Chris Matthews: Don’t worry, I’ll include some easier questions when I interview Obama

    Via the Washington Free Beacon, can we trust a guy who compared himself yesterday to a kid on Christmas Eve to ask tough, newsy questions of the president? The whole point of agreeing to a town hall carried by a liberal cable network, with an audience full of college kids, hosted by someone who cops to getting thrills up his leg at Obama’s oratory, is to let O pitch ObamaCare in the most favorable of media environments. He’s playing tee-ball here, by design. They might as well invite him to wear pajamas. Even the “hard” questions are more likely to be along the lines of “Were you disappointed on launch day that your team had failed you?” than “HOW COULD YOU NOT HAVE KNOWN?” The fact that Matthews has actually allotted time for questions even he thinks will be easy — as well as a “fun” segment at the end — makes me want to watch in morbid curiosity to see how bad it can get. Will there be any tingles mid-program? What would that look like? Is America, as a society, prepared for it?
As for the audience, I’m betting that the disaffected millennials who want to recall Obama will be grossly underrepresented. One interesting tangent on that, though: How come young adults aged 25-29 are still more or less on O’s side whereas younger adults aged 18-24 have soured on him? Emma Roller has a theory:

Intuitively, you’d think younger millennials would be more supportive of Obama because his health law allows them to stay on their parents’ plan longer for free. Why is it the opposite? My working theory: older millennials are more supportive of the president is because they were around to vote for him in 2008, and so have a more visceral tie to his policies.
I asked IOP pollster-in-chief John Della Volpe if he thought my theory was plausible. He responded, “Not only is that plausible but I agree!” So it may not be so much that the 18-24 set likes Obama less; they just don’t risk their egos as much by not supporting him.

No doubt. Older millennials made the purchase psychologically on Hopenchange; it’d have to fall apart completely before they admit it’s a lemon. Younger millennials aren’t similarly invested. There may be another element, though. Some studies suggest that once a person’s political identity is formed in youth, it remains surprisingly steady for the rest of his or her life. Older millennials aren’t just kids who got suckered by Obama hype, they’re voters who, like most of the rest of America, soured on Bush and the GOP because of Dubya’s second term. Unlike most of the rest of America, though, that pro-Democrat/anti-Republican orientation is more apt to endure in their age group because it developed during a formative age for political awareness. They’re sticking with Obama not just for ego-protection, in other words, but because of bona fide partisan identification. Younger millennials are in a different position, having largely missed the Bush years and picked up politics in the Obama years of economic stagnation. They’re not firmly forged Democrats, unlike their slightly older brothers and sisters. That’s good news for the GOP, even if older millennials are now mostly a lost cause.
Anyway, set your DVRs. Exit question: What would constitute a “hard question” for Obama? Matthews seems to think asking him about NSA surveillance qualifies, which is understandable but … not really true, I think. You know what Obama’s going to say — it’s a delicate balance between freedom and security, no one’s more concerned about privacy than he is, he’s convinced that these programs save lives, etc etc. It’s not a hard question if you can guess the answer in advance. But then, that also goes for my hobbyhorse lately about O violating separation of powers. That’s not a hard subject to spin either: The executive branch has some discretion in how it enforces the law and he’s exercising that discretion in ObamaCare’s transitional period to make the program better for Americans. The art of the hard question is in the follow-up, not the initial ask. We’ll see how Tingles does tonight.

