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One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato (429-347 BC)

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

House Slashes IRS Funding | Obamacare Hurts Women | Fact Checker: Dems Reponses "Untethered" From Facts

Today In Washington, D.C. - July 15, 2014
The House reconvened at 10 AM. At 12:38, the House passed by voice vote H.R. 3086 — "To permanently extend the Internet Tax Freedom Act."

The House will consider today:
H.R. 5016 — "Making appropriations for financial services and general government for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2015, and for other purposes."
H.R. 5021 — "To provide an extension of Federal-aid highway, highway safety, motor carrier safety, transit, and other programs funded out of the Highway Trust Fund, and for other purposes."

The Blaze reports, that yesterday the House voted "... to cut more than $1 billion from the IRS’s tax enforcement budget, giving Republicans a big helping of revenge against an agency they’ve battled all year. Members of the House this week are considering the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2015. The bill being debated on the House floor would already cut IRS funding by $341 million compared to the current fiscal year. . . .

"[M}embers went further by considering amendments to chop even more from the proposed $10.95 billion IRS budget. And the big cuts were approved easily in voice votes, demonstrating how little appetite there is among Democrats to defend the IRS in the wake of its effort to target conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. The biggest reduction came from Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-I), who proposed a whopping $788 million cut from the IRS’s $5 billion tax enforcement budget. The IRS has been targeting American taxpayers, as we’ve learned, for their political beliefs for the last four or five years,” Huizenga said. . . .

"Moments earlier, the House voice-vote approved another amendment from Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) to eliminate another $353 million from IRS enforcement funds. The House also approved amendments from Reps. Bill Posey (R-FL) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) to chop another $3 million from the same account.

"By the end of the night, the House had cut a total of $1.144 billion from the IRS’s enforcement account, a reduction of more than 20 percent."

Yesterday, the House passed:
H.R. 1786(Voice Vote) — "To reauthorize the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program, and for other purposes."
H.R. 4193 (Voice Vote) — "To amend title 5, United States Code, to change the default investment fund under the Thrift Savings Plan, and for other purposes."
H.R. 4195 (386-0) — "To amend chapter 15 of title 44, United States Code (commonly known as the Federal Register Act), to modernize the Federal Register, and for other purposes."
H.R. 4197 (Voice Vote) — "To amend title 5, United States Code, to extend the period of certain authority with respect to judicial review of Merit Systems Protection Board decisions relating to whistleblowers, and for other purposes."
H.R. 5029 (346-41) — "To provide for the establishment of a body to identify and coordinate international science and technology cooperation that can strengthen the domestic science and technology enterprise and support United States foreign policy goals."
H.R. 5031 (Voice Vote) — "To define STEM education to include computer science, and to support existing STEM education programs at the National Science Foundation."
H.R. 5056 (Voice Vote) — "To improve the efficiency of Federal research and development, and for other purposes."
H.R. 4185 (Voice Vote) — "To revise certain authorities of the District of Columbia courts, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia, and the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, and for other purposes."
--  Numerous bills (not listed) naming U.S. Government Buildings.

The Senate reconvened at 10 AM today. The Senate voted on cloture on two nominees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).  Once again, Democrats used the precedent the established to invoke cloture with fewer than 60 votes following their use of the nuclear option to break Senate rules in order to change them. Using that precedent, cloture was invoked on the controversial nomination of Norman Bay to be a member of FERC by a vote of 51-45.

Following that vote, senators voted 85-10 to invoke cloture on the nomination of Cheryl LaFleur to be a member of FERC. At 3 PM, the Senate will vote on confirmation of the Bay and LaFleur nominations.

Speaking on the Senate floor this morning, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell discussed how Obamacare is hurting women and noted that Democrats refuse to take responsibility for it. He said, “So many middle-class families in my state and across the country continue to suffer from the impacts of this law. And one thing that becomes increasingly clear with each passing day is the extent to which Obamacare is particularly hard on women. Research shows that women make about 80 percent of the health care decisions for their families in this country. And yet Obamacare has caused countless women to lose the health care plans they had and liked. When these women first spoke out about the betrayal they felt when they lost their plans, many of the law’s supporters waved their concerns away. They said they were lying, or that their plans were ‘junk’ because, of course, they knew better. It’s a pattern that seems to have continued ever since. American women also now have fewer choices of doctors and hospitals under Obamacare. The bill’s supporters have continually waved those concerns aside too. Millions of Americans use Flexible Spending Accounts to pay for out-of-pocket health care expenses. But Obamacare imposes arbitrary limits on how much of a family’s own, hard-earned money can be set aside, and the law also prevents people who’ve come to depend on FSAs from using them to pay for common expenses like allergy medicine and cold medication. Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare Advantage and other regulatory actions could reduce the average benefit for women and men who rely on this program by more than $1,500 a year. Concerns like these are all brushed aside by Obamacare’s supporters. Washington should also be looking for ways to grow economic opportunities for women. But Obamacare does just the opposite.”

