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Sen. DeMint: People With Pre-Existing Conditions Actually Got Better Health Care Before Obamacare

By Annie-Rose Strasser and Scott Keyes on Mar 28, 2012 at 10:13 am

WASHINGTON, DC — Though one of the key successes — and most popular aspects — of the Affordable Care Act is the provision banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) thinks they were better off before the law passed.

ThinkProgress spoke with DeMint outside a tea party rally nearby where the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the constitutionality of the individual mandate. The second-term South Carolina senator called the pre-existing condition clause simply an “excuse for government to run health care.” We asked whether people with such conditions would get less health care under Obamacare than they did prior to its enactment. “They probably will,” declared DeMint.

DEMINT: I can guarantee you people with pre-exisitng conditions are going to get less health care—lower quality health care—under Obamacare than they would under a state-run plan.

KEYES: Do you think they get less health care under Obamacare than they did before Obamacare was enacted?

DEMINT: They probably will. It will definitely cost more for everyone and it will be inefficient and it won’t be as patient-focused. And so we need to make sure that we do the thing the right way and there are ways that everyone can have insurance, and that’s our goal.

Watch it:

While DeMint may think care will be worse for those with pre-existing conditions, this is simply not true. Nearly 50,000 people previously turned down because of a pre-existing condition have already been able to receive health care because of the ACA and the new Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan that the law created. Already, health care reform has stopped discrimination against children with pre-existing conditions. By 2014, that same law will apply to all adults, ensuring that everyone with an existing medical problem is able to get the care they need.

Republicans are currently pushing for the repeal of the ACA as the Supreme Court hears a case on the constitutionality of the individual mandate section of the law. If the mandate were to be repealed, health insurers would likely have to once again deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, because it would be unsustainable to have an insurance pool made up of only “high risk” people.

Yet for DeMint, that world where insurance companies could deny health insurance to people with pre-existing conditions is not only preferable, but somehow better for such people. If Republicans get their wish, DeMint’s vision may soon be realized at the expense of health care for millions of Americans with existing medical problems.

Justice

DeMint Joins The Mike Lee Club, Will Oppose All Judicial Nominees

By Ian Millhiser on Mar 9, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Earlier this year, Tea Party Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) announced that he would oppose each of President Obama’s nominees in retaliation for the fact that Lee believed the president’s recent recess appointments to be unconstitutional. Lee also believes that national child labor laws, Social Security, Medicare, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, and income assistance for the poor are unconstitutional.

Regrettably, Lee’s fellow Tea Partier Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has now decided to follow Lee’s lead:

DeMint, who voted last fall for two Obama judicial choices from South Carolina, said he’s now rejecting all of the president’s nominees to protest his winter recess appointments of four controversial nominees to avoid GOP opposition.

“President Obama has shown a complete disdain for the people’s elected representatives and our duty to advise and consent on nominations,” DeMint told McClatchy.

“Unless he revokes his unprecedented recess appointments that defied the constitutional role of Congress, I don’t intend to support any of his judicial nominees this year,” DeMint said.

Needless to say, Lee and DeMint are wrong about the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments. They and many of their fellow congressional Republicans have argued that the Senate can defeat the president’s recess appointments power by having a single senator hit the Senate’s gavel twice every three days (this is not an exaggeration). Yet, as two of President George W. Bush’s top constitutional advisors explained in 2010, the question of whether the president can make recess appointments does not turn on whether the Senate engages in some empty formality, rather, “the question ‘is whether in a practical sense the Senate is in session so that its advice and consent can be obtained.’”

Because the Senate was out of town and conducting no business when the president named his recent recess appointments, there is no good reason to doubt their constitutionality.

