Commentary: The Big Divide

Man looking out window

Whether the economy is currently bubbling along or facing a slowdown, a slow-motion disaster is about to create a real crisis for the government, our future politics, and the shrinking middle class. Half of households have no retirement savings.

This is just one of many shifts in the economy that reflect the declining fortunes of the middle class. Wages have remained mostly flat for most workers—particularly those without a college degree—since the early 1970s. Recent high rates of inflation further cut into the ability of the self-identified middle class to make ends meet. But the biggest change has been the abolition of employer-provided pensions and their replacement with rickety and self-managed 401k savings plans.

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Biden Administration Finalizes Rule That will Open Up ObamaCare to Illegal Immigrants

DACA Supporters

The Biden administration published a new rule Friday that will allow tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to receive health care through ObamaCare.

The new rule, according to a White House statement, removes a prohibition on illegal immigrants protected from deportation under the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program from accessing healthcare through the Affordable Care Act.

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Commentary: Limiting Short-Term Health Care Plans Will Hurt Americans

Mike Pirner had emergency gall bladder surgery shortly after buying short-term medical insurance plan (STM), for $150/month. The costs associated with the procedure were $100,000 — Mike only had to pay his $2,500 deductible, which was also his out-of-pocket maximum. President Biden has proposed rules released Friday of the July 4th week that would limit these plans to three months, with one additional month possible. Currently, these plans can last up to three years. 

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Commentary: Republicans Must Not Surrender to Bernie Sanders on Healthcare

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the GOP needs an effective healthcare agenda. There are many policies and programs they could be championing to help families deal with rising costs — especially now with control in the House and a slim Democratic majority in the Senate — but unfortunately, they’ve failed to capitalize on this issue so far.

Republicans are missing an important opening; last year 90 percent of voters said a candidate’s plan for reducing the cost of healthcare would be important to them and 39 percent went so far as to say they would likely cross party lines to vote for a candidate who makes reducing healthcare costs their top priority!

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Foreign Actors Suspected in Hack of D.C. Obamacare Exchange, Theft of House Members’ Personal Data

A malign foreign actor could be behind the theft of personally identifiable information of hundreds of House members and staff in the hack of an Obamacare health insurance exchange in the nation’s capital, according to the chair of the House Administration Committee.

Lawmakers and their staff were notified a few days ago by the House chief administrative officer of the hack of the D.C. Health Link exchange.

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Small Businesses Might Drop Obamacare as Premiums Skyrocket

Health insurance premiums offered under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), colloquially known as Obamacare, will rise next year, hitting small businesses particularly hard and potentially pressuring them to drop out of the program.

While recent provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act have provided additional subsidies for individual consumers that will likely offset the increased cost of premiums, no such support was granted to small business owners, according to the Wall Street Journal. Insurers are proposing median premium increases of 10%, but some are proposing increases as high as 20%.

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U.S. Senate Passes Massive Tax and Spend Bill Targeting Carbon Emissions, Prescription Drug Costs, More

The U.S. Senate on Sunday passed a $740 billion new taxing and spending bill that seeks to combat climate change and allow the government to control the price of prescription medications, among other things.

No Republicans voted for the bill, named the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, in the divided 50-50 Senate, forcing Vice President Kamala Harris to break the tie. The measure must return to the House for a concurrence vote after senators passed several amendments Sunday. The House is expected to take the bill up again on Friday. If the House concurs, President Joe Biden has indicated he will sign it.

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Commentary: The Senate Seats Most Likely to Flip in 2022

The 2022 United States Senate elections can best be thought of as the classic battle between the irresistible force and the immovable object. The irresistible force is the playing field. President Joe Biden’s job approval in the RCP Average is currently 39.7%, the lowest of his presidency. That’s about 3.5 points lower than Barack Obama’s job approval was on (midterm) Election Day 2010. President Obama’s job approval only dipped to 40% briefly, in the immediate aftermath of the botched Obamacare rollout, and it never dropped below 40%. President Donald Trump’s job approval spent much of 2017 below this mark, but in the terrible Republican election year of 2018, it never fell this low.

