More and more frequently lately, I read about growing concern regarding the administration’s blatant disregard for many laws as written, overstepping of Constitutional bounds, and refusals to cooperate in any way at all in issues where violations may have occurred.
In most cases, the issues involved are composed of actions taken improperly or illegally, such as the IRS targeting political foes, or the gross negligence occurring in the mishandling of the embassy attack in Benghazi. There are also the festering situations regarding the Fast and Furious gun-running scheme and the Justice Department's improper harassment of James Rosen, reporter for Fox News.
While each of these situations has likely illegal elements of their own, the nefarious actions taken have been politically motivated. The primary intent has been to either cover up significant malfeasance and incompetence, or to stem exposure of evidence damaging to the image of the incumbent and/or his representatives.
But now, today, while we have another significant mis-step, this one goes the the heart of the monumental problems with the new health-care tax. And the complainants here aren’t every day tax-paying citizens, political foes or other types of outside adversaries. The victims now are members of Congress and their aides.
John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman, of Politico via Drudge write that: “The Office of Personnel Management [OPM], under heavy pressure from Capitol Hill, will issue a ruling that says the government can continue to make a contribution to the health care premiums of members of Congress and their aides, according to several Hill sources.”
It seems that Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, inserted a provision in the new heath-care tax saying members of Congress and their aides must be covered by plans “created” by the law or “offered through an exchange.”
Until now, OPM hadn’t said if the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program could contribute premium payments toward plans on the exchange. However, if the current payments stopped, ”lawmakers and aides would have faced thousands of dollars in additional premium payments each year. Under the old system, the government contributed nearly 75 percent of premium payments.”
Facing the possibility of losing this huge perk, paid for by the public, panic reached the extent from both parties, that the incumbent “told Democratic senators that he was personally involved in finding a solution.”
Apparently there was much serious griping from both sides of the aisle about the potential of a “brain drain,” which is the “fear that aides would head for more lucrative jobs, spooked by the potential for spiking health premiums.”
So, here we have a situation not only proving the heath-care tax is unaffordable to those forced to pay it, the government's own employees would prefer to find new careers, rather than watch their incomes dramatically sink.
However, by issuing the ruling that says the government can continue to make a contribution to the health care premiums of members of Congress and their aides, the problem got fixed due to presidential pressure.
But while the taxpaying public has the exact same problems, or worse, if they don’t pay for the coverage they’ll be fined, penalized or thrown in jail. So my question for today is: “How long will the public sit still while this kind of total abuse of power and financial rip-off goes on?”
That's it for today folk's.
Adios
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