How A Divorce Can Boost Health Insurance Subsidies

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Photo Credit: iStockphoto

Photo Credit: iStockphoto

As the enrollment period continues for health coverage on the state health insurance marketplaces, people continue to have many questions about buying a plan there.

What happens with premium tax credits if a couple gets divorced? If the premium tax credit is based on the previous year’s income when the couple filed taxes jointly, many wouldn’t qualify. But once someone is divorced, one individual might have little income. What is the subsidy based on in that situation?

If a couple divorces, each person’s eligibility for premium tax credits will generally be based on his or her own annual income. The former spouse’s income won’t be counted, even if the couple filed taxes jointly the previous year.

Premium tax credits are available to people with incomes up to 400 percent of the 2013 federal poverty level ($45,960 for an individual).

During the application process, people are asked to project their income for the year. If someone estimates income that’s more than 10 percent lower than the previous year’s taxes or wage information or Social Security data would suggest, the system will flag it.

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TV Ratings: State of the Union, With 33.3 Million Viewers, Hits 14-Year Low

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Larry Downing

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Larry Downing

With final ratings in for the State of the Union address, Nielsen Media puts the grand total just shy of last year’s for a 14-year low.

The gross average audience of 13 networks airing President Barack Obama’s speech puts viewership at 33,299,172. That’s down from the 33.5 million that tuned in for the 2013 speech for its lowest showing since 2000. (President Bill Clinton’s final address in office averaged 31,478,000.)

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Ted Cruz Changes His Mind About Obamacare

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

During the summer and fall of 2013, Texas senator Ted Cruz repeatedly warned that it would be impossible to repeal Obamacare once Americans began receiving subsidies on January 1, 2014.

In the new year, Americans would become “hooked on the subsidies, addicted to the sugar,” Cruz told a Tea Party gathering in his home state on August 19, according to the Texas Tribune. “If we get to January 1, this thing is here forever.” This belief was a main justification for the last-ditch campaign to fund the government if, and only if, Obamacare was defunded.

But on a conference call Wednesday afternoon, a month after Obamacare subsidies began flowing, Cruz told reporters that he no longer believes that January 1 was the deadline to stop Obamacare. “I believe we will repeal Obamacare,” he said.

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Wasserman Schultz: ‘The President Is Going to Have to Use His Executive Authority’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Despite criticism of President Barack Obama’s pledge that he will use his executive authority and executive orders to advance his agenda regardless of Congress, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said the president “should use his executive authority.”

At the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday following the president’s State of the Union speech, CNSNews.com asked Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz, “What do you think of the criticism about using executive order(s) to get things done on climate change or [the] minimum wage?”

“Well, the ball’s in their court,” she said, in reference to Republicans in the House of Representatives. “I mean, they have an opportunity to work with him.”

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MSNBC Lionizes ‘Action Hero’ Obama as Superman, Washington Crossing the Delaware, and Uncle Sam (+video)

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Photo Credit: Newsbusters

Photo Credit: Newsbusters

MSNBC airs a bizarre video montage at the beginning of every episode of The Ed Show, but the program was especially outlandish on Monday and Wednesday, depicting President Obama as a series of larger-than-life figures. The liberal network first portrayed the chief executive as Superman standing on top of the White House, and later placed the Democrat’s head on George Washington’s body in the famed painting of the crossing of the Delaware River.

Two days later, The Ed Show lead segment repeatedly showed a graphic depicting the President as Uncle Sam, holding a pen in his boxing glove-covered hand:

After the montage on both Monday and Tuesday, host Ed Schultz gave his commentary in front of a graphic trumpeting President Obama as an “action hero,” and touted the liberal politician’s controversial vow to take executive action on several issues, as a means to motivate Congress to pass his legislative agenda.

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$20M and Counting: Feds Tackle Counterfeit Goods Ahead of Super Bowl

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The feds have already set a Super Bowl record — by seizing some $20 million worth of phony gear smuggled in from all over the world as Sunday’s game approaches.

Fake tickets good enough to gain entry to MetLife Stadium, knock-off jerseys and even sex workers descending on the biggest event in American sports are all on the radar of the Department of Homeland Security. The agency has set up a 24-hour operation at JFK airport, where they are confiscating loads of unlicensed Super Bowl paraphernalia in advance of Sunday’s game, FoxNews.com has learned.

“We have seized upwards of $20 million worth of counterfeit merchandise, most of which is related to the Super Bowl,” said Special Agent in Charge James T. Hayes of Homeland Security in New York. “We’ve executed 11 arrests so far and expect to make more in the coming days.”

Hayes said investigators have confiscated “thousands of pieces” of illegal merchandise, sent mostly from Asian countries like China. The fraudulent items include hats, jerseys and T-shirts made to look like they are officially endorsed by the National Football League for this year’s Super Bowl game between the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos as MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

“If it’s produced, it’s being counterfeited,” Hayes said. “This is the perfect environment for counterfeiters because of street vendors,” he said of New York City and areas surrounding the northern New Jersey stadium.

