Political Parties in TexasParty PlatformBoth parties develop .docx

Political Parties in Texas/Party Platform
Both parties develop party platforms. These platforms may
sound great but often do not go into the details needed to effect
the actual policy. We will look at one policy position, health
and examine the developments since this platform was written
in 2012.
Start with the descriptions of Health Care from the respective
parties on page 147.
Your book states the Democratic parties support universal
health- care plan as permitted under the Affordable Care Act.
Your book states that the Republicans believe that health care
decision should be between a patient and health care
professionals and should be protected from government
intrusion. It also states that the Republican Party demands the
immediate repeal of the patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act but does not state the replacement of the particular health
care policy.
Background information:
An alternative to universal care through the Affordable Care
Act are Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).
Proponents of Health Savings Accounts believe it encourages
people to be value-conscious shoppers in the health care
marketplace. For example, a 2012 study from the Rand
Corporation, a policy research institute, found that families with
consumer-directed health coverage, like HSA plans, spent an
average of 21 percent less the first year after switching from
traditional coverage. And that if half of those with employer-

sponsored coverage were in such plans, health care costs would
fall by $57 billion.
Defenders of ObamaCare—including New York Times
economist Paul Krugman—do not believe people can make
value-conscious health care decisions. Their preferred option is
to insulate patients from almost all costs of care—otherwise
known as national health insurance— and then control costs by
imposing price controls. ObamaCare doesn’t get them all the
way there, but it’s a big step in that direction.
However, if individuals and businesses have access to HSA
plans, that might help offset the health care spending explosion
that ObamaCare creates. Even now health insurers are warning
of quickly rising premiums under ObamaCare. So HSA plans
may be the only “affordable” option.
The real question is whether health insurers will offer HSA
options at a reasonable price. One of the dirty little secrets is
that health insurers offer an HSA plan, but price it so high that
the more expensive, comprehensive coverage looks like a better
deal. The insurance companies approved of ObamaCare in
exchange for the anticipated extra patients signing up. This
however, does nothing to decrease the cost or increase the
ability of the individual to make decisions outside of the
insurance company. Recently we have seen the insurance
companies asking to be bailed out
because not enough younger people have signed up to
compensate for the elderly on the plan. In fact ,both Aetna and
United Health Care have threatened to pull out of the health
market in 2016/2017.
2016: What's Next for Obamacare? Nina Owcharenko
Heritage Foundation January 15, 2016

http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2016/1/2016-
whats-next- for-obamacare
This article is also a .pdf on the learning web
1. What are the six ailments that have been associated with
Obamacare?
· Failing state exchanges, collapsing co-ops, higher premiums,
higher deductibles, narrow networks, and fewer choices.
2. What three solutions were presented at the Urban Institute?
· More government spending, more government intervention,
and more government control.
3. According to the author, what would be the consequences of
keeping Obamacare afloat?
· Providers and patients are beholden to government regulators.
4. What are three activities would occur with the removal of
regulatory and political obstacles?
·
5. Why do you think private ownership of health care would be
more preferable than health care tied to your place of
employment?
·
6. Do you think Medicaid recipients would get more quality
physician access with coverage that is comparable to other in
the health care system? (Many physicians have elected not to
take Medicaid because it does not address the coverage of their
services)
7. How was the $2 trillion in new health care spending
financed?
· By tax increases, draconian cuts to Medicare and questionable
offsets
8. What should a replacement package include?
·
9. How did Obamacare overhaul the health care sector and
whose coverage was most affected?
·

·
10. What will the marketplace need?
· Time to adjust to a less prescriptive regulatory landscape
before locking in new financing reforms.
11. What should any replacement package include to make
health care simpler, transparent, and more direct to individuals?
·
12. What is an alternative to funneling support indirectly to
third-party entities?
·
13. What process in the Senate will encourage reform?
· Maximize the reconciliation process to repeal major elements
of Obamacare.
14. What should Congress do in the next year?
· Building a framework for a patient centered, market-based
alternative that empowers individuals to control the dollars and
decisions regarding their health care.
ObamaCare Enrollment Fails to Make it Over Obama's
Drastically Lowered Bar
John Merline
Investor Business Daily 02/04/16
http://www.investors.com/politics/capital-hill/obamacare-
enrollment- fails-to-make-it-over-obamas-drastically-lowered-
bar/
1. There were 12.7 million total enrollment at the federal and
state run Obamacare exchanges, slightly above the low
projection of 11 million but lower than the high end 14.1
projections. What had the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
expected enrollment?
2. 11.7 “enrolled” dwindled down to about 9 million. Why?
3. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Burwell claims the

the marketplace is getting stronger. How did Aetna and United
Health Group respond to this claim/
4. Other bigger insurers?
5. Why are insurance companies losing money under
Obamacare?
( mind you they had the Congress guarantee payment regardless
of the decreased enrollment)
6. What is the reason for flat enrollment from working and
middle class in this country?
Interest Groups
Given the importance of business groups in Texas, I have
chosen the Right to Work interest group and unions.
Given the stronghold of the unions in certain states (Indiana,
Michigan, and just recently, Wisconsin), the National Right to
Work Foundation had to lay a lot of groundwork before they
realized any successes. This was done through grass root
organizing, petitions, newsletters,websites, and telephone
banks. The National Right To Work Foundation also identified
candidates who would run in the upcoming elections and who
would be sympathetic to the passage of their legislation.
Eventually, the legislatures (state House and state Senate) in
these respective states changed parties and passage of this
legislation was easier. (In
West Virginia House Passes Right-To-Work After Intense
Legislative Debate Daily Caller
Conner D. Wolf 02/04/2016
http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/04/wv-house-passes-right-to-
work-after-intense- legislative-debate/

