Del. Rob Bell Delivers the Weekly Virginia Republican Address
Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, delivers the weekly Virginia Republican Address. At Crossover, Republicans have been successful in advancing properties like impr...
By: VAGOPTV
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Del. Rob Bell Delivers the Weekly Virginia Republican Address - Video
Officials in several Republican states that balked at participating in President Obamas health-care initiative are now revisiting the issue amid mounting panic over a possible Supreme Court decision that would revoke federal insurance subsidies for millions of Americans.
The discussions taking place in state capitals around the country are part of a flurry of planning and lobbying by officials, insurance and hospital executives, and health-care advocates to blunt the possible impact of a court ruling.
The justices hear arguments about the matter next week. If the court sides with the plaintiffs, who argue that subsidies are not allowed in the 34states that opted against setting up their own insurance marketplaces, the ruling could spark an immediate crisis. People could see their insurance bills skyrocket and be forced to abruptly cancel their coverage.
At least six states where Republican leaders had previously refused to set up state marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act are now considering what steps they might take to preserve the subsidies being paid to their residents.
[The Supreme Court is deciding a case that could derail Obamacare. Heres what you need to know.]
Efforts to hold on to the subsidies are under consideration even in South Carolina, which supported the challenge now before the Supreme Court. Gov.Nikki Haley (R) said in an interview that South Carolina may consider setting up a marketplace, though it is unclear how such a proposal would fare in the staunchly conservative state.
Were going to start in this next week working on some things statewide, said Haley, who says she still opposes setting up an exchange.
Nine states now have bills under consideration to set up their own marketplaces, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, although in some cases these efforts began before the court accepted the subsidies case.
Lobbyists for insurers, hospitals and consumer groups are alerting legislators in some states to what they call the potentially disastrous consequences if the subsidies are suddenly revoked. In Pennsylvania, for example, hospitals and insurers are trying to coax the Republican-led legislature to back a state marketplace if immediate action is needed to preserve the subsidies.
But there are enormous logistical and financial barriers to setting up a marketplace this late in the game, experts say. The states that already have their own marketplaces took several years to set up the Web sites, contract with insurance companies and establish call centers. They did so with the help of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants that are no longer available.
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At least 6 Republican states revisit their stance of resisting Obamacare
Provided by Vox.com (ISIS)
At theConservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)this week, you might have expected to see evidence of the debate raging in the Republican Party over its approach to foreign policy. Instead,the GOP's loudest and most aggressive foreign policy instincts were on mostprominent display. It was less a soul-searching moment, and more hawkfest 2015.
At a marquee foreign policy panel, for example,Sen. Tom Cotton got the biggest applause for this line:"Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Joe Biden made the right decision to support George Bush in the Iraq war." About ten seconds later, Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT), who like Cotton is an Iraq vet, denounced the 2003 decision to invade. The crowd was silent.
That's as a good a summary of the CPAC approach to foreign policy as you can get.A hawk was cheered. A skeptic was ignored.
And while CPAC appeals to the most conservative wing of the party, the rise of the hawks here is part of a much broader trend in the GOP.There are three big reasons for the return of the GOP's aggressive foreign policy and each says something important about the 2016 race.
Every plausible candidate for the 2016 GOP nomination - with the notable exception of non-interventionist Rand Paul - has advanced a pretty aggressive approach to world politics. The place it is most true: ISIS, which was clearly CPAC's most popular foreign affairs topic. At times, the conference felt like a competition as to who could be more aggressive with respect to the group.
"ISIS represents the worst threat to freedom since communism," former Texas Governor Rick Perry said.
"We kill the terrorist leaders before they kill us," Sen. Ted Cruz, also of Texas, said.
Governor Bobby Jindal (LA) won huge applause for demanding that America "hunt down and kill these radical Islamic terrorists."
There's a reason that ISIS, more than Iran or Russia, took the spotlight at CPAC. They are a simple, unambiguous evil one that harkens back to the early 2000s, when the GOP's war on terrorism rhetoric helped it dominate Democrats at the polls before Iraq went sour.
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Republican hawks stole the show at CPAC. Heres why that matters.
Noam Chomsky - The Republican Party
Chomsky on the GOP.
By: Chomsky #39;s Philosophy
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Noam Chomsky - The Republican Party - Video
In a political embarrassment for Republicans, House GOP leaders on Friday abruptly cancelled a vote on a bill to update the George W. Bush-era No Child Left Behind education law after struggling to find support from conservatives.
The bill would keep the annual testing requirements on schools but would give more freedom to states and districts to spend federal dollars and identify and fix failing schools. But conservative opponents said it doesn't go far enough to let states and districts set education policy. Such conservative groups as Heritage Action for America and Club for Growth are among the opponents.
"We have a constitutional duty as members of Congress to return education decisions to parents and states," Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., wrote this week on Facebook.
Democrats also dislike the bill and said it would abdicate the federal government's responsibility to ensure that poor, minority, disabled and non-English speaking students go to good schools and that billions of federal education dollars are spent wisely. The White House threatened to veto the bill, calling it "a significant step backwards."
Senior Republican officials said it was unclear when a vote would occur. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss private negotiations.
"I look forward to continuing to discuss with my colleagues the conservative reforms in this legislation, and I expect we will have an opportunity to finish this important work soon," Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. Kline, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said the delay happened because the debate over funding the Homeland Security Department had taken priority on the House floor.
The bipartisan 2002 No Child Left Behind law was a signature achievement of Bush, and its authors included the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and current House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. It sought to close significant gaps in the achievement of poor and minority students and their more affluent peers. It mandated annual testing in reading and math for students in grades three to eight and again in high school. Schools had to show student growth or face consequences.
But its requirement that all students be able to read and do math at grade level by 2014 proved elusive.
The Obama administration in 2012 began allowing waivers around some of the law's more stringent requirements if schools agreed to certain conditions, like using college- and career-ready standards such as Common Core. The standards have been adopted in more than 40 states and spell out what English and math skills students should master in each grade. They are a political issue in many states because they are viewed by critics as a federal effort even though they were developed by U.S. governors.
House Republican leaders have used their bill to show their opposition to the Obama administration's encouragement of the Common Core state standards because it prohibits the federal education secretary from demanding changes to state standards or imposing conditions on states in exchange for a waiver around federal law.
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House Republican Leaders Scrap Education Vote