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Students Stranded on Buses Overnight

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Photo Credit: CNN

Photo Credit: CNN

Officials in Hoover, Alabama, were sending buses early Wednesday morning to pick up stranded motorists.

In the first run, two school buses were sent to transport as many as 100 people to local shelters, said Rusty Lowe of the Hoover fire department.

The buses will make several runs.

About 50 Atlanta school children were still stuck on buses early Wednesday morning.

The students had gotten on buses to get home shortly after noon Tuesday, but treacherous road conditions coupled with gridlocked traffic has made it impossible.

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Ted Cruz: The Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the president’s persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat. On Monday, Mr. Obama acted unilaterally to raise the minimum wage paid by federal contracts, the first of many executive actions the White House promised would be a theme of his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

The president’s taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology. The great 18th-century political philosopher Montesquieu observed: “There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates.” America’s Founding Fathers took this warning to heart, and we should too.

Rule of law doesn’t simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. That no one—and especially not the president—is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Yet rather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying and waiving portions of the laws he is charged to enforce. When Mr. Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

On many of those policy issues, reasonable minds can disagree. Mr. Obama may be right that some of those laws should be changed. But the typical way to voice that policy disagreement, for the preceding 43 presidents, has been to work with Congress to change the law. If the president cannot persuade Congress, then the next step is to take the case to the American people. As President Reagan put it: “If you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat” of electoral accountability.

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Joe Miller: The President’s Divisive Remarks

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Screen shot 2014-01-29 at 2.02.51 AMThe agenda outlined by President Obama last night can best be described as willfully divisive. Rather than look for common ground, he offered only more controversial proposals like amnesty, climate change, higher taxes, and back-door gun control. And to make matters worse, he again threatened to indulge his totalitarian instincts by circumventing Congress, should it fail to submit to his agenda.

It’s very unfortunate that this president is so resistant to the evidence of his failed economic policies that his only response after five years of stagnation is to double down on redistribution, crony capitalism, and more government intervention. Nothing was more telling than his glowing words for Obamacare, without so much as an acknowledgement of the hardships it has forced on millions of Americans.

And what should be particularly concerning to Alaskans, is the President’s threats to set more land aside as designated wilderness. It’s not hard to see where that is going: more federal control, less development, fewer jobs, and even less revenue for State priorities.

It’s time to return to fiscal sanity, get government out of the way, and offer Alaskans real opportunity by returning to the time-tested free-market principles that built the world’s largest economy over the last 230 years.

State of the Union 2014: Obama Calls For ‘Year of Action’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By JENNIFER EPSTEIN.

President Barack Obama outlined plans Tuesday to make 2014 his year of action — using his executive authorities wherever possible while encouraging Congress to go even further.

Obama took on a more pragmatic tone than in previous State of the Union addresses, acknowledging that getting his agenda past House Republicans was unlikely and therefore he would use his power to do what he can on his own.

While most of the language was not partisan, the implication was clear — the president is tired of engaging in futile battles with the GOP. Striking a contrast to congressional inaction, Obama highlighted a dozen executive actions, including an executive order announced earlier Tuesday to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for federal contract workers and plans to speed up ConnectEd, which aims to bring high-speed Internet access to 99 percent of schools within five years.

Obama didn’t entirely ignore Congress — the White House believes immigration reform is a real possibility this year and the president reached out to the GOP on that front. He discussed immigration reform in broad terms, in hopes of leaving space for House Republicans to continue their work on legislation, while still calling for action.

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State of the Union 2014: Obama embraces Obamacare

By DAVID NATHER.

President Barack Obama left no doubt Tuesday night what his Obamacare sales technique will be: loud voice, lots of confidence and no apologies.

Don’t dwell on the scratches on the hood. Just tell the customer how good it will feel to rev the engine and drive the car off the lot.

Obamacare didn’t show up in the State of the Union address until over halfway through, and it encompassed all of nine paragraphs in an hour-plus stemwinder. But this was very much a hard sell by the president for Americans to sign up for his signature health care law, the biggest sales pitch Obama has made in a State of the Union address since the law passed. His pitch was a lengthy tour of all the success stories he could find: the Arizona woman with a health condition who got health coverage just in time, the Kentucky governor who built one of the best working enrollment websites in the country and the millions of Americans who have already signed up for coverage.

His message to Obamacare’s supporters and critics: Enough with the repeal votes. Time to sign up — especially the young adults.

“That’s why, tonight, I ask every American who knows someone without health insurance to help them get covered by March 31st,” Obama said. “Moms, get on your kids to sign up. Kids, call your mom and walk her through the application. It will give her some peace of mind — plus, she’ll appreciate hearing from you.”

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