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The House on Friday approved a bill to allow insurers to sell canceled health insurance plans that had been canceled due to ObamaCare regulations.

The vote came a day after President Obama announced he would unilaterally attempt to fix the problem, but Obama capitulated after the vote had been scheduled Tuesday.

The bill passed 261-157, with 39 Democrats crossing over to support the GOP-backed legislation (View for the vote breakdown below), who previously supported opposing the effort before and during the government shutdown. Only after Republicans’ predictions that the law would negatively harm Americans coming to fruition, did these Democrats make a politically calculated decision.

The bill approved by the Republican-controlled House would go further than the plan Obama by allowing insurance companies to sell the old plans to customers who previously had them, as well as new customers, but only for another year. Obama’s plan would only apply to those customers enrolled in the plans before the cancellation notices went out.

However, Republicans, in bringing the bill to the floor on Friday, underscored that President Obama does not even have the constitutional authority to make those changes on his own. President Obama previously and unilaterally exempted his crony friends from compliance with the law, which many on the right criticized before the shutdown.

House Speaker John Boehner said he’s “highly skeptical that they can do this administratively.”

The legislation’s sponsor, Michigan Republican and Chairman Fred Upton, also raised the question whether or not Obama could or would simply reverse course a few weeks or months down the road. Upton told Fox News that his bill is a “better answer — because who knows how his executive order is going to be tested?”

President Obama has already vowed to veto the House bill, despite claiming he wants to remedy his broken promise, disguising his opposition with suggestions the bill goes too far. Prior the vote, Republicans turned away a Democratic alternative that would have taken the teeth out of the GOP bill, because it wouldn’t have addressed the real cause of the problem nor its already devastating ramifications.

The bill may be a great gesture, but neither so-called “fix” will actually undo the damage ObamaCare has and will cause. In fact, both are likely to cause problems for the insurance industry and state-level commissioners, further exacerbating the negative impacts of an already-failed law.

Amid Obama’s announcement on Thursday, they complained that they were unsure how to implement the change, if at all, considering cancellation notices have already gone out and rates have already been set for 2014 in many states.

Obama plans to meet with insurance industry executives Friday afternoon, after they fired back at the Obama administration for trying to dump the blame on them.

“What we want to do is to be able to say to these folks, you know what, the Affordable Care Act is not going to be the reason why insurers have to cancel your plan,” Obama said of the millions who have received cancellation notices. But the fact, is that insurers are merely following the law, a law that is designed to throw off those private holders so that high risk pools do not drive up premiums even further.

Only last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a Senate panel she doubted that retroactively permitting insurers to sell canceled policies after all “can work very well since companies are now in the market with an array of new plans. Many have actually added consumer protections in the last 3 1/2 years.”

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 587
(Republicans in roman; Democrats in italic; Independents underlined)

H R 3350      RECORDED VOTE      15-Nov-2013      1:34 PM
QUESTION:  On Passage
BILL TITLE: Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013

 

