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Home > Blogs > Ohio politics > Archives > 2011 > February > 02
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Senate effort to repeal health care law fails; Ohio senators speak out
By Jack Torry Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - With Senate Democrats Wednesday night blocking GOP efforts to repeal last year’s health care law, congressional Republicans hope to push through a wave of smaller bills as a way to slowly pick apart the key sections of the law.
By a vote of 51-47, the Republicans fell 13 votes of killing the law, which is the signature domestic achievement of President Barack Obama’s first two years in office. It provides insurance to 32 million people currently without coverage.
Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio joined 46 other Republicans in voting to scrap the law, while Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, 49 other Senate Democrats and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont voted to retain it.
Because the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the bill would save $230 billion over the next decade, Senate rules required 60 votes to repeal the law. Republicans have dismissed the budget saving projections as unrealistic.
Despite the vote, the law remains under fierce assault in the courts and by the Republican-controlled U.S. House, which voted last month to repeal the measure.
A federal judge in Florida this week invalidated the entire law, while a federal judge in Virginia in December struck down the law’s requirement that Americans buy insurance or face financial penalties. But last year, two other federal judges ruled the law was constitutional, setting up an all but certain road to the U.S. Supreme Court to determine the fate of the law.
Moments after the Senate vote, House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester Twp., said that “this debate has just begun.’’ In a statement, he said “the need for repeal continues to become more clear, whether it’s in the courts or the court of public opinion.’’
Boehner vowed to “continue working to repeal this job-destroying health care law and replace it with common sense reforms that lower costs and increase access without putting more Americans out of work.’’
Adopting a more conciliatory stance, Portman expressed the hope that the combination of the repeal votes in both houses along with this week’s court ruling “would bring people together’’ in both parties to “figure out how we take this legislation and change it.’’
“I am so concerned about the way this law is affecting our economy that I’m hoping in any and all ways to improve it,’’ Portman told Ohio reporters in a conference call after the vote. In the House, the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee hopes to round up the votes to kill the individual mandate and scrap the independent payment advisory board, which is supposed to suggest ways to limit spending on Medicare, which covers health costs for the elderly. But any Republican effort to dramatically revise the law would meet with intense opposition from Obama.
In a Senate floor speech Tuesday evening, Brown complained that Republicans “don’t really want to fix” the law because “they have offered nothing to fix it.’’
He castigated Republican calls to allow insurance companies to sell insurance across state lines and to curb expensive lawsuits against physicians and medical providers, saying “that might insure 2 million or 3 million more people … nothing substantive that matters in people’s lives.’’
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TweetSen. Jones introduces bill to ban state employee collective bargaining
Sen. Shannon Jones, R-Clearcreek Twp., has introduced Senate Bill 5, a ban on collective bargaining by state employees.
The bill was unveiled Tuesday as part of the Republican-controlled Senate’s priority legislation.
“Taxpayers of Ohio expect government to deliver quality services without the significant cost increases they have experienced over the past two decades,” Jones said in a press release.
“Seriously examining collective bargaining must be part of the effort to accomplish those goals.”
Opposition from labor leaders has begun to form.
“This is a blatant attack on working people and political payback that goes against the will of the people,” Becky Williams, president of SEIU District 1199 which represents over 9,000 public sector workers in Ohio, said in a press release.
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TweetBrown cosponsoring bill that would develop technology to keep drunks from starting cars
By Jack Torry Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Sen. Sherrod Brown will co-sponsor a bill that would authorize the federal government to spend $60 million during the next five years to develop new technologies that would keep people who have been drinking heavily from starting their cars.
The bill, introduced last year by Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico, is aimed at dramatically reducing the number of Americans killed every year in drunken-driving crashes. In 2009, about 324 people in Ohio died in 2009 in alcohol-related crashes and 19,000 more were arrested for DUI.
“We know drunken driving and its impact cuts across communities,’’ Brown said in a conference call Wednesday with Ohio reporters. “More than one-third of all traffic fatalities are caused by drunken driving.’’
The bill would help create a partnership among the government, the automotive industry and organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving to develop the technologies that would be less expensive and less noticeable than ignition locks, which prevent people who have been drinking heavily from starting their cars.
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TweetLawmakers unveil plan to ban late-term abortions in Ohio
The Ohio Right to Life Society and Ohio House Republicans on Wednesday unveiled three bills aimed at limiting and regulating abortions.
With Republicans who oppose abortion now holding key Statehouse leadership posts, they expressed optimism for passage during this session of the legislature.
During the previous two years, Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland and the Democratic-controlled House resisted legislation pushed by Ohio Right to Life and the group’s allies.
“I am so glad on Nov. 2 that voters sought a different direction for us,” Rep. Danny Bubp, part of the new House GOP majority, said at a press conference.
Mike Gonidakis, Right to Life executive director, said at a Statehouse press conference that “we’re going to pour everything we have” into getting the bills passed.
Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio used a press release to criticize the proposals.
“Sadly, none of these bills do anything to prevent unplanned pregnancies, decrease pregnancy complications or increase access to prenatal care,” Copeland said in the release.
The bills:
Prohibits late-term abortions except when necessary to prevent the death of the mother or a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.
Revises the process of judicial bypass that permits minors to get a judge’s permission to bypass the parental consent requirement to obtain an abortion. Would require the minor to prove her case by presenting “clear and convincing” evidence and impose other requirements.
Prohibits coverage of non-therapeutic abortions in insurance plans under the State Exchange created by the new federal health care law.
Rep. Mike Henne, R-Clayton, attended the press conference but did not speak.
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TweetKasich appoints African-American to lead largest state agency
After weeks of pressure from African-American leaders about the lack of diversity in his cabinet, Gov. John Kasich on Wednesday appointed Michael B. Colbert of Xenia to lead the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, one of the state’s largest agencies.
Colbert, 44, an African-American, has served as interim director since Douglas Lumpkin, who is also an African-American, resigned at the change of administrations. Colbert has been the chief financial officer for JFS since March 2008 and has 15 years experience as an auditor for the state Auditor’s office.
Job and Family Services has nearly 3,700 employees and a $21.6 billion annual budget. It administers Ohio Medicaid, a health insurance program for 2.1 million poor and disabled Ohioans, issues unemployment checks to 300,000 out-of-work people and welfare checks to 240,000 Ohioans, and manages a food stamp program used by 1.8 million.
Kasich has appointed 21 department directors: 17 men, 4 women. Colbert is the first and only African-American among them. Two vacancies remain: Lottery Commission director and head of the Department of Youth Services.
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