1. What will the measure accomplish?
2. What will the Democrat Governor Earl Tomblin likely do
when this legislation gets to his desk?
3. What does Representative Marty Gearheart say about this
bill?
4. What does Democratic Representative Stephen Skinner
contend?
5. Besides exclusive representation how else can a union
organize?
6. Why do unions tend not to choose member only status?
7. What did the Senate pass and how does it benefit union? How
does it impede nonunion companies?
Update: Feb. 11, 2016. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin vetoed the
bill which would have made West Virginia the 26th Right To
Work (RTW) state. It is more of a symbolic veto because unlike
other states where you need 2/3 to override a veto, in West
Virginia you only need a majority to override the veto.
www.nrtw.org
Look at the map. There are 25 right to work states and notice
the proximity of the recent right to work states (Wisconsin,
Michigan and Indiana). Also, notice Illinois, whose governor
recently passed an exclusion from paying dues by an executive
order. (not through the legislate process)
Under latest News and Views click on the Right to Work
Experts Discuss Friedrichs v. CTA Supreme Court Argument
1/12/2016. Review the questions first and listen to the 14

minute video
1. Mark Mix describes this case as a free speech and first
amendment protections case. What are government employees
compelled to pay to the labor union and what does the labor
union do in return?
2. According to mark Mix, what is the core issue?
3. Though this wasn't a RTW case, it was based on two RTW
cases that were successfully argued earlier before the Supreme
Court. What did the Knox case address? In the 2014 Harris case,
who were the unions taking money from to subsidize their
activities?
4. What kind of speech is a violation of the First Amendment?
5. Vicki McKenna points out that teachers might not agree with
what unions were doing politically in their name and their
activities had no connection with the collective bargaining
aspects. What does she cite as the problem?
6. Mark Mix explains how the 1977 Supreme Court Abood case
did not feel this prompted a major constitutional issue that
raises to the strict scrutiny level ( government would have to
find a compelling government interest to allow a law to stand,
otherwise it would be ruled unconstitutional). At the time,
which right was identified as more important than any First
Amendment Right?
7. What does the Friedrichs case do?
8. What are they asking the Supreme Court to do now?
9. Why is this not democracy?
10. McKenna states that this will not eliminate unions but allow
school teachers to choose who will represent them. How does
Mark Mix clarify this perception?
11. Representation is another important issue. What was the
original sin in compulsory unionism?
12. What happens if they overturn the Abood case?
13. Unions have the option to be exclusive bargaining
representatives whether there is a right to work law in place or

not. They use this as their basis for charging fees. There are
five cases in the Federal Court that seek to extend the Harris
case. What is the main argument as to why exclusive bargaining
representation may not be constitutional?
14. There is nothing at the federal level or any level for that
matter, that says unions can have exclusive bargaining
representation. The unions just demand it and use it as their
basis for charging fees and forced unionism. What would
happen if exclusive bargaining representation is removed?
Look at this video, by Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IGbUyYKAvw Mr. Trumka
asks individuals to go to:
http://americaworkstogether.us/2015/10/whos-behind-friedrichs/
Read the article: “Who's Behind Friedrichs”:
1. What did Alito devote half of his opinion to in the Harris
case?
2. What do these fees cover?
3. What was covered in the Abood v Detroit Board of
Education?
4. Rebecca Friedrichs, the plaintiff includes nine other
California school teachers who have all opted out of union
membership. What reasons are given for the teacher's suit?
5. According to the author, what happens if the Court's decision
reaches further then the issue of agency fees?
6. What three things are cited if the Friedrichs plaintiffs
succeed in all their claims before the high court?
7. If exclusive union representation, as discussed in the earlier
video, was eliminated, could the union still say they are legally
obligated and therefore, in the position to collect dues?
Campaigns/Elections

Abbott, Davis Both Use Attack Ads Ahead of Friday Debate
Sept. 18, 2014
Abbott and Davis put out ads before the debate.
http://www.ksat.com/content/pns/ksat/news/2014/09/18/abbott--
davis-both-use-attack-ads- ahead-of-friday-debate.html
1. What did Abbott's initial campaign advertisements
include?What was previously used by Abbot in his campaign
ads?
2. What did Greg Abbott use in his attack ads?
3. What did Wendy Davis use in her attack ad?
4. Who generally uses attacks ads more?
5. How would the focus be different during the upcoming Friday
debate in the Rio Grande??
Davis, Abbott Face Off in First Debate Estephany Escobar
Channel News 25 Channel September 20, 2014
The First Debate
http://www.kxxv.com/story/26582593/davis-abott-face-off-in-
first-debate
1. Where was the first debate held and why do you think this
location was picked? What three issues were discussed?

2. What did Attorney General Abbott include in his border
security plan?
3. How does he plan to respond to the lack of federal funds that
were needed for the influx of undocumented immigrants?
4. What additional component did Senator Davis want to
implement with border security?
5. What did Davis accuse Abbott of regarding school funds?
How much did the Texas Legislature cut from public schools in
201l ( some of it replaced with the 2013 budget)
6. How did Abbot respond?
7. What did Abbot say about the minimum wage?
8. How did Davis respond?
9. How did the two candidates differ on releasing information
about the storage of chemicals?
Wendy Davis Lost Badly. Here's How It Happened. Jay Root,
Texas Tribune
Washington Post November 6, 2014
The Election
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-
fix/wp/2014/11/06/wendy-davis-lost-really-badly- heres-how-it-
happened/
We will be looking at important components that can make or

break a campaign. Name recognition, ability to fund raise,
messaging and issues, effective TV campaigns, and the response
to negative ads.
1. What campaign's thematic foundation was not aired?
2. How much did the Davis campaign raise?
3. How was the 2014 characterized and did this make it
easier/harder for Davis?
4. What had the Democrats based a lot of hope on to help Davis
win the first statewide election since 1994?
5. What was the point spread between Abbott and Davis?
6. How was Davis viewed and did Battleground seem to help her
turnout (specific)?
7. How did voter registration play into the campaign?
8. Consistent messaging is important. Did Davis had a
consistent message about the type of Democrat she was ? (Give
examples)
9. If you were her campaign manager would you have
encouraged her to emphasize her late abortion after she had
earlier decided to be cautious on the abortion issue?
10. How was her gun messaging confusing?
11. Davis agreed with tax incentives but how did she negate this
message later on in the campaign?
12. Did Davis welcome other Democrats at the state
convention? Did she welcome President Obama consistently
throughout the campaign? Why?
13. What two factors were working in Abbot's favor?
14. Why did the story as a single mother from humble roots in a
trailer park to a Harvard degree not resonate?
15. Did she allow many Texas news outlets to her Austin
event?”
16. Timing of ads is important and monies will be needed in
early August as well as in October/November. How did the
Abbott campaign respond later to define Davis?
Note: Davis only got 47% of the women's vote and Abbott got

close to 40% of the Latinos vote, a decent percent for a
Republican candidate.
The Fix
By Jay Root, The Texas Tribune November 6, 2014
On the day last year when state Sen. Wendy Davis launched her
bid for the Texas governor’s
mansion, something she didn't mention got almost as much
attention as the speech itself: her
filibuster of a bill creating new abortion regulations.
After all, it was that June 2013 stand against the legislation that
propelled Davis to instant
celebrity and made her a rare Texas Democratic fundraising
phenom, so leaving it out was
noticeable.
In the Haltom City auditorium where Davis made her
announcement, senior adviser Matt
Angle, mingling with reporters at the press table, explained why
the dramatic event didn’t make
the cut. He said that in the arc of her compelling biography, it
wasn’t all that significant.
“The idea,” Angle added, “is to tell Wendy’s story.”