AYES NOES PRES NV
REPUBLICAN 222 4 4
DEMOCRATIC 39 153 8
INDEPENDENT
TOTALS 261 157   12

—- AYES    261 —
 

Aderholt
Amash
Amodei
Bachmann
Bachus
Barber
Barletta
Barr
Barrow (GA)
Barton
Benishek
Bentivolio
Bera (CA)
Bilirakis
Bishop (NY)
Bishop (UT)
Black
Blackburn
Boustany
Brady (TX)
Braley (IA)
Brooks (AL)
Brooks (IN)
Brownley (CA)
Buchanan
Bucshon
Burgess
Bustos
Calvert
Camp
Cantor
Capito
Carter
Cassidy
Chabot
Chaffetz
Coble
Coffman
Cole
Collins (GA)
Collins (NY)
Conaway
Cook
Costa
Cotton
Cramer
Crawford
Crenshaw
Culberson
Daines
Davis, Rodney
DeFazio
DelBene
Denham
Dent
DeSantis
DesJarlais
Diaz-Balart
Duckworth
Duffy
Duncan (SC)
Duncan (TN)
Ellmers
Enyart
Esty
Farenthold
Fincher
Fitzpatrick
Fleischmann
Fleming
Flores
Forbes
Fortenberry
Foster
Foxx
Franks (AZ)
Frelinghuysen
Gallego
Garamendi
Garcia
Gardner
Garrett
Gerlach
Gibbs
Gibson
Gingrey (GA)
Gohmert
Goodlatte
Gowdy
Graves (GA)
Graves (MO)
Griffin (AR)
Griffith (VA)
Grimm
Guthrie
Hanna
Harper
Harris
Hartzler
Hastings (WA)
Heck (NV)
Hensarling
Herrera Beutler
Holding
Hudson
Huelskamp
Huizenga (MI)
Hultgren
Hunter
Hurt
Issa
Jenkins
Johnson (OH)
Johnson, Sam
Jordan
Joyce
Kelly (PA)
Kind
King (IA)
King (NY)
Kingston
Kinzinger (IL)
Kline
Kuster
Labrador
LaMalfa
Lamborn
Lance
Lankford
Latham
Latta
LoBiondo
Loebsack
Long
Lucas
Luetkemeyer
Lummis
Maffei
Maloney, Sean
Marchant
Marino
Matheson
McCarthy (CA)
McCaul
McClintock
McHenry
McIntyre
McKeon
McKinley
McMorris Rodgers
McNerney
Meadows
Meehan
Messer
Mica
Miller (FL)
Miller (MI)
Miller, Gary
Mullin
Mulvaney
Murphy (FL)
Murphy (PA)
Neugebauer
Noem
Nolan
Nugent
Nunes
Nunnelee
Olson
Owens
Palazzo
Paulsen
Pearce
Perry
Peters (CA)
Peters (MI)
Peterson
Petri
Pittenger
Pitts
Poe (TX)
Pompeo
Posey
Price (GA)
Radel
Rahall
Reed
Reichert
Renacci
Ribble
Rice (SC)
Rigell
Roby
Roe (TN)
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Rogers (MI)
Rohrabacher
Rokita
Rooney
Ros-Lehtinen
Roskam
Ross
Rothfus
Royce
Ruiz
Runyan
Ryan (WI)
Salmon
Sanford
Scalise
Schneider
Schock
Schrader
Schweikert
Scott, Austin
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shea-Porter
Shimkus
Shuster
Simpson
Sinema
Smith (MO)
Smith (NE)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Southerland
Stewart
Stivers
Stockman
Stutzman
Terry
Thompson (PA)
Thornberry
Tiberi
Tipton
Turner
Upton
Valadao
Vela
Wagner
Walberg
Walden
Walorski
Walz
Weber (TX)
Webster (FL)
Wenstrup
Westmoreland
Whitfield
Williams
Wilson (SC)
Wittman
Wolf
Womack
Woodall
Yoder
Yoho
Young (AK)
Young (IN)

