While it isn’t true that every bad idea originates in California, it does seem to be the place where any bad idea can go to receive the love and attention it needs to blossom into a fully-grown public policy.
A group of nine House Republicans from California is calling on the Obama administration to reject a request from the state to allow people in the country illegally to purchase health insurance through ObamaCare.
The lawmakers, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, wrote a letter to the administration calling for it to reject a waiver application from California that would allow illegal immigrants to buy coverage through ObamaCare as long as they paid full price and did not receive government subsidies.
ObamaCare specifically bans people in the country illegally from enrolling, the lawmakers point out.
Good on GOP lawmakers for pushing back on this idiocy — but this idiocy is a real live California statute signed into law three weeks ago by Governor Jerry Dontgiveadamn:
Under a bill signed Friday by Gov. Jerry Brown, California will become the first state to ask federal officials to allow immigrants here illegally to buy insurance through its state health exchange.
Immigrants here illegally can’t purchase coverage through the exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act. Under SB 10, the state will formally ask the federal government to allow such immigrants to buy insurance through Covered California, without cost to the state or federal government.
“Without cost” is the shorthand for what Ronald Reagan called “the nine most terrifying words in the English language.”
Because of course people who are here illegally won’t try to skirt ObamaCare’s eligibility rules for receiving federal subsides — which have never been enforced very well, and probably never will be. And of course if California’s law is upheld, California lawmakers would never even dream of expanding subsidies to illegals — or at least not until a reasonable amount of time has passed. A few months, perhaps. Because fairness or whatever.
This is what leftists do: Make a small crack in the dyke, then wait for the inevitable flood of free water.
And the Los Angeles Times is there to help. See if you can spot what word is missing from the paper’s June 10 writeup of SB10’s passage into law.
That misleading headline makes it seem as though heartless somebodies (Republicans, probably, somehow) were denying universal coverage benefits to hardworking legal immigrants. You’ll find further cheerleading in the story’s fourth graf, which describes SB10 as “the latest immigrant-friendly policy recently passed in California.”
Keep in mind, if you can, that this is what passes for straight news at the LA Times, when in fact it belongs on the op-ed page.
The point is that this country is never more than one Democratic supermajority away from some massive new budget-busting “free” benefit, and rarely more than one slim Democratic majority away from expanding it further — even to non-citizens here illegally.
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