Thirteen months later, that unexecuted strategy sits atop a trash
heap of failed tactics, unmet
goals and muddled messages that helped doom Davis to an
embarrassing defeat long before
the voters rendered their verdict Tuesday night.
When the curtain came down on Team Davis, the campaign had
not aired a single English-
language TV ad focusing on the Fort Worth senator’s up-from-
the-trailer-park narrative once
seen as her campaign’s thematic foundation. In the final days,
Davis couldn’t afford to air such
an ad, even though her campaign said it had raised almost $40
million, a top official
Wendy Davis lost badly. Here’s how it happened. - The
Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-
fix/wp/2014/11/06/wendy-davi...
1 of 9 2/15/2015 10:21 PM
acknowledged.
Davis probably never had a modicum of a chance to win the
Texas governor’s race. The 2014
election turned out to be another wave election that cost
Democrats the U.S. Senate, governor’s

races in heavily Democratic states and competitive legislative
races across the land, including in
Texas.
But for more than a year, Democrats were crowing that with a
well-funded turnout operation,
Davis was the kind of candidate who could at least move the
needle for the bedraggled party,
which hadn’t won a statewide election since 1994. In one sense
they were correct: She moved
the needle, all right — backward.
The spread between Attorney General Greg Abbott and Davis
exceeded 20 points, greater than
the split between Republican Gov. Rick Perry and Democrat
Bill White in the historic tea party
wave four years ago. In fact, it was the worst showing by a
Democratic gubernatorial candidate
since Garry Mauro’s 68 percent-to-31 percent drubbing at the
hands of George W. Bush in
1998.
The percentage of Texans who negatively viewed the single
mom-turned-Harvard grad was
exceptionally high.
The vaunted ground game that wealthy Democratic donors had

been promised by Battleground
Texas — started by the very people who pushed President
Obama over the top in hard-fought
contests in Ohio and Florida in 2012 — fell well below even the
dismal turnout of 2010, which
had made Texas dead last, 51st out of 51, among U.S. states and
the District of Columbia.
Even voter registration, as a percentage of the eligible voter
population, dropped from the last
governor’s race despite all the talk of a wave of new voters who
would start making Texas more
competitive.
And Davis’s message?
Whatever it started out as, it bordered on incoherence in the
waning days of the race.
2 of 9 2/15/2015 10:21 PM
Was she an Ann Richards progressive? A good ol' gal moderate?
Did she run away from
Obama? Toward him?

Over the past 13 months, voters saw all that and more from the
Davis operation.
Mixed messages
If the campaign telegraphed early caution on the abortion issue,
Davis threw it to the wind two
months out from Election Day, when she released a memoir
about her own late abortion in
1997. She went on a week-long book tour that inevitably
focused on abortion rights, followed by
another week spent on the same subject — namely, bashing
Abbott for opposing abortion even
in cases of rape or incest.
On gun rights, she riled conservatives last fall by embracing
restrictions on firearms sales at
gun shows, only to take friendly fire in February from
bewildered liberal supporters when
she agreed with Abbott that Texans should be allowed to openly
carry handguns.
She lauded job-luring tax incentives as a key economic
development tool, and
even celebrated them during a stop last year at a San Antonio
company that got some. But then
she attempted to use the programs as a cudgel against Abbott

because he had received
campaign money from corporate executives who benefited from
them.
Davis also blew hot and cold on surrogates. Her campaign,
fearing backlash from moderates
and independents, reportedly opposed a possible appearance by
Hillary Rodham Clinton and
other big-name Democrats at the state convention this summer,
then went on to tout an
endorsement from the former secretary of state as Davis's poll
numbers began sinking before
Election Day.
Even more stark was the inconsistent approach to Obama, whose
dizzying unpopularity made
him a pariah in the 2014 midterm election, particularly in the
South.
Davis initially seemed to distance herself from the president.
When he came to Austin in April,
for example, she met with him behind closed doors — away
from the news media and
3 of 9 2/15/2015 10:21 PM

photographers. And it was the White House, not the Davis
campaign, that announced the
meeting.
Contrast that with the final days of the race, when Davis began
running radio ads featuring
Michelle Obama, then — to the delight of her Republican
opponent — told reporters she would
be “thrilled” if the president joined her on the campaign trail in
Texas. And on the day before
the election, she hopped on a conference call with the president
to fire up turnout.
Davis pollster Joel Benenson, who advised Obama in 2008 and
2012, disputed the notion that
Davis seesawed from one message to another, saying the
campaign consistently kept Abbott on
the defensive by tagging him as an “insider” working against
average Texans. When it came to
surrogates, he said the point was to keep the focus on the
candidate during the race while using
big-name Democrats at the very end to boost turnout.
Benenson’s take: Abbott’s unprecedented war chest allowed him
to outspend Davis 3 to 1 on TV

by the end of the race, and a national climate that favored
Republicans made the climb far too
steep to overcome.
“We were a challenger and an underdog, a significant underdog,
in a very red state,” Benenson
said. “We also had to deal with the reality that he had an
enormous cash advantage and that at
any point he could bury us on TV.”
But critics, even some Democrats, say Davis and her partners at
Battleground Texas took a
challenging situation and made it worse.
Glenn Smith, a longtime Democratic consultant in Austin, said
he warned Battleground
Director Jenn Brown in the spring of 2013 that the group was
overplaying its hand by bragging
about the know-how it had gleaned from Obama’s past
campaigns in other states. He said he
“didn’t get much of a response.”
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“You have to speak Texan if you’re going to do well here. They
didn’t,” Smith said. “There was

4 of 9 2/15/2015 10:21 PM
this belief after 2012 that if you waved this turnout wand you
would wake up some progressive
majority. It didn’t exist.”
Battleground did not immediately respond to Smith’s critique.
Optimistic Start
Things didn’t start out so bad for the Democrats.
Because of the filibuster, Davis was already well-known, so she
wouldn’t have to spend so
much money pumping up her name recognition. With Perry
declining to seek reelection, Davis
was competing in the first open governor’s race since Richards
was elected. Her opponent,
while exceptionally well-funded, was largely untested in high-
profile political battles.
In the important race for campaign money, Davis already had
raised nearly $1 million in the
initial days after the filibuster, gaining instant credibility as a
fundraiser who could tap into a

network of small donors, something that had eluded Texas
Democrats for years.
So when the new year began, Davis could legitimately share her
party’s hope that, at last, a
Texas Democrat could at least make it close for the first time in
decades.
The high point came in mid-January, when the first major
fundraising reports were released.
When adding the money she raised plus the proceeds raised
jointly with Battleground Texas,
Davis laid claim to a bigger fundraising haul than Abbott for the
last critical months of 2013,
leading to a burst of positive news coverage.
First campaign crisis
That turned out to be short-lived. A few days later, on Jan. 18,
the Dallas Morning
Newshanded Davis her first major campaign crisis when it
posted a story criticizing her for
discrepancies in her official campaign biography.
Throughout her political career, Davis had highlighted her
struggles as a single mother, her