Justice

Right Wing Groups Spend Over $1 Million To Elect Senate Candidate With Fringe Constitutional Theories

By Josh Israel on Jan 20, 2012 at 6:30 pm

Texas Republican Senate candidate Ted Cruz

Senate candidate Ted Cruz (R-TX)

While most of the coverage of skyrocketing spending by SuperPACs and tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organizations has focused on the tens of millions going to presidential campaign attack ads, one statewide candidate has been the beneficiary of $1.1 million in spending by right-wing groups already this cycle — a radical attorney named Ted Cruz.

Cruz, a former Texas state solicitor general, is seeking the Republican nomination for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s (R-TX) open senate seat. Although his two primary opponents have raised much more in campaign cash to date, every “independent expenditure” reported for the race, to date, has been aimed at helping Cruz’s candidacy or hurting his opponents.

Yesterday, Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-SC) Senate Conservatives Fund reported spending $500,000 on a pro-Cruz independent expenditure. Likewise, the conservative Club for Growth, Club for Growth Action, and former Rep. Dick Armey’s (R-TX) FreedomWorks have spent more than $634,000 on pro-Cruz ads and over $468,000 on ads bashing primary opponent Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for being a “moderate.”

So what’s so exciting about Cruz that far right groups are willing to pay top dollar to put him in the Senate? Cruz excited anti-government groups with his unconstitutional proposal for a backdoor method of state nullification of federal laws and the Affordable Care Act. He co-authored a white paper advocating a radical reading of the Constitution that would lead to Medicaid and most federal education programs being declared unconstitutional, and he supports an equally radical plan to privatize much of Social Security.

Moreover, if Cruz is elected, he would quickly find several new friends who share his inability to distinguish the Constitution from the Tea Party’s policy preferences. Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Rand Paul (R-KY) have all pushed even more radical efforts to declare much of the Twentieth Century unconstitutional.

Economy

70 Percent Of The Cuts In GOP Sen. DeMint’s Deficit Reduction Plan Target Low-Income People

By Pat Garofalo on Dec 19, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Last month, Tea Party favorite Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) released a budget plan along with GOP Sens. Rand Paul (KY) and Mike Lee (UT) that purports to cut $5 trillion out of the federal budget over 10 years. The plan included about $4.2 trillion in direct spending cuts (with the rest coming from reduced interest payments on the debt and the sale of government assets).

The senators claim that these reductions are simply “real, sustainable spending cuts.” However, as McClatchy reported, about 70 percent of the deficit reduction in DeMint’s plan is placed right onto the backs of low-income Americans:

A plan by Republican U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina to slash the federal budget deficit would hit the poorest Americans especially hard, directing 70 percent of its $4.2 trillion in spending cuts at safety-net programs intended to help tens of millions of low-income people.

The plan proposes $20 billion in cuts that would affect the affluent. It suggests almost $3 trillion in cuts that would affect low-income Americans, leading one liberal economist to call the plan “cruel.”

“It’s cruel,” said Andrew Fieldhouse of the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s inexcusable to cut supports that help those adversely affected by the economic downturn.” Alan Viard, who was on the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, added that “this plan places a disproportionate burden on low-income groups.”

Even with tax revenue at a 60 year low, DeMint proposes no new revenue other than from one-time sale of government assets, which is obviously not a sustainable revenue source. Interestingly, he also does nothing on Medicare, even while walloping Medicaid and means testing Social Security.

This is hardly the first time that DeMint has been the right-wing id on economic policy, as he also put forth the Senate Republican stimulus plan, which consisted of nothing but huge tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. He simply shows what the right-wing would do if it had absolute control of the budget: gut the social safety net while largely sparing the richest Americans any pain.

