Obamacare Illegal Alien Cartoons

California lawmakers try to extend ObamaCare to illegal immigrants

ObamaCare offers $3,000 incentive to hire illegal aliens

 

 

 

 

California is on the brink of becoming the first state in the nation to offer illegal immigrants the chance to buy insurance on an ObamaCare exchange -- testing what's being described as a "loophole" in the law.
The Affordable Care Act technically bars illegal immigrants from the insurance exchanges.
But the California bill, which last week passed the state legislature and was sent to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk, would allow the state to apply for a federal waiver to open its exchange -- Covered California -- to undocumented residents.
There's no guarantee that will happen. Brown first would have to sign the bill and the Obama administration then would have to green-light the waiver. Even if that is granted, it wouldn't necessarily give illegal immigrants access to insurance subsidies.
Critics, though, say it’s a slippery slope and yet another example of how the federal government has hoodwinked Americans into getting behind the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare.
“This is the first step in another misrepresentation of the Affordable Care Act,” Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform told US News & World Report. “It was sold to the American people on the fact that you wouldn’t have to subsidize health care for illegal immigrants.”
During his monthslong public pitch for the health care overhaul, President Obama had promised repeatedly the benefits that come with the federal and state health care exchanges would not be made available to illegal immigrants.
Currently, it is illegal under ObamaCare for undocumented immigrants to buy into the ACA.
According to HealthCare.gov, “undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible to buy Marketplace health coverage, or for premium tax credits and other savings on Marketplace plans.”
However, a provision in the law called the “innovation waiver” allows states like California to change portions of the law as long as the state makes coverage available to more people and as long as the federal government doesn’t get stuck footing the bill.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ricardo Lara, a Democrat, says if Brown signs the bill, 390,000 illegal immigrants would be eligible to receive health insurance.
“We are talking about our friends. We are talking about our neighbors and our families who are denied basic health care in the richest state of this union,” Lara, the son of an undocumented worker, said during Senate negotiations last June.
While the California waiver would be the first of its kind on a large scale, 18 states already have offered subsidies for prenatal care for undocumented women and health insurance for all undocumented children, according to Think Progress.
Requests for comment to Brown's office and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as well to Lara's office, were not immediately returned.

Secret Service agent's book claims Clinton has 'volcanic' leadership style

An ex-Secret Service officer's forthcoming book on Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton reportedly claims she has a “volcanic” leadership style and lacks the "temperament" to hold office -- the same charge the candidate leveled last week at Donald Trump.
The book, “Crisis of Character,” is due to be released June 28 – a month before Clinton is likely to take the stage to accept the Democratic presidential nomination in Philadelphia. Written by ex-Secret Service Officer Gary J. Byrne, who was “posted directly outside President Clinton’s Oval Office,” the 285-page book paints Clinton as disdainful of rules and erratic in her personality.
While some extracts have already been released on the Amazon.com preview page, the New York Post reported Monday that Byrne claims Clinton is too “erratic, uncontrollable and occasionally violent” to become commander-in-chief.
Byrne describes Clinton as switching quickly from friendly to angry in a moment, and repeatedly screaming obscenities at her husband, the Secret Service and White House staffers. Secret Service agents even had to consider what to do in case the first lady attacked the president physically, Byrne claims.
“Hillary Clinton is now poised to become the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, but she simply lacks the integrity and temperament to serve in the office,” Byrne wrote, according to the Post.
“From the bottom of my soul I know this to be true. And with Hillary’s latest rise, I realize that her own leadership style — volcanic, impulsive, enabled by sycophants, and disdainful of the rules set for everyone else — hasn’t changed a bit.”

