The latest update on President Trump’s war with Congress over Obamacare has us salivating.
According to policy experts, when Obamacare was passed President Obama also coordinated through the federal Office of Personnel Management a workaround for members of Congress and their staff such that they would be regarded as a ‘small business’.
And as such, they would be exempted from the Obamacare mandate.
Because that was simply the stroke of Obama’s pen, it can just as easily be killed by the stroke of Trump’s pen.
It’s sweet justice whose time is long overdue.
If he begins pulling those strings, get ready to watch Congress — especially Democrats — start to squirm and suddenly want to come to the table for renewed negotiations.
Sometimes it’s just fun to watch this stuff.
Here’s more from Daily Signal…
President Donald Trump could have Congress in an uncomfortable corner over the lawmakers’ exemption, and that of their staff, from Obamacare.
“This is one more instance of Congress passing an unpleasant, expensive, onerous law on citizens and then conferring a valuable benefit on itself,” Joe Morris, former general counsel for the Office of Personnel Management, told The Daily Signal.
Over the weekend, Trump tweeted that he could take away the exemption, granted by the Obama administration’s Office of Personnel Management, to prod Congress toward agreement on getting rid of Obamacare.
The provision provides what critics say is tantamount to an unconstitutional waiver for members of Congress and their staff from rules mandated by the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.
To exempt themselves, the 535 lawmakers and their more than 13,000 staffers are treated as if they were a small business employing fewer than 50 workers.
The exemption policy was created in an OPM directive under President Barack Obama, and could easily be overturned by Trump, said Morris, who worked at the agency during the Reagan administration.
Many critics of Obamacare, including a host of grassroots activists, long have argued that Congress and its staff should have to live under Obamacare like other Americans.
Morris said that applying Obamacare rules to Congress and its staff—as the language of the 2010 law actually requires—could prompt Republican lawmakers to act on their promise to repeal and replace the law. They failed to reach 50 votes to do so in the Senate last week, when three Republicans joined Democrats to scuttle a “skinny repeal” proposal that would have set up a conference with the House.
Such action by Trump, some political observers speculate, could spur Democrats to come to the bargaining table over the fate of Obamacare.
