Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Former Obama Administration Staffers Now Making Money Off Obamacare

After examining the harmful impacts of Obamacare on so many segments of the population—seniors, doctors, and future generations—we’ve finally found one constituency for whom the unpopular law has proved an unmitigated boon: high-priced lobbyists.

The Hill reports on how dozens of former staffers who wrote and implemented the law are now “cashing in,” trading their expertise for big bucks:

ObamaCare has become big business for an elite network of Washington lobbyists and consultants who helped shape the law from the inside. More than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law have set up shop on K Street since 2010….

“When [Vice President] Biden leaned over [during healthcare signing] and said to [President] Obama, ‘This is a big f’n deal,’” said Ivan Adler, a headhunter at the McCormick Group, “he was right.”

As the article notes, these high-priced lobbying firms and their clients are searching for “expert help,” both to understand the law—we did have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it, remember—and to lobby bureaucrats into making regulatory changes. Hence “widespread complaints from businesses and their lobbyists” led to a delay in the employer mandate.

And it’s not just big businesses and their K Street lobbyists receiving special treatment under Obamacare. Unions received their waivers—although they’re now lobbying for yet another exemption from the law. Congress recently got in on the act, lobbying behind closed doors for its own illegal relief, to keep taxpayer-funded health insurance subsidies going to Members of Congress and their staffs.

This is the type of behavior—shady backroom deals like the “Louisiana Purchase” and the “Cornhusker Kickback”—that helped make Obamacare so unpopular when Congress rammed it through more than three years ago.

There’s one easy way to put a stop to this unfair, unworkable, and unpopular law: Congress should embrace the opportunity to defund Obamacare now.

This post was originally published at The Daily Signal.