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Incidentally, Clinton last week accused presumptive Republican nominee Trump of being "temperamentally unfit" for office.
In the Amazon preview of the book, Byrne recalled an alleged fight between the first couple during the summer of 1995 in Chapter 1, “The Vase.” Byrne said a vase was smashed during the loud argument and the next morning President Clinton sported “a shiner, a real, put-a-steak-on-it black eye.” Clinton’s personal scheduler Nancy Hernreich allegedly told Byrne the eye condition was a result of Clinton’s allergy to coffee.
Clinton's critics say the book sheds light on the Clintons’ character and suitability for office.
"It’s about them having a separate set of rules or not having to follow the rules, and there are basic questions of character … in how they treated others and how they treated their colleagues,” Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said Monday on Fox News.
However, Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh, a former adviser to John Kerry, said it was an example of the negative 2016 campaign and would only play into the tactics of Trump.
"I think this book is just one more example of where this campaign is going, which is straight to the gutter,” Marsh said. “A really negative campaign is the bet Donald Trump is hoping for because it’s the only one he can win, because people get turned off by truly negative campaigns.”
The Clinton campaign dismissed the book, telling the Post it belongs in the fantasy section of a store.
“Gary Byrne joins the ranks of Ed Klein and other ‘authors’ in this latest in a long line of books attempting to cash in on the election cycle with their nonsense,” spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement. “It should be put in the fantasy section of the book store.”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest wouldn’t be drawn into commenting directly about the book.
“I'd think I'd reserve judgment about the wisdom of writing a book from such a perspective until I know more about the book,” Earnest told reporters.

Why Bernie won't acknowledge Hillary's win, despite the obvious math

Is Bernie Sanders in denial, or just milking his moment?
With Hillary Clinton having now captured the 2,383 delegates needed to win the nomination today—as declared last night by the AP—the long contest would seem to be over.
But no.
Sanders says he’s heading for a contested convention in Philadelphia.
The Vermont senator risks looking like a sore loser, but at this point, what else has he got to do?
Many people forget that Sanders was not a Democrat until adopting the label last year to make his run. The Democratic establishment has been clearly lined up behind Clinton.

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He doesn’t really owe the party anything.
Sanders was kind of marginalized as an independent member of Congress. Now he’s drawing huge crowds, raising big money and garnering endless media attention. Of course he doesn’t want to give up the limelight.
Plus, the man is 74 years old. It’s not like he can bide his time until 2020. Ted Cruz dropped his campaign against Donald Trump, despite repeatedly vowing to take the fight to Cleveland, because he’s young enough for another presidential bid. This is it for Bernie.
Now obviously he’s accomplished far more than anyone expected and gained a measure of clout within his new party. He’s already pushed Clinton significantly to the left. He can make demands for such things as platform concessions at the convention. I don’t see Hillary picking him as her running mate, given that he’d be 78 at the end of the first term, but stranger things have happened.
Maybe he's engaging in pregame bluster. Sanders told a presser he'll be returning to Vermont to "assess where we are" rather that discuss things based on "speculation." (Hillary had a media availability yesterday, perhaps signaling a shift in her limited-access policy.)
It’s clear, in retrospect, that Sanders might have had a shot at beating the Clinton machine. And that is prompting some early political obituaries.
“According to interviews with the candidate, his advisers, allies and other Democrats,” says the Washington Post, “Sanders fell short because of missed opportunities, a failure to connect with key constituencies and stubborn strategy decisions.”
Once his campaign got hot, “he struggled to connect with black and Latino voters, as well as with older Democrats, groups that carried Clinton’s candidacy. Sanders repeatedly clashed with another vital constituency — the party leaders whose votes as superdelegates he would ultimately need to pry the nomination away from Clinton.
“Sanders also overestimated the power of his economic message and, adamant that he run the kind of positive campaign that had been his trademark in Vermont, initially underestimated the imperative to draw sharp contrasts with Clinton.”
By failing to compete with Clinton in minority communities, Sanders won states with large white populations but fell behind to the point where he couldn’t catch up. Clinton, for instance, swept 73 percent of the vote in South Carolina.
By spending limited time on the trail and tending to Senate business in 2015, Sanders acted like a message candidate who didn’t expect to win—and by the time that changed, it was too late.
By saying he didn’t care about Clinton’s “damn emails,” Sanders gave up a major weapon and showed he wanted to fight only on “the issues.” But that only takes you so far.
Even if he ekes out a slight victory in California, the math is totally against Sanders. Of the superdelegates who have announced their support, 547 are for Hillary, 46 for Bernie. The weight that the Democrats give superdelegates may be totally unfair, but the notion that large numbers of them are going to flip for a guy who attacks the party system as rigged seems far-fetched.
The real question is whether all those Feeling the Bern will transfer their allegiance to Clinton, or whether a sizable number will defect to Trump or simply stay home. And that’s why Sanders’ tone is important.
Of course, reporters can also be tendentious. A female journalist asked Sanders yesterday whether it would be “sexist” for him to keep resisting the first woman to win a major-party nomination. He dismissed the question as not serious.
Clinton is talking about unifying the party. Her spokesman Brian Fallon told MSNBC yesterday, “I think it would be helpful to not seek to delegitimize the process that has led to Hillary Clinton clinching this nomination as will happen tomorrow night.”
So Hillary is going to declare victory. The press will say she’s the winner. And Bernie Sanders will have a hard time convincing anyone that he’s still got a shot at the nomination.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz. 