LGBT

DeMint Blocks Confirmation Of El Salvador’s Ambassador Because She Condemned Homophobia

By Igor Volsky on Dec 13, 2011 at 9:40 am

Last night, Senate Republicans blocked the confirmation of Mari Carmen Aponte, President Barack Obama’s nominee to be ambassador to El Salvador in a vote of 49 to 37. Aponte has served as ambassador since September 2010 as a recess appointee.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) led the Republican campaign against the lawyer and Hispanic activist, raising questions “over unfounded rumors that her boyfriend of years ago was a Cuban spy” and her support for Salvadorean President Mauricio Funes’ Decree 56, “which prohibits all forms of discrimination by the government of El Salvador on the basis of sexual orientation or identity.” On June 28, Aponte penned an op-ed praising the Funes’ directive, writing, “No one should be subjected to aggression because of who he is or who he loves. Homophobia and brutal hostility are often based on lack of understanding about what it truly means to be gay or transgender. To avoid negative perceptions, we must work together with education and support for those facing those who promote hatred.” Anti-gay groups in El Salvador and DeMint objected to the sentiment:

DEMINT: Ms. Aponte has enflamed tensions in the same country she should be improving diplomatic relations. Her decision to publish an opinion piece hostile to the culture of El Salvadorians present even more doubts about her fitness for the job. This op-ed upset a large number of community and pro-life groups in El Salvador who were insulted by Ms. Aponte’s rhetoric. A coalition of more than three dozen groups has since written the Senate asking its members to oppose Ms. Aponte’s confirmation. I quote from their letter in which they wrote, “we respectfully request that Ms. Aponte be removed from post as soon as possible so that El Salvador may enjoy the benefits of having a person as a government representative of your nobile country.”

Watch it:

As Aponte explained, “The OpEd reflects the policies of the Obama administration, the Salvadorean government and sixty-three other countries,” she said to La Prensa, “It was not drafted as an insult to anyone.” But during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in November, DeMint took it upon himself to “apologize” to the groups “on behalf of the United States and reassure them that most Americans share their values.”

Economy

Republican Senators Push False Argument That Payroll Tax Cut Will Undermine Social Security

By Travis Waldron on Dec 7, 2011 at 2:10 pm

As some Republicans, including Majority Leader Eric Cantor (VA), are growing worried that opposing a payroll tax cut extension will undercut their message as anti-tax zealots, other Republicans have opposed the extension at every turn. Despite their staunch opposition to raising taxes on millionaires, these Republicans have cycled through the reasons to avoid providing a tax cut to the middle class that would allow the average family to pocket an extra $1,000 a year.

The latest argument to emerge from the GOP has been that extending the payroll tax cut would undermine Social Security, since payroll tax revenue goes directly into the Social Security Trust Fund. Multiple Congressional Republicans have adopted that theory of late, including South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R), who put it to use on CNBC last night:

DEMINT: Republicans are always ready to cut taxes, as you know. We don’t think it’s a good idea to do it by raiding Social Security.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) made the same argument on Fox News earlier in the day:

PAUL: Well, you know, Social Security is $6 trillion short of money. So the president is advocating reducing the amount of funding to Social Security when they’re already $6 trillion short. So it doesn’t really make any sense and it really argues that he’s going to bankrupt Social Security even quicker by reducing it’s funding.

Watch a compilation:

That argument, which has been adopted by members of both parties and perpetuated by news outlets like NPR, has one problem: it’s not true. Each of the plans under consideration is fully paid for, replacing revenue the Social Security Trust Fund would have lost from lower payroll tax receipts with money made up from either alternative revenue sources or spending cuts. The earlier payroll tax holiday, set to expire this month, was also fully-funded, and the program has thus far “been held harmless” from the holiday, as Reuters noted today.

And while the opposition from Republicans may seem like an impassioned defense of a vital and popular program, a look at their history with the program shows it is not. DeMint has supported privatizing the program while Paul is a proponent of means testing — “solutions” that are both bad policy and unnecessary. Despite Paul’s $6 trillion assertion, Social Security actually has a $2.6 trillion surplus and is solvent through at least 2037.

And if Republicans truly want to use the payroll tax to shore up its long-term viability, there is an easy way to do that. The payroll tax is currently collected only on the first $106,800 in income; raising or eliminating that cap would make the program fully solvent for the next 75 years.

