Told 'ya it was a bad idea...
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425951/electronic-medical-records-mandate-disaster
by MICHELLE MALKIN October 23, 2015 12:00 AM @MICHELLEMALKIN Hey, who’s up for a stiff dose of “See, I told you so?” For the past several years, medical professionals have warned that the federal electronic-medical-records mandate — buried in the trillion-dollar Obama stimulus of 2009 — would do more harm than good. Their diagnosis, unfortunately, is on the nose. The Quack-in-Chief peddled his tech-centric elixir as a cost-saving miracle. “This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests,” he crowed at the time. In theory, of course, modernizing record-collection is a good idea, which many private health-care providers had already adopted before the Healer of All Things took office. But in the clumsy, power-grabbing hands of Washington bureaucrats, Obama’s one-size-fits-all EMR regulations have morphed into what one expert called “health-care information technology’s version of cash-for-clunkers.”
RELATED: Thousands of Obamacare Enrollees Lose Their Plans, Again I reported in 2012 how my own primary-care physician quit her regular practice and converted to “concierge care” because of the meddlesome EMR burden. Untold numbers of docs across the country have done the same. In 2013, health-care analysts at the RAND Corporation admitted that their cost-savings predictions of $81 billion a year were vastly inflated. In 2014, RAND researchers interviewed doctors who spotlighted “important negative effects” of the EMR mandate on “their professional lives and, in some troubling ways, on patient care. They described poor EHR usability that did not match clinical workflows, time-consuming data entry, interference with face-to-face patient care, and overwhelming numbers of electronic messages and alerts.” And the hits keep coming.
Robert Wachter, author of the recently published The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, chronicled the damage he’s witnessed: “Physicians retiring early. Small practices bankrupted by up-front expenses or locked into ineffective systems by the prohibitive cost of switching. Hours consumed by onerous data entry unrelated to patient care. Workflow disruptions. And above all, massive intrusions on our patient relationships.” RELATED: The Simple Way to Repeal Obamacare The American Medical Association, which foolishly backed Obamacare, is now balking at top-down government intrusion into its profession. Better late than never. The group launched a campaign called “Break the Red Tape” this summer to pressure D.C. to pause the new medical-record rules as an estimated 250,000 physicians face fines totaling $200 million a year for failing to comply with “meaningful use” EMR requirements. In Massachusetts last month, physicians decried the failure to achieve true “interoperability” between EMR systems despite a $30 billion federal investment through the Obama stimulus. Dr. Dennis Dimitri, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, noted at a rancor-filled town hall that the mandate has “added significant time to the daily life of most physicians in their practices,” WBUR reported. “It has not necessarily lived up to expectations in terms of its ability to provide cues to physicians to make sure that necessary treatments are not being missed. It has certainly not been able to swiftly disseminate information from one clinical setting to another.”
RELATED: Conservatives: Stop Enabling Obamacare That’s in no small part due to the cronyism embedded in the federal stimulus “incentives” — a massive chunk of which the White House doled out to behemoth EMR company Epic Systems, headed by Obama crony Judith Faulkner. As I’ve noted repeatedly in this column the past three years, Epic continues to be plagued by both industry and provider complaints about the failure of its creaky, closed-end system and exorbitant fee structure to enable the very kind of interoperability the Obama EMR mandate was supposed to ensure.
Now, even left-wing Mother Jones magazine reports this week that “instead of ushering in a new age of secure and easily accessible medical files, Epic has helped create a fragmented system that leaves doctors unable to trade information across practices or hospitals. That hurts patients who can’t be assured that their records — drug allergies, test results, X-rays — will be available to the doctors who need to see them. This is especially important for patients with lengthy and complicated health histories.” The Obama White House has responded by doubling down on its destructive EMR rules that punish both patients and providers. Congress must intervene. Representative Steve King (R., Iowa), introduced a bill Thursday to repeal the draconian penalties “so that providers can get back to the business they are uniquely trained to do — utilizing their skills and knowledge to heal the sick and support the continued vitality of the healthy.” Prescription: Butt out, Washington. Primum non nocere. — Michelle Malkin is author of the book Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs. Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com. Copyright © 2015 Creators.com
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425951/electronic-medical-records-mandate-disaster
by MICHELLE MALKIN October 23, 2015 12:00 AM @MICHELLEMALKIN Hey, who’s up for a stiff dose of “See, I told you so?” For the past several years, medical professionals have warned that the federal electronic-medical-records mandate — buried in the trillion-dollar Obama stimulus of 2009 — would do more harm than good. Their diagnosis, unfortunately, is on the nose. The Quack-in-Chief peddled his tech-centric elixir as a cost-saving miracle. “This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests,” he crowed at the time. In theory, of course, modernizing record-collection is a good idea, which many private health-care providers had already adopted before the Healer of All Things took office. But in the clumsy, power-grabbing hands of Washington bureaucrats, Obama’s one-size-fits-all EMR regulations have morphed into what one expert called “health-care information technology’s version of cash-for-clunkers.”
