Shockingly, at the rotting core of
Barack Obama's signature heath-care law is a crime. When his
administration initiated Cost-Sharing Reduction (CSR) subsidies to
health insurance companies under Obamacare, it actually
misappropriated public funds. Per 18 U.S.C. § 644:
“Whoever, not being an authorized
depositary of public moneys, knowingly receives from any disbursing
officer, or collector of internal revenue, or other agent of the
United States, any public money on deposit, or by way of loan or
accommodation, with or without interest, or otherwise than in payment
of a debt against the United States, or uses, transfers, converts,
appropriates, or applies any portion of the public money for any
purpose not prescribed by law is guilty of embezzlement....”
Why do Democrats perpetually get away
scot-free with such outrageous wrongdoing?
Recall that the Appropriations Clause
is the cornerstone of Congress's “power of the purse”. In other
words, only the legislature has the authority to disburse federal
funds, not the former president's executive branch. Specifically,
that responsibility is defined by the U.S. Constitution, Article I,
section 7, cl. 1: “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in
the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur
with amendments as on other Bills.” Hence, President Trump's
action to immediately terminate said illegal payments.
Naturally, the anti-Trump MSM opposes
his rightful action. For example, Washington Post contributor Ilya
Somin writes, “Now, President Trump is making the situation worse
by trying to use these illegal payments as leverage to force the
legislature to do his bidding.” For the record, didn't the
Democratically-controlled Congress do Obama's bidding when they
passed the ironically named Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010? For
context, that's the same bill—without one Republican vote—that
then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said had to be passed,
“...[S]o that you can find out what is in it—away from the fog of
the controversy.” That controversy, as this column details, is
unceasing.
What liberals don't scramble, it seems,
they tend to mix up. For starters, only Obama overstepped here, not
Trump. Yet, Mr. Somin continues:
“What is ultimately at stake here is
not only the future of the health care law, but of the constitutional
separation of powers and the limits of executive branch authority.
Trump’s ham-fisted attempt at dealmaking is eroding those
limits....”
In truth, Trump's new executive order
actually affirms Congress's autonomy. After all, House
Republicans filed a lawsuit contending that the CSR payments were
illegal. In May 2016, federal district Judge Rosemary Collyer
agreed, though she stayed her judgment pending a possible appeal.
The basis of her decision was Article I, section 9, cl. 7 of the U.S.
Constitution which states, “No Money shall be drawn from the
Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”
Misconstruing the facts makes Mr. Somin, a professor of law at George
Mason University, look foolish. Such intellectual dishonesty is the
unfortunate result of obvious political blinders.
As does blaming Mr. Trump for the
current dysfunctional state of U.S. health-care policy. After all,
The Donald entered presidential politics on June 16, 2015. For five
years previously, the GOP establishment repeatedly made
promises—subsequently broken—to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Irrespective of the president's “bidding,” don't the American
people have the right to expect elected representatives to honor
their own pledges? Therefore, it takes real chutzpah to criticize
the new guy for trying to remedy an escalating problem that proceeded
him. Truth-teller Trump tweeted Friday, “ObamaCare is a broken
mess. Piece by piece we will now begin the process of giving America
the great HealthCare it deserves!” What's wrong with moving the
ball forward by taking legal steps that set things right?
In any case, the CSR payouts, made by
the Department of Health and Human Services, were a considerable boon
to health insurers’ bottom line: about $7 billion annually. How
crooked to circumvent Congress—and misuse the Treasury as a slush
fund for such ultra-Constitutional plotting! Likewise, how two-faced
to publicly malign the very businesses the Obama administration was
subsidizing via the back door. Clearly, chicanery rivaling
Shakespeare's tangled web!
Importantly, this issue illuminates the
interchangeability between progressivism and fascism. After all,
didn't Democrats create a health-care behemoth designed to cede
private industry (read: 1/6 of the U.S. economy) to jackbooted
governmental control? The underlying criminality “greasing the
wheels”—same as Obama's empty promises of keeping your doctor,
and lowering premiums by $2,500—is apparent for all to see. If, in
eight years, anyone had bothered to scrutinize the artifices of
political Pinocchio's “hope and change,” that is. In retrospect,
partisans voted blindly for a dystopian dream; without the foggiest
notion of who—or what—they were really getting.
Twitter: @DavidHunterblog
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