Obamacare

Community organizing, Obamacare style

A subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform held a hearing today on the government’s Obamacare “outreach” program. Obamacare authorizes the government to provide information to the uninsured, and to assist them in obtaining insurance, through the use of “navigators.” Today’s hearing addressed concerns of Republican committee members about how this process will work in practice. The only witness was Gary Cohen, deputy administrator of the Department »

The Bulworth identity

Featured image Peter Baker reports on President Obama’s frustrations in the New York Times: In private, [Obama] has talked longingly of “going Bulworth,” a reference to a little-remembered 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a senator who risked it all to say what he really thought. While Mr. Beatty’s character had neither the power nor the platform of a president, the metaphor highlights Mr. Obama’s desire to be liberated from what he sees »

Meet the new oppressor, same as the old oppressor

Featured image If this were April 1, I’d bet that the following headline from ABC News is a joke: “IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office.” But the joke is on us. Here’s the story: Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the »

Obama celebrates Mother’s Day

Featured image The White House has set up a Twitter account through which it is praising our Dear Leader in a style befitting the megalomaniacal leader of a one-party state. You really have to see it to get a fuller understanding of the Age of Obama, though I should warn readers that, as in the case of New York Times editorials, you may lose brain cells scrolling through the thing. In one »

Applying for Obamacare

Featured image Last month Time’s Joe Klein decried the Obama administration’s “incompetence” implementing Obamacare. This month Klein expressed relief in an “Exclusive” report. In his “Exclusive” Klein praised the administration for streamlining the complex 21-page online Obamacare application to a mere three pages. Klein called it “a spiffy, new three-page application for individuals (find it here)” (footnote omitted). He added: “There will be a seven-page application for families (11 including the appendix), »

Tax cuts, Obama style

Featured image A thoroughgoing dishonesty permeates the Obama administration. From Obamacare to Benghazi, this is the gang that can’t talk straight. Philip Klein catches the president in the act of being himself, peddling instantly classic doubletalk: As part of a Mothers’ Day weekend defense of his signature legislative accomplishment, President Obama claimed that the law represented the “largest health care tax cut for working families and small businesses in our history. “ »

Senate Dems prepare to throw Obama under the Obamacare bus

Featured image We’ve been saying for some time that Obamacare will be a central issue in the 2014 election, and that it offers Republicans the hope, if they nominate solid candidates, of taking control of the Senate. Now, Senate Democrats have figured this out, as well. Ron Wyden is latest example. He frets: There is reason to be very concerned about what’s going to happen with young people. If their (insurance) premiums »

New, improved, exclusive!

Featured image Last month Time’s Joe Klein decried the Obama administration’s “incompetence” implementing Obamacare. This week Klein expressed relief in an “Exclusive” report. In his “Exclusive” Klein praised the administration for streamlining the complex 21-page online Obamacare application to a mere three pages. Klein called it “a spiffy, new three-page application for individuals (find it here)” (footnote omitted). He added: “There will be a seven-page application for families (11 including the appendix), »

Have the Kochs Already Bought the LA Times?

Featured image I spent last evening at a splendid dinner of the Friends of Ronald Reagan at the California Club in downtown Los Angeles, where our special guest was Senator John Thune.  It was off the record, so no, I won’t tell you what he said, except that when I mentioned I was from Power Line, he recalled running into Scott at the airport recently and was wondering if we were starting »

Five notes on five takes

Featured image Glenn Reynolds not only teaches law at the University of Tennessee College of Law, where he is the Beauchamp Brogan Professor of Law, he writes regular newspaper columns and books of general interest, conducts interviews for InstaVision, and scours the Web for material of interest to flag on InstaPundit, which looks like it would have to be a full-time job all by itself. And he also publishes readable law review »

This just in: Demise of Obamacare exaggerated

Featured image My introduction to the concept of the low information voter came in my capacity as Treasurer of Rudy Boschwitz’s 1996 campaign against then incumbent Paul Wellstone. Rudy had engaged the services of a prominent political consultant who had polled Minnesota voters on issues relevant to the race. The poll resulted in a briefly book that was a couple of inches thick, slicing and dicing the electorate with great sophisticatoin. According »

“God bless the abortionist”

Featured image President Obama really poured it on in his speech to Planned Parenthood yesterday (video below). Taken together with the introduction by Planned Parenthood’s president, we get a full airing of the sacramental view of abortion that underlies the Democrats’ mania on behalf of the practice. Obama’s speech begins at about 6:30. In the gospel according to Barry, we now have the blessing for the abortionist: “As long as we’ve got »

Obamacare for thee but not for me [UPDATED]

Featured image Congress rarely comes together across party lines these days, but bipartisan consensus has emerged over the unsuitability of Obamacare’s insurance exchanges. Politico reports that Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join under Obamacare. The talks are said to involve Harry Reid, John Boehner, other top lawmakers, and the Obama administration. »

Max Baucus fears a wreck of the train he hopped

Featured image Max Baucus, who helped write the Obamacare legislation, said today that he sees a “huge train wreck” ahead due to problems in implementing that law. Baucus addressed this comment to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius during a routine budget hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, which he chairs. Baucus expressed concern that new health insurance marketplaces for consumers and small businesses will not open on time in every »

Open enrollment, closing opportunity

Featured image The designers of Obamacare put some serious thought into the expansion of the welfare state. If you have an income up to 400 percent of the designated federal poverty line, you can now skip your application for disability benefits and proceed directly to get on the Obamcare dole. You may actually need the subsidy to cushion the shock of the premium increases that Obamacare will deliver along with the benefits. »

Obamacare delenda est

Featured image The enactment of Obamacare by overweening Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate was more than a gratuitous act of destruction, but it was incredibly destructive, and it was premised on Barack Obama’s incessantly repeated pack of lies about preserving existing arrangements, lowering costs, and all the rest. A willful pack of lies. Now what? Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin have not given up the fight and have been »

The sequester, jobs, politics, and national security

Featured image The White House, through economist turned flack Alan Krueger, wasted no time in blaming yesterday’s lousy jobs report on the sequester. It’s a ridiculous claim. As we observed, government employment held steady, and the sequester is too recent to have affected the private sector. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, who is frequently cited by the Obama administration, agrees that the sequester is not yet in play. Zandi told CNBC: »