RELATED: Thousands of Obamacare Enrollees Lose Their Plans, Again I reported in 2012 how my own primary-care physician quit her regular practice and converted to “concierge care” because of the meddlesome EMR burden. Untold numbers of docs across the country have done the same. In 2013, health-care analysts at the RAND Corporation admitted that their cost-savings predictions of $81 billion a year were vastly inflated. In 2014, RAND researchers interviewed doctors who spotlighted “important negative effects” of the EMR mandate on “their professional lives and, in some troubling ways, on patient care. They described poor EHR usability that did not match clinical workflows, time-consuming data entry, interference with face-to-face patient care, and overwhelming numbers of electronic messages and alerts.” And the hits keep coming.
Robert Wachter, author of the recently published The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, chronicled the damage he’s witnessed: “Physicians retiring early. Small practices bankrupted by up-front expenses or locked into ineffective systems by the prohibitive cost of switching. Hours consumed by onerous data entry unrelated to patient care. Workflow disruptions. And above all, massive intrusions on our patient relationships.” RELATED: The Simple Way to Repeal Obamacare The American Medical Association, which foolishly backed Obamacare, is now balking at top-down government intrusion into its profession. Better late than never. The group launched a campaign called “Break the Red Tape” this summer to pressure D.C. to pause the new medical-record rules as an estimated 250,000 physicians face fines totaling $200 million a year for failing to comply with “meaningful use” EMR requirements. In Massachusetts last month, physicians decried the failure to achieve true “interoperability” between EMR systems despite a $30 billion federal investment through the Obama stimulus. Dr. Dennis Dimitri, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, noted at a rancor-filled town hall that the mandate has “added significant time to the daily life of most physicians in their practices,” WBUR reported. “It has not necessarily lived up to expectations in terms of its ability to provide cues to physicians to make sure that necessary treatments are not being missed. It has certainly not been able to swiftly disseminate information from one clinical setting to another.”
RELATED: Conservatives: Stop Enabling Obamacare That’s in no small part due to the cronyism embedded in the federal stimulus “incentives” — a massive chunk of which the White House doled out to behemoth EMR company Epic Systems, headed by Obama crony Judith Faulkner. As I’ve noted repeatedly in this column the past three years, Epic continues to be plagued by both industry and provider complaints about the failure of its creaky, closed-end system and exorbitant fee structure to enable the very kind of interoperability the Obama EMR mandate was supposed to ensure.
Now, even left-wing Mother Jones magazine reports this week that “instead of ushering in a new age of secure and easily accessible medical files, Epic has helped create a fragmented system that leaves doctors unable to trade information across practices or hospitals. That hurts patients who can’t be assured that their records — drug allergies, test results, X-rays — will be available to the doctors who need to see them. This is especially important for patients with lengthy and complicated health histories.” The Obama White House has responded by doubling down on its destructive EMR rules that punish both patients and providers. Congress must intervene. Representative Steve King (R., Iowa), introduced a bill Thursday to repeal the draconian penalties “so that providers can get back to the business they are uniquely trained to do — utilizing their skills and knowledge to heal the sick and support the continued vitality of the healthy.” Prescription: Butt out, Washington. Primum non nocere. — Michelle Malkin is author of the book Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs. Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com. Copyright © 2015 Creators.com
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425951/electronic-medical-records-mandate-disaster
Unpossible!
http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/19/no-your-medical-records-are-not-private/
What was the real reason that the administration was all hellbent on getting all your medical records recorded electronically?
