Greg Corombos and Jim Geraghty try to wrap their heads around President Obama’s sudden decision to allow Americans to keep their existing plans for another year and setting the stage for blaming insurance companies if that doesn’t happen. They also discuss the president’s confessions of failure and more.
Healthcare.gov is a security nightmare, arbitrary deadlines were enforced for political purposes and changes to the law would be good but not as good as repeal, according to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan.
Jordan is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which received few concrete answers Wednesday on how healthcare.gov was launched despite dire warnings of security holes and a glaring lack of testing. U.S. Chief Information Officer Steven Van Roekel, White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and Healthcare.gov Chief Project Manager Henry Chao all said they were unaware of gaping security problems before the October 1 launch, did know testing had been rather limited and ducked any responsibility for pressing forward on the scheduled date instead of insisting upon a delay.
Rep. Jordan says he knows exactly why the administration didn’t change the timetable.
“The reason they couldn’t delay it is then Republicans would be right. We can’t have that, not in the most politically-oriented administration in history, where everything is driven by politics and not about getting to the facts,” said Jordan. “We have the Benghazi scandal and it’s blamed on the video. We have the IRS scandal and it’s just two rogue agents in Cincinnati. Here we have the roll-out of Obamacare. October 1 is not written into the law but politically we have to stick to that date because that’s what we told everyone and we can’t let Republicans be right because they were fighting the roll-out and wanting to delay this.
“So people’s information was put at risk for political reasons and that is just unacceptable,” he said.
A September 3 memo from another Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) official warned “the threat and risk potential to the system is limitless.” Yet, Chao, Van Roekel and Park all stated they never saw that memo.
“So the people who were designing it, the people who were responsible for making sure this system is safe, making sure this website works didn’t even know about the report where the outside agency contracted to look into the confidentiality and whether this thing would work from end to end didn’t even know that the report said it wouldn’t work and that it had never been tested,” said Jordan.
Jordan and his colleagues are inundated by constituents stunned and furious over their suddenly cancelled health care policies. House Republicans plan to push the “Keep Your Health Plan Act” later this week. Sponsored by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton. It would allow all Americans to keep their current health plans for another year.
The idea is facing resistance from the White House and from some conservatives. The arguments from the right suggest insurance companies cannot just flip a switch and reinstate policies that were cancelled in obedience to federal law.
The strategy is also coming under fire from those who believe any temporary reprieve for Obamacare simply helps the law survive and gives political coverage for the administration on a law that initially passed zero GOP votes. Some conservatives also fear that Senate Democrats will gut the Upton bill, replace it with a Democratic bill and then put Republicans in the awkward position of supporting a Democratic bill or being blamed for the lack of any legislative fixes to the law.
Jordan favors an all the above strategy.
“I think it’s a valid concern and I think it’s something we’ll look at. What we want to try to do is implement good policy that is in the best interests of the families and the individuals and the business that we get to represent. Those debates are going on. I’m not sure how that will play out and what exactly is the right move,” said Jordan.
“What I do know is this: this bill doesn’t work, this bill I think will never work and the answer in the end is for this bill to be repealed. If we can delay it, if we can stall it, if we can suspend it, all those things are good. But ultimately this law needs to be repealed because it will not work. It is not going to allow families to keep the doctors that they want or keep the insurance plan they want. It’s just not in the best interest of our country,” said Jordan.
Jordan believes it may be possible to convince enough Democrats to shelve the whole law for at least a year, although the administration is unlikely to give ground on its signature domestic issue.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see more and more Dems abandon support for Obamacare – including blue state liberals. They applaud James O’Keefe for his new videos showing Obamacare navigators willingly encouraging insurance fraud. Greg and Jim also discuss whether passing a bill that allows people to keep their health plans is the right plan or whether they should watch it burn. And they discuss a sleazy ad suggesting young people enroll in Obamacare so they can get free birth control and have risk-free sex with apparent strangers.
President Obama’s new explanation of Obamacare is just as false as his original argument and the political consequences may be unavoidable, according to Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner.
Turner believes it will be hard for Obama to regain the public’s trust after violating the central promise behind the Affordable Care Act, that anyone who likes their health care plan and their doctor would be able to keep them. Millions of people in the individual market have already learned their policies will be terminated in the coming weeks. Millions more could face the same situation once business leaders have to make decisions on health care coverage next year.
“I think the American people are absolutely incensed and you also see it through the mainstream media. They’re finally starting to give the president four pinocchios, which is about as many as The Washington Post can give,” said Turner. “A lie is when you say something that’s false and you know it’s false and you do it anyway. It wasn’t like this was a misstep, like The New York Times says. He said it dozens of times off teleprompters and written speeches while his staff knew that millions of people were going to lose their health coverage.”
Obama subsequently tried to claim he always said only plans that didn’t change after the legislation became law would be grandfathered in. He further asserts than anyone losing coverage because it doesn’t meet Obamacare standards will be better off in the new system. Turner vehemently disagrees.