Clinton has delegates to win Dem nomination, AP reports; Sanders questions tally

Hillary Clinton has earned enough delegates to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, according to an Associated Press count released Monday night – an assessment swiftly challenged by primary rival Bernie Sanders and his campaign.
The AP released its updated tally, showing the former secretary of state winning enough delegates to become the first woman to top a major party’s presidential ticket, on the eve of the last major day of primary voting.
The AP said Clinton reached the 2,383 delegates needed to become the presumptive Democratic nominee with a weekend victory in Puerto Rico and late burst of support from superdelegates. Those are party officials and officeholders, many of them eager to wrap up the primary, free to support whichever candidate they want.
"We really need to bring a close to this primary process and get on to defeating Donald Trump," said Nancy Worley, a superdelegate who chairs Alabama's Democratic Party and provided one of the last endorsements to put Clinton over the top.
"It's time to stand behind our presumptive candidate," said Michael Brown, one of two superdelegates from the District of Columbia who came forward in the past week to back Clinton before the city's June 14 primary. "We shouldn't be acting like we are undecided when the people of America have spoken."

Clinton touted the news at a Long Beach, Calif., campaign event, saying the campaign is now on the “brink of a historic … unprecedented moment.” But even she stressed that six states are yet to vote on Tuesday and urged supporters to cast their ballots for her in those contests.

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The six states to vote Tuesday include New Jersey, North Dakota, New Mexico, Montana, California, and South Dakota.
Campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement: “This is an important milestone, but there are six states that are voting Tuesday, with millions of people heading to the polls, and Hillary Clinton is working to earn every vote. We look forward to Tuesday night, when Hillary Clinton will clinch not only a win in the popular vote, but also the majority of pledged delegates."