—- NOES    157 —
 

Andrews
Bass
Beatty
Bishop (GA)
Blumenauer
Bonamici
Brady (PA)
Bridenstine
Broun (GA)
Brown (FL)
Butterfield
Capps
Capuano
Carney
Carson (IN)
Cartwright
Castor (FL)
Castro (TX)
Chu
Cicilline
Clarke
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Cohen
Connolly
Conyers
Cooper
Courtney
Crowley
Cuellar
Cummings
Davis (CA)
Davis, Danny
DeGette
Delaney
DeLauro
Deutch
Dingell
Doggett
Doyle
Edwards
Ellison
Engel
Eshoo
Farr
Fattah
Frankel (FL)
Fudge
Gabbard
Grayson
Green, Al
Grijalva
Gutiérrez
Hahn
Hall
Hanabusa
Hastings (FL)
Heck (WA)
Higgins
Himes
Hinojosa
Holt
Honda
Horsford
Hoyer
Huffman
Israel
Jackson Lee
Jeffries
Johnson (GA)
Johnson, E. B.
Kaptur
Keating
Kelly (IL)
Kennedy
Kildee
Kilmer
Kirkpatrick
Langevin
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Lee (CA)
Levin
Lewis
Lipinski
Lofgren
Lowenthal
Lowey
Lujan Grisham (NM)
Luján, Ben Ray (NM)
Lynch
Maloney, Carolyn
Massie
Matsui
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
Meeks
Meng
Michaud
Moore
Moran
Nadler
Napolitano
Neal
Negrete McLeod
O’Rourke
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor (AZ)
Payne
Pelosi
Perlmutter
Pingree (ME)
Pocan
Polis
Price (NC)
Quigley
Rangel
Richmond
Roybal-Allard
Ruppersberger
Ryan (OH)
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Sarbanes
Schakowsky
Schiff
Schwartz
Scott (VA)
Scott, David
Serrano
Sewell (AL)
Sherman
Slaughter
Smith (WA)
Speier
Swalwell (CA)
Takano
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Titus
Tonko
Van Hollen
Vargas
Veasey
Velázquez
Visclosky
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Watt
Waxman
Welch
Wilson (FL)
Yarmuth

—- NOT VOTING    12 —
 

Becerra
Campbell
Cárdenas
Gosar
Granger
Green, Gene
Jones
McCarthy (NY)
Miller, George
Rush
Sires
Tsongas

The House on Friday approved a bill

North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan is 1 of the 7 Democrats up for reelection in states that Mitt Romney carried, who are now in total panic mode amid the failed rollout and mass policy cancellations, because they ignored their constituents by supporting ObamaCare.

As so many other Democrats, including the president, she is finding herself adding new layers of new lies in her attempt to explain old lies. Team Hagan is taking a wholly unbelievable position. The senator and her staff claim she was sufficiently knowledgable regarding the behemoth of a law, claiming in an email, “Yes she read the bill.”

But Kay Hagan is also asking the people of North Carolina to believe that she only became aware of the law’s implications “when insurance companies began disingenuously offering plans that they knew they would be canceling.”

Unfortunately, the only choice for the people of North Carolina is to decide whether Senator Kay Hagan is lying about everything, or just lying about being sufficiently knowledgable about the bill when she decided to ignore her constituents and vote for ObamaCare. However, when the choice is between dishonesty and incompetence, everyone loses.

The statement provided by her office in an email is just simply not true, and sooner or later Kay Hagan and the Democratic Party will need to stop the lying charade. Insurance companies, as laid out in our PPD study, would not have legally been able to offer plans such as the plans Kay Hagan is scapegoating, unless they were grandfathered prior to the law’s passage. Even still, it was the Essential Health Benefit Standards written into regulations after the law’s passage by HHS that are responsible for Americans losing their health plans.

Republicans are taking aim at Kay Hagan over her ObamaCare blunders, with N.C. Speaker of the House Thom Tillis saying he wants the Greensboro Democrat to release audio from a conference call she held on November 13 with reporters.

Dana Milbank’s column in the Washington Post chronicled that call, and it wasn’t pretty.

“Hagan hosted a conference call for reporters Tuesday morning to discuss the problems with the health-care law’s rollout, and the Q&A session was so painful that the senator should qualify for trauma coverage under the Affordable Care Act,” Milbank wrote.

In addition to Tillis, Mark Harris, who is the Charlotte pastor also running in the Republican Senate primary, is asking Kay Hagan to answer 5 questions about her connection to ObamaCare:

  1. What was Kay Hagan’s role in crafting the language and provisions in the Obamacare legislation?
  2. When did Kay Hagan know that citizens would be booted from their healthcare plans?
  3. Why did Kay Hagan ignore the concerns of North Carolinians from 2009 until now?
  4. Did Kay Hagan actually read the Obamacare legislation before voting on it?
  5. Has Kay Hagan read the Obamacare legislation as of today?