“People are going to see for themselves once they ever do get on the website that the deductibles in the Obamacare exchange coverage is going to be several times higher,” said Turner, noting that deductibles on average run about $1,000 now and on the most affordable Obamacare plans in California they average about $4,000.
Turner says a major reason both premiums and deductibles are soaring is because of what Obamacare requires to be in every policy.
“Chris Conover, an economist from Duke University, believes by the time 2014 is over that 129 million Americans will have lost their policies because they did not comply with this long list of expensive Obamacare mandates. If your policy doesn’t cover drug addiction, rehabilitative care, habilitative care, pediatric dentistry, pregnancy testing, pregnancy care. If your policy does not cover all of those, it’s not a legal policy. The insurance companies cannot sell it. And for the president to be saying it’s the insurance companies’ fault makes me crazy. They cannot sell an illegal policy,” said Turner.
Turner further asserts that Obama summoned Senate Democrats up for re-election next year to convince them not to support any measures designed to extend deadlines, implement delays or anything else as the flawed roll-out persists. However, Turner says those Democrats will eventually buck the White House in an effort to save their own political skin.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are intrigued as Bill Clinton publicly calls for changes to allow people to keep their existing health care plans. They also cringe as new reports suggest healthcare.gov is a security nightmare. And they discuss news suggesting the first enrollment numbers will be stunningly low, fudged nonetheless and could have been provided at any time.
Six nations reportedly agree on the framework of a deal that would ease international sanctions on Iran in exchange for its verifiable compliance with steps to prove it is not developing nuclear weapons.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Charlie Cooke of National Review are encouraged by new poll numbers showing Democrats just as unpopular as Republicans. They also rip the Veterans Administration for dropping the ball on helping returning veterans and for showing America what government-run health care would look like. And they react to an ESPN commentator suggesting that we should stop playing a “militaristic” anthem before sporting events.
Foreign and domestic espionage has been in the news a lot this year, but despite the latest technology and intense training, the best performance of American spies is still considered to be the work of six amateurs who were pivotal in winning the American Revolution.
The amazing story of this indispensable group is outlined in “George Washington’s Secret Six: The Spy Ring that Saved the American Revolution,” by Fox News host Brian Kilmeade. Far from highly trained operatives, six unassuming colonists, ranging from a merchant to a tavern owner to a New York socialite, risked life and limb and ultimately reversed the tide of the war.
In fact, their work was so impressive that it is still the gold standard by which all future operatives are measured.
“When I went to (CIA headquarters in) Langley, Virginia, to see how good they were, they told me, ‘Not only were they good, we teach our men and women that we hire today what they learned in the middle of a war with no covert forces training,” said Kilmeade.
“They were able to able to stop Benedict Arnold from giving away West Point. They stopped a counterfeit ring that was going to make Washington’s new country have their money worth nothing, therefore their forces weren’t getting paid and they’d all leave. And they were also able to get the Battle of Yorktown ahead of time,” he said.
The “Culper Spy Ring” was so secretive that Washington never even knew who the leader was. Historians didn’t figure out it was Robert Townsend until well into the 20th Century. There was one female spy, known as Agent 355, who is still unidentified but was critical in exposing the treachery of Benedict Arnold.
“This woman infiltrated the social scene. We know that for sure. She found out where the parties were. She found out that there was a Patriot general about to turn sides and Washington was able to figure out it was Benedict Arnold,” said Kilmeade. “If they were unable to unearth this, West Point would have gone to the British, the Hudson would have gone to the British and we don’t win the war.”
One of the reasons the woman’s identity remains a secret is because historians believe the British figured out her role in stopping Arnold and she was killed.
The spy ring was created out of desperation in 1776. After chasing the British out of Boston, Washington’s forces were routed badly on Long Island and barely survived to fight another day. At this point, Washington knew he needed more intelligence and needed it on Long Island and in New York City where the British were so heavily concentrated.
The first recruit was Nathan Hale, but, as Kilmeade points out, that didn’t end well.
“Washington asked for volunteers to go there and tell them what’s going on, to find out the structure of the forces and Nathan Hale put his hand up,” said Kilmeade who says Washington and others were very skeptical of Hale because he had no covert training and didn’t know the local area. Hale insisted he was the right man.
“He said, ‘I’m a schoolteacher from Yale. I’m a smart guy. I’ll figure it out.’ Within a day-and-a-half, he gets hanged on 66th and 3rd in New York City. He’s dead,” said Kilmeade. “And Washington says, ‘I’ve got to do this right and I can’t win without them.'”
Washington then tapped an officer named Benjamin Talmadge to recruit this spy ring, ultimately comprised of Townsend, Agent 355, James Rivington, Abraham Woodhull, Austin Roe and Caleb Brewster. The genius of the network was finding people with plausible reasons for interacting with one or more fellow conspirators on a regular basis.