Just wait for some bureaucrat to look through your medical records, your tax records, and whatever else they want to find out about you. Not possible? Just ask Congressman Chaffetz about that.
And hackers?
Oh my...
What was the real reason that the administration was all hellbent on getting all your medical records recorded electronically?
Just wait for some bureaucrat to look through your medical records, your tax records, and whatever else they want to find out about you. Not possible? Just ask Congressman Chaffetz about that.
And hackers?
Oh my...
No, Your Medical Records Are Not Private
Many Americans think the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects their medical privacy, but federal bureaucrats issue thousands of subpoenas every year without prior judicial approval to get around the law.
“If you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy against government in your medical care, then where does it exist at all? If that’s not private, then what is?” Adam Bates, a criminal justice policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Congress passed HIPAA in 1996 with a promise that it would clamp down on waste, fraud and abuse in the health care industry and safeguard patient privacy. But HIPAA allows federal bureaucrats to get patient records merely by issuing administrative subpoenas, or civil investigative demands.
These bureaucratic edicts bypass the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that a judge must give prior approval before government can search or take an individual’s property. Officials with the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Inspector General and the Department of Justice (DOJ) thus have access to any records they believe to be “relevant” in cases of alleged health care fraud.
“The subpoenas are so broad that they almost always will include patient records,” David Douglass, a partner at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton law firm which represents health care providers also told TheDCNF.
The DOJ issued 2,102 administrative subpoenas in 2001 over suspected health care offenses, according to a 2002 DOJ report. That doesn’t include subpoenas issued by other agencies, like the HHS IG. Nobody knows how many administrative subpoenas are issued annually now because the 2002 report was the last time an official count was done.
But lawyers representing medical care providers constantly deal with administrative subpoenas.
“I do think it raises constitutional challenges,” said Robert Rhoad to TheDCNF. Rhoad is a former Navy JAG Corps lawyer who’s now a partner at Crowell & Moring law firm.
Federal officials in most cases can also share records, including patient records, with whistleblowers, called relators, and their lawyers, whether or not the government ultimately decides to pursue criminal charges or a civil lawsuit.
“Everybody’s got horror stories for what happens when the relators get into their stuff,” said Jonathan Diesenhaus, a former DOJ senior trial lawyer who now represents health care companies as a partner with the Hogan Lovells law firm, to TheDCNF. “It becomes an avenue for abuse.”
Congress passed HIPAA amid reports of increasing Medicare fraud, but the legislation also provided for first time ever specific authorization for judgeless administrative subpoenas to be used in criminal law enforcement pursuits.
“Mentioning privacy, the Justice Department can get medical records, patient bills,” Diesenhaus said. “Just like an administrative subpoena, these civil investigative demands fall into the federal program oversight exception to the HIPAA statue.”
“So, patient records protections that apply and require courts to say ‘yes, you can look at those records’ in other contexts, and that imposed significant penalties for even government people who released them, those rules don’t apply with the IG or if the Department of Justice asks for patient records,” Diesenhaus said.
Federal officials use patient records to determine whether a health care provider, drug company or patient gamed the system, “and there is no judicial oversight,” Diesenhaus said.
“But I would imagine people don’t understand in this world of heightened sensitivity to privacy issues — I don’t know that people understand that these government agencies when looking into billing fraud get raw medical records and raw billing records and look and see what the diagnosis is,” Diesenhaus said.
Spokesmen for DOJ and the HHS IG did not respond to TheDCNF requests for comment.
Health care lawyers said judgeless subpoenas in health care investigations became more prevalent after passage of the 2009 Fraud Enforcement And Recovery Act, which amends the False Claims Act — the main law allowing for fraud recovery. The 2009 law extended the authority to issue administrative subpoenas from the attorneygGeneral to 93 U.S. attorneys.
Four years later, in 2012, the DOJ announced its largest ever four-year recovery rate under the False Claims Act — $13.3 billion.
“With respect to civil investigative demands and administrative subpoenas, there has been a sharp uptick in the issuance of those in the last few years,” Rhoad said.
