Radio America Online News Bureau

Archives for June 2017

‘All the Wrong Moves in the Obamacare Direction’

by

A key member of the House Freedom Caucus says the Senate health care bill drifts too far towards the existing framework and that the smartest approach would be to repeal Obamacare and then get to work on a replacement, although he does not expect GOP leaders to choose that path.

Rep. Dave Brat, R-Virginia, taught economics for 20 years before pulling off a stunning defeat of then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014 Republican primary.  He could not support the Senate bill unveiled by leaders last week.

“The original bill coming out of the Senate kind of made all the wrong moves in the Obamacare direction, which is shocking,” said Brat.

“It’s not just about adding more coverage or helping more people.  That’s the way most people are thinking about this.  What I think people lost track of is Economics 101.  Obamacare is in the ditch because of its own economic logic,” said Brat.

He says lawmakers on both sides struggle to see the big picture.

“That Obamacare logic was just about 100 percent attention paid to coverage and no attention paid to the price of health care.  As a result, people were covered with gold-plated health insurance policies, but no one could afford health coverage,” said Brat.

With Senate Republicans now unable to move their own bill, Brat enthusiastically endorses the suggestion of Sens. Rand Paul, R-Kent., and Ben Sasse, R-Neb., to repeal Obamacare now and then get to work on a replacement that can pass.

“The rational politics would have been, initially, to repeal Obamacare, which all of those senators voted for when it didn’t count.  They all voted for the 2015 package to repeal Obamacare,” said Brat.

He says that’s exactly what Republican voters expected after the 2016 elections, but they aren’t getting it.

“When you vote 50 times to repeal and then you tell the American people you’re going to repeal and then you end up very close to Obamacare logic.  That is not good for the Republican brand,” said Brat.

Brat is confident that if repeal came first, there would be plenty of interest across the spectrum in getting on board with the replacement bill.

“Then you have the leverage to work with the Democrats.  There’s no shortage of people who want to add programs in D.C. in the swamp, right?  So you first repeal and then the floodgates are open to add.  You can get as many votes as you want from any politician to say yes.  Politicians love to say yes.  That would have been a brilliant move back in January,” he said.

So will House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell embrace that idea now that a comprehensive bill is flailing in the Senate?  Brat is not holding his breath.

“I went to seminary so I’ll be praying for it, but I’m doubtful.  That would be too good of news.  I don’t think we’ve got a big enough spine to carry that off,” said Brat.

But why?  Republicans scored decisive wins in three separate election cycles, due in large part to their promises to repeal Obamacare.  So why aren’t they following through?

Brat sees three key reasons: keeping the special interests happy, the effort to protect vulnerable Senate incumbents from unpopular votes, and a relentlessly hostile media.

“Up in D.C., you’ve got to appease the swamp, so there’s all sorts of moneyed special interests you have to appease, ” said Brat, noting that the insurance companies love what the Senate GOP produced.  “Then if you’re in tough seats, you’ve got to try to support those tough seats.”

Brat says the influence of the major insurance companies is a big problem, one that James Madison and Adam Smith warned against long ago.

“Both of them had the exact same logic.  You want a large number  of small competitors duking it out in this country.  We’ve lost that.  That’s the American way.  Instead, we’ve got a few huge oligopolies running from D.C., which the elites can put their thumb down on and that’s why the American person is getting hammered right now,” said Brat.

As for the media, Brat says the avalanche of false, negative coverage is tough for many members to weather.

“After we passed the House bill, the mainstream media repeated misinformation and fake news for the next week.  It was one simple line: House bill gets rid of pre-existing conditions.  Everybody with pre-existing conditions is on their own and there’s going to be death in the streets,” said Brat.

“It is daunting to have confidence in the people back home, that they can see through that message when that’s all you see as a politician is that mainstream media.  CNN, New York Times, Washington Post: House guts, destroys obliterates – all these crazy words.  Then they say, ‘Politicians, you guys have to be more civil,’ as they lambaste us with falsehoods constantly,” said Brat.

One of the main reasons Brat opposes the Senate bill is because it fails to deal with what he sees as the fatally flawed framework of Obamacare.