Democratic Path to Nomination | InsideGov

The Sanders campaign rejected the declaration that Clinton had clinched the party nod, citing its longstanding position that the superdelegates should not count until they actually vote at the convention – as they are free to switch sides before then.
"There is nothing to concede," Sanders told KTVU late Monday at a rally in San Francisco. "Secretary Clinton will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to win the Democratic nomination. She will be dependent on superdelegates. They vote on July 25th so right now our goal right at this moment [is to] do everything we can to win the primary tomorrow."
Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs accused the media of “a rush to judgement" and "ignoring the Democratic National Committee’s clear statement that it is wrong to count the votes of superdelegates before they actually vote at the convention this summer."
"Our job from now until the convention is to convince those superdelegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump," Briggs said.
On Monday, Sanders' supporters expressed disappointment that the calls were made before California's primary and urged the senator to continue on despite the pronouncements. "We're going to keep fighting until the last vote is counted," said Kristen Elliott, a Sanders' supporter from San Francisco who attended the rally.
Said another attendee, Patrick Bryant of San Francisco: "It's what bookies do. They call fights before they're over."
Clinton has won 1,812 pledged delegates in primaries and caucuses. She also has the support of 571 superdelegates, according to an Associated Press count. The AP surveyed all 714 superdelegates repeatedly in the past seven months, and only 95 remain publicly uncommitted.
All the superdelegates counted in Clinton's tally have unequivocally told the AP they will back her at the convention and not change their vote. Since the start of the AP's survey in late 2015, no superdelegates have switched from supporting Clinton to backing Sanders.
Clinton’s presumptive victory Monday came nearly eight years to the day after she conceded her first White House campaign to Barack Obama. Back then, she famously noted her inability to "shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling."
Campaigning this time as the loyal successor to Obama, Clinton fended off a surprisingly strong challenge from Vermont Sen. Sanders. He mobilized millions with a fervently liberal message and his insurgent candidacy revealed a deep level of national frustration with politics-as-usual, even among Democrats who have controlled the White House since 2009.
Clinton outpaced Sanders in winning new superdelegate endorsements even after his string of primary and caucus wins in May. Following the results in Puerto Rico, it is no longer possible for Sanders to reach the 2,383 needed to win the nomination based on the remaining available pledged delegates and uncommitted superdelegates, according to the AP.
Clinton leads Sanders by more than 3 million cast votes, by 291 pledged delegates and by 523 superdelegates. She also won 29 caucuses and primaries compared to his 21 victories.
Echoing the sentiments of California Gov. Jerry Brown, who overcame a decades-long rivalry with the Clinton family to endorse her last week, many superdelegates expressed a desire to close ranks around a nominee who could defeat Trump in November.
Beyond winning over millions of Sanders supporters who vow to remain loyal to the self-described democratic socialist, Clinton faces challenges as she turns toward November, including criticism of her decision to use a private email server run from her New York home while serving as secretary of state. Her deep unpopularity among Republicans has pushed many leery of Trump to nevertheless embrace his campaign.
"This to me is about saving the country and preventing a third progressive, liberal term, which is what a Clinton presidency would do," House Speaker Paul Ryan told the AP last week after he finally endorsed Trump, weeks after the New Yorker clinched the GOP nomination.
Yet Clinton showed no signs of limping into the general election as she approached the milestone, leaving Sanders behind and focusing on lacerating Trump. She said electing the billionaire businessman, who has spent months hitting her and her husband with bitingly personal attacks, would be a "historic mistake."
"He is not just unprepared. He is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility," Clinton said last week in a speech that was striking in its forcefulness, previewing a brutal five-month general election campaign to come.
Even without the nomination, Sanders can claim ideological victory. His liberal positions pushed the issue of income inequality into the spotlight and drove Clinton to the left on issues such as trade, Wall Street and campaign finance reform.
But she prevailed, in part, by claiming much of the coalition that boosted Obama. She won overwhelming support from women and minorities, catapulting her to decisive victories in diverse, delegate-rich states such as New York and Texas.
When Clinton launched her campaign last April, she did so largely unopposed, having scared off more formidable challengers by locking down much of the party's organizational and fundraising infrastructure. Vice President Joe Biden, seen as her most threatening rival, opted not to run in October.
Of the four opponents who did take her on, Sanders was the only one who emerged to provide a serious challenge. He caught fire among young voters and independents, his campaign gaining momentum from a narrow loss in Iowa in February and a commanding victory in New Hampshire. His ability to raise vast sums of money online gave him the resources to continue into the spring.
But Clinton vowed not to repeat the failings of her 2008 campaign and focused early on winning delegates, hiring help from Obama's old team before launching her campaign. They pushed superdelegates into making early commitments and held campaign appearances in areas where they could win the most pledged delegates.
Her victory in Nevada in late February diminished concerns from allies about her campaign operation. Decisive wins in Southern states on Super Tuesday and a sweep of March 15 contests gave her a significant delegate lead, which became insurmountable by the end of April after big victories in New York and in the Northeast.
She now moves on to face Trump, whose ascent to the top of the Republican Party few expected. The brash real estate mogul and reality TV star has long since turned his attention from primary foes to Clinton, debuting a nickname — "Crooked Hillary" — and arguing she belongs in jail for her email setup.
After a long primary campaign, Clinton said this past weekend in California she was ready to accept his challenge.
"We're judged by our words and our deeds, not our race, not our ethnicity, not our religion," she said Saturday in Oxnard. "So it is time to judge Donald Trump by his words and his deeds. And I believe that his words and his deeds disqualify him from being president of the United States."