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RP what a clown, a joke! grandstanding for the KY bubbas, rednecks, ridge runners. 2/3 of both chambers, and 3/4 of states to ratify his bull ?
I like the notion even if he is using it as a platform for theater and potshots at SCOTUS.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/1...625.html?hp=f1Forget the Vitter amendment. Rand Paul wants to make sure that Congress can’t ever again write laws with provisions specific to lawmakers.
The Kentucky freshman Republican has introduced a cons utional amendment that would preclude senators and congressmen from passing laws that don’t apply equally to U.S. citizens and Congress, the executive branch and the Supreme Court. The amendment is aimed squarely at Obamacare provisions specific to members of Congress and their staffs that became a central point of contention during the government shutdown.
Under Obamacare, Capitol Hill aides and lawmakers are required to enter the law’s health exchanges and a summertime ruling from the Office of Personnel Management ensured they will continue to receive federal employer contributions to help pay for insurance on the exchanges. A number of lawmakers, specifically Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), have been pushing for the end to those contributions, arguing they amount to a Washington exemption from Obamacare. Vitter has drafted legislative language that would eliminate these subsidies and tried to attach the measure to an energy efficiency bill and pushed for it to be included in the government funding bill last week.
Paul seeks to go a step further and amend the Cons ution so that “Congress shall make no law applicable to a citizen of the United States that is not equally applicable to Congress,” the executive branch including the president and vice president as well as the Supreme Court.
RP what a clown, a joke! grandstanding for the KY bubbas, rednecks, ridge runners. 2/3 of both chambers, and 3/4 of states to ratify his bull ?
^this would be right up your alley if it were a lib proposing it
you're such a partisan hack and a joke. both parties are zionist manufactured ideologies..it's garbage.
Not going to happen.
lol boutons outted
I don't get it. These guys are Federal Workers and they get FEHB just like I do (I am a federal worker). It is an employer subsidized health insurance and thus by having insurance you don't have to get Obamacare. Nothing to see here. Its like working @ HEB fulltime and having insurance through them. Those people wouldn't HAVE to sign up to Obamacare either. And, if those people quit working for the government they would have to go to the exchanges just like everyone else. This is a stupid thing to be fighting for and there grandstanding is annoying.
I applaud Rand and hope more ideas like this come out of both parties.
It's a sensible amendment, but you just gotta wonder how much pork needs to be added to this to get supermajority on both chambers, tbh...
agreed, just another spurious, fabricated, look-at-me-make-noise/get-on-boob-tube issue from the right wing. The idea is to "punish" these people with "horrible" ACA as pay back for the govt "punishing" the uninsured Americans with ACA.
btw, no one MUST use the exchanges. They are conveniences. People get quotes directly from insurers. And there is a company that has been provide exchange-type service for several years.
How Rand Paul’s Proposed Cons utional Amendment Could Make Rand Paul Super-Rich
Paul’s amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law applicable to a citizen of the United States that is not equally applicable to Congress,” and then includes similar provisions applying to executive branch officials and federal judges. The problem with this language, however, is that it makes no distinction between laws that give special privileges to members of Congress and laws that exclude them from federal benefits for entirely legitimate reasons.
To give an absurd — but entirely plausible example, given the breadth of the Paul amendment’s language — Congress recently enacted a bill that includes a one-time payment for the widow of the late Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), which is a typical practice when a member of Congress dies in office. Under Paul’s very broad cons utional language, however, a law that is applicable to just one citizen — in this case, Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg — must also be “equally applicable” to members of Congress. Thus, every member of Congress could sue to demand that they also receive a payment equal to the death benefit paid to Lautenberg’s widow. Under Paul’s broad language, such a lawsuit could very well succeed.
Nor is this problem unique to one-off laws providing benefits to individual citizens. Federal Medicare law excludes most Americans under the age of 65 from receiving benefits. But if the Cons ution explicitly prohibits laws that are “applicable to a citizen of the United States” but “not equally applicable to Congress,” then it is not at all clear that federal law can deny Medicare benefits to any member of Congress so long as those benefits are enjoyed by any U.S. citizen. Medicare benefits are “applicable” to Americans over 65, so they must also be “applicable” to members of Congress. The same could be true about Social Security benefits. And food stamps. And veterans benefits. And federal employee retirement benefits.
Indeed, Paul’s amendment is so broadly drafted that it could immediately grant to every member of Congress every single benefit offered to anyone at all under federal law. Because Medal of Honor recipients currently receive a monthly pension of $1,259 as a reward for their service, members of Congress could potentially also have to receive this pension, despite having done nothing to earn it.
Admittedly, the intent of Paul’s amendment is to limit the privileges afforded to members of Congress, not to transform them into recipients of the most generous and unnecessary welfare program in American history. So it is possible that the courts would ignore the literal meaning of the amendment and interpret it narrowly to merely forbid laws that give special privileges to lawmakers. Even this interpretation is problematic, however.
To give just one example, Senate Rule XXIII prohibits all but a short list of mostly high-ranking government officials from being present on the Senate floor while the body is in session. Under Paul’s amendment, however, if just one citizen is barred from setting foot on the Senate floor, then this bar must also be “equally applicable” to the senators themselves. Conceivably, Congress could rectify this situation by opening the Senate floor up to everyone, but it would be virtually impossible to conduct legislative business if literally any U.S. citizen — or, perhaps, thousands of them at a time — could rush the Senate floor.
Paul is well-known for his idiosyncratic understanding of the Cons ution. He once praised a widely reviled Supreme Court decision that would protect employers seeking to exploit their workers, and he labeled whites-only lunch counters the “hard part about believing in freedom.” Given his tendency to read our founding do ent and see things there that few other people see, it’s probably a bad idea for him to draft new amendments to add onto that do ent — even if those amendments actually do what he says they will do.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...-kings-queens/
"idiosyncratic"? he's ing stupid.
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