In other words, this is shaping up to be a worse environment than either of the last three midterms, all of which were nightmares for the party in power.

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Democrats Worry About Spike in Obamacare Premiums Ahead of Midterms

Obamacare

As Democrats head into the November midterms with historically low approval ratings, another major factor could arise that will further contribute to the shrinking of their already-slim majorities.

As reported by The Hill, the Affordable Care Act – known colloquially as “Obamacare” – could face a significant increase in premiums due to a lapse in special funding provided by the coronavirus aid bill passed last year. That bill, known as the American Rescue Plan, temporarily increased financial assistance for Americans seeking healthcare through Obamacare; the increase was set to expire just one year after the bill’s passage.

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Commentary: Joe Biden and His Hostility to Conscience Rights

In 2020, the Trump administration filed a lawsuit against the University of Vermont Medical Center for forcing a nurse to assist at an abortion. Trump’s Department of Justice called the hospital’s bullying of the nurse “the kind of indecent coercion [that] violates everything this country stands for.”

In 2021, the Biden administration dropped this lawsuit. It did not want to defend the nurse. This rankled former Trump officials. “It is a dereliction of duty that is an insult to the bipartisan consensus that says you cannot force people to assist in abortions,” Roger Severino, the former head of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights (OCR) told Fox News.

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Commentary: Biden’s Vaccine Mandate Could Rise or Fall Based on 2012 Roberts Ruling on Obamacare Individual Mandate

“Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority.”

That was Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion ruling in 2012 that the individual mandate to purchase health insurance in the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was unconstitutional under Congress’ Article I, Section 8 power to regulate interstate commerce.

And yet, the mandate was rescued in the very same decision by Roberts, ruling that penalty under the individual mandate was a valid exercise of Congress’ Article I, Section 8 power to collect taxes.

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Commentary: BidenCare Blows ObamaCare Costs Out of the Water

PolitiFact’s 2013 “Lie of the Year” came from former President Barack Obama selling ObamaCare, his massive government takeover of healthcare. “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it,” Obama said. That was a lie. Now President Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) want to expand that lie through their $3.5 trillion federal spending blowout pending in Congress. 

Obama also said we could keep our doctors under ObamaCare. Obama lied to me and millions of other people. When I left a full-time job in 2013 for contract work, I switched to an ObamaCare exchange plan. And no, I didn’t get to keep my doctor on that new plan. I also saw the cost of my ObamaCare plan increase by double digit rates for 2014.

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Second Federal Court Blocks Biden Mandate Requiring Doctors to Perform Trans Surgeries Against Conscience

A federal court has blocked President Joe Biden’s mandate that would require doctors to perform transgender surgeries against their consciences.

Judge Reed O’Connor of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Wichita Falls Division, granted “a permanent injunction” to the Christian plaintiffs “to be exempt from the government’s requirement to perform abortions and gender-transition procedures.”

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Commentary: Biden Wants Unity Moving into the Democratic Party

Mainstream voters in both parties feel that neither major party represents them, and that their opinions and wishes hold little sway over government policy.

Establishment Republicans failed the average American by becoming captive to extreme Libertarian ideology that is divorced from the reality of most people’s lives.

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Biden Restores Taxpayer-Funded Abortions, Expands Obamacare

President Joe Biden issued executive actions Thursday to direct U.S. tax dollars to promoting abortion here and abroad, and to expand Obamacare. 

The actions not only will mean federal funding for abortions in other countries, but could restore more federal funding to Planned Parenthood. 

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Former Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore on Barrett: Confirm Now!

In an interview with The Virginia Star, Kilgore shared that Barrett’s nomination was a long time coming.

“A lot of us were looking to the President, hoping he would nominate her last time instead of Kavanaugh [in 2018]. She carried herself so well during her 2017 hearing for the 7th Circuit Court, and she was a former clerk for Justice Scalia. She is a favorite justice for many conservatives throughout the nation.”

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