Typical: Congressional Leaders exempted their staffs from #Obamacare…

If you read the New York Times this week, you may have been surprised to read the following story:

“Wrinkle in Health Law Vexes Lawmakers’ Aides“

Under a wrinkle that dates back to enactment of the law, members of Congress and thousands of their aides are required to get their coverage through new state-based markets known as insurance exchanges.

But the law does not provide any obvious way for the federal government to continue paying its share of the premiums for the comprehensive coverage.

As you might imagine, the members of Congress (and their aides) are none too happy at being subjected to the same rules the common rabble will soon be “enjoying”.

However, my first thought was that this could work in our favor, since the Harry Reids and other Obamacare proponents in Congress would be willing to reconsider all this, …until I heard Marco Rubio talk with Hugh Hewitt on Hugh’s radio show:

HEWITT: New York Times today has a story about Hill staffers who are going to get totally screwed by Obamacare here and about a couple of months.  Their premiums are going to go up to about $11,000 per year. They get no federal subsidy of that.

Is there opportunity to leverage that, some of those staffers are obviously Harry Reid’s staff. Is there any sense that perhaps we could at least get a delay of the individual mandate in exchange for fixing some of the problems that even Democrats understand?

RUBIO: Well, curious enough, they exempt committee staffers and they exempt leadership staffers so, in fact this only applies to staff of the rank and file and to the members—the individual members of the House and Senate that will see this happen to them as well.  And I do think there is a point of leverage.

There on the other hand, look, I don’t think the laws of health insurance for us should be any different than they are for the rest of the country. So, I’m not prepared to support a change to health insurance policies for members of Congress and their staff, unless they’re prepared to make the same change for people all across the country.

HEWITT: Leadership…I had no idea. Leadership…

RUBIO: Well, that’s the benefits of writing the rules, right?

Just to be sure, I looked it up. And this post from Politifact (as well as this one from Rollcall) backs up Rubio’s statement.

So, we not only have a miserable, unconscionable law which will adversely affect every aspect of our lives, but we have the very folks who authored it having specifically exempted their staffs from it.

Like Rubio said, “that’s the benefits of writing the rules, right?”

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Defund Obamacare. Today. Now.

Or at the very least, make Congress’ Leadership staffers deal with it, as well. If it’s truly the wonderful “gift” that our Congressional betters say it is, then it would be rude not to share it.