“At least the House package had a little bit of room to negotiate some of the regulations and the regulations are Obamacare.  If you don’t get rid of the Obamacare regulations, a young person cannot go out and buy a catastrophic package out of college, so they’re left with a gold-plated plan with a $2,000-$3,000 deductible.  And I don’t know a lot of college grads with two or three grand in their pocket,” said Brat.

He is imploring his fellow Republicans to proceed on the principles they constantly espouse about the success of the free market.

“If you believe in free markets and the standard American package of free enterprise, etc., that will deliver the goods.  Everybody knows these eye surgeries that started out at $6,000 per eye are down to $450 per eye to get your Tiger Woods eye surgery,” said Brat.

“That’s what the market can do if you let it alone.  If you let the government intervene, you end up with Medicare, which is insolvent in 2034.  You end up with Social Security, which is insolvent for the kids in 2034.  $20 trillion in debt, $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities to those major programs, and we’re going to add more government,” said Brat.

Standard Podcast [ 12:24 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Share

Gettysburg Reenactment Rumors

by

Gettysburg Pennsylvania authorities are on edge over rumors claiming  the leftist group Antifa may cause problems at this weekend’s battle reenactment. According to Fox News, some fear the group may cause damage to gravestones and even burn a Confederate flag. While peaceful protests are legal, such action on Antifa’s part will not be tolerated. While the Central Pennsylvania Antifa group denies the rumors, United States park police are taking the reports seriously. The reenactment is highly attended, and authorities are preparing for any incidents that may arise.

Share

Sanctuary City Smackdown, Illinois Financial Fiasco, ‘Fake News’ Feedback

by

Ian Tuttle of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America celebrate the House passing “Kate’s Law” and agreeing to further crackdowns on sanctuary cities. They also discuss the dismal financial prospects of Illinois, which has racked up massive amounts of debt and that additional tax increases cannot solve despite the insistence of Democrats. And they contemplate the partisan fallout if Twitter releases a “fake news” button for its site. Finally, they extol the genius of America as they prepare to celebrate Independence Day and the Three Martini Lunch pauses until July 5.

Share

‘We Have to Be Watching Out for Regular Americans’

by

A new government report estimates that 1.4 million illegal immigrants are using the stolen Social Security numbers of Americans, a problem that is getting worse and being exacerbated by the inability of key federal agencies to work together.

It’s a problem that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., says demands congressional attention to protect the interests of American citizens and those in the U.S. legally.

According to the report from Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Robert George, only half of those 1.4 million Americans were even notified that their Social Security information was compromised.

He also concluded that tracking the fraud is more difficult than it needs to be because the IRS is forbidden from working with the Department of Homeland Security to find those responsible.

Rohrabacher finds that unacceptable but not surprising.  He says the problem is getting worse because more and more people are coming to the U.S. illegally with the expectation of receiving federal benefits.

“You have got a large number now, millions of people who are coming to this country who thought they were going to get government benefits,just like Americans” said Rohrabacher.

He says failing to address this issue

“Today, we’ve evolved into a situation where if people are here illegally can end up compromising the Social Security system or any of our systems designed to help Americans and legal immigrants, it’ll just destroy the whole system.  It’s in the process.  We are in the process of collapsing now,” said Rohrabacher.

Rohrabacher says the problem also persists because of leaders who encourage the problem.

“This is the same mentality as people who are in elected office who are telling us they are going to provide sanctuary in cities and states around the United States for people who are here illegally, even when they’re criminals.  I mean how absurd is that,” said Rohrabacher.

He says the bureaucratic wall that prevents IRS-DHS collaboration is from the same mindset.

“This same gang has managed to sneak this type of restriction into law or into practice here at the federal level.  We need to make sure it’s dealt with as quickly as we can.  Now that we have a president and two houses of Congress, we need to prove we can act,” said Rohrabacher.

The congressman says there are definitely good, honorable people working inside the federal government, but he warns the number of political operatives who are embedding themselves into the bureaucracy is a problem.

“There are a lot of other people who have been making their way through the bureaucracy that have been helped along by liberal-left political connections, sort of wormed their way into the system.  I know a lot of people in the last eight years have made sure they’re in positions throughout our government,” said Rohrabacher.

While Rohrabacher isn’t immediately sure of what exact legislation is needed to allow greater interagency cooperation and to crack down on Social Security fraud, he says the process is clear.

