Today we have for you a golden example of the bullet we dodged by keeping Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine out of office, the gun still aimed at every American’s health care, and the the knives plunged in our backs by the people America trusts to keep them informed about both.
Last week, the Virginia newspaper Roanoke Times published an op-ed by American Commitment membership director Jon Decker (who, in the interest of full disclosure, is a personal friend of mine) that called out Kaine, Clinton’s failed running mate who remains a Democrat Virginia Senator, for dishonestly claiming Obamacare doesn’t treat members of Congress any different than it treats the average America.
Kaine quoted an Office of Personnel Management official as saying that “Members of Congress will not receive anything that is not available to the public,” when in reality, as Decker lays out in the piece, Barack Obama illegally directed OPM to restore “employer contributions” for lawmakers and congressional staffers averaging $12,000 a year, which Congress takes advantage of by having the House and Senate falsely file themselves as small businesses with the DC Small Business Health Exchange.
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Kaine responded with his own Roanoke Times op-ed (since deleted, but archived here). Decker and American Commitment president Phil Kerpen, tackle that op-ed today at The Federalist, which you should take the time to read for the full scoop on just how Congress is exempting itself from the law they want you to suffer under.
Here at TFPP, we want to focus on one particular aspect to the brawl that exposes both Kaine and the Roanoke Times for the utter, utter hacks that they are:
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While one could presume Kaine is intentionally deceiving the public to cover up the sweet deal that forces taxpayers to pay his premiums, we can’t rule out the possibility that he is genuinely, jaw-droppingly ignorant of how employer-sponsored health insurance works in this country.
In his response, Kaine made this baffling, false claim: “Just like those 62 percent of Virginians and 151 million Americans, Congressional staff and Members of Congress receive coverage through the employer-sponsored insurance system on the exchange.”
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According to the most recent official data, there are 2,044 covered lives in the Virginia small business exchange, the only Obamacare exchange that allows employer-sponsored coverage. That’s about 0.02 percent of the state population, not 62 percent. Nationally, there are 232,698 people who “receive coverage through the employer-sponsored insurance system on the exchange,” more than a little short of Kaine’s claim of 151 million. Approximately zero of them, other than Congress and its staff, work for large employers.
Kerpen had slammed Kaine for this bit of idiocy on Twitter when Kaine originally tried it:
Tim Kaine thinks millions of people have **employer coverage through Obamacare exchanges**.https://t.co/F9bvQSlVxZ pic.twitter.com/cFsYlPpOst
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) September 22, 2017
Well, it seems someone from Team Kaine had been paying attention, because the lie in question magically changed between then and now, without any admission or disclaimer that the Roanoke Times had edited Kaine’s piece:
I guess somebody reads my Twitter… the @roanoketimes has stealth-edited away @timkaine's embarrassing display of ignorance. pic.twitter.com/nxhsc0Czqh
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) September 25, 2017
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As of Monday, after American Commitment had sounded the alarm, Kaine’s op-ed has disappeared entirely. Does Kaine have a revamped attempt at revisionism in the works, or are his pals in the Virginia media simply trying to pretend this never happened in hopes that this incident simply blows over?
What have we learned from this? As Decker and Kerpen put it, Kaine “doesn’t have to pay [premiums] himself, neither does his staff, and he apparently lacks the most basic understanding of how the rest of us are suffering from soaring premiums and dwindling health-care options.” Indeed.
Countless outright lies and end-runs around statute just like this one keep Obamacare propped up. This story is a reminder that Obamacare cannot survive without fraud — a fraud the press is all to happy to join.
