LVRJ:
During a visit to Las Vegas, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio said Wednesday Congress should pass a bill to fund Homeland Security without conditions, essentially stepping back from a battle with President Barack Obama over his executive actions on immigration.
The possible Republican presidential candidate said national security is too important to hold up funding, although he disagrees with Obama’s moves to go around Congress to halt deportations of up to 5 million undocumented immigrants.
“We have to fund Homeland Security,” Rubio told reporters during a brief news conference. “We can’t let Homeland Security shut down.”
Hollywood Reporter:
Kristen Bell Demands Friends Get Whooping Cough Vaccination Before Holding Her Baby
All kinds of awesome.
"Look, guys, I'm not here to talk about the Iraq War. Anyway, meet my adviser, Paul Wolfowitz."
http://t.co/...
— @pbump
AP:
Study: Oklahoma's daily small quakes raise risk of big ones
More politics and policy below the fold.
James Fallows:
Actually, I hope Jim Webb does run. Two of the issues on which he has based his political career—economic inequality, and the risks of chickenhawk militarism—are absolutely crucial issues for the Democratic party and the country. Realistically the 2016 Democratic race seems more sewn up than any other nomination race I can recall. Anyone running against Hillary Clinton faces very steep odds. But there's still a long time to go, anything can happen, and the country and the party can only benefit from having a candidate like Webb make the case he would make. For similar reasons, I said nine years ago that I was glad Webb was beginning his (long-shot) run for the Senate in Virginia.
Want to hear how Jim Webb sounds when he talks about economic and social justice? I wrote about this during the 2012 presidential campaign, and I give you the video below. It came during the controversy over whether 47 percent of Americans were "takers," and in it Webb talks both about moral issues and about things he accomplished in the Senate.
Greg Sargent on
Glenn Kessler:
The most important read of the morning is Glenn Kessler’s deep dive into the previous statements of leading GOP lawmakers about the structure and purpose of the Affordable Care act — statements that strongly suggest they only recently came around to the reading of the ACA that is driving the King v. Burwell legal challenge that could do severe damage to the law.
Kessler reports that GOP Senators John Cornyn, John Barrasso, and Orrin Hatch, along with Rep. Paul Ryan, are all previously on record making statements that appear grounded in the assumption that subsidies would be available to people who got health care on the federal exchanges, in addition to state ones. The King lawsuit, of course, alleges that the ACA does not authorize subsidies to all those people, and now, Cornyn, Hatch, and Ryan have signed a brief siding with the challengers. Meanwhile, Barrasso is openly rooting for the Supreme Court to “bring down” the law.
Some of these statements have been previously aired. What’s new here is that these Senators and their spokespeople have now attempted to explain their shift in views. Most of their explanations, Kessler concludes, are pretty weak, and amount to an “unacknowledged flip-flop.”
Tony Pugh:
When Indiana Gov. Mike Pence agreed to expand eligibility for his state’s Medicaid program, he made sure to call it “reform” rather than “expansion.”
The change reflects both the unique, conservative features of Indiana’s Medicaid plan as well as a complex political dynamic for Pence, a conservative Republican with rumored presidential aspirations.
By embracing a key pillar of the Affordable Care Act, Pence’s Medicaid plan could tarnish his conservative bona fides with large swaths of GOP voters and opinion makers.
So with party leaders in Washington calling for the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, Medicaid “reform” sounds and looks a lot better to GOP hardliners than the dreaded E-word.
“This has been a long process, but real reform takes work,” Pence said when the deal was done.
His careful wording is part of an awkward political dance that’s being performed nationwide as more Republican governors push for Medicaid expansion, despite tepid support from GOP state lawmakers and a continuing assault on the health care law by Republicans in Congress.
Two from
Nicholas Bagley explaining the King v Burwell standing issue:
One:
To unpack the standing question, we’ve got to take a close look at what the plaintiffs have alleged and what the newspapers have reported. As we do that, though, keep in mind that standing is often confused with a related concept called mootness. Both are relevant here. A plaintiff’s standing is measured at the moment she files her lawsuit. In cases seeking an injunction—and that’s what the King plaintiffs want—a plaintiff has standing if she has a reasonable, non-speculative basis for thinking that she will suffer an injury at the hands of the defendant. But a case that was proper when filed can become moot if, during the litigation, it becomes apparent that the threatened injury will never materialize.
Two (my bold):
Now that recent reporting has raised serious questions about the veracity of those declarations, it is incumbent on the plaintiffs’ lawyers to clarify to the Supreme Court the basis for their clients’ standing, perhaps with amended declarations that offer specifics about VA enrollment (for King and Hurst) and income (for Levy and Luck). Indeed, to the extent that unanticipated standing problems have arisen, the King lawyers have an ethical obligation to do so. As the Court has said, “[w]hen a development after this Court grants certiorari … could have the effect of depriving the Court of jurisdiction due to the absence of a continuing case or controversy, that development should be called to the attention of the Court without delay.”
If the plaintiffs keep mum, they’ll be putting the Supreme Court into a bind. The Court isn’t equipped to decide factual questions; it’s supposed to resolve legal disputes. At the same time, however, the Court can’t just ignore standing. Without standing, the federal courts lack jurisdiction—the power—to resolve the dispute. That’s why the courts must consider standing on their own, whether or not any party has objected.
Paul Krugman:
But here’s the mystery: evidently [Stephen] Moore has had a successful career. Why?
Think about Heritage: It’s immensely wealthy, and could surely afford to hire a technically competent right-wing hack. The Wall Street Journal, similarly, could have attracted someone much less likely to trip over his own intellectual shoelaces. Again, the problem isn’t even that Moore got the macroeconomics of recent years all wrong, although he did; it’s the inability to write without making embarrassing mistakes.
So why is he there (and he’s not alone — there are some other incompetent hacks at Heritage)?
I suspect that the incompetence is actually desirable at some level — a smart hack might turn honest, or something, But it’s remarkable.
Merrill Goozner:
In 2010, the CBO expected 14 million more people would be covered by Medicaid because of the ACA. Now, the government bean counters project 11 million, and even that may be optimistic.
Political opposition to the law remains fierce across the country. It still doesn't poll well despite the president's improving popularity.
The U.S. Supreme Court next month will hear a challenge that could unravel the subsidies, which are key to making insurance affordable for low- to moderate-income Americans without employer-based coverage. Without those tax credits, the coverage expansion will end and probably reverse course.
So it is timely to remind ourselves why putting an end to the scourge that leaves one-seventh of the population without health insurance is so important—not just for the obvious social and moral reasons, but for the economic relief it will provide to nearly everyone else. Unfortunately, that is rarely part of the public discussion.