If Republicans have a cogent reason for opposing a tax cut for the middle class that is meant to stimulate the economy, they should provide it, because their current line — that such a tax cut will weaken a program many of them have sought to undermine for years — simply isn’t true.

Update

Stephen C. Goss, the Chief Actuary of Social Security, said today that the Social Security Trust Fund “would be unaffected by enactment” of a payroll tax cut extension, according to a statement circulated by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA). The Congressional Budget Office agreed, saying all lost revenue would be offset.

Update

Joe Sonka, a reporter for LEO Weekly in Louisville, Kentucky points out that in addition to means testing, Paul has also supported privatizating Social Security and called it a Ponzi scheme, making his strident defense of the program now seem even more insincere.

LGBT

DeMint Accuses El Salvadorian Ambassador Of ‘Promoting The Homosexual Lifestyle’

By Igor Volsky on Nov 21, 2011 at 9:15 am

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is attempting to derail the confirmation of Mari Carmen Aponte — who President Obama recess appointed as his ambassador to El Salvador in August 2010 — out of concerns that she is “promoting the homosexual lifestyle” in the Latin American nation, Andrés Duque of Blabbeando reports. During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing earlier this month, DeMint read from an op-ed Aponte wrote commemorating Salvadorean President Mauricio Funes’ Decree 56, “which prohibits all forms of discrimination by the government of El Salvador on the basis of sexual orientation or identity,” and insinuated that the piece insulted “pro-family” groups in El Salvador and the United States:

DEMINT: In her OpEd, Ms. Aponte, presuming to represent the view of all Americans, in strongly promoting the homosexual lifestyle, wrote that “everyone has the responsibility to inform our neighbors and friends about what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.” The OpEd upset a large number of community and pro-family groups in El Salvador who were insulted by Ms. Aponte’s attempt to impose a pro-gay agenda in their country.

I would also like to ask unanimous consent to submit, for the record, a response to the OpEd from a coalition of more than three dozen groups and a letter from Salvadorean groups to the United States Senate asking the Senate to oppose Ms. Aponte’s confirmation and I quote “We respectfully request that Ms. Aponte be removed from her post as soon as possible so that El Salvador may enjoy the benefits of having a person as a government representative of your noble country.”

I would like to apologize to the Salvadorean people on behalf of the United States and reassure them that most Americans share their values. Ms. Aponte’s personal, professional and political contact over many years raises numerous questions of judgement. I will vote ‘no on Ms. Aponte’s confirmation and strongly recommend my colleagues do the same.

Watch it:

But as Aponte explained, “The OpEd reflects the policies of the Obama administration, the Salvadorean government and sixty-three other countries,” she said to La Prensa, “It was not drafted as an insult to anyone.”

DeMint is “urging the U.S. Senate not to appoint Aponte as U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador based on an OpEd in which she saluted the government of El Salvador for their own initiatives to protect their LGBT populations” — a move that shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with DeMint’s record on LGBT equality. In October of 2010, the senator “said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.”

Climate Progress

Irony Can Be So Ironic: Anti-Science, Anti-EPA Jim DeMint Says Inhaler Ban Will “Hurt Quality of Life”

By Stephen Lacey on Nov 1, 2011 at 2:49 pm

In an ironic show of concern for asthma sufferers everywhere, South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint has been leading a charge against a federal ban on Primatene Mist inhalers, saying the ban will harm “quality of life for Americans.”

But as one of the most outspoken climate science deniers in Congress, DeMint has consistently supported policies that would lead to increases in rates of asthma, not decreases. In August, a team of researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine found that increasing levels of ozone from human-induced climate change would lead to 7% more emergency room visits due to asthma attacks among children under the age of 17.

Over the years, DeMint has consistently voted to stop regulation of greenhouse gases, voted against raising fuel standards for automobiles, and voted against expanding mercury standards. The League of Conservation Voters gave DeMint a lifetime score of 7 on his environmental record. No, that’s not 7 out of 10. That’s 7 out of 100.

