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10 Days And Counting: Romney Adviser Won’t Say If He Would Repeal Obama’s DREAM Directive

It has been 10 days since President Obama announced his new policy to protect DREAM Act-eligible young adults from deportation, and even after Mitt Romney’s immigration speech last week, the GOP presidential candidate’s campaign still won’t say if he would keep the policy in place.

Instead, Romney adviser Ed Gillespie told CNN’s Candy Crowley Sunday morning that the former governor would review and potentially repeal all of Obama’s executive actions if elected. And Gillespie dismissed Obama’s directive to stop deportations as a politically motivated move to win Latino voters:

GILLESPIE: Between now and November, it’s clear that the Oval Office is an extension of the Obama campaign headquarters and they’re going to make a lot of political moves, and there are a lot of other target demographics that the president will try to appeal to with executive actions.

CROWLEY: [...] But you can’t tell me today whether he would leave that in place?

GILLESPIE: What I’m telling you is that all of these are subject to review and repeal.

Watch it:

Health

10 Things You Would Miss About Obamacare

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act this week and could potentially strike down part or the whole of ‘Obamacare.’ Below are 10 things you will miss about the law if the justices invalidate it:

1) Access to health insurance for 30 million Americans and lower premiums. More than 30 million uninsured Americans will find coverage under the law. Middle-class families who buy health care coverage through the exchanges will be eligible for refundable and advanceable premium credits and cost-sharing subsidies to ensure that the coverage they have is affordable.

2) The ability of businesses and individuals to purchase comprehensive coverage from a regulated marketplace. The law creates new marketplaces for individuals and small businesses to compare and purchase comprehensive coverage. Insurers will have to meet quality measures to ensure that Americans can access comprehensive coverage when they need it.

3) Insurers’ inability to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. Beginning in 2014, insurers can no longer deny insurance to families or individuals with pre-existing conditions. Insurers are also prohibited from placing lifetime limits on the dollar value of coverage and rescinding insurers except in cases of fraud. Insurers are already prohibited from discriminating against children with pre-existing conditions.

4) Tax credits for small businesses that offer insurance. Small employers that purchase health insurance for employees are already receiving tax credits to encourage them to continue providing coverage.

5) Assistance for businesses that provide health benefits to early retirees.The law created a temporary reinsurance program for employers providing health insurance coverage to retirees over age 55 who are not eligible for Medicare, reimbursing employers or insurers for 80% of retiree claims. The program has offered at least $4.73 billion in reinsurance payments to more than 2,800 employers and other sponsors of retiree plans, with an average cumulative reimbursement per plan sponsor of approximately $189,700.

6) Affordable health care for lower-income Americans. Obamacare extends Medicaid to individuals with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty line, guaranteeing that the nation’ most vulnerable population has access to affordable, comprehensive coverage.

7) Investments in women’s health. Obamacare prohibits insurers from charging women substantially more than men and requires insurers to offer preventive services — including contraception — at no additional cost.

8) Young adults’ ability to stay on their parents’ health care plans. More than 3.1 million young people have already benefited from dependent coverage, which allows children up to age 26 to remain insured on their parents’ plans.

9) Discounts for seniors on brand-name drugs. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are required to provide a 50% discount on prescriptions filled in the Medicare Part D coverage gap. Seniors have already saved $3.5 billion on prescription drug costs thanks to the Affordable Care Act provision.

10) Temporary coverage for the sickest Americans. The law established temporary national high-risk pools that are providing health coverage to individuals with pre-existing medical conditions who cannot find insurance on the individual market. In 2014, they will be able to enroll in insurance through the exchanges. 67,482 individuals have already benefited from the program.

Tell Congress that you stand with Obamacare by adding your name here.

Justice

Romney Adviser Faults Obama For Failing To Pass DREAM Act, Which Romney Pledged To Veto

Throughout the GOP presidential primary, Mitt Romney has repeatedly said that he opposes the DREAM Act and has even pledged to veto the measure if it ever found its way to his desk. But on Sunday morning, Romney adviser Carlos Gutierrez blamed Democrats for the DREAM Act’s failure in Congress:

GUTIERREZ: Before an election, let’s promise something to Hispanics. That bill had things in there that couldn’t get bipartisan support. Republicans said don’t ram that bill now, we’re in the middle of an election year and you did it anyway knowing that it wouldn’t pass. But it didn’t matter, you made the promise, you got the Hispanic vote, and that has been the pattern. This administration has played with Hispanics.