5 of 9 2/15/2015 10:21 PM
rise from humble roots in a trailer park to a Harvard law degree
and, eventually, the Texas
Senate.
But not all of the details were accurate. She was 21, not 19,
when she divorced, for example.
And her husband’s role in paying for her Harvard education had
been played down in the
official campaign version, the newspaper noted.
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A day after story ran, Davis press aides Rebecca Acuña and Bo
Delp huddled on the phone and
came up with a plan. They thought some aspects of the story
were unfair or inaccurate, that the
discrepancies were relatively minor and that the findings could
largely be portrayed as old
news, because many of them had been reported by the Texas
Tribune and the Houston
Chronicle.
They agreed that Davis needed to push back hard and fast and,
together with deputy campaign

manager Terrysa Guerra, recommended that Davis stage a news
conference to counter the
ballooning controversy.
“I was told this was not going to happen. And we did
recommend it several more times,” Delp
said. “It just didn’t happen.”
Instead, the campaign tried to tamp down the controversy by
giving selective media interviews
and issuing news releases with a detailed timeline of Davis’s
life.
Looking back, former campaign manager Karin Johanson said
she regrets not responding more
forcefully to a story that — to her surprise — generated far
more attention and in far more
media markets than the campaign saw coming.
“I wish we had pushed back a little harder,” she said. Johanson,
who left the campaign in June,
said Davis faced more early media scrutiny than Abbott, and
faced unrealistic expectations for
a Democrat trying to break through in conservative Texas.

6 of 9 2/15/2015 10:21 PM
Finally, after 10 days of bleeding, the campaign shot back with
both barrels: first by
releasing letters from the candidate’s daughters to counter the
notion, circulated in
conservative media, that she had been a bad mother, and then
with a speech that evening from
Davis in Austin.
“Greg Abbott and his folks have picked a fight with the wrong
Texas gal if they think that I will
shrink from working to fight for a just and right future for all
Texans,” she roared inside the
Four Seasons ballroom.
It was Davis at her best — fiery, passionate and taking the
battle to her opponent.
The problem is few voters saw the speech in real time because it
coincided with the nationwide
broadcast of Obama’s State of the Union address in Washington,
eating up the political
bandwidth she needed to make a huge splash.
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Adding insult to injury, the Davis campaign angered Texas news
outlets that were not allowed
inside the Austin event, which only the Texas Tribune was
given permission to cover (and
provided a publicly available livestream of the speech on its
Web site).
The controversy finally died down, but the damage had been
done.
Going on the attack
With polls showing Davis still lagging well behind Abbott in
the summer, her campaign
decided to gamble early by airing an expensive 60-second attack
ad that criticized Abbott for
siding with a vacuum cleaner company over a woman who sued
it after she was raped by a
door-to-door salesman.
“The biggest calculated risk was going up on the air early,
which we did in August, and we
stayed up on the air. We tried to run as full a program as we
could,” said Benenson, the Davis
pollster. “We knew that could end up putting us at a
disadvantage later on.”

7 of 9 2/15/2015 10:21 PM
That’s precisely what happened. The Abbott campaign
carpetbombed Davis with negative ads —
and also ran several positive ones promoting Abbott. In the end,
Davis was unable to respond
in kind or cut a positive bio ad to counter her negative image,
let alone reinforce the
struggling-mom narrative the campaign had originally planned
to make the centerpiece of its
messaging.
Abbott strategist Dave Carney said that airing the expensive TV
ad in the dead of summer was
one of two gigantic tactical errors Davis made with her
advertising campaign. The second, he
said, was running the now-infamous “wheelchair ad,” which
opened with an empty wheelchair
and this jarring line: “A tree fell on Greg Abbott.”
The spot was meant to illustrate hypocrisy on the part of her
disabled opponent — specifically,
that Abbott sued after his freak accident in 1984 but later sided

against victims who sought
similar remedies from the civil justice system.
Carney recalls seeing the ad pop up on his phone at Terry
Black’s Barbecue in Austin, where he
was having lunch with Republican consultants Mark Miner and
Rob Johnson.
“I thought my phone stopped because the wheelchair was sort of
frozen in place,” he said. “We
were all, like, this is crazy.”
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By the time he got back to his office after lunch, the ad was
well on its way to becoming a
giant media firestorm, eventually causing even some liberal
supporters to question the wisdom
of it.
“It was such a self-inflicted wound, because if you had put a
picture of Abbott in the wheelchair
at the beginning of the ad, it would not have been an issue,” he
said. “The empty wheelchair
was the issue."
In the ensuing days, Carney said, the Abbott campaign's polling
showed the ad moved the

needle by a significant margin — driving voters to Abbott, not
Davis. He said it boosted him by
8 of 9 2/15/2015 10:21 PM
at least five percentage points.
On Wednesday, briefing reporters about their field strategy,
Carney joked that the Abbott
campaign would have to count the wheelchair ad as an “in-kind
contribution” to the Davis
campaign if it’s determined her campaign honchos were trying
to help the Republican win.
Benenson, the Davis pollster, agreed that Davis’s standing with
voters began to deteriorate after
the wheelchair ad ran, but not because of any blowback from the
ad. He said it was because
Abbott poured gobs of money into attack ads and other spots.
“Greg Abbott would not have spent the money they spent if they
thought they had broken the
race open,” Benenson said.
On that point, the official word from the Abbott campaign is

that it had committed itself to a
big advertising budget and saw no reason to pull back from it.
But Texas Republican Party Chairman Steve Munisteri said
Abbott and his fellow GOP
candidates didn’t just want to win. They wanted to crush the
Democrats, cut off funding to
Battleground Texas and undermine their theory that the Lone
Star State will trend Democratic
anytime soon, if ever.
“There’s no question that in the last couple of weeks we
changed our goal from winning to
annihilating them,” Munisteri said. “When you obliterate the
other side, there’s not much for
them to say.”
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9 of 9 2/15/2015 10:21 PM

EDINBURG -
EDINBURG
Davis, Abott Face Off In First Debate
Posted: Sep 20, 2014 12:02 AM CST
By Estephany Escobar - email
The two candidates for Texas governor faced off in their first
debate on Friday.
The debate was held in the Rio Grande Valley, where several of
the questions focused on
border security. Other topics the candidates discussed had to do
with education and minimum
wage.
Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is the Republican candidate
for governor, said his border
security plan will include sending 500 DPS officers to the
border. In addition, he will add 20
Texas Rangers across the state.
He said his office is working on a potential lawsuit against the
government regarding the
money spent on this year's influx of undocumented immigrants.
"There are expenses that should not come out of the pockets of
taxpayers in the state of
Texas. The reason, because it wasn't McAllen or the Rio Grande
Valley that caused this, the
reason this happened it is all the president's fault,” said Abbott.