The emails obtained from Hagan’s spokeswoman Sadie Weiner, appear to address some of the question asked by Harris. The first email read:

First, this is nothing more than a political stunt that does nothing to help more people get access to care and highlights the difference between Kay, who is working to fix this law, and her opponents who don’t have any plan to reform our broken health care system.

In her capacity as a member of the HELP Committee, Senator Hagan was involved with that committee’s markup of the health care reform bill in the summer of 2009. Once insurance companies began disingenuously offering plans that they knew they would be canceling it became clear that more people would be getting cancellation letters. That’s why Senator Hagan supports the Landrieu bill to allow people to stay on their current plans. Yes she read the bill.

In an attempt to reconcile how it is possible that she read the bill yet still broke her promise, Sadie Weiner responded with another inadequate comment that dishonestly ignores reality.

The full scope of the problem became clear only when cancellation letters started going out, since information on non-ACA compliant plans was not made public by the insurance companies. And remember – we are talking about this because insurance companies were disingenuously offering plans that they knew they would have to cancel, and Kay is supporting a bill to fix it.

Whether or not the insurance companies released specific plans that were non-ACA compliant, is irrelevant. If Kay Hagan had read the bill, or the regulations added every few months following the passage, then she would have known that individual paying policy holders could not keep their health plans. In fact, the unfortunate truth is that the law is predicated upon those people losing their plans, because they are needed in the high risk pool to keep premiums from going even higher than the already-unaffordable rates they are in the ObamaCare exchanges.

If Kay Hagan read the bill, then it would not have been “clear only when cancellation letters started going out,” as insurers are merely following the law, the law that she obviously did not read.

As so many other Democrats, including the

“Even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.” — Bill Clinton, Nov. 12

WASHINGTON — So the former president asserts that the current president continues to dishonor his “you like your plan, you can keep your plan” pledge. And calls for the Affordable Care Act to be changed, despite furious White House resistance to the very idea.

Coming from the dean of the Democratic Party, this one line marked the breaching of the dam. It legitimized the brewing rebellion of panicked Democrats against Obamacare. Within hours, that rebellion went loudly public. By Thursday, President Obama had been forced into a rear-guard holding action, asking insurers to grant a one-year extension of current plans.

The damage to the Obama presidency, however, is already done. His approval rating has fallen to 39 percent, his lowest ever. And, for the first time, a majority consider him untrustworthy. That bond is not easily repaired.

At stake, however, is more than the fate of one presidency or of the current Democratic majority in the Senate. At stake is the new, more ambitious, social-democratic brand of American liberalism introduced by Obama, of which Obamacare is both symbol and concrete embodiment.

Precisely when the GOP was returning to a more constitutionalist conservatism committed to reforming, restructuring and reining in the welfare state (see, for example, the Paul Ryan Medicare reform passed by House Republicans with near unanimity), Obama offered a transformational liberalism designed to expand the role of government, enlarge the welfare state and create yet new entitlements (see, for example, his call for universal preschool in his most recent State of the Union address).

The centerpiece of this vision is, of course, Obamacare, the most sweeping social reform in the last half-century, affecting one-sixth of the economy and directly touching the most vital area of life of every citizen.

As the only socially transformational legislation in modern American history to be enacted on a straight party-line vote, Obamacare is wholly owned by the Democrats. Its unraveling would catastrophically undermine their underlying ideology of ever-expansive central government providing cradle-to-grave care for an ever-grateful citizenry.

For four years, this debate has been theoretical. Now it’s real. And for Democrats, it’s a disaster.

It begins with the bungled rollout. If Washington can’t even do the website — the literal portal to this brave new world — how does it propose to regulate the vast ecosystem of American medicine?

Second, arrogance. Five million freely chosen, freely purchased, freely renewed health care plans are summarily canceled. Why? Because they don’t meet some arbitrary standard set by the experts in Washington.

For all his news conference gyrations about not deliberately deceiving people with his “if you like it” promise, the law Obama so triumphantly gave us allows you to keep your plan only if he likes it. That’s the very definition of paternalism.

