Prostitution. Bribery. Blackmail. Thuggery. Hypocrisy.
Those
were just some of the incendiary words thrown around the U.S. Senate
last week, and that doesn’t count what people said in private.
The
Senate may still have a reputation as a genteel club, but lawmakers
seemed to abandon rules of decorum completely last week in arguments
about whether Congress should be treated like the rest of the country
when it comes to Obamacare.
Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana
Republican, has demanded a floor vote on his bill to end an exemption
that members of Congress and their staffs are slated to get that will
make them the only participants in the new Obamacare exchanges to
receive generous subsidies from their employer to pay for their health
insurance. Angry Senate Democrats have drafted legislation that dredges
up a 2007 prostitution scandal involving Vitter. The confrontation is a
perfect illustration of just how wide the gulf in attitudes is between
the Beltway and the rest of the country — and how viciously Capitol Hill
denizens will fight for their privileges.
In 1995, the newly
elected Republican Congress passed a Congressional Accountability Act to
fulfill a promise made the previous year in the Contract with America.
For the first time, the Act applied to Congress the same civil-rights
employment and labor laws that lawmakers had required everyday citizens
to abide by. With some lapses, it’s worked well to defuse public outrage
about “one law for thee, one law for me” congressional behavior.
In
2009, Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) decided that the principle
deserved to be embedded in Obamacare, and he was able to insert a
provision requiring all members of Congress and their staffs to get
insurance through the Obamacare health exchanges. “The more that
Congress experiences the laws it passes, the better,” said Grassley.
Although his amendment was watered down before final passage to exclude
committee staff, it still applies to members of Congress and their
personal staffs. Most employment lawyers interpreted that to mean that
the taxpayer-funded federal health-insurance subsidies dispensed to
those on Congress’s payroll — which now range from $5,000 to $11,000 a
year — would have to end.
Democratic and Republican staffers alike were furious, warning
that Congress faced a “brain drain” if the provision stuck. Under
behind-the-scenes pressure from members of Congress in both parties,
President Obama used the quiet of the August recess to personally order
the Office of Personnel Management, which supervises federal employment
issues, to interpret the law so as to
retain the generous congressional benefits.OPM
had previously balked at issuing such a ruling. Even without OPM,
Congress could have voted to restore the subsidies or ordered a salary
raise to compensate for the loss of benefits, but that would have been a
messy, public process, which everyone wanted to avoid.
Senator
Vitter says the OPM ruling has removed “the sting of Obamacare” from
Congress. “Many Americans will see their health coverage dropped by
employers, and they will be forced into the exchanges,” he told me last
week. “If Congress is forced into them on the same terms, it will be
more likely to fix Obamacare’s problems for others.” The bill he and his
co-author, Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming, have drafted would make
everyone working on Capitol Hill buy insurance through the exchanges —
with no subsidies. White House officials and political appointees in the
executive branch would also be required to obtain health insurance
through the exchanges.
The Congressional Leadership Empire decided to strike back at Vitter.
Politico
reported that several Democratic senators have asked staff to draft
legislation that would deny federal health subsidies to anyone who votes
for the Vitter plan, even if Vitter’s plan doesn’t become law. An even
more spiteful draft bill would bar subsidies to any lawmaker or aide
found by a congressional ethics committee to have “engaged in the
solicitation of prostitution.” In 2007, Vitter’s phone number was found
in the records of the “D.C. Madam,” the owner of a high-end prostitution
ring. Back then, Vitter held a news conference with his wife standing
next to him and apologized for a “serious sin” that he refused to
discuss further. He was reelected with 57 percent of the vote in 2010.
Vitter
isn’t taking the attempts to strong-arm him quietly. “Harry Reid is
acting like an old-time Vegas mafia thug, and a desperate one at that,”
he said in a statement to
Politico. He also wrote a letter to
the Senate Ethics Committee demanding an investigation of Reid and
Democratic senator Barbara Boxer of California. “Threatening to take
away their colleagues’ health care coverage subsidy if they do not vote a
certain way, at worst constitutes bribery and a quid pro quo
arrangement, and at best amounts to improper conduct,” he wrote. Senator
Reid’s office responded by calling Vitter’s charges “absurd and
baseless.”
What Vitter’s opponents fear most is that this fight
will penetrate the public’s consciousness. A new poll taken for
Independent Women’s Voice, a conservative group, found that 92 percent
of voters think Congress shouldn’t be exempted from the insurance
provisions of Obamacare. Most voters blame both parties equally for the
exemption, which means Republicans will also be hurt politically if it
stands. “This is an issue with almost unprecedented intensity,” IWV
president Heather Higgins told me. “Republicans have the choice of
leading the Vitter parade for repeal or getting run over by it. To duck
it will be viewed by their constituents as political malpractice.”
— John Fund is national-affairs columnist for NRO.