"It is the case that is ultimately the government's responsibility
to secure our border to pay
ultimately the cost as a consequence for it. But as a governor, I
believe the state should step
in and help communities such as this one,” said Democratic
candidate for Governor Wendy
Davis.
Davis said if she was in Rick Perry's shoes this year, she would
have called a special session
of Texas legislature to hear from local communities. She said
she would like to hear from law
enforcement and charities.
During the debates, both candidates agreed they want to boost
the education system.
Davis asked Abbott to stop his appeals in order to adequately
fund schools in Texas.
A judge declared Texas schools finance system unconstitutional
in August. The Texas
Legislature cut $5.4 billion from public schools in 2011, which
prompted for more than 600
school districts around the state to sue.
"The only thing right now coming between our children and
appropriate funding of their schools
today, it's you,” said Davis.
"Senator Davis, there is actually another thing coming in
between me and setting that lawsuit
and that is law you voted on and helped pass in 2011 that
removes from the Attorney General,
the ability to settle lawsuits just like this,” Abbott replied.

The candidates also discussed minimum wage. Abbott claims 94
percent of the companies in
the state pay more than minimum wage already and the system
is working.
However, Davis said the minimum wage should be raised.
The candidates also touched on releasing information about
storage of chemicals like the
ammonium nitrate that was at West fertilizer plant.
Davis blamed Abbott for not allowing Texans to know where
chemicals are stored. However, he
said he wants to uphold the Texas Homeland Security act to
prevent information from getting
into the wrong hands.
Davis, Abott Face Off In First Debate - KXXV-TV News
Channel 25 - Ce... http://www.kxxv.com/story/26582593/davis-
abott-face-off-in-first-debate
1 of 3 9/28/2014 12:40 PM
The second and last debate will be on Sept. 30.
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Top Local Stories
NEWSNEWSNEWSNEWS ( ( (
(HTTP://WWW.KSAT.COM/NEWSHTTP://WWW.KSAT.COM/
NEWSHTTP://WWW.KSAT.COM/NEWSHTTP://WWW.KSAT.
COM/NEWS))))
Abbott, Davis both use attackAbbott, Davis both use
attackAbbott, Davis both use attackAbbott, Davis both use
attack
ads ahead of Friday debateads ahead of Friday debateads ahead
of Friday debateads ahead of Friday debate
Candidates will face off in closed studio inCandidates will face
off in closed studio inCandidates will face off in closed studio
inCandidates will face off in closed studio in
Edinburg at 6 p.m.Edinburg at 6 p.m.Edinburg at 6
p.m.Edinburg at 6 p.m.
By Brian MylarBrian MylarBrian MylarBrian Mylar ( ( (
(http://www.ksat.com/author/bmylarhttp://www.ksat.com/author
/bmylarhttp://www.ksat.com/author/bmylarhttp://www.ksat.com
/author/bmylar)))) -
Anchor/Reporter
Posted: 6:07 PM, September 18, 2014
Updated: 6:07 PM, September 18, 2014
EDINBURG, TexasEDINBURG, TexasEDINBURG,
TexasEDINBURG, Texas - The latest television
advertisements being run in the Texas governor's race

show both candidates attacking each other ahead of
Friday's debate in the Rio Grande Valley.
Attorney General Greg Abbott has not been
hard-hitting in his television advertising up until now.
In a recent spot, he brought out his mother-in-law to
sing his praises. In another, he showed how he worked
out in a parking garage to rebuild his body after an
accident left him unable to walk.
But his latest ad goes for the jugular.
"Wendy Davis is embroiled in scandal, yet again," the
announcer said in the ad. "As a state senator, Davis used
her influence to win lucrative taxpayer-funded
contracts."
The ad accused Democrat Wendy Davis of personally
profiting from her job as a senator.
Davis has always been on the attack. Her latest ad
accuses Abbott of protecting a hospital with a bad
surgeon.

"Using his office to go to court, against the victims," the
announcer said. "Greg Abbott. Another insider. Not
BCSO: Human remains
found in West Bexar
County
Obama to nominate Scalia
successor 'in due time'
Just Ask Justin: Sarah's
Question
Just Ask Justin: Kevin's
Question
Woman forges checks, goes
shopping at H-E-B
Abbott, Davis both use attack ads ahead of Friday debate
file:///C:/Users/Julie Janzer/Downloads/Abbott, Davis both use
attack ads...
1 of 3 2/14/2016 4:28 PM
working for you."

Attack ads are traditionally used by the underdog in
races, but not solely the underdog.
The latest polls show Abbott leading Davis by just eight
points after an earlier double digit lead.
Issues, rather than attacks, may be more prominent in
Friday's debate in the Rio Grande Valley.
Dr. Sharon Navarro, a UTSA political science professor,
said people in the Rio Grande Valley have issues similar
to Texans elsewhere.
"Issues such as immigration, education and jobs and
access to health care are primarily important, as with
any group," Navarro said.
The debate will be the first of two scheduled debates
between the candidates before November's election.
While it will occur in an area that has a large Hispanic
population that votes mostly Democratic, Navarro said
Texas as a whole may not be even half Democratic
anytime soon.

