Posted on 09/26/2013 11:36:07 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Two words, my friends: “Bipartisan support.”
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia broke ranks with fellow Democrats and said he’d support a stopgap spending plan that delays the individual mandate in President Barack Obama’s health-care law.
“There’s no way I could not vote for it,” Manchin said at a Bloomberg Government breakfast today. “It’s very reasonable and sensible.”…
Manchin, 66, said he’d be willing to delay the individual mandate as part of the budget negotiations because the Obama administration in July gave businesses an extra year to provide their workers with health insurance.
“Don’t put the mandate on the American public right now,” Manchin said. “Give them at least a year. If you know you couldn’t bring the corporate sector, you gave them a year, don’t you think it’d be fair?”
Two intriguing footnotes. One: News of this broke while The One was busy delivering his umpteen-thousandth speech about how terrific O-Care will be if we just give it a chance. Coincidence, or did Manchin time this for maximum impact? Two: Unlike many other red-state Democrats, he’s not up for reelection next year. He’s safe in West Virginia until 2018. Either he supports delay on the merits (he ran an ad three years ago in which he literally shot a hole through a copy of the bill) or he thinks the political fallout of backing O-Care will be so gruesome that it’ll still be a liability for him in five years. Either way, this is just the sort of political cover that Democrats who are up for reelection in conservative states need to vote with the GOP. Pryor, Landrieu, Begich, Hagan — Republicans could conceivably have 50 votes or more for delay headed into debt-ceiling negotiations. That won’t break a filibuster but it does complicate the White House’s message of blaming everything on those darned wingnuts and their anti-ObamaCare monomania.
But Manchin’s announcement wasn’t the only news breaking during O’s speech:
The Obama administration is delaying another piece of Obamacare – this time postponing online enrollment in some of the small-business exchanges scheduled to open Oct. 1, sources tell POLITICO.
Small businesses looking to enroll in coverage on so-called SHOP exchanges run by the federal government will be able to submit a paper application on Oct. 1 – they just won’t be able to enroll online…
The SHOP applications represent the latest glitch in the federal exchange infrastructure. Federal health officials recently said they won’t be able to transfer Medicaid applications to states right away, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week.
So there’s the answer to the question I asked last night. The D.C. exchange was promoted by the media as ahead of the curve relative to other exchanges, and yet they still couldn’t get the subsidies calculations right in time for launch day — with three years to prepare. If that’s the shape that a comparatively well-run exchange was in, when would the more poorly-run exchanges start postponing elements of the rollout? Well, here you go. It took less than 24 hours.
Exit question: At this point, would the White House rather meet Boehner’s demand for a one-year delay of all of ObamaCare or Manchin’s demand for a one-year delay of the individual mandate specifically? I think there’s more political risk to the latter than the former, no? If you delay the whole law, you buy yourself time to work out all the bugs before trying again at a rollout next year. It’ll be hugely embarrassing to the White House to postpone things when they’re this close to launch, and there are doubtless lots of congressional Democrats who don’t want O-Care becoming a key issue right before the midterms, but that’s survivable. What’s potentially not survivable is rolling out the exchanges now minus the individual mandate, which means lots of young adults will face no legal compulsion to buy in. If (as Bill Clinton noted two days ago) healthy uninsured people refuse to fork over their money, then insurers suddenly don’t have a pool of revenue to cover all the people with preexisting conditions who are signing up, and then the whole scheme starts to collapse. There’ll be no delays after that; if insurers start crumbling, we’ll be in post-ObamaCare mode as a country. Better, then, to hit pause on the whole thing if you’re O to prevent that sort of collapse, right?
Until he gets “the call”.
The entire concept here is to get them past the 2014 Elections, where they can begin to feast on our cadavers in earnest for a full 24 months before being accountable again.
Manchin could switch parties. IMO
He’s knows Obama’s war on coal is and Death Care will kill his state.
Count on more ad more democrats to vote for and call for support of a DELAY
they DO NOT want to run in 2014 with this train wreck in place
He’s a weasel.just wants to delay this until after the mid-term election.
There is new leadership in the GOP, whether the party wants to admit it or not: Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Jeff Sessions, and the others who stepped into the breach to spell the senator from Texas.
NOW is the time to attack! Bayonets forward!
How about exemptions for the entire country ...except Congress, the Supreme Court & Obama?
By what authority does the Federal Government have the power to force me into a Life Long Contract (Peonage re: 13th Amendment)with an Insurance Company?
Correct. All of the Republicans need to spell Cruz.
FROM THE NATIONAL REVIEW:
There is no reason to think the Tea Party, if properly organized and harnessed, cannot be even more potent next year than it was in 2010, especially now that its members know the government really was out to get them.
Control of the Congress by the current GOP “leadership” would only serve to increase frustration on the right. The citizenry does not want “deals” or more legislation — it wants action.
Win or lose, the battle is now joined: First the struggle for the GOP and then the battle for control of Congress and the presidency. Cruz just struck at the kings he could reach — the Republican “leadership” — and has most likely dealt them a fatal blow. Now the Tea Party hordes must back him up by eliminating his opponents (who tend to be geriatrics, and thus “leaders” by longevity rather than talent or commitment) through the primary process wherever possible.
RE: By what authority does the Federal Government have the power to force me into a Life Long Contract (Peonage re: 13th Amendment)with an Insurance Company?
From Justice John Roberts — you don’t have to enter into the contract... just pay a tax if you don’t want to.
Roaring debate just before the mid term elections? OK
The don’t want ObamaCare wrapped around their necks for the 2014 elections. It’s the same reason Obama delayed the employer mandate until after the election. They don’t want you to see the full train wreck just yet.
I guess it's time for Hussein 0bama to invite the NSA over to the white hut to discuss what this senator has been doing.
“How about exemptions for the entire country ...except Congress, the Supreme Court & Obama?”
How about everyone on the government payroll receives Obamacare - the rest of us can choose free market insurance plans?
Let’s be clear in our objectives here and not get swindled by leftist word games:
Only 2 things are desirable WRT Obamacare: either repeal (elimination) of the entire law or defunding the mechanisms used to implement the law. This may result in a “delay” of implementation, but it will be a delay in implementing the entire law!!!! NOT PORTIONS of it, which is what a “delay in the individual mandate” would be.
In fact, at this point, Demonrats probably WANT a delay in the individual mandate. If the peons are forced into the plan before 2014, with all its disastrous financial penalties intact, they (the low information voters) might actually catch on to how much of a train wreck this is for the country.
At this point, we should demand that the individual mandate stay IN, IF we can’t defund it now (and if it can’t be repealed which of course that’s not happening). If we don’t, if the Pubbies allow such a capitulation, then they have reached even an even higher state of stupidity than anyone could have imagined.
Even for them.
Let’s not loose sight of that fact. It seems Hotair hasn’t figured the above out yet.
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