Drones

Obamacare Lawsuits Mount as Notre Dame Joins Scrum of Opponents

Hours after the University of Notre Dame filed a religious challenge to the U.S. health-care overhaul in Indiana federal court, a judge in Washington heard arguments in a lawsuit assailing tax provisions of the statute.
The cases underscore the persistent and diverse nature of legal attacks on the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act even as the Obama administration struggles to fix bugs in HealthCare.gov, the online marketplace for health insurance created by the measure.
Obamacare litigation continues partly because questions about its legitimacy as a piece partisan legislation are unresolved, said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington and an opponent of the act. The statute passed Congress without Republican support in either the House or Senate.
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It doesn’t matter what motivates the plaintiffs bringing those challenges as long as “their legal arguments are sound, because that’s what the courts are looking at,” Shapiro said.
The suit in Washington, in which a federal judge yesterday heard arguments for an immediate verdict, was brought by seven individuals and businesses from six states. At least three similar complaints have been filed in Oklahoma, Virginia and Indiana. All challenge some of the federal government’s authority to offer tax credits to subsidize health insurance for poor people under Obamacare.
Catholic Teaching
The complaint Notre Dame filed yesterday, alleging that the law’s requirement health plans cover birth control violates Roman Catholic teaching, is a re-filing of a lawsuit dismissed in December on procedural grounds.
The Notre Dame case is among 86 lawsuits attacking Obamacare on religious grounds, according to Erin Mersino, trial counsel at the Thomas More Law Center, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, a Christian-based public interest law firm.
Forty-one of the cases involve primarily Catholic nonprofit groups such as Notre Dame and take issue with the birth control mandate, Mersino said. The other 46 were brought by for-profit entities whose owners argue the contraception provision violates their religious freedom, she said.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 26 agreed to hear two cases from the for-profit group involving the craft store chain Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. They, too, claim an exemption from covering employees’ birth control on religious grounds.
First Look
The dispute will be the court’s first look at President Barack Obama’s biggest legislative accomplishment since a majority of the justices upheld the core of the law in 2012.
The court on Dec. 2 declined to hear an appeal by Liberty University, a Virginia school founded by the late evangelical preacher and activist Jerry Falwell, which lost a lower-court case arguing the law’s employer mandate exceeded Congress’s power over interstate commerce.
The suits by nonprofit religious groups are less advanced in the courts because the Obama administration delayed the birth control mandate for a year as it sought an accommodation with them.
While the religious cases have drawn attention because of their number and high-profile plaintiffs such as Notre Dame and the Archdiocese of Washington, they don’t threaten the viability of Obamacare, according to Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, and a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

“They’re challenges to one particular part of one particular regulation,” Jost said. “They’re very important cases, but I don’t think they mean much for the Affordable Care Act.”
The tax cases, involving federal subsidies to people shopping for insurance on government-run marketplaces, or exchanges, present a “significant challenge” to the law because, if successful, they could prevent millions of people from buying coverage, Jost said.
Plaintiffs in those suits argue the language of the health- care legislation allows subsidies only for people using state- run exchanges, not the federal government’s.
Thirty-three states, including Ohio, Texas and Florida, declined to set up exchanges.
“No legitimate method of statutory construction would interpret the phrase ‘established by the state’ in the ACA’s subsidy provisions to mean ‘‘established by the state or federal government,’’ according to a brief filed by plaintiffs in the case argued yesterday in Washington.
Congressional Intent
That argument will probably fail because courts look on laws as a whole, not narrow slices of language, and ‘‘it’s clear Congress meant for the federal exchanges to be treated the same as the states’ exchanges,” Jost said.
Shapiro, of the Cato Institute, said the tax credit cases could “have legs.”
“There’s a very strong technical argument that the challengers are bringing,” Shapiro said. “It’s not some sort of glitch or scriveners’ error. Congress wanted to incentivize states to create these exchanges.”
At least one other case challenges the Affordable Care Act on the grounds that it violates the Constitution’s origination clause, which requires revenue-raising measures to originate in the House, not the Senate.
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U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington in June rejected that argument as made by Matt Sissel, an Iowa man, concluding the challenged bill originated in the House even if it was completely rewritten by the Senate.
The cases are Notre Dame University v. Sebelius, 3:13- cv-01276, U.S. District Court, North District of Indiana (South Bend), and Halbig v. Sebelius, 13-cv-00623, U.S District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).

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Stunning hypocrisy from Democrats in wake of ObamaCare's broken promises

Hypocrisy and double standards are two things that disgust and infuriate all Americans, regardless of where they fall on the ideological spectrum.
Unfortunately, these qualities are far too prevalent in our political culture today, and are prime reasons why Washington and the politicians that work there are held in such low regard.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the implementation and implosion of ObamaCare.
During the debate over the deeply flawed bill in 2009 and 2010, voters were repeatedly assured by President Obama and his congressional allies that everyone who liked their current health care plan would be able to keep it. “Period.”