“They needed someone who had a reason to go to Manhattan and Robert Townsend did. He had a family business there. his house was billeted by the British, so they wanted him out of his house in Oyster Bay anyway. He has a reason to be there, to conduct business and he went in there and did it, at which time he was also able to observe things and write them down,” said Kilmeade.
“He was also able to become a reporter for Rivington’s newspaper and interview the very soldiers that were trying to dominate the colonies. He’d print those stories and it would go to Britain, but he would also be able to take that information and give it to Washington,” said Kilmeade, who then related the chain of events that moved key intelligence back to Washington.
“Amazingly, they’d be handed off to an agent named Austin Roe, who owned a tavern 55 miles from the city. He’d show up. He’d grab the papers. He had a reason to buy some commerce there because he owned a tavern. He’d buy something from Robert Townsend. In the materials would be this information, and he’d have that perilous ride of 55 miles back to his tavern and from there get it to Caleb Brewster who would row across the sound to get it to Washington on the other side,” he said.
The harrowing work was not without its consequences. In addition to the likely murder of Agent 355, Townsend himself was never the same after the war.
“It looks like he had PTSD. He never got his life together afterwards. He never really accomplished anything significant. After this war was so nerve-racking for him, that he never really got his act together,” said Kilmeade.
The six spies kept a very low profile. Fellow patriots were stunned later on when Washington stopped at Rivington’s newspaper offices to thank a man observers believed was a devout loyalist. Townsend was a no-show at his appointment with Washington. Kilmeade says that quality has carried over to the present generation of heroic Americans.
“They remind me of Americans today when I talk to men and women who serve in war. They don’t want the acclaim, even the Congressional Medals of Honor. They don’t want to take because they don’t want to single themselves out. They do it for their country. They do it for the cause,” said Kilmeade.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review enjoy Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood mocking Obamacare at the CMA award show. They also fume as the Obama administration declares Obamacare is not a federal health care program and refuses to apply fraud protections. And they aren’t surprised in the least as Joe Biden congratulates the wrong person for winning the Boston mayoral race.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee says conservatives need to update their messaging to appeal to a new generation of voters, who can be won over once they see how conservative principles work best for them and their families.
Speaking on Election Day, before voters knew about a Democratic win in Virginia and the margin of the GOP win in New Jersey, Lee reiterated key tenets from his recent Heritage Foundation address that aimed to chart the way forward for the GOP and a conservative movement wearied by the recent showdown over defunding Obamacare.
Lee says the last Republican leader to effectively tailor conservative principles to the present-day concerns of Americans was Ronald Reagan. That was 33 years ago, and Lee points out by the time the next race for the White House concludes, the distance between that day and Reagan’s 1980 landslide will be about the same length of time between Reagan’s win and the D-Day landings in 1944.
As a result, Lee says it’s time for new messaging. He says the message can include many reform-minded ideas but needs to be anchored in timeless principles.
“I think that agenda needs to form around two pillars of conservatism. The whole purpose of conservatism is to protect free markets and to protect the voluntary civil society in our country. Those are the two things that really give security, safety and meaning to community life in America, and those are the two principles that ought to animate all of what we do as conservatives to make sure that we protect those two key components of what our civilization is built around,” said Lee.
He says one of the greatest threats to those American cornerstones is the growth and intrusion of government into those organic institutions.
“We can damage both free markets and the voluntary civil society through excessive government interference. There are a lot of things we can do to damage them, to weaken them, even to destroy them with government. And once you’ve destroyed them, you can’t just flip a switch and recreate them because government lacks the capacity to do that,” said Lee.
“So a lot of the time, this means looking for ways to get government out of the way so that individuals can do what individuals do best in a free society, which is to form voluntary associations with others,” he said.
Lee is championing several specific reform policies, including greater choice in higher education, giving employees greater flexibility in trading overtime pay for time off and drastically reducing the federal gas tax while giving state and local authorities greater control over where new roads and lanes are built to bring parents home to their families sooner.
But the hallmark of his agenda is tax reform. Lee would simplify the income tax code down to just two tax brackets. Individuals making less than $87, 850 and couples earning less than $175,700 would pay 15 percent in taxes. Americans above those income levels would pay 35 percent. He would also dramatically increase the child tax credit to $2,500 per child.
Lee says the tax savings will help families but he says reforming the system will accomplish something even more important.
“This also would undo a really pernicious aspect of the existing personal income tax system, which is to say it would get rid of the parent tax penalty that exists in current law,” said Lee. “What I mean by that is working parents pay into our senior entitlement programs twice, first when they work and pay their taxes and then again as they raise their children and incur costs at an average of about $300,000 to raise a child to maturity.”
“Those children grow up and, in turn, will pay taxes that will fund their parents’ generation as they enter these senior entitlement programs as beneficiaries. So my tax plan would offset this parent tax penalty and would make it easier for parents, as they’re raising their children, to get along,” he said.