Watch the video:

Romney has dodged questions on President Obama’s recent immigration directive to protect undocumented young adults. Instead, he has promised a “long-term” solution without specifying what that would be, other than policy making undocumented immigrants’ lives so miserable they choose “self-deportation.”

During the Republican primaries, Romney attacked Governor Rick Perry for Texas’ incarnation of the DREAM Act, calling it a “magnet for illegal immigration.” Gutierrez may claim the Obama administration has “played” with Hispanics with the DREAM promise, but his preferred candidate has clarified no plan of his own.

Economy

Romney Adviser Hits Back On Bain Offshoring: Obama Is ‘Outsourcing’ Jobs To Nebraska!

Mitt Romney’s campaign is responding to evidence that Bain Capital invested in companies that sent American jobs overseas by accusing the Obama administration of “outsourcing” telemarketing jobs to Omaha, Nebraska.

During an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Romney adviser Ed Gillespie continued the campaign’s dubious strategy of schooling reporters on the difference between “outsourcing” and “offshoring” jobs, insisting that a Washington Post investigation — which found that Romney’s company “invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India” — misunderstood the complicated business jargon.

Gillespie said that he was “not aware” if companies tied to Bain shipped jobs overseas, before adding, “what happened in the story as near I can tell is that the reporter confused the notion of outsourcing.” “Now a lot of American companies outsource, they outsource domestically,” he said, noting that the Obama campaign outsources jobs to Nebraska and CNN contracts out video editing projects.

Pressed by host Candy Crowley, Gillispie seemed to deny that the companies featured in the Post story set up operations in foreign countries, but suggested that some of the firms Bain invested in did, in fact, ship jobs overseas:

CROWLEY: But your statement today that those companies, while he was head of Bain, did not outsource jobs?

GILLESPIE: In the Washington Post article, which is what we went back and looked at, no.

CROWLEY: So those specific companies, but there might be other companies…

GILLESPIE: Those specific companies are the ones we checked because that was the story and again I would encourage you to have the Washington Post reporter on and see if they can demonstrate to you or to the American voters the validity of the headline that was on that story, because like I say it was a breathless headline, but a baseless story.

Watch it:

The Washington Post headline read, “Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas” and offered six examples — McKinsey Global Institute, Corporate Software Inc., Stream International Inc., Modus Media Inc., GT Bicycle Inc., SMTC Corp. — of companies that shifted jobs out of America. Gillespie did not provide any evidence to contradict that claim.

Update

Romney advier Eric Fehrnstrom similarly attacked the Obama campaign for “outsourcing” jobs to other places in the United States during an appearance on Face the Nation and claimed that the companies listed in the Washington Post stories were expanding in other countries, not sending American jobs overseas.

Justice

GOP Oversight Chair Admits There Is No Evidence Of White House Involvement In Fast And Furious

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)

Last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) claimed that the White House decision to invoke executive privilege to prevent the release of some documents related to the “Fast and Furious” investigation indicated some sort of admission of a White House cover-up. Today, pressed by Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) admitted that there is absolutely no evidence to back up Boehner’s allegation:

WALLACE: Do you have any evidence that White House officials were involved in these decisions, that they knowingly misled Congress, and are involved in a cover-up?

ISSA: No, we don’t. And what we are seeking are documents that we know to exist, February 4 to December [2011] that are in fact about [murdered Border Patrol agent] Brian Terry’s murder, who knew, and why people were lying about it…

WALLACE: I want to be clear, because we’ve got to get out, no evidence that the White House is involved in the cover up?

ISSA: And I hope they don’t get involved.

Watch the video:

Given that Boehner was first elected to Congress in 1990, he should certainly know better than to infer that “executive privilege” has to involve White House officials. Every administration over his lengthy Congressional tenure has asserted “deliberative process privilege” and as recently as 2008, Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey rejected congressional subpoenas for reports of Department of Justice interviews with the White House staff regarding the Valerie Plame Wilson identify leak investigation citing the same privilege.

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