"Maybe 15 or 20 years, it's hard to say," Navarro said.
The Abbott-Davis debate is set for 6 p.m. on Friday in
Edinburg.
Copyright 2014 by KSAT - All rights reserved.
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Abbott, Davis both use attack ads ahead of Friday debate
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2 of 3 2/14/2016 4:28 PM
October 30th, 2015
Who’s Behind Friedrichs?
October 30th, 2015
A version of this article originally ran in the October 2015
edition of Clarion.
As the current term of the U.S. Supreme Court opens this
autumn, looming on the docket is Friedrichs v. California
Teachers Association, a case designed to decimate public-sector

unions. While it may not come to that—even the most
knowledgeable Court-watchers are unsure how the justices will
rule—the stakes are high. A decision is expected before the
term
ends in June.
Photo: Tim Sackton/Flickr
The case was, in effect, invited by Justice Samuel Alito, who
penned the majority opinion in Harris v. Quinn, a 2014 case in
which the court ruled against the union representing
home-care workers in Illinois. In Harris, as Harold Meyerson
wrote here, Alito devoted half of his opinion to considering the
constitutionality of public-sector unions’ right to collect
“fair share” fees from those who have opted out of union
membership. These fees cover the worker’s share of the
resources the union spent on negotiating a contract, representing
workers in grievance procedures, and other services that benefit
the entire workforce. They are lower than the dues assessed the
union’s members, whose payments also cover the cost
of their union’s political activities.
The right of unions to collect fair share fees was settled by the
court’s unanimous decision in 1977’s Abood v. Detroit Board of
Education. In her dissenting opinion in Harris, Justice
Elena Kagan noted that the fair-share issues Alito brought up
were not even before the court in Harris. Alito’s questioning of
the Abood precedent, however, signaled an inclination by
the conservative majority to revisit it.
Alito’s invitation to reconsider Abood helped ensure that
Friedrichs tore through the legal system at high speed. But the
real force propelling Friedrichs’ gallop through the courts was
the
Center for Individual Rights (CIR), the right-wing pro-bono law
group that is representing teacher Rebecca Friedrichs and her

fellow plaintiffs: At each stage in the legal process, CIR
attorneys asked the courts to rule against their own clients, with
the apparent interest of moving the case up to the Supreme
Court as quickly as possible.
“It just seems really nefarious,” says Frank Deale, a professor at
the CUNY School of Law. “In fact, it’s collusive, in a way.
You’re setting up this false scenario, this false conflict, in
order to get a Supreme Court ruling. The Center for Individual
Rights didn’t even make an argument [in the lower-court
filings]. They asked for the court to rule for the defendant, and
then they got rewarded for it.”
In addition to Rebecca Friedrichs, the plaintiffs include nine
other California schoolteachers, who have all opted out of union
membership. They’re bringing suit against the California
Teachers Association in a bid to relieve themselves of having to
pay their fair share, via agency fees, for the services the union
is required by law to provide to them, including contract
negotiation and adjudication of grievances. But the Court’s
ultimate decision could reach further than the issue of agency
fees, in ways that could threaten the very existence of unions.
A narrow ruling, of course, could have a lesser effect.
Should the Friedrichs plaintiffs succeed in all their claims
before the high court, they could cause public-sector unions to
have significant drops in membership, since all the workers
covered under their union contract could cease payment of any
dues or fees to the union, even though the union would still be
legally obligated to provide them with services. The
unions would have to sign up their current members to collect
payments from them again, causing them to devote additional
staff and resources to organizing. As well, the resources
unions could devote to political action could be substantially
diminished—a possible reason why, with the 2016 elections
looming, right-wing organizations have been so determined to

fast-forward the case to the Supremes.
WHEN THE CENTER FOR Individual Rights first came on the
scene in 1989, Frank Deale was on the staff of the Center for
Constitutional Rights, the organization that made its
mark in the field of civil rights. “When I first heard their name I
said, ‘For goodness’s sake, they’re picking up our name,’” he
says. “It sounded so similar.”
CIR’s name was likely no accident; it was founded by two
lawyers from the Washington Legal Foundation, a right-wing
public-interest law organization frequently in combat with the
Center for Constitutional Rights during Deale’s tenure there.
Since its founding, the Center for Individual Rights has
maintained a special focus on challenging civil-rights measures,
especially affirmative action. In 1995, it scored a significant, if
fleeting, victory in Hopwood v. Texas, until the Supreme Court
overturned the federal court decision in the case, which had
struck down affirmative-action admissions standards at the
University of Texas Law School. To step up its efforts, in 1999,
CIR ran ads in campus newspapers seeking plaintiffs among
white students looking to challenge their colleges’
affirmative-action policies.
CIR also set its sights on the 1965 Voting Rights Act,
representing plaintiffs in the recent case Nix v. Holder, which,
while unsuccessful, ran parallel to Shelby v. Holder, the 2013
case
that gutted Section 5 of the VRA, effectively curtailing the
enforcement provision of the law.
The list of foundations and donor-advised funds supporting the
Center for Individual Rights reads like a who’s who of the
right’s organized opposition to labor. A number of those
funders, unsurprisingly, enjoy the support of Charles and David

Koch, the billionaire brothers who are principals in Koch
Industries, the second-largest privately held corporation in the
United States. (Forbes estimates each of the brothers’ personal
wealth at $42.3 billion.) Longtime supporters of anti-labor
efforts, the Koch brothers even founded their own
organization, Americans for Prosperity, to create for the
Republican right the sort of electoral get-out-the-vote ground
teams that members of unions often form on behalf of pro-labor,
usually Democratic, candidates.
In January 2011, Americans for Prosperity President Tim
Phillips explained to a room full of right-wing activists in
Arlington, Virginia, why Republicans had failed to gain a more
permanent foothold in Congress in the 1990s: “They had the
public employee unions,” Phillips said of the Democrats,
“which have only gotten stronger, have only gotten better
funded,
Who’s Behind Friedrichs? | America Works Together
1 of 2 2/14/2016 4:19 PM
have only gotten better organized in the period of time between
the 1990s and today.”
Six weeks later, Scott Walker, the Koch-supported Wisconsin
governor, introduced the legislation that killed public-sector
unions’ ability to collect agency fees in his state.
Koch-linked groups known to have made grants to CIR,
according to the Center for Media and Democracy, include
DonorsTrust, the Donors Capital Fund, and the Claude R.
Lambe

Charitable Foundation. Other CIR funders belong to the Koch
donor network. Among them are the Dick and Betsy DeVos
Family Foundation, as well as the Lynde and Harry Bradley
Foundation, which was instrumental in the legislative attack on
labor in Wisconsin. (Scott Walker was hand-picked as an anti-
labor warrior by Bradley Foundation President Michael W.
Grebe back when Walker was in college; years later, Grebe
went on to chair Walker’s gubernatorial campaign. The
foundation, meanwhile, dumped millions into anti-labor think
tanks
such as the MacIver Institute and the Wisconsin Policy
Research Institute, which supplied the talking points and ideas
that shaped Walker’s 2011 anti-union legislation. By 2013, the
Wisconsin Policy Research Institute had received at least $17
million from the Bradley Foundation, according to the Center
for Media and Democracy.)
Think tanks and groups that receive either direct funding from
Koch entities or are linked to the Koch brothers’ funding
network also filed amicus briefs in favor of the Friedrichs
plaintiffs. They include the Cato Institute, the National Right to
Work Legal Defense Fund, and the Mackinac Center, a major
force behind the 2012 anti-union legislation enacted in
Michigan.
According to journalist Laura Flanders, earlier in its history
CIR also enjoyed the support of the Pioneer Fund, a white
supremacist organization devoted to the promotion of eugenics.
Flanders, writing in The Nation in 1999, found through an
examination of the group’s tax records that the Pioneer Fund
had made three separate grants to CIR.
While the involvement of the Pioneer Fund in CIR may seem
unrelated to the law group’s anti-union work, it is not
uncommon for organizations opposed to the interests of labor to
also have histories of antipathy to other forms of civil rights.

