Senator Schumer and Democrat Lies about Being the Party of the Middle Class

President Obama's Obamacare and illegal immigrant amnesty orders sometimes take on a life of their own, and sometimes, they even overlap. ~~~~~ At least one disadvantage wasn't anticipated by either legal immigrants or President Obama when he granted deportation amnesty to 5 million illegal immigrants under questionably illegal executive orders. Legal immigrants who are eligible for Obamacare are having problems when they try to sign up for health coverage because of safeguards that were put in place to keep out illegal immigrants, the Wall Street Journal reported recently. People born outside of the United States who are trying to sign up on HealthCare.gov are having difficulty proving they are the identities they present and also struggle in trying to submit documents that demonstrate they are in the country legally. As a result, some are being redirected to Medicaid even though they don't qualify, while others struggle to navigate an online system with a range of glitches, including a failure to verify people without an extensive credit history. Verification is an essential step in creating an account. "A lot of advocates are frustrated," Angel Padilla, health policy analyst at the National Immigration Law Center, told the WSJ. Hispanics have the highest rate of uninsured of all racial or ethnic groups, with roughly 25% without coverage, so the messed-up enrollment process is undermining the Obama administration's target of enrolling more Hispanics, who had a poor showing during the first year of the program. Aaron Albright, a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), told the WSJ that CMS officials said they were not aware of some of the problems alleged by the immigrants rights groups. We have to wonder if this Obamacare problem - added to Hispanic disappointment with President Obama's inaction on his promise of immigration reform until six years into his presidency - may help explain the noticeable Hispanic voter switch to Republican candidates at all levels in the November midterm elections. ~~~~~ But, glitches or not, at least one Democrat, third-ranking US Senate Democrat Charles Schumer, said last week that Democrats made a mistake by passing President Obama’s healthcare law in 2010 : “We took [the American people's] mandate and put all our focus on the wrong problem -- health care reform.” He said, although this is not easily confirmed, that he opposed the timing of the healthcare vote and was overruled by other party members. “The plight of uninsured Americans and the hardships created by unfair insurance company practices certainly needed to be addressed,” the New York Senator said. “But it wasn’t the change we were hired to make” in the 2008 election. The vast majority of Americans were relatively happy with their employer-provided health insurance in 2009, and the healthcare overhaul's message was aimed at about 5% of the electorate: those who lacked insurance and who voted. The Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them. We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem - healthcare reform." In fact, Senator Schumer is not the first Democrat to try to put space between himself and the hugely unpopular Obamacare, but he is the first Democrat to say he rejected it before he voted for it. Perhaps Schumer's recent revelation has something to do with Washington rumors that he would like to replace Harry Reid as Democrat Senate leader. ~~~~~ Moneynews commented on Senator Schumer's statement about Obamacare, noting that Schumer added that President Obama and Democratic majorities in Congress were elected in 2008 to get the economy working for middle class families, not to pass Obamacare. Moneynews concludes that the 2008 Democrat agenda had nothing to do with the middle class, because most middle class families had private healthcare insurance they liked. Rather, according to Moneynews, Obamacare was really part of the Democrat agenda to "assist the working poor - raising the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid, food stamps, the earned-income tax credit and higher education grants - while cozying up to big business to finance Democratic campaigns....Schumer still embraces Obamacare as sound policy, even though it made healthcare more expensive for many middle-class families and it enriches Democratic contributors who are among the top executives and shareholders in the healthcare industry....Cozying up to big business - while championing the poor and offering lip service to the middle class - is what Democrats have done best lately." That, added Moneynews, is the kind of special treatment that Obama blames on Republican lawmakers. ~~~~~ Dear readers, what is so boldly wrong and disingenuous about Schumer's position is that he pretends that he and the Democrat Party support "the middle class," while in reality just the opposite is true. Democrats take hard-earned money from the middle class to pay for the entitlement programs meant to bind together the Democrat voter coalition of Blacks, Hispanics, young people, women and poor whites. The American middle class is the cash cow that pays and pays -- and receives little in return -- when Democrats are in control of the federal government. But, the American middle class - White, Black, Hispanic - woke up in November 2014. They remembered that Americans prosper when private business, fair play and competition are in play. They saw that monopolies -- especially the Obamacare government monopoly for healthcare -- is an abuse of the public's trust in government to keep their best interests and desires at the heart of the governing process. As Moneynews put it : "Somewhere along the way Washington, and in particular Democrats, forgot that private businesses, not government, are the nation's principal jobs creator and that monopolies stifle progress." It is clear that Democrats believe that government does not answer to the electorate -- it tells them what is best for them. Recent examples include not only Obamacare but also blocked petroleum exploration off the Atlantic, Pacific and Eastern Gulf coasts and the Keystone XL project. These limit US oil supplies, enrich big multinational oil companies and keep OPEC and Russian oil producers in business. What these Democrat-Obama policies do is deny Americans decent jobs. They also send US Dollars from gasoline and other petroleum product sales in the US to the Middle East and Russia, where they finance anti-American policies and terrorism. The new GOP Congress will work hard to turn Washington around. But each step of the way, Senator Schumer and other Democrats will be wringing their fat-cat hands while they falsely accuse Republicans of being in bed with big business. Don't be fooled. Join in the GOP-led fight to put the federal government back into its proper place as the servant of the American people.