Congressional Rewards

            The signal achievement of President Obama's first term was the signing into law of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare.  It was passed without time to review its contents ("We have to pass it to know what's in it." _ Nancy Pelosi) and without a single Republic vote.    The engineer and the passengers on the train that brought us ObamaCare (a train wreck, as Democratic Senator Max Baucus calls it), are all Democrats.  Put simply, the Democratic Party owns ObamaCare.

            Now it turns out that these same Democrats don't like the way ObamaCare applies to them.  According to the law they wrote and passed in the dead of night, they would  be subject to the same rules as the common people.  They would even have to buy their own health insurance.  Imagine that!  But why should they be treated like everybody else?  They are, after all, the privileged, the elite, the ruling class. 
            So what did they do?  They appealed to President Obama for help.  More than happy to reward his co-conspirators for their continued fealty,  he obliged.
            This is not the first time Obama has modified the law in defiance of the Constitution.  Within weeks of the bill's passage  he gave waivers to 2,000 select companies and his buddies in the labor unions.  Then last month he postponed for a year the law's requirement for employers to provide insurance for their employees.  Now, using a slick and illegal maneuver via the Office of Personnel Management, he's given members of Congress and their aides  $4,900 ($10,000 for families) in taxpayer money to offset their insurance costs.  Like his actions to circumvent the law on DOMA, the Dream Act, and Cap and Trade, the man who swore to uphold the law of the land is once again picking the laws he chooses to enforce or disregard.  
            The president's shameful conduct violates a specific provision in the Affordable Care Act that prohibits this special treatment.   Several Republican congressmen have called him out on this, as have Conservative media outlets.  But where is the outrage in the liberal media?  Why do they give the president a pass on this as they do every time he issues executive orders that bypass Congress and amount to legislating from the White House? 
            Why do we put up with it?  We should all be screaming bloody murder.  I hope lawmakers hear it from their constituents at town hall meetings during their summer recess.
            There is one legislator, however, who does not intend to benefit from presidential generosity for very long.  Tom Coburn, Republican Senator from Oklahoma and a great favorite of mine, is not running for re-election in 2014. He is imposing a term limit on himself, keeping his promise not to stay in the Senate for more than two terms.   Why can't we have more like him?  Wouldn't it be nice to clean out that rat's nest in Washington?