e-News 10/21/16

• Speeches Will Not Fix ObamaCare
• Mr. President: The VA is Still Broken
• More Unwise Actions on Cuba: The Washington Post Weighs in
• Salute: New Jersey Task Force-1 and our Volunteers
• Salute: Randolph Kiwanis Club

 

Speeches Will Not Fix ObamaCare

President Obama launched yet another spirited defense of his signature ObamaCare program delivering a speech in Florida yesterday.  Yes, ObamaCare is the same program that former President Bill Clinton recently called “the craziest thing in the world.”  And it is the same program that Minnesota’s Gov. Mark Dayton (D-MN) said is “no longer affordable.”

My House colleague, Tom Price, Chairman of the Budget Committee, reacted this way: “If the American people had a dime for every time the president offered another sales pitch for his disastrous health care law, they might actually be able to afford an Obamacare plan.”

It has now been six years since the so-called Affordable Care Act (ACA), was rammed through Congress and three years since its botched rollout and the reality is not changing. Premiums and deductibles have gone up. Choices are fewer.  Many New Jersey families have actually lost the health coverage they were told time and time again that they could keep.

But perhaps most disconcerting is the effect ObamaCare is having on our economy and jobs.

I spent a good deal of time this week listening to small businessmen and women across the 11^th District.  They are concerned that unnecessary regulations are strangling their companies and they struggle with ObamaCare’s various mandates.  This issue was raised with me this week at the Randolph Chamber of Commerce and elsewhere. ACA also has a 30-hour definition of full-time employee for purposes of the employer mandate.  The 30-hour definition of full-time employment has harmed job creation and growth, especially among small businesses.  

The President’s many speeches will not make quality health care more affordable or accessible.  But the House Leadership has a plan, part of its Better Way agenda.  Learn more here. 

Mr. President: The VA is Still Broken

The President recently stated at a CNN town hall that he “fired a whole bunch of people” who oversaw corrupt and failing VA facilities.

The Washington Post fact checker gave this claim Four Pinocchios.  As the Post notes, a grand total of one executive was fired for waitlist violations. One.

Attempts like these to whitewash the ongoing problems at the VA are disgraceful. You can’t fix a problem if you insist it no longer exists. Here are some facts:

• The VA itself admits that more than a half million veterans are still waiting over 30 days to see a doctor.
• An average of 22 veterans commit suicide every day, and yet nearly one-third of calls to the VA suicide hotline still go unanswered.

This agency continues to be a national catastrophe. However, the House Leadership, as part of the Better Way agenda, has a plan to completely overhaul the VA so it works for every single veteran and their families. As the Better Way report explains, “The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, is directly proportional to their perception of how the veterans of earlier wars were treated by their nation. We will honor those who served by modernizing the institutions that serve them.”

More Unwise Actions on Cuba

President Obama recently unveiled a Presidential Decision Directive trumpeting the further overtures he is making to the Cuban government designed to make the thaw in relations he announced on Dec. 17, 2014, “irreversible.”

The “executive actions” are designed to increase trade and travel with the communist island. Under the new rules, which went into effect last Monday, travelers can purchase unlimited quantities of Cuban rum and cigars in any country where they are sold so long as they are for personal consumption.

These moves are wrong for human rights, justice and national security reasons.

Despite being handed concession after concession by the Obama Administration, the Castro regime continues to jail pro-democracy activists at a rate of hundreds per month.  Cuba continues to harbor Joanne Chesimard, convicted of murdering a New Jersey State Trooper in 1973.  Cuba has also been implicated in activities that support the regime in North Korea, the Colombian FARC rebels and other terrorist groups.

Read the Washington Post editorial, “Obama to the Castro regime: Do whatever you want” here.

Salute: Thank you to New Jersey’s police, medics, firefighters, Red Cross personnel and other volunteers who rushed to North Carolina to assist with Hurricane Matthew relief efforts.  It was also the first official out-of-state deployment for 80 members of New Jersey Task Force One – our federally-designated Urban Search and Rescue Team.

Salute: To the Randolph Kiwanis Club for its forty years of sponsorship of the Morristown Craft Market at the Morristown National Guard Armory, one of New Jersey acclaimed major cultural and charitable events.