Lastly, deception. The essence of the entitlement state is government giving away free stuff. Hence Obamacare would provide insurance for 30 million uninsured, while giving everybody tons of free medical services — without adding “one dime to our deficits,” promised Obama.

This being inherently impossible, there had to be a catch. Now we know it: hidden subsidies. Toss millions of the insured off their plans and onto the Obamacare “exchanges” where they would be forced into more expensive insurance packed with coverage they don’t want and don’t need — so that the overcharge can be used to subsidize others.

The reaction to the incompetence, arrogance and deception has ranged from ridicule to anger. But more is in jeopardy than just panicked congressional Democrats. This is the signature legislative achievement of the Obama presidency, the embodiment of his new entitlement-state liberalism. If Obamacare goes down, there will be little left of its underlying ideology.

Perhaps it won’t go down. Perhaps the web portal hums beautifully on Nov. 30. Perhaps they’ll find a way to restore the canceled policies without wrecking the financial underpinning of the exchanges.

Perhaps. The more likely scenario, however, is that Obamacare does fail. It either fails politically, renounced by a wide consensus that includes a growing number of Democrats. Or it succumbs to the financial complications (the insurance “death spiral”) of the very amendments desperately tacked on to save it.

If it does fail, the effect will be historic. Obamacare will take down with it more than Mary Landrieu and Co. It will discredit Obama’s new liberalism for years to come.

Charles Krauthammer’s email address is [email protected].

Bill Clinton's one line marked the breaching

(Credit: Reuters)

New York state’s manufacturing sector unexpectedly contracted in October, according to a report released Friday from the New York Federal Reserve.

The New York Fed’s “Empire State” general business conditions index contracted to minus 2.21 from 1.52 in October.

A reading above zero indicates expansion, while reading above indicate expansion. Friday’s was the first negative reading since May, and took economists by complete surprise. Economist polled by Reuters had forecasted an index of 5.0.

The report highlights more challenges still facing the world’s largest economy, where the recovery remains a term rather than a reality. Many have scapegoated the partial government shutdown in October, but the latest economic data in the wake of that impasse has been mixed, at best. Thus far, the data shows no causation.

The new orders index completely plummeted to minus 5.53 from 7.75, and shipments saw the bottom pull out from underneath them, falling to minus 0.53 from 13.12.

Labor market conditions further weakened, with the index for the number of employees slipping to 0.0 from 3.61 in October. The average employee workweek index also sank to minus 5.26 from 3.61.

Ironically, the New York Fed claims that firms remained relatively optimistic in November, following on a buoyant outlook in October.

The index of six-month business conditions slipped down to 37.51 from 40.76.

The survey of manufacturing plants in the state is one of the earliest monthly guideposts to U.S. factory conditions, with more economic manufacturing data and indexes shortly following.

New York state's manufacturing sector unexpectedly contracted

CREDIT: Reuters

Friday the Commerce Department reported U.S. import prices saw the biggest drop since April, falling 0.7 percent in October. Economists were expecting prices to fall by just 0.4 percent. Meanwhile, Export prices fell 0.5 percent, while economists expected prices to actually rise slightly by 0.1 percent.

For U.S. exports prices to unexpectedly fall in October, is a trouble sign of global economic weakness, and the cost of imports in to the United States dropping was due to a steep drop in the price of oil.

The drop in export prices last month is the seventh decline in 8 straight months. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected a slight increase in export prices and also missed the mark on import prices.

The decline shows European consumption is so weak that American producers have no option to raise prices.

The European Central Bank, which is struggling to support a recovery, cut interest rates earlier this month in part over concerns the region’s weak economy is weighing too much on prices.

A 3.6 percent fall in petroleum imports, the steepest decline in over a year, caused the drop in overall prices. However, there were signs that global economic weakness was also a reason for price declines.

