In the midterm elections in November 2014, the American people spoke at the ballot box with unparalleled clarity. Their vote — to shift the balance of power in the Senate to the Republicans — was a repudiation of Barack Obama’s radicalism and Democratic governance as a whole.
At least that’s what we, the people, were led to believe. The reality, it turns out, is we were voting for politicians, who regardless of ideological stripe place their jobs and the well-being of their party above the will of the nation.
Yesterday, we saw this in the confirmation vote on Barack Obama’s nominee for attorney general, Loretta Lynch, who promises to match her disastrous predecessor, Eric Holder, at every turn. Vulnerable GOP senators who were more concerned about their reelection than about the task at hand voted to confirm Lynch.
The Senate’s top five Republican leaders have cosponsored legislation to extend until 2017 the Obamacare insurance subsidies that may be struck down by the Supreme Court this summer.
The legislation, offered by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), one of the most politically vulnerable Senate incumbents in 2016, would maintain the federal HealthCare.gov tax credits at stake in King v. Burwell through the end of August 2017.
The bill was unveiled this week with 29 other cosponsors, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his four top deputies, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), John Thune (R-SD), John Barrasso (R-WY) and Roy Blunt (R-MO). Another cosponsor is Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the chairman of the conference’s electoral arm.
Johnson, who was among the ten Senate Republicans who voted to confirm Lynch, claims the bill to retain the subsidies is “a first step toward reversing the damage that Obamacare has inflicted on the American health care system.” How, you ask? In a recent radio interview, he explained that if the high court strikes down the federally issued subsidies, millions of Americans would be adversely affected. The Democrats, he went on to explain, would blame this on the GOP, which might in turn negatively impact the 2016 elections.
Shorter Johnson: This stop gap measure, loathsome though it is, is a key to keeping the GOP in power.
Fool us once….
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