Rather than join with Republicans and immediately repeal this catastrophe before it gets any worse, Democrats are stubbornly digging in their heels. 

Now, as the new law implodes before our eyes, millions of Americans have received letters of cancellation. With approximately five million people across the country expected to lose their current plan and millions more to follow, when all the smoke clears, it’s clear that the Democrats broke their promise to the American people.
Many other Americans are experiencing fewer medical options as insurers restrict their choice of doctors and hospitals in order to keep costs low.
Some of the country’s top medical facilities are being excluded from the new exchange system, meaning patients who have been getting treatment from doctors they like all of a sudden find themselves out of luck.
For example, in New Hampshire, only 16 of the state’s 26 hospitals are available on the federal exchange, meaning patients must either pay more to keep their current doctor or seek inferior care elsewhere.
Neither is a good option.
New Hampshire is not alone. Across the country, some of the best hospitals are not available on plans on the exchange, leaving patients with difficult choices and unwanted sometimes, life threatening decisions.
Rather than join with Republicans and immediately repeal this catastrophe before it gets any worse, Democrats are stubbornly digging in their heels.
They know that backing away from President Obama’s signature achievement would be a huge embarrassment for the White House, and they’re unwilling to buck their party leadership.
Instead, they’re hiding behind meaningless show votes in Congress, offering half-hearted and meaningless attempts to reinstate cancelled plans or delay implementation of some of the particularly onerous new federal regulations.
All these false efforts will do is add to the increased costs and put things off until after the 2014 elections.
No one is mistaking these transparent moves as profiles in courage.
ObamaCare became the law of the land because every single Democratic Senator fell in line with their party bosses and voted for it. For any sitting member of the Senate to somehow now suggest that they are fighting to protect their constituents from this “trainwreck” is completely hypocritical.
If they were really interested in sparing their constituents from ObamaCare’s harmful impact, they should have stood up when they could have stopped the whole thing from becoming law.
They could have also voted to allow for the protection or “grandfathering” of the older policies.
They did neither.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that politicians in Washington have access to many special perks and privileges unavailable to the general public when attempting to navigate ObamaCare.
Beyond having more top-flight plans to choose from, senators have access to what the New York Times recently described as “concierge-type services” and “in-person support sessions” available only to members of Congress.
Democrats who voted for ObamaCare are therefore not exposed to the same frustrations of a broken website and complicated red tape that millions of everyday people are being forced to work through.
The hypocrisy is stunning. Saddling the rest of the country with complicated rules they didn’t want and don’t need in pursuit of a health care takeover that will hurt patient care, limit options and devastate our economy is no way to run a country.
Not only is President Obama to blame here, so too are every single one of the Democratic senators who forced this fiasco on the American people.
The president is not going to face voters again, but his congressional enablers and supporters will in less than a year. When they do, it’s going to be an unpleasant experience for any incumbent having to explain their deciding vote and continued support for the ongoing disaster of ObamaCare.

Senseless

Fact Check: Is President Obama's latest health care promise true?