Leader McConnell continued, “[D]espite these terrible stories that keep pouring into our offices, the people who supported this law when it passed and they continue to defend it now. We kept warning them that Obamacare would hurt jobs and increase costs. They had to know that Obamacare was going to reduce choices for women and limit their access to certain doctors and hospitals. But Washington Democrats voted for Obamacare anyway. They created these problems. And that’s why they should be working with Republicans now to start over with real, patient-centered reform that lowers costs and that women and men in this country actually want. But they refuse. They’re just doubling down on Obamacare. And now they’re trying to convince people of another untruth — that somehow it’s not possible to preserve our nation’s long tradition of tolerance and respect for people of faith while at the same time preserving a woman’s ability to make her own decisions about contraception.”

Democrats have been particularly loose with the truth when discussing the recent Supreme Court case involving Hobby Lobby’s objections to one of Obamacare’s mandates. Their distortions have been so egregious that The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler wrote an entire “Fact Checker” column just going through the various outlandish claims Democrats have made. He wrote that “in some cases the rhetoric has gotten way ahead of the facts,” emphasizing, “Nothing in the ruling allows a company to stop a woman from getting or filling a prescription for contraceptives, but that salient fact is often lost as lawmakers jump to conclusions that the cost will be prohibitive. That may or may not be the case depending on circumstances.”

Kessler notes House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) saying, “Really, we should be afraid of this court.  The five guys who start determining what contraceptions are legal. Let’s not even go there.” He explains, “This is a very odd statement from the House Democratic leader, given that the majority opinion flatly states that ‘under our cases, women (and men) have a constitutional right to obtain contraceptives,’ citing the 1965 ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut, which under the right to privacy nullified a law prohibiting the use of contraceptives.”

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), the chair of the DNC, claimed, “This is deeply troubling because you have organized religions that oppose health care, period. So if you have an employer who is a member of an organized religion and they decide, you know, I wouldn’t provide health care to my own family because I object religiously, I’m not going to allow any kind of health-care treatment.” Kessler responds, “While there are some religions that object to certain medical procedures, Wasserman Schultz goes to quite an extreme to suggest that employers could block an employee from seeking any kind of health-care treatment. (Again, the issue was who would pay for contraceptives, not whether someone was barred from getting contraceptives.)”

In a particularly detached statement from reality, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said, “[In Griswold v. Connecticut,] the Supreme Court said that the right of privacy of individuals and families trumped any state right to ban contraceptives.  It was a breakthrough.  They found privacy, at least the inference of privacy, in the Constitution. I asked that question repeatedly of Justice Roberts and Justice Alito to make sure that they would honor that same tradition of privacy. The Hobby Lobby decision violates that fundamental premise. [While both justices were careful in their answers before confirmation,] they both said they stood by the Griswold decision.” Kessler notes, “Durbin serves on the Judiciary Committee and is the second-ranking Democrat on the Senate. Here, he appears to come close to saying what Pelosi asserted — that the ruling signaled a possible ban on contraceptives. He specifically mentions the Griswold decision, which as we noted was cited by Alito in the majority opinion as settled law.” It seems rather absurd for Durbin to claim Justices Roberts and Alito “violated” Griswold when the majority opinion specifically held to it and cited it as being unaffected in this decision.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) asserted, “The U.S. Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision opened the door to unprecedented corporate intrusion into our private lives. Coloradans understand that women should never have to ask their bosses for a permission slip to access common forms of birth control.” Kessler points out, “Udall’s remarks were contained in a news release he issued with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) about a bill that seeks to overturn the Hobby Lobby decision. There is a bit of an irony here: Udall voted for the Affordable Care Act, which built upon the employer-based health-care system in the United States and thus led to a ruling by the Supreme Court in the first place. . . . Again, the issue is not whether women will have access to birth control, but whether the health plan will cover the cost.”

Kessler concludes of Democrats’ “collection of rhetoric,” “All too often, lawmakers leap to conclusions that are not warranted by the facts at hand. Simply put, the court ruling does not outlaw contraceptives, does not allow bosses to prevent women from seeking birth control and does not take away a person’s religious freedom. . . . [I]n many cases the Democratic response has been untethered from those basic facts.”

It’s ironic, then, that Democrats’ response is to seek to infringe on the religious freedoms ensured in the bipartisan Religious Freedom Restoration Act that was signed into law by President Clinton.”

As Leader McConnell said, “I realize that Democrats may think the best way to keep people from focusing on the impact of Obamacare on middle-class families is to just make things up — and to attempt to divide us. Well, I think that’s a shame. And I think it takes a pretty dim view of what we’re capable of as a country. The goal here shouldn’t be to protect the freedoms of some while denying the freedoms of others. The goal here — and always — should be to preserve everyone’s freedoms. We can do both. . . . The American people know that. They know Democrats are just attempting to offer another false choice here. What we’re saying is that of course you can support both religious freedom and access to contraception. Look: if Washington Democrats really wanted to help women, they’d work with us to do so.”

Tags: House, slashes, IRS funding, Senate, Obamacare, hurts women, fact checker, Democrats, unthethered from facts To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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