Politico reports on DeMint’s amendment — which was just voted down in the Senate — that would have prevented the Food and Drug Administration from banning a specific type of inhaler:

Read more

Health

GOP Senator Pushes Radical Bill To Restrict Discussion Of Abortion Over The Internet

By Marie Diamond on Oct 19, 2011 at 1:15 pm

Instead of focusing on job creation, congressional Republicans have spent their time passing socially conservative legislation like the “Let Women Die” bill that would allow hospitals that receive federal funds to deny women life-saving abortion procedures.

Now Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), one of the most die-hard anti-choice lawmakers, has jumped on the bandwagon by sneaking a radical anti-abortion amendment onto a completely unrelated piece of legislation. DeMint’s amendment would ban women and their doctors from discussing abortion over the Internet:

Anti-choice Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) just filed an anti-choice amendment to a bill related to agriculture, transportation, housing, and other programs. The DeMint amendment could bar discussion of abortion over the Internet and through videoconferencing, even if a woman’s health is at risk and if this kind of communication with her doctor is her best option to receive care.

Under this amendment, women would need a separate, segregated Internet just for talking about abortion care with their doctors.

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said DeMint is essentially mandating “an abortion-only version of Skype.” She points out that a woman with high-risk pregnancy talking to her doctor through video conferencing would have to somehow switch to a separate communications system if abortion came up at all. “It is impractical, ridiculous, and, most importantly, bad for women in rural or remote areas who would not be able to discuss the full set of options with their doctor,” Keenan said.

DeMint’s bill is yet another Republican attempt to circumvent women’s constitutional right to an abortion by essentially outlawing doctors from discussing that option with their patients. These so-called “small government” conservatives have no problem inserting government into private conversations between women and their doctors.

To add insult to injury, DeMint’s underhanded method is to shoehorn this attack on women’s privacy onto an unrelated bill — an insidious effort to push his agenda while avoiding public scrutiny.

Economy

DeMint Is ‘Willing’ To Cause ‘Serious Disruptions’ To U.S. Economy Over Debt Ceiling

By Tanya Somanader on Jul 7, 2011 at 2:10 pm

As the Aug. 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling approaches, Republicans lawmakers are inching closer to the economic cliff over their stubborn refusal to close unfair tax loopholes and raise tax rates on the wealthy. The GOP’s lead lemming is Tea Party leader Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). Last night on Fox’s Freedom Watch with host Andrew Napolitano, DeMint blamed the Obama administration for purposefully “burning time” to bring about this fiscal crisis. Urging Republicans to maintain their intransigence on the debt ceiling, DeMint said he’d be “willing to” cause “serious disruptions” in the economy to secure significant cuts and a balanced budget:

DEMINT: The reason the president hasn’t addressed the issue even though we knew it was facing us, and this is the fourth time he’s asked for an increase in the debt limit, he has been burning time — that’s what [Vice President Joe] Biden was supposed to do is get the Republicans behind closed doors — is burn the clock up until we have a crisis. So now we’re at the point where there would have to be some serious disruptions in order not to raise it. I’m willing to do that, I just don’t think we can find enough of Republicans and Democrats to say it’s time to stop spending.

Watch it:

A brief survey of such “disruptions” include an immediate cut of nearly 40 percent from the federal budget, a 2.3 percent drop in GDP, a freeze on billions in Social Security payments, a disruption of payments for Medicare, Medicaid, and military active duty pay, a “double-dip contraction” in the already fragile U.S. housing market, a severe blow to America’s creditworthiness, an inevitable increase in unemployment, and ultimately, a direct shove back into a recession.

DeMint and his Republican colleagues, however, view all of this as no big deal. Nonetheless, DeMint’s complete dismissal of the looming economic disaster he’s willing to cause will earn him nothing but blame from the American people.

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