Administrative subpoenas have all but replaced the grand jury, Douglass said.
“When this administrative subpoena power was granted, it became more common for the government to issue administrative subpoenas than grand jury subpoenas,” Douglass said. “So the administrative subpoena is a much lower (legal) bar to issue and the government has much broader authority to use it.”
A federal judge recently ruled that the Drug Enforcement Administration can access patient records after a medical office in Dallas challenged DEA’s demands.
Most businesses don’t challenge subpoenas in court. The success rate isn’t great for the few that do. “Part of it is you want to show you’re cooperative and don’t have anything to hide,” Rhoad said.
Administrative subpoenas are tough to fight, as Congress has issued agencies broad authority through the years. Courts historically are deferential to the government, the 2002 DOJ report said.
“I absolutely think companies capitulate rather than fight,” said Douglass.
Companies also have to take into account an agency’s authority to retaliate in the future.
“The thing is that the government, and HHS in particular, they hold a lot of administrative remedies in their pocket that they can exercise relatively freely,” Rhoad said. “And if you’re a health care provider, the death penalty for you is to be excluded from federal health care programs.”
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Seven Years Out - and I am doing OK...
https://youtu.be/Z0GFRcFm-aY
Doctor yesterday said that I am OK... just need another bone survey to make sure that all is well.
So - what did I do today?
Guess...
Now I need a nap...
jc
Doctor yesterday said that I am OK... just need another bone survey to make sure that all is well.
So - what did I do today?
Guess...
jc
Oh, the horror...
Dad Joke SurvivorsBeware of dad jokes this Father's Day…
Posted by Nickelodeon on Thursday, September 3, 2015
Why I like Ted Cruz...
http://hardnoxandfriends.com/2015/07/17/ted-cruz-lists-76-abuses-of-lawless-actions-by-the-obama-administration/
THE LEGAL LIMIT: THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S ATTEMPTS TO EXPAND FEDERAL POWER
By U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) Ranking Member Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on The Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights
Introductory Remarks:
Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the President’s persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat.
The President’s taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology. The great 18th-century political philosopher Montesquieu observed: “There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates.” America’s Founding Fathers took this warning to heart, and we should too.
Rule of law doesn’t simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. No one—and especially not the president—is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
Rather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying, and waiving portions of the laws that he is charged to enforce. When President Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
In the more than two centuries of our nation’s history, there is simply no precedent for the White House wantonly ignoring federal law and asking others to do the same.
For all those who are silent now: What would they think of a Republican president who announced that he was going to ignore the law, or unilaterally change the law? Imagine a future president setting aside environmental laws, or tax laws, or labor laws, or tort laws with which he or she disagreed.
That would be wrong—and it is the Obama precedent that is opening the door for future lawlessness. As Montesquieu knew, an imperial presidency threatens the liberty of every citizen. Because when a president can pick and choose which laws to follow and which to ignore, he is no longer a president.
Report No. 4: The Obama Administration’s Abuse of Power
Governing by Executive Fiat
1. Disregarded 1996 welfare reform law in granting broad work waivers for work requirements of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
2. Implemented portions of the DREAM Act, which Congress rejected, by executive action.
3. Ended some terror asylum restrictions, by allowing asylum for people who provided only “insignificant” or “limited” material support of terrorists.
4. Allowed immigrants in the U.S. illegally, who are relatives of military troops and veterans, to stay in the country and get legal status.
5. Extended federal marriage benefits by recognizing, under federal law, same-sex marriages created in a state that allows same-sex marriage even if the couple is living in a state that doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage.
6. Recognized same-sex marriage in Utah, even though the Supreme Court stayed the court order recognizing same-sex marriage in Utah and Utah said it would not recognize same-sex marriages performed before the stay.
7. Refused to prosecute violation of drug laws with certain mandatory minimums.
8. Issued signing statements, refusing to enforce parts of congressional-enacted statutes.
9. Illegally refused to act on Yucca Mountain’s application to become a nuclear waste repository.
10. Falsely portrayed the Benghazi terrorist attack as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim YouTube video, and then lied about the White House’s involvement.
