If life under ObamaCare is as wonderful as supporters tell us, how come Harry Reid is keeping his staffers from enjoying it?
As part of the Affordable Care Act, members of Congress and their office staffers are required to purchase their health insurance through the new ObamaCare exchanges. But Reid is the Senate majority leader. And he has just taken advantage of a loophole in the law that allows leaders in Congress to exempt their committee or leadership staffs.
It makes for an illuminating contrast. On the Republican side, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have declined to carve out exemptions for their staffers, even though these men opposed the law.
By contrast, Reid helped push the bill through. When it passed, he said, “This is the change that we were sent to Washington to deliver.” Yet it is this same Harry Reid — alone among congressional leaders, Democrat or Republican — who now invokes a loophole to ensure that his own people are shielded from a law he claims as one of his proudest achievements.
Now, we understand why these staffers would want an exclusion. For notwithstanding the official party line that people will find plans under ObamaCare superior to the ones they are losing, those most responsible for this law know better.
And in this smelly exception Reid has given his leadership staff, we have the essence of today’s Washington: a political class that doesn’t want to live by the same rules it imposes on the American people.