Import prices for Japanese goods dropped 0.2 percent last month, which is an indication that Japan’s monetary policy was putting downward pressure on its exchange rate, thus its exports were becoming more competitive globally.

In what some are seeing as a possible indicator of Japanese competitiveness, auto import prices fell 0.1 percent, and had been down 1.4 percent during the year up until this October reading. The 12-month decline is the biggest drop since the Labor Department began tracking it in 1981.

Friday the Commerce Department reported U.S. import

President Obama discussed the Affordable Care Act’s failures earlier today in a press conference. Thursday afternoon, Obama offered what he hopes will offer an administrative “fix” to the Affordable Care Act.

Private insurance companies are forced to meet the Essential Health Benefit Standards, or so-called “superior standards” that the law mandates, such as prenatal care and free birth control for men, or coverage for prostate check-ups for women.

As reported in our PPD study, he law’s unprecedented mandates are causing private companies to drop millions of Americans from their existing health coverage.

The “fix” that Obama plans on implementing is directing insurance companies to allow affected policy holders to renew their old coverage and allowing insurers to extend their cancelled policies for a year.

“I completely get how upsetting this could be for many Americans,” Obama said.

This “fix” is only delaying the inevitable until conveniently after the 2014 elections. And come the following year we will truly see the negative impacts of ObamaCare.

Those who are most familiar with the Affordable Care Act, however, know that this “fix” isn’t at all such. If the younger, healthy people with individual private plans are no longer being forced into the exchanges, how will the law sustain itself?

In fact, Zeke Emanuel, brother to former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, said just last night that a plan such as this would drive premiums in the exchange way up.

White House officials stated that a letter will be issued to the state insurance commissioners, which will specify that current plans sold to existing customers will not be considered out of compliance with the health care law in 2014.

The administration is still not showing substantial flexibility, however, with the president making it crystal clear that he will not even consider an alternative that strips his law.

The broken promises that President Obama reiterated several times throughout the years since the law has been passed, have prompted public outrage toward both the president and the Affordable Care Act, itself.

The majority of Americans believe that the president blatantly lied to them, therefore, winning their trust back will be a grueling task, and that is provided the insurance companies even comply with this option.

What are the incentives for private insurers to comply with such a “fix,” when less than a year later they will have to reissue another pink slip to the same insurers?

President Barrack Obama admits,“It won’t solve every problem for every person but it will solve a lot of them.”

Obama strategically avoided making statements that took on the security risks that each user of the exchange has assumed, encouraging individuals to compare and shop the ObamaCare exchanges.

The pressure from the Democratic Party demanding Obama fix the catastrophic problems associated with his landmark health care law has been building due to the upcoming 2014 elections. This delay will only slow down the astronomical amount of debt we will incur once this law has its free rein.

House Speaker John Boehner is “highly skeptical” that the White House administration would be able to fix the problems with ObamaCare administratively. Speaker John Boehner said, “the only way to fix it is to scrap it.”

Boehner has called ObamaCare a “rolling calamity that has to be stopped.” He also described the outcome of this law on private insurance companies stating, “this is going to destroy the best health care delivery system in the world.”

Earlier, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) foreshadowed the president’s announcement. Pelosi has been a staunch supporter of ObamaCare, going to the lengths of legislative bribery an strong arming House Democrats to pass the law. She is known for the infamous and nonsensical comment that “we had to pass the law in order to know what is in the law.”

White House officials are scheduled to meet with the House and Senate Democratic caucuses to strategize over the “fixes” of this debacle later today on Capitol Hill.

President Obama discussed the Affordable Care Act's

Did the White House lose the faith of Israel? The United States and Israel are at odds over the Palestinian Authority, which is demanding Israel make concessions, while refuseing to budge on it own framework position.

America under Obama has lost the faith of Israelis, with reports claiming that they no longer trust in the U.S ability to negotiate with Iran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday explained why he cancelled funding that was to be issued to the Housing Ministry for new construction in Judea and Samaria, stressing that this would increase their favor with the nations in order to stop Iran.