For instance, Reed Larson, who led the National Right to Work
Committee and the National Right to Work Legal
Foundation for three decades, was an early member of the John
Birch Society (JBS), as was Fred Koch, father to Charles and
David. (Charles Koch resigned from JBS in 1968; David
Koch does not appear to have ever been a member.) JBS
opposed the civil-rights movement, alleging it—and
desegregation efforts in general—to be a communist plot.
One such far-right group included among the plaintiffs in
Friedrichs is the Christian Educators Association International
(CEAI), which seeks to provide to right-wing Christian teachers
working in public schools some of the services teachers now
receive through their unions. CEAI is virulently opposed to
LGBT rights, and its website includes a statement accusing
public schools and the National Education Association (NEA) of
promoting “the homosexual agenda.” Among the books sold as
guides for teachers on the CEAI website are several by
Carl Sommer, a former New York City high school teacher
known for his opposition to school desegregation and sex
education.
THE RIGHT-WING ONE-PERCENTERS behind the assaults on
labor appear to be leaving nothing to chance.
Lawyers at the Center for Individual Rights understood that
Harris v. Quinn, which challenged the unionization of home-
care aides employed jointly by the state of Illinois and their
individual clients, could well result in a narrow ruling that
applied only to workers with joint employers in the state of
Illinois. (And that’s exactly what happened.) The Center’s
decision
to move Friedrichs through the legal system at record speed
anticipated just such a ruling—an incomplete victory—that
would require the right to have, ready to go, a case that could
yield a broader decision.

Now, because Friedrichs could yield a similarly limited
outcome, the anti-labor right has other anti-union cases in the
works. Late last month, a federal district judge ruled against the
plaintiff in Bain v. California Teachers Association, a suit
challenging unions’ political activity brought by the ironically
named anti-union group StudentsFirst, which is helmed by
charter schools proponent Michelle Rhee. If the Supreme Court
doesn’t overturn its 1977 decision in Abood, it’s clear that the
Koch brothers and their allies will run yet another suit
through the courts in their decades-long effort to destroy
unions.
The next U.S. president may get to appoint as many as three
Supreme Court justices. The fate of labor may well rest with
those choices.
http://prospect.org/article/whos-behind-friedrichs
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2 of 2 2/14/2016 4:19 PM
- The Daily Caller - http://dailycaller.com -
WV House Passes Right-To-Work After Intense Legislative
Debate
Posted By Connor D. Wolf On 5:08 PM 02/04/2016 In | No
Comments
The West Virginia House of Delegates passed a contentious
right-to-work measure Thursday in a move to outlaw mandatory
union dues or fees as a condition of employment.
The policy has been a Republican priority since the party
secured the legislature in November 2014. The bill will be sent
back
to the Senate to vote on portions that were revised. Democratic
Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, however, will likely veto the proposal
when it gets to his desk.
“If unions do a good job, I believe, workers will want to be
members,” Republican Rep. Marty Gearheart told the legislature
before the vote. “This bill allows workers to choose whether
they want to be members.”
The measure was introduced Jan. 13 on the first day of the 60-
day legislative session. The Senate first approved the proposal
Jan. 21 before sending it to the House. Supporters of the

proposal argue it will help reverse decades of bad economic
policies
enacted under previous Democratic control. Democratic Rep.
Stephen Skinner warned it will cause workers to freeload off the
union.
“I’ve learned a lot over the last four years about unions, the
labor movement and all the good they do,” Skinner noted. “This
bill should be called right-to-freeload.”
When a union becomes an exclusive representative for a
workplace it is legally required to represent all workers. Critics
of
right-to-work argue this will cause workers to freeload since
they get union benefits regardless of whether they fund it.
Exclusive representation, however, is not the only way a union
can organize workers. Unions can choose to become
member-only organizations.
“Why in this day and age does a worker have to fund a union
they do not morally agree with,” Republican Rep. Amy
Summers
said before the legislature.
Member-only unions are only required to represent workers that
pay dues. Unions tend not to choose to be member only
because they lose monopoly bargaining rights. Without
monopoly rights other unions can try to organize workers at a
company
that is already unionized. Democratic Rep. Nancy Guthrie
argues the bill is unnecessary and puts workers at risk.
“A bill like this doesn’t do anything more than add more
insecurity,” Guthrie declared. “This is not a bill we need, this is
a bill
some people want.”

Those opposed to the proposal claim the policy makes it much
more difficult for workers to advocate for themselves. There are
currently 25 states which has passed right-to-work laws.
The measure passed despite a disputed Senate seat which put the
Republican majority in question. Republican Sen. Daniel
Hall helped the party take the majority in the Senate when he
switched parties in 2014. When he resigned Jan. 3, though, both
parties debated over who should fill the seat.
Hall left as a Republican but was voted in as a Democrat. The
West Virginia Democratic Party asserted his seat should be
replaced with someone in their party since he was elected as a
Democrat. The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals
decided
a Republican should fill the seat since he left as one.
Unions took another hit hours before the House passed right-to-
work. The Senate passed a repeal of the state prevailing wage
law. The policy benefits unions because it sets wages and
benefits for public projects usually at a rate union contracts
dictate.
The policy impedes upon nonunion companies from competing
at a lower cost for government contracts.
Follow Connor on Twitter
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
[email protected]
Article printed from The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com
URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/04/wv-house-

passes-right-to-work-after-intense-legislative-
debate/
Copyright © 2011 Daily Caller. All rights reserved.
WV Right-To-Work Heads To Governor's Desk | The Daily
Caller http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/04/wv-house-passes-right-
to-work-after-in...
1 of 1 2/14/2016 4:39 PM
CAPITAL HILL
ObamaCare Enrollment Fails To Make It Over Obama’s
Drastically Lowe... http://www.investors.com/politics/capital-
hill/obamacare-enrollment-fail...
1 of 3 2/14/2016 4:41 PM
JOHN MERLINE 2/04/2016 6:33 PM EST
Drastically Lowered Bar
(Jovan Williams/IBD)
Reprints
bout 12.7 million people enrolled in ObamaCare plans this year,
which is almost 9 million fewer