“We’d have to name those legal impediments to say specifically that the cooperation that’s necessary to track down this type of fraud committed against the American people by illegal immigrants and that all areas of government should be legally able to work together,” said Rohrabacher.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed multiple bill addressing illegal immigration, one to ratchet up the punishment for repeat illegal immigrants and the other to threaten the withholding of federal dollars to cities and other jurisdictions that impede the work of federal immigration officials.

Rohrabacher says addressing Social Security fraud and bureaucratic hurdles is another test the public expects Republicans to pass.

Standard Podcast [ 10:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Share

“Caliphate” Crumbling, Government Healthcare Horror, Trump Twitter Wars

by

David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud new developments in the Middle East as ISIS loses its grip on Mosul and its defeat appears increasingly likely. They condemn the appalling Charlie Gard decision in which a London court decided that a terminally ill child will be removed from life support — against the wishes of his parents — and reflect on the implications of single-payer healthcare. They criticize President Trump’s latest Twitter barrage against Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, claiming Trump’s language debases the culture. Plus, a follow-up revelation in the McEnroe-Williams tennis controversy.

Share

POTUS Sinks WOTUS

by

President Trump made good on a major campaign promise Tuesday, as the Environmental Protection Agency announced the beginning of a process that will roll back the Waters of the United States rule, a move that has champions of private property rights cheering loudly.

On Tuesday, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt made the policy shift official.

“We are taking significant action to return power to the states and provide regulatory certainty to our nation’s farmers and businesses,” said Pruitt in a statement.

“This is the first step in the two-step process to redefine ‘waters of the U.S.’ and we are committed to moving through this re-evaluation to quickly provide regulatory certainty, in a way that is thoughtful, transparent and collaborative with other agencies and the public,” he added

“It’s a big day for freedom for property rights and the Constitution,” said R.J. Smith, a senior fellow in environmental policy at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Smith says he Waters of the United States rule, or WOTUS, which was put forward during the Obama administration, was nothing more than gross distortion of what Congress intended for the EPA to regulate as part of the Clean Water Act.

The act specifically allowed government to regulate “navigable” waterways, which Smith said was well-understood to mean bodies of water on which commerce traveled through shipping.  But he says the government was content to leash its authority.

“‘Navigable waters’ kept getting stretched by the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers year after year.  First it would go to tributary streams.  Then it would go to smaller streams.  Then it would go to creeks and it would go to irrigation ditches, things that nothing could navigate,” said Smith.

It didn’t stop there.

“Then it began to control the lands that were adjacent to navigable waters and lands that were adjacent to things that ran into navigable waters,” said Smith.

“By vastly expanding this,they’ve reached a point now where something that was only supposed to protect major rivers to see that commerce could take place in America now controls whether a farmer can plow his own land,” said Smith.

And that creeping government control forces property owners to beg Uncle Sam to use their own property.

“It takes an endless amount of time, years of time, money and still uncertainty to try to get a permit to use your own land.  Anything that rain falls on now could technically be considered waters of the United States,” said Smith, noting that building a home on seemingly dry land on your own property could lead to millions of dollars in government fines.

The rescinding of WOTUS is not the end of the story.  Pruitt’s announcement triggers a 30-day comment period, which will be considered in revising the existing rule.

“EPA and the corps together will come up with a revised rule, hopefully a rule that protects property rights and puts the EPA and the corps back into the constitutional mode they’re supposed to be in,” said Smith.

He also wants Congress to make sure the EPA can never stretch the definition of “navigable waters” ever again.

“The United States Congress needs to go back and revisit the Clean Water Act of 1972 and amend it so that it unequivocally says that “navigable” means navigable and it means by commercial shipping, not by somebody in a motor boat, not by somebody in a canoe or a kayak or a rubber raft or even floating down a little tiny creek in a tube,” said Smith.

Standard Podcast [ 6:46 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Share

Syria Scared Straight, Republicans Retreat on Repeal, Dunkirk Diversity Drama

by

David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud the “tough guy” stance that President Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis are taking in deterring further chemical attacks in Syria. They dive into the complications surrounding the healthcare debate, as Mitch McConnell scraps the vote on the most recent GOP bill and many of the Republicans opposed believe the government should be doing more. Finally, they discuss the PC complaints that the new Dunkirk film — a historical World War II drama  — is “too white,” even though the vast majority of soldiers involved were white.