11 Illegally revealed the existence of sealed indictments in the Benghazi investigation.
12. Failed to enforce the Magnitsky Act as required by law, by not adding Russian human rights abusers to a list of people not permitted to travel to or do business in the U.S.
13. Killed four Americans overseas in counterterrorism operations without judicial process.
14. Continued to give Egypt aid after the military took over its government, even though federal law prohibits aid to Egypt in the event of a coup.
Obamacare
15. Granted a “hardship” exemption from the individual mandate for people whose health plans were canceled because their plans weren’t Obamacare compliant.
16. Delayed the individual mandate for two years.
17. Allowed individuals to buy health insurance plans in 2014 that did not comply with Obamacare. Extended this delay until 2016—past the mid-term elections.
18. Extended the deadline to enroll in Obamacare.
19. Illegally granted businesses a waiver from Obamacare’s employer mandate. Twice.
20. Illegally continued the Obamacare employer contribution for congressional staffs.
21. Illegally delayed the Obamacare caps on out-of-pocket healthcare payments.
22. Illegally delayed Obamacare verification of eligibility for healthcare subsidies.
23. Illegally required people to violate their faith via the Obamacare contraception mandate.
24. As of May 2011, over 50% of Obamacare waiver beneficiaries were union members (who account for less than 12% of the American work force).
Economy
25. Ordered Boeing to fire 1,000 employees in South Carolina and shut down a new factory because it was non-union.
26. Implemented a moratorium on offshore drilling after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill without statutory authority, and continued to enact new versions after federal courts repeatedly invalidated the moratorium.
27. Treated secured creditors worse than unsecured creditors in the Chrysler bankruptcy.
28. Terminated the pensions of 20,000 non-union Delphi employees in the GM bankruptcy.
29. Had SWAT teams raid a Gibson guitar factory and seize property, on the purported basis that Gibson had broken India’s environmental laws—but no charges were filed.
30. Government agencies are engaging in “Operation Choke Point,” where the government asks banks to “choke off” access to financial services for customers engaging in conduct the Administration does not like—such as “ammunition sales.”
Executive Nominees and Personnel
31. Made illegal “recess” appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board when Congress wasn’t in recess. Ignored the rulings of three federal courts of appeals that held those nominations unconstitutional.
32. Appointed czars to oversee federal policy specifically because czars do not require Senate confirmation, earning criticism from stalwart Democrats such as West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd and Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold.
33. As of January 2012, 36 of the President’s executive office staff owed $833,970 in back taxes.
34. As of 2011, 311,566 federal employees or retirees owed $3.5 billion in taxes.
Free Speech and Privacy
35. Illegally targeted conservative groups for heightened IRS scrutiny.
36. Circumvented the Freedom of Information Act, by requiring White House Counsel review of all documents to be released under the Freedom of Information Act that the Administration believed pertained to “White House equities”—and then delayed in producing many of these documents by FOIA’s statutory deadline, or didn’t produce them at all.
37. Got secret permission from the FISA Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and emails, permitting the NSA to search American’s communications in its databases.
38. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking to monitor about 80% of U.S. credit card transactions.
39. Targeted Fox News reporter James Rosen by falsely labeling him a possible “co-conspirator” in a criminal investigation of a new leak.
40. Secretly obtained phone records from staff at the Associated Press.
41. Had meetings with lobbyists in coffee shops near White House to avoid disclosure requirements.
Other Lawless Acts
42. Aided drug cartels instead of enforcing immigration laws—as found by a federal judge. Border Patrol agents, multiple times, knowingly helped smuggle illegal immigrant children into the U.S.; “the DHS is encouraging parents to seriously jeopardize the safety of their children.”
43. Illegally sold thousands of guns to criminals, in the operation known as Fast and Furious and then refused to comply with congressional subpoenas about the operation.
44. Dismissed charges filed by Bush Administration against New Black Panther Party members who were videotaped intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling station during the 2008 election.
45. Argued for expansive federal powers in the Supreme Court, which has rejected the Administration’s arguments unanimously 9 times since January 2012.
