The "Vitter Amendment" Is Total BS

 The "Vitter Amendment" Is Total BS

I'm better known for the hookers thing, but I also have this terrible amendment.

Photo by Mark Wilson, Getty Images

The Best Fiction Writers in the World Couldn't Make This Stuff Up, But the Republicans Can

  The way the exchanges work in the Affordable Care Act is that the government provides subsidies so that people who don't currently get employer-provided insurance can afford to buy it. Congressional members and their staff get employer paid health insurance! In fact members of Congress get the best health insurance available in the country. Yet we keep hearing from Tea Party members, like Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaking to Laura Ingraham, a right-wing radio talk show host, who are probably in need of serious psychological treatment, that the Democrats and the President are willing to give members of Congress a special congressional exemption. This, pardon my language, is TOTAL, AND COMPLETE BULLSHIT!

 Let me explain by quoting excepts from an article by Matthew Yglesias of www.slate.com, and the actual amendment. First as to the benefits of the Vitter Amendment, there are none. Absolutely NONE!  It all goes back to an amendment to the Affordable Care Act spearheaded by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa. This was supposed to be a poison-pill measure that would force congressional staff to obtain their health insurance on Affordable Care Act exchanges.

 Grassley thought that the Democrats would reject this idea out of hand. But Democrats genuinely think that health insurance exchanges are a good idea and were happy to sign on to this piece of legislative trolling. Public officials are always concerned about what public services are of benefit to them. That's why sequestration's impact on air travel was addressed much more adroitly than its impact on preschool for poor kids.

Wait for it, Wait for it

 But there's a nuance here. The way most people, including congressional staffers, get health care is that their employer partially pays for it, as in the case of Congressional members and their staffers. The way the exchanges work is that the government provides subsidies so that people who don't currently get employer-provided insurance can afford to buy it. The Grassley amendment, on one reading, would create an anomalous situation where not only would congressional staff have to buy insurance on the exchanges, they'd be taking a large de facto pay cut. That's because they'd be losing a valuable perk (employer-provided insurance) and given nothing in exchange for it. That doesn't really make sense as public policy, and certainly, Grassley's intention wasn't to enact an across the board cut in congressional staff pay. He was just trolling. At any rate, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) stepped in and said they did not interpret the Grassley amendment in this way. Instead they read it as authorizing the government to redirect money currently spent on buying health insurance for congressional staff to subsidizing the purchase of insurance on Obamacare exchanges. Thus, congressional staff will participate in the exchanges and the exchange process but won't end up taking a pay cut. Somehow the conservative press convinced itself that this constituted a "special congressional exemption" from Obamacare or from the individual mandate. At this point David Vitter, whether out of stupidity, (probably out of stupidity) or what, I can't quite say, says Matthew Yglesias, took up this banner and has been actually sponsoring legislation that would overrule the OPM and force the perverse reading of the Grassley amendment onto the government.

I Warned You, The Best Fiction Writers in the World Couldn't Make this Stuff Up, But the Republicans Did!

 Bringing the Vitter amendment into the government shutdown fight serves one very important purpose for cynical Republicans. Democrats do not like the Vitter amendment (because it's dumb), and yet if the government would've shut down over a Vitter amendment dispute, that would arguably make the Democrats look bad rather than the Republicans. If GOP leaders can persuade their crazy base that this Vitter amendment fight is important, that would allow the leadership to extricate itself from the untenable situation it's currently in. That said, the problem for Republicans here is that the Vitter amendment is really dumb. It's entirely possible that if they pick the fight on these grounds, Democrats will have to cave. At which point congressional Republicans will have succeeded in cutting their staff's pay and not much else. Not anything else, in fact. The implementation of Obamacare won't be impacted at all even a tiny little bit.

 This, my followers, is how Republicans create something and then try to turn it around and make the Democrats look bad for something that they created in the first place, and in actuality will never come to fruition. You can't make this stuff up, but the Republicans can, and do.

 To read Matthews entire article on slate.com click this link. http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/09/30/vitter_amendment_is_total_bs.html