Share

Ex-INS Official Hails Court Ruling on Travel Ban

by

The law is very clear that the president has the power to exclude any person or group of people from entering the United States and the Supreme Court was right to rule in his favor, according to a former high-ranking Immigration and Naturalization Service official.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected appellate court decisions striking down President Trump’s executive order that calls for a 90-day travel ban from six nations with significant terrorism problems.  The justices lifted some of the injunctions against the executive order and agreed to hear oral arguments on other components later this year.

Temple University School of Law Professor Jan C. Ting served as assistant director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service at the Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration.  He says the Supreme Court’s stark reversal from the lower court decisions is striking.

“The unanimity of the high court was surprising.  Even the liberal wing of the court concurred in the judgment that the positions of the lower courts in striking down the ban were overly broad,” said Ting.

He fully expects the court to rule in Trump’s favor on the outstanding issues as well given what Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a separate opinion that both concurred and dissented from the majority opinion.

“It seemed like the travel ban was very likely to be affirmed by the high court on the merits when the high court gets to that point, and I think that’s reflected in the unanimous decision of the high court to push back on the lower court injunctions,” said Ting.

Ting has weighed in at various points of the travel ban debate, pointing out that Trump’s first version was perfectly legal based on existing U.S. statute, specifically 8 USC 1182(f).

“Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate,” the statute reads in part.

Ting says that makes this fierce political battle an open and shut case.

“The law is very clear.  The president has the authority to exclude any alien from the United States for any reason and for any period of time the president chooses.  That is unmistakably clear,” said Ting, noting the ruling is a rebuke to lower courts straining for reasons to block the order.

“The role of the courts is and ought to be very limited.  These are political questions, whether people should be excluded from the United States.  The political branches of government, the Congress and president together, should be making these decisions,” said Ting.

Critics often call the executive order a Muslim ban and cite first amendment concern.  Ting says that argument simply doesn’t hold up.

“I think it’s pretty clear that there’s not a religious issue there.  I mean anyone who reads the first amendment can see that we’re not establishing a religion in a travel ban,” said Ting.

Furthermore, he asserts that non-citizens in other countries don’t have constitutional rights.

“The notion that people who are outside the United States who are not citizens have some rights that they can assert under our Constitution is, I think, an erroneous claim.  Those issues will all be decided when the high court rules on the merits,” said Ting.

“It would be startling if people outside the United States had some constitutional right either to come to the United States or, frankly, whether they could assert any constitutional rights while as non-citizens outside the United States,” said Ting.

“We think the United States is an exceptional country, but our Constitution is not so great that it governs people all over the world who are not citizens,” he added.

In it’s decision, the Supreme Court allows people to travel to the U.S. from the six nations listed in the executive order only if there is a clear connection for them in this country, ranging from a new job to admission to a college or university or if they have close family in the U.S.

Alternatively, the ban remains firmly in place for those without such connections.

Ting finds the distinction unhelpful.

“I’m with the three dissenters (Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito), who say this is going to give rise to a lot of unnecessary litigation before we get to the merits.  It’s really not necessary.  Since it’s going to be overturned anyway, why don’t we just restore it in the interim?” said Ting.

He says the answer to that can probably be found in in the man who leads the high court.

“I think we see the hand of Chief Justice Roberts here.  He’s trying to preserve the dignity of the court and he would like to have unanimous opinions,” said Ting.  “He negotiated this compromise just to get everyone on board so the Supreme Court could speak with one voice, heightening the respect of the high court and its decisions.”

 

Standard Podcast [ 10:34 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Share

CNN Eats Crow, GOP’s Healthcare Headache, Sanders Scandal, Serena Slighted?

by


David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss the resignation of three CNN reporters after the redaction of a deceptive story on a top Trump advisor. They also express frustration over the tactics of Senate Republicans as the debate over the new healthcare bill escalates.Then, they decry the double standard, as it provides little coverage of the FBI’s bank fraud investigation of Bernie Sanders’ wife. And they defend John McEnroe’s controversial comments on NPR that while Serena Williams is the best women’s player of all time, she would struggle greatly on the men’s tour.

Share