46. Sued Louisiana to stop school vouchers and keep low-income minorities trapped in failing schools.
47. Threatened to arrest military priests for practicing their faith during the partial government shutdown.
48. Muzzled the speech of military chaplains.
49. Sued fire departments saying their multiple-choice, open-book written employment tests were racially discriminatory.
50. Gave 23,994 tax refunds worth more than $46 million to aliens here illegally using the same address in Atlanta, GA.
Other Abuses of Power
51. Released a mentally ill Guantanamo detainee… who had been a high-risk al Qaeda fighter in jihad combat since the 1980s.
52. Backed release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.
53. President Obama told NASA administrator to “find a way to reach out to the Muslim world.”
54. Claimed the Fort Hood shooting was “workplace violence” rather than terrorism.
55. Signed a stimulus bill that spent money on bonuses for AIG executives, and then acted shocked and outraged at the bonuses.
56. Gave $535 million to Solyndra, which went bankrupt; Solyndra shareholders and officials made substantial donations to Obama’s campaign.
57. Reneged on a campaign promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.
58. Increased the national debt more in one term than President Bush did in two terms.
59. Extended mortgage assistance to people who bought multiple homes during the housing bubble.
60. Proposed rules that would have decimated family farms, by prohibiting children under 18 from doing many forms of farm work.
61. Former “safe schools czar” has written about his past drug abuse and advocated promoting homosexuality in schools.
62. Nominated Timothy Geithner—who had significant tax issues —to head the Treasury Department, which enforces tax laws.
63. Reneged on campaign promise to broadcast healthcare reform negotiations on C-SPAN.
64. Reneged on a campaign promise to wait five days before signing any non-emergency bill (at least 10 times during first 3 months in office).
65. Unilaterally, increased the minimum wage for federal contract workers from $7.25 to $10.10, via executive order.
66. Cancelled all White House tours after sequestration—purportedly saving $18,000 per week—even though President Obama had spent more than $1 million in tax money to golf with Tiger Woods one weekend a few weeks before.
67. Adopted pro-union “ambush election” rules.
68. Pressured Ford to pull an anti-auto-bailout TV ad.
69. Actively, aided in George Zimmerman protests.
70. Tried to seize a privately owned motel when guests used illegal drugs at the motel.
71. Shut down the Amber Alert website, while keeping up Let’s Move website, during the partial government shutdown.
72. Gave supervised release to a convicted criminal (an alien here illegally) who later killed a nun in a DUI.
73. Shut down an Amish farm for selling fresh unpasteurized milk across state lines.
74. Spent $7 million per household in “stimulus funds” to connect a few Montana households to the Internet.
75. Spent $205,075 in “stimulus” funds to relocate a shrub that sells for $16.
76. Fired an inspector general after investigating an $850,000 AmeriCorps grant received by a nonprofit run by former NBA star and Obama supporter Kevin Johnson (now mayor of Sacramento).
###
The original report, complete with hotlinked source footnotes to support Cruz’s claims, can be viewed here.
- See more at: http://dcxposed.com/2015/01/27/ted-cruzs-list-76-abuses-power-lawless-actions-obama-administration/#sthash.bdK0oBYq.dpuf
THE LEGAL LIMIT: THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S ATTEMPTS TO EXPAND FEDERAL POWER
By U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) Ranking Member Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on The Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights
Introductory Remarks:
Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the President’s persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat.
The President’s taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology. The great 18th-century political philosopher Montesquieu observed: “There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates.” America’s Founding Fathers took this warning to heart, and we should too.
Rule of law doesn’t simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. No one—and especially not the president—is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
Rather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying, and waiving portions of the laws that he is charged to enforce. When President Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
In the more than two centuries of our nation’s history, there is simply no precedent for the White House wantonly ignoring federal law and asking others to do the same.
For all those who are silent now: What would they think of a Republican president who announced that he was going to ignore the law, or unilaterally change the law? Imagine a future president setting aside environmental laws, or tax laws, or labor laws, or tort laws with which he or she disagreed.
That would be wrong—and it is the Obama precedent that is opening the door for future lawlessness. As Montesquieu knew, an imperial presidency threatens the liberty of every citizen. Because when a president can pick and choose which laws to follow and which to ignore, he is no longer a president.