Is President Obama’s latest health care promise – that his plan will offer “most” people a better plan for the same price or less than their current policy – actually true?
 Some analysts say no.
"That’s not an accurate argument," says Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute. "If your plan is now covering a bunch of things that you don’t need, then how is it a better plan for you?"
 Former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin says there's no evidence to support the president's claim.
"You can do the math," he says. "Most of the policies in his claim could spend more, cover more things, provide more visits and charge less." But, he concludes, "the arithmetic just does not work."
Obama’s remarks last month were an effort to deflect criticism for having earlier promised that people could keep their plans and doctors no matter what.
 "Most people, he said, "will be able to buy better plans for the same price or even cheaper than what they've gotten before."
 A few days after that promise, the president appeared to downgrade the pledge somewhat, saying only that "there's a good chance that they'll be able to buy better insurance at lower cost."
 The promise that "most people" would be better off is sharply disputed by many, including a number of individuals experiencing sticker shock, including those with pre-existing conditions.
They include Tom Gialanella of Seattle, who had a policy that was renewed for years even after he had cancer -- not the kind of sub-standard policy the president likes to criticize.
 But he says his new policy under ObamaCare "went from $891 a month to $1,437 a month and also my deductibles all doubled."
Andrew Leonard recently told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that he "would get the terrible, terrible plan with the $6,000 deductible." As far as the premiums are concerned, he said, " I'll pay $1,200 dollars a year for that and I'll be less insured than I am today."
 Analysts say those whose policies are canceled will get new coverage, but not at lower prices.
 "What we're seeing is that the new ObamaCare plans typically have higher deductibles than the old plans did," says Roy, along with "a narrower choice of doctors and hospitals and yet higher premiums."
 David Hogberg of the National Center for Public Policy Research adds,"It's very easy for a bronze plan to have a deductible (with) total out of pocket costs that are $6,000."
 That, of course, means the individual doesn't get a dollar of benefits until he or she has exceeded $6,000 in expenditures, much more than many young people spend on medical care.
 Rosemary Gibson of the Hastings Center and author of "The Battle Over Health Care" points to a  Nov. 14 letter from one of the top officials implementing the law that concedes subsidies won't help everyone.
 She describes it as "a letter from Gary Cohen to state health insurance commissioners saying while many people still have subsidies, there will still be some people who will be paying more than they were paying."
 In fact, one insurance plan that asked not to be identified analyzed its pool of 375,000 people and found that,  even after subsidies, only 10 percent would actually see a decrease in costs, while one third would face significant rate increases as a result of ObamaCare.

Illinois public unions target Democratic lawmakers

The latest battle between organized labor and states trying to fix huge budget problems by cutting pension costs has surfaced in Illinois, where public union leaders are waging an all-out effort to stop the Democrat-led campaign.
Details of a plan reached last week appear to show state legislative leaders are attempting to solve Illinois' $100 billion pension crisis in part by changing workers' retirement age, reducing automatic pension increases and limiting their collective-bargaining privileges.
Union leaders argue the plan to help the under-funded pension plan, which appears to have bipartisan support, seems no different than the one the General Assembly rejected earlier this year.
“It’s an unfair, unconstitutional scheme that undermines retirement security,” the We Are One Illinois labor coalition said last week as details of the plan emerged. "It’s no compromise at all with those who earned and paid for their retirement benefits. In fact, reports suggest the leaders have repackaged Senate Bill 1 and barely bothered to disguise it.”
Rank-and-file state lawmakers were briefed on the plan Friday, and a vote could come as early as this week.
Leaders of the unions, a usually reliable Democratic vote, are specifically targeting Democratic state senators from moderate, swing districts where election opponents can hammer them for inaction or being too tough on state workers and say eight to 10 of them are considered "persuadable."
The battle is the most recent to play out across the Midwest where Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan have worked to limit collective bargain deals to reduce budget shortfalls.
The most epic battle took place in Wisconsin in 2011 when GOP Gov. Scott Walker led an effort to get the General Assembly to pass legislation that limited collective bargaining for most state workers and required them to pay more for their pensions and health-care benefits to help reduce a projected  $137 million budget shortfall.
The move sparked weeks of protests in the state capitol, a national debate on the issue and a failed attempt to recall Walker, who was faced with a projected $3.6 billion deficit when he signed the legislation.
Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn and the four legislative leaders of the Democrat-controlled Assembly say the plan will save the state an estimated $160 billion over 30 years and are working to secure enough support for passage.