“At this time, the attention of the international community must not be diverted from the main effort – preventing Iran from receiving an agreement that will allow it to continue its military nuclear program. As a member of the government, action must be coordinated and have the benefit of forethought,” said Netanyahu

Rafi Smith Institute released a poll that found the large majority of Israelis do not believe the United States is looking out for Israel’s interest and that the White House is not being honest with Israel regarding the true nature of the negotiations with Iran.

The poll asked if can Israel rely on the United States to ensure Israel’s security regarding the negotiations with Iran. The survey found 55 percent of Israelis said that it could not, while only 31 percent said it could, and 70 percent of the right-wing said that Israel could not trust us. On the left, 40 percent said that they could.

Rafi Smith Institute asked, if they believed that the Obama administration is telling Israel everything it needs to know about the Iranian program: 24 percent agrees that the Obama administration is giving Israel an “accurate picture” of the negotiations and 42 percent believe that Israel is not being supplied with all of the details, while over one-third of those that were polled said they did not know the answer to that question.

The easing of sanctions against Tehran in exchange for an Iranian promise to reduce its level of uranium enrichment did not sit well with Netanyahu. The Prime Minister had criticized the deal that the U.S had been trying to put together with Iran and in return he clearly gained a larger majority approval from his people.

People’s Pundit Daily previously reported on the inner workings of the deal, and the administrations effort to delay sanction implementation to move the negotiations along.

(Also Read: Iran Agreement Reached With 6 World Powers)

Furthermore, it is safe to say that the majority of Israelis do not believe that our President Barack Obama is willing to seek out our ally’s best interests let alone trust White House administration to be honest regarding said negotiations with Iran.

How could anyone blame the majority of our ally’s disbelief in the White House’s ability to procure a honest deal, amid new revelations our own president lies or “deceives” his very own nation.

 

Did the White House lose the faith

WASHINGTON — One reason Washington makes so much bad history is that so many people here know so little history. This helps explain why “comprehensive” immigration reform is foundering: Too few of today’s legislators know what happened 163 years ago.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell does know. The most important Kentuckian since Henry Clay, McConnell knows how his hero Clay, who was called “the great compromiser,” failed to engineer Senate passage of a comprehensive compromise in 1850. McConnell, who wrote his senior thesis at the University of Louisville on the Compromise of 1850, knows that this was achieved by the canniness of Stephen A. Douglas. His is a name not much mentioned on Capitol Hill since he died in 1861 at age 48.

In 1850, the “Little Giant” — he stood 5 feet 4 — was in his first term as senator from Illinois. He would win his third term in 1859, defeating the tall man who was president when Douglas died. Douglas’ great achievement — the compromises of 1850 — helped save the union by releasing steam from the sectional crisis. This delayed the Civil War — the “irrepressible conflict” — until a decade of immigration and industrialization had made the North more prepared to win it, and until two other Illinois men, Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Grant, emerged.

By 1850, the country’s sectional hostilities, fueled by slavery, had been exacerbated by the war with Mexico. As the North’s population grew and the House of Representatives became increasingly hostile to the expansion of slavery, the South focused on preserving the Senate balance of slave and non-slave states while the nation digested the land acquired in the war.

The tangle of disputes concerned several matters — fugitive slaves, the slave trade in the District of Columbia, statehood for California and creation of territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico. A Texas-New Mexico border dispute and some other matters were added to the witches’ brew.

Clay, depressed and exhausted after failing to assemble a Senate majority for a comprehensive bill that addressed each subject, went to Rhode Island to rest. Douglas, however, proposed breaking the comprehensive bill into separate measures, which passed. He cobbled together several different majority coalitions.

There were 60 senators when the process began but 62 before it ended, after California’s two arrived. For a lucid exposition of all this, read Fergus M. Bordewich’s “America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union.”

Now, consider the “comprehensive” immigration bill passed this year by the Senate, and Sen. Marco Rubio’s judgment that “if we stick to the position of all or nothing, we’re going to end up with nothing.”