than had once been expected and 1.4 million fewer than the
upper boundary of its revised
enrollment forecast.
Nevertheless, Health and Human Services secretary Sylvia
Burwell declared the year “a success” and
claimed that enrollment “exceeded our expectations.”
“The marketplace is growing and getting stronger,” she said,
“and the Affordable Care Act has become a
crucial part of health care in America.”
In reality, ObamaCare enrollment has hit a wall.
At 12.7 million, total enrollment at the federal and state-run
ObamaCare exchanges has ended up in the
middle of range of the administration’s sharply lowered
enrollment forecast, which they said could be
anywhere from 11 million to 14.1 million for 2016. The
Congressional Budget Office had previously
expected enrollment to hit 21 million this year.
Sign-ups through the HealthCare.gov site — which is where
people from 38 states go to get ObamaCare
plans — climbed 828,405, hitting 9.6 million, in contrast with
8.8 million at the end of open enrollment last
year. Enrollment in two states — Arizona and Indiana —
actually declined.

2 of 3 2/14/2016 4:41 PM
Enroll in Obamacare
healthplansamerica.org/Obamacare
Find & Compare Healthcare for Free. Get Covered in 3 Steps
(or
Less)
The administration says that just over 3 million signed up
through the state-run exchanges this year —
which include New York and California. That’s an increase of
only about 224,000.
All these numbers, it should be noted, are highly inflated
because they include people who haven’t actually
paid their first premiums. Last year, the 11.7 million who the
administration claimed had “enrolled”
dwindled down to about 9 million by the end of the year.
HHS says that this year, it has been subtracting cancellations
during open enrollment, unlike previous
years, and so the rate of decline going forward might be less
than in the previous two years.

Still, there’s little evidence to support Burwell’s other claim
that the marketplace is getting stronger.
Aetna just this week warned that the ObamaCare exchanges
appear “unsustainable,” and UnitedHealth
Group said last fall that it might bail on ObamaCare next year.
Meanwhile, many of the biggest insurers
providing coverage through ObamaCare have been reporting
losses, and more than half of the nonprofit
insurance co-ops that ObamaCare created have already failed.
“Most insurance companies are losing money today under
Obamacare because not enough healthy people
have signed up. They were hoping that the 2016 enrollment
would change that. It has not,” noted industry
analyst Robert Laszewski.
He says that the reason for the flat enrollment this year is
simple: ObamaCare costs too much.
“If you are solidly in the working and middle class in this
country, individual health insurance on the state
and federal exchanges is anything but affordable,” he explained.
3 of 3 2/14/2016 4:41 PM

Commentary on Obamacare (/issues/health-care/obamacare),
Health Care Reform (/issues/health-care/health-care-reform),
Issues
(/issues)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nina Owcharenko (/about/staff/o/nina-
owcharenko)
Director, Center for Health Policy Studies and Preston
A. Wells, Jr. Fellow
Center for Health Policy Studies
2016: What’s Next for Obamacare?
By Nina Owcharenko (/about/staff/o/nina-owcharenko)
Obamacare remains unworkable, unaffordable, and unpopular.
Its
ailments continue to mount: failing state exchanges, collapsing
co-ops,
higher premiums, higher deductibles, narrow networks, and
fewer
choices. It should be no surprise that the latest Real Clear
Politics
average poll shows 50.2 percent of Americans oppose the law,
while only
42.5 percent support it.

Those who support the law are in triage mode. Last month the
Urban
Institute hosted an event discussing the next steps to strengthen
and
improve the law. Not surprisingly, their solutions were simply
more of
the same: more government spending, more government
intervention,
and more government control. Liberal prescriptions for keeping
Obamacare afloat would ultimately result in a health care
system where
providers and patients are beholden to government regulators.
The alternative is patient-centered, market-based reform. A
variety of plans have proposed
Obamacare alternatives. These plans share a commitment to
core conservative principles:
making health coverage more affordable by removing regulatory
and policy obstacles that
discourage choice and competition;
encouraging personal ownership of health care by reforming the
tax treatment of health care;
transforming health care coverage to low-income Americans by
restoring Medicaid to a true

safety net and offering a glide path out of poverty; and
modernizing Medicare to meet that program’s demographic,
fiscal, and structural challenges.
Recent reports indicate House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.)
anticipates advancing an alternative to
Obamacare in 2016. The budget process offers a natural
platform for outlining a replacement. From
there, the committee work needed to fill in details will be
critical. Before Congress embarks on these
next steps, it should set some basic policy parameters for any
replacement to Obamacare.
Use sound financing. Obamacare added an additional $2 trillion
in new health care spending,
financed by tax increases, draconian cuts to Medicare and
questionable offsets. To be consistent
with full repeal, any replacement package should be based on
rescinding this new spending and
its flawed financing. Conservative health policy experts have
long argued that there was plenty of
spending in the health care system before Obamacare to fund
reform.
1.
Stabilize and liberate the health care market. Obamacare
overhauled the health care sector
through thousands of pages of legislation and regulation
resulting in massive disruption of the
market and -- more importantly -- existing coverage of everyday

Americans. To avoid repeating
2.
January 15, 2016
whats-next-fo...
1 of 2 2/14/2016 4:47 PM
this catastrophe, Congress must be careful to organize reforms
in a practical fashion. In
particular, this includes allowing the marketplace time to adjust
to a less prescriptive regulatory
landscape before locking in new financing reforms.
Make financing simpler, transparent and direct to individuals.
Obamacare’s failures are a result
of the law’s fundamental design flaws. As my colleague Ed
Haislmaier argues “The complexity
and cascade of adverse effects are the inescapable byproduct of
the law’s basic design.” Thus,
rather than funneling support indirectly to third-party entities
for providing care and services,
any replacement package should direct financing to individuals
so that they have personal
ownership and the freedom to choose the health care that best
suits their needs.
3.
The Senate’s recent efforts to maximize the reconciliation
process to repeal major elements of

Obamacare should encourage reformers. Of course, more can be
done to expand its reach, but the
initiative provided an important test run -- and down payment
on lawmakers’ commitment to voters
-- to repeal the law.
Reconciliation shows repeal is possible. Now is the time to
show that replacing Obamacare is
possible too. To do that, Congress should spend the next year
building a framework for a patient-
centered, market-based alternative that empowers individuals to
control the dollars and decisions
regarding their health care.
Owcharenko is The Heritage Foundation’s Preston A. Wells, Jr.,
fellow and director of the think tank’s Center
for Health Policy Studies.
This piece originally appeared in The Hill's "Congress Blog."
The Hill
©2016 The Heritage Foundation
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