Administration to release more data on ObamaCare site's progress

The Obama administration is expected to give a fuller picture Sunday of whether it met its self-imposed November 30 deadline to allow 50,000 people to access the federal healthcare exchange website simultaneously.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have scheduled a press conference for 9 a.m. to discuss the progress of the site, Healthcare.gov.
Obama administration officials said Saturday that the site had "performed well" and that  upgrades overnight Friday had improved response times and reduced errors. The site was taken offline between 9 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. Eastern time Saturday, in addition to its regular maintenance window, which falls between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. Eastern time Sunday.
"With the scheduled upgrades last night and tonight, we're on track to meet our stated goal for the site to work for the vast majority of users," CMS spokesman Aaron Albright told Fox News earlier Saturday.
CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille said the installation of new servers Friday night helped improved the response times and error rates, even with heavier-than-usual weekend traffic.
Though President Obama and other administration officials have tried to downplay the deadline, saying fixes are an ongoing effort, a lot is riding on the site’s performance this weekend, including upcoming elections as well as Americans’ confidence in the president and his signature health-care law, which depends on their participation to work.
The Washington Post reported hours before that the administration was prepared to announce Sunday that they have met deadlines for improving HealthCare.gov. However, technicians failed to reach the deadline to fix at least some of the glitches, according to the newspaper.
Official have repeatedly said in recent weeks that the site would after the deadline be able to accommodate the “vast majority” of online shoppers.
The White House says it's made numerous upgrades in both software and hardware over the last month, which also will allow the site to handle more than 800,000 visitors a day.
Still, in the days leading up to the deadline, the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services continued to scale back expectations, saying not to expect the site to be 100 percent glitch-free.
"If there are extraordinarily high spikes in traffic, which exceed the site's capacity, consumers will be put in a new, advanced queuing system that will give them an expected wait time, or allow them to be notified via when they can return to the site," Bataille said Monday.
Obama recently said he'd consider a "fix" to be successful if 80 percent of the people are able to navigate the site without a major problem.
The nation's largest health insurer trade group said significant problems remain.
Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, told the Associated Press that insurers have complained that enrollment data sent to them from the website include too much incorrect, duplicative, garbled or missing information. She said the problems must be cleared up to guarantee consumers the coverage they signed up for effective Jan. 1.
The first big test of the repaired website probably won't come for another couple of weeks, when an enrollment surge is expected as consumers rush to meet a Dec. 23 deadline so their coverage can kick in on the first of the year.
Avoiding a break in coverage is particularly important for millions of people whose current individual policies were canceled because they don't meet the standards of the health care law, as well as for a group of about 100,000 in an expiring federal program for high-risk patients.
Democrats and Republicans will be closely watching the site this weekend. With the midterm elections less than a year away, it's vital to Democrats that the site lives up to expectations the president set. Republicans have already suggested they'll launch coordinated attacks linking every congressional Democrat up for re-election to the Affordable Care Act.
In the House, the effort, based around dozens of votes to repeal the law, is about denying Democrats the 17-seat gain they would need to win back the majority. In the Senate, it's about gaining the six seats Republicans need to take control of that chamber.
It was announced earlier this week that Families USA, a self-proclaimed non-partisan organization, has been given a $1.1 million grant to establish a database of ObamaCare "success stories."
Families USA received the money from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on Oct. 4. The grant is meant to help Families USA expand the database of “real people” sharing their stories of enrolling in ObamaCare.
News of the grant has been revealed in the same week that the White House announced two more delays related to the president's landmark health care reform law.
On Wednesday, it was announced that it would delay the launch of an online portal to the health insurance marketplace for small businesses until November 2015. Officials said that the decision to delay the launch had been taken because making repairs to the federal health exchange site, Healthcare.gov took priority.
The administration also announced that the launch of a Spanish-language sign-up tool would have to be postponed.
In recent weeks, the White House has also pushed back the enrollment deadline for individuals to December 23, given businesses with more than 50 workers until 2015 to provide required health insurance without paying a penalty, and moved the deadline date for individuals to avoid penalties for failing to get coverage back for six weeks.
There was also an announced schedule change in next year's open enrollment season. It will start on Nov. 15, 2014, a month later than originally scheduled, and finish on Jan. 15, 2015, about five weeks later than originally planned. Bailey Comment: "Do you think that a lot of visits to this site was to shop for insurance or just to see if the site works now"?