The bill, in the writing of which Rubio participated, is 1,197 pages long.

It is 1,193 pages longer than the National Archive’s parchment copy of the Homestead Act of 1862, which is one of the most important legislative acts in American history. Passed when there were few national laws regulating immigration, the Homestead Act was designed to attract immigrants to settle the continent’s interior.

Today’s Senate bill is gigantic because it deals with everything. Its size is proportional to Washington’s serene confidence that it knows everything. What should be the hourly wage of an agricultural sorter in 2016? The Senate bill (through an explanation given on page 318) says $9.84. And the hourly wage of a worker in a nursery? Twenty cents less than the agricultural sorter’s wage. Some senators know everything.

The bill also contains a remarkable geographical insight: Nevada is a border state. Your eyes tell you its southern tip is about 200 miles from the Mexican border, but the bill, which includes $46.3 billion in border security spending, decrees that Nevada is eligible for border pork.

Immigration reforms should address three problems — border security (the least important problem; about 40 percent of those here illegally came on visas they overstayed), the needs of America’s workforce, and the status of the 11 million here illegally. If McConnell were majority leader, the bill would be broken into manageable bits, and there might be found a different majority coalition for each.

But the majority leader is a Democrat (Harry Reid from the border state of Nevada) whose party has one overriding interest — turning as many of the 11 million into voters as fast as possible. They are holding all immigration reforms hostage to this objective. Which shall be the case unless and until McConnell is majority leader.

George Will’s email address is [email protected].

One reason Washington makes so much bad

It appears the their shutdown woes are behind them, with Republicans retaking a slight lead in the PPD average Generic Congressional Ballot calculation.

The Republican Party eked out their slight advantage with the release of two polls conducted by Quinnipiac and Fox News. Prior to the failed rollout of ObamaCare, Democrats have led in the People’s Pundit Daily average Generic Congressional Ballot for most of the year. During the partial government shutdown, Democrats led Republicans by upwards of 6.6 percent.

[table id=3 /]

However, the decision to oppose ObamaCare despite the risks to shutting down the government may appear to be a benefit in the long run. Clearly, the shutdown hurt the Virginia governor’s race, with the clock running out on Ken Cuccinelli before the bad press surrounding ObamaCare could completely circulate. Yet the Republican Party is clearly the benefactors of their position.

The survey from Quinnipiac University found the contest a tie, closing the average to a slight Democrat advantage. A Fox News poll conducted shortly after the Quinnipiac survey shows the Republicans gaining further momentum — Republicans +3 — resulting in an average lead of .3 percent and counting.

In the Quinnipiac poll, voters were evenly divided 39 – 39 percent on whether they would vote for a Democrat or a Republican in their Congressional district, down from Democrats leading 43 – 34 percent in an October 1 Quinnipiac University poll. Among the biggest change, independent voters shifted from 32 percent for Democrats and 30 percent for Republicans in the October 1 poll, to 37 – 26 percent in support of Republicans today.

TREND: If the election for the U.S. House of Representatives were being held today, would you vote for the Republican candidate, or for the Democratic candidate in your district? (* Low Dem advantage also 0% May 2013)
                                                             DEMOCRATIC ADVANTAGE
                                                             High    Low
                     Nov 13  Oct 01  Aug 02  Jul 12  May 30  Oct 01  Nov 13
                     2013    2013    2013    2013    2013    2013    2013*

Republican           39      34      36      34      38      34      39
Democratic           39      43      40      39      38      43      39
SMONE ELSE(VOL)       3       4       3       3       3       4       3
WLDN'T VOTE(VOL)      2       2       2       2       1       2       2
DK/NA                18      17      19      21      20      17      18

The trend is clear, and apparently has continued in the later conducted Fox News poll, which found Republicans leading Democrats 43 – 40 percent, a reversal from a 45- 37 Democratic advantage in the Fox News poll conducted from October 20-22.

It appears the their shutdown woes are

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