Report No. 4: The Obama Administration’s Abuse of Power
Governing by Executive Fiat
1. Disregarded 1996 welfare reform law in granting broad work waivers for work requirements of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
2. Implemented portions of the DREAM Act, which Congress rejected, by executive action.
3. Ended some terror asylum restrictions, by allowing asylum for people who provided only “insignificant” or “limited” material support of terrorists.
4. Allowed immigrants in the U.S. illegally, who are relatives of military troops and veterans, to stay in the country and get legal status.
5. Extended federal marriage benefits by recognizing, under federal law, same-sex marriages created in a state that allows same-sex marriage even if the couple is living in a state that doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage.
6. Recognized same-sex marriage in Utah, even though the Supreme Court stayed the court order recognizing same-sex marriage in Utah and Utah said it would not recognize same-sex marriages performed before the stay.
7. Refused to prosecute violation of drug laws with certain mandatory minimums.
8. Issued signing statements, refusing to enforce parts of congressional-enacted statutes.
9. Illegally refused to act on Yucca Mountain’s application to become a nuclear waste repository.
10. Falsely portrayed the Benghazi terrorist attack as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim YouTube video, and then lied about the White House’s involvement.
11 Illegally revealed the existence of sealed indictments in the Benghazi investigation.
12. Failed to enforce the Magnitsky Act as required by law, by not adding Russian human rights abusers to a list of people not permitted to travel to or do business in the U.S.
13. Killed four Americans overseas in counterterrorism operations without judicial process.
14. Continued to give Egypt aid after the military took over its government, even though federal law prohibits aid to Egypt in the event of a coup.
Obamacare
15. Granted a “hardship” exemption from the individual mandate for people whose health plans were canceled because their plans weren’t Obamacare compliant.
16. Delayed the individual mandate for two years.
17. Allowed individuals to buy health insurance plans in 2014 that did not comply with Obamacare. Extended this delay until 2016—past the mid-term elections.
18. Extended the deadline to enroll in Obamacare.
19. Illegally granted businesses a waiver from Obamacare’s employer mandate. Twice.
20. Illegally continued the Obamacare employer contribution for congressional staffs.
21. Illegally delayed the Obamacare caps on out-of-pocket healthcare payments.
22. Illegally delayed Obamacare verification of eligibility for healthcare subsidies.
23. Illegally required people to violate their faith via the Obamacare contraception mandate.
24. As of May 2011, over 50% of Obamacare waiver beneficiaries were union members (who account for less than 12% of the American work force).
Economy
25. Ordered Boeing to fire 1,000 employees in South Carolina and shut down a new factory because it was non-union.
26. Implemented a moratorium on offshore drilling after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill without statutory authority, and continued to enact new versions after federal courts repeatedly invalidated the moratorium.
27. Treated secured creditors worse than unsecured creditors in the Chrysler bankruptcy.
28. Terminated the pensions of 20,000 non-union Delphi employees in the GM bankruptcy.
29. Had SWAT teams raid a Gibson guitar factory and seize property, on the purported basis that Gibson had broken India’s environmental laws—but no charges were filed.
30. Government agencies are engaging in “Operation Choke Point,” where the government asks banks to “choke off” access to financial services for customers engaging in conduct the Administration does not like—such as “ammunition sales.”
Executive Nominees and Personnel
31. Made illegal “recess” appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board when Congress wasn’t in recess. Ignored the rulings of three federal courts of appeals that held those nominations unconstitutional.
32. Appointed czars to oversee federal policy specifically because czars do not require Senate confirmation, earning criticism from stalwart Democrats such as West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd and Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold.
33. As of January 2012, 36 of the President’s executive office staff owed $833,970 in back taxes.
34. As of 2011, 311,566 federal employees or retirees owed $3.5 billion in taxes.
Free Speech and Privacy
35. Illegally targeted conservative groups for heightened IRS scrutiny.
36. Circumvented the Freedom of Information Act, by requiring White House Counsel review of all documents to be released under the Freedom of Information Act that the Administration believed pertained to “White House equities”—and then delayed in producing many of these documents by FOIA’s statutory deadline, or didn’t produce them at all.
37. Got secret permission from the FISA Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and emails, permitting the NSA to search American’s communications in its databases.
38. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking to monitor about 80% of U.S. credit card transactions.
39. Targeted Fox News reporter James Rosen by falsely labeling him a possible “co-conspirator” in a criminal investigation of a new leak.
40. Secretly obtained phone records from staff at the Associated Press.
41. Had meetings with lobbyists in coffee shops near White House to avoid disclosure requirements.
Other Lawless Acts
42. Aided drug cartels instead of enforcing immigration laws—as found by a federal judge. Border Patrol agents, multiple times, knowingly helped smuggle illegal immigrant children into the U.S.; “the DHS is encouraging parents to seriously jeopardize the safety of their children.”
43. Illegally sold thousands of guns to criminals, in the operation known as Fast and Furious and then refused to comply with congressional subpoenas about the operation.
44. Dismissed charges filed by Bush Administration against New Black Panther Party members who were videotaped intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling station during the 2008 election.
45. Argued for expansive federal powers in the Supreme Court, which has rejected the Administration’s arguments unanimously 9 times since January 2012.
46. Sued Louisiana to stop school vouchers and keep low-income minorities trapped in failing schools.
47. Threatened to arrest military priests for practicing their faith during the partial government shutdown.
48. Muzzled the speech of military chaplains.
49. Sued fire departments saying their multiple-choice, open-book written employment tests were racially discriminatory.
50. Gave 23,994 tax refunds worth more than $46 million to aliens here illegally using the same address in Atlanta, GA.
Other Abuses of Power
51. Released a mentally ill Guantanamo detainee… who had been a high-risk al Qaeda fighter in jihad combat since the 1980s.
52. Backed release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.
53. President Obama told NASA administrator to “find a way to reach out to the Muslim world.”
54. Claimed the Fort Hood shooting was “workplace violence” rather than terrorism.
55. Signed a stimulus bill that spent money on bonuses for AIG executives, and then acted shocked and outraged at the bonuses.
56. Gave $535 million to Solyndra, which went bankrupt; Solyndra shareholders and officials made substantial donations to Obama’s campaign.
57. Reneged on a campaign promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.
58. Increased the national debt more in one term than President Bush did in two terms.
59. Extended mortgage assistance to people who bought multiple homes during the housing bubble.
60. Proposed rules that would have decimated family farms, by prohibiting children under 18 from doing many forms of farm work.
61. Former “safe schools czar” has written about his past drug abuse and advocated promoting homosexuality in schools.
62. Nominated Timothy Geithner—who had significant tax issues —to head the Treasury Department, which enforces tax laws.
63. Reneged on campaign promise to broadcast healthcare reform negotiations on C-SPAN.
64. Reneged on a campaign promise to wait five days before signing any non-emergency bill (at least 10 times during first 3 months in office).
65. Unilaterally, increased the minimum wage for federal contract workers from $7.25 to $10.10, via executive order.
66. Cancelled all White House tours after sequestration—purportedly saving $18,000 per week—even though President Obama had spent more than $1 million in tax money to golf with Tiger Woods one weekend a few weeks before.
67. Adopted pro-union “ambush election” rules.
68. Pressured Ford to pull an anti-auto-bailout TV ad.
69. Actively, aided in George Zimmerman protests.
70. Tried to seize a privately owned motel when guests used illegal drugs at the motel.
71. Shut down the Amber Alert website, while keeping up Let’s Move website, during the partial government shutdown.
72. Gave supervised release to a convicted criminal (an alien here illegally) who later killed a nun in a DUI.
73. Shut down an Amish farm for selling fresh unpasteurized milk across state lines.
74. Spent $7 million per household in “stimulus funds” to connect a few Montana households to the Internet.
75. Spent $205,075 in “stimulus” funds to relocate a shrub that sells for $16.
76. Fired an inspector general after investigating an $850,000 AmeriCorps grant received by a nonprofit run by former NBA star and Obama supporter Kevin Johnson (now mayor of Sacramento).
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The original report, complete with hotlinked source footnotes to support Cruz’s claims, can be viewed here.
- See more at: http://dcxposed.com/2015/01/27/ted-cruzs-list-76-abuses-power-lawless-actions-obama-administration/#sthash.bdK0oBYq.dpuf
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