not true,” said King.

The congressman says the arguments against the Senate version of immigration reform remain clear.

“If you look at who benefits from illegal immigration or from passing what they call comprehensive immigration reform – and we all know that’s a euphemism for amnesty – the people that benefit from that are employers of illegals, they benefit from cheap labor, and the power brokers for the Democratic Party and those people that are here illegally.  Middle class America, the low-skilled or unskilled worker, the people who are entering into jobs at the lowest levels are the ones that are disadvantaged the most because they’re being pushed out of jobs,” said King.

“Young Americans growing up are missing their opportunity to learn a work ethic and build their skill level because there’s somebody there who’s in the United States illegally who will go in and work cheaper and they’re being cut out of their opportunities.  The double-digit unemployment exists the highest in the lowest-skilled jobs.  Now they’re talking about bringing in hundreds of thousands of unskilled workers to fill a demand that doesn’t exist in this economy,” said King.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see former Obamacare supporters understand the cost of their coverage is going up and they point out the lies uttered by HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius on national television.  They groan as a new bipartisan poll shows the government shutdown is further damaging Ken Cuccinelli’s bid to be the next governor of Virginia.  And they discuss the Obama administration’s double standard of locking down the mall for most Americans but rolling out the welcome mat for a major immigration rally.