Obama Isn’t Planning to Be as Silent as Bush in Post-Presidency

President Barack Obama says he appreciated George W. Bush’s silence during his eight years in office. Now, as the current president prepares for life outside the White House, his aides have given mixed messages about just how political Obama will be during the Trump administration.

Obama has said speaking out on policy won’t be his priority after leaving the White House on Friday.

“Now, that doesn’t mean that if a year from now or a year and a half from now or two years from now, there is an issue of such moment, such import, that isn’t just a debate about a particular tax bill or, you know, a particular policy, but goes to some foundational issues about our democracy that I might not weigh in,” Obama said in a December CNN interview with his former adviser, David Axelrod. “You know, I’m still a citizen and that carries with it duties and obligations.”

Upon leaving the White House, Obama will be the first president to remain in the District of Columbia since Woodrow Wilson in 1921. The first family is remaining in the District until their 15-year-old daughter, Sasha, graduates high school.

Obama will have a new office in the same building that houses the World Wildlife Federation. He has also already started building his post-presidency staff, the Chicago Tribune reported Monday. He hired a chief of staff, Anita Decker Breckenridge, an aide since Obama was an Illinois state legislator in 2003.

Obama White House aides Valerie Jarrett and Jen Psaki told the Tribune that Obama will work to ensure affordable health care access—presumably meaning he will speak out against President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle Obamacare.

The Tribune also reported that Obama will speak up for Dreamers, the label given to children of illegal immigrants. In June 2012, Obama took executive action to carry out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protects illegal immigrants from deportation. Trump opposes the program.

Obama’s involvement in policy battles would be a significant departure from his predecessor. Upon leaving office in 2009, Bush retreated to Texas and out of the spotlight.

Just days after the November election, White House press secretary Josh Earnest invoked Bush’s behavior to indicate Obama might not second guess Trump in public.

“He deeply appreciated how President George W. Bush, after leaving office, gave the new president some running room, gave him a little space, wasn’t backseat driving in public, offering up all kinds of critiques with every single decision that President Obama was making in the earliest days of his presidency,” Earnest told reporters during a White House briefing.

“I’m confident that President George W. Bush didn’t agree with every single decision that President Obama was making,” Earnest added, “but he was extraordinarily respectful of the democratic process. President Obama admired that.”

Bush has consistently steered clear of criticizing Obama or even making many policy pronouncements. Democrat predecessors such as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter have remained in the spotlight, choosing to speak out on various political issues of interest to them.

“He is already one of the wealthiest presidents in modern history and he will probably make millions more on corporate boards,” author and presidential historian Craig Shirley told The Daily Signal of Obama. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he became secretary-general of the United Nations.”

Shirley, a biographer of Ronald Reagan, said Obama will be similar to Clinton—young in retirement and unable to step out of the spotlight. He doesn’t anticipate Obama having a modest post-presidency like his immediate predecessor.

“He will continue talking. That’s what he knows how to do,” Shirley said of Obama. “He won’t fade away. When Reagan’s eight years were up, he went back to California. When [Dwight] Eisenhower’s eight years were up, he returned to Gettysburg and played golf.”

Reports over the last two years indicated Obama would focus on his presidential library to be built in Chicago, but also on helping black youth through a nonprofit incarnation of the White House initiative known as “My Brother’s Keeper.”

Obama has said he was committed to the goals of the “My Brother’s Keeper” program to boost opportunities for young men of color after leaving office. Shirley suggested this could be an “admirable” nonpolitical issue for Obama—one in which he could become an elder statesman in his post-presidency.

A more political effort would come from his work with the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which is focused on doing away with gerrymandering. Obama is expected to work with former Attorney General Eric Holder on the initiative. Gerrymandering is the drawing of legislative and congressional districts to help one’s party.

Obama’s involvement is geared toward helping Democrats running for state legislatures win back state houses before the 2020 census and subsequent redistricting.

“The Democrats have lost about 1,000 elective legislative seats since Obama took office,” Shirley said. “For stopping gerrymandering, they’re not going to turn to Obama for guidance.”

During the CNN interview in December, Obama talked about shaping the next generation of leaders.

“With respect to my priorities when I leave, it is to build that next generation of leadership; organizers, journalists, politicians,” Obama said. “I see them in America, I see them around the world, 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds who are just full of talent, full of idealism.”

He continued that a short-term goal would be helping his beleaguered Democrats.

“I think what I can do is not do it myself, but say to those who are still in the game right now look, think about this, think about how you’re organizing that, you know, what are you doing to make sure that young talent is out there in the field being supported,” Obama said. “You know, how are you making sure that your message is reaching everybody and not just those who have already been converted. Identifying really talented staff and organizers who are already out there and encouraging them to get involved.” (For more from the author of “Obama Isn’t Planning to Be as Silent as Bush in Post-Presidency” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Commutation of Manning Sentence Sends a Horrible Message to Service Personnel

Exercising his authority under Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, President Barack Obama commuted the court-martial sentence of convicted felon Bradley Manning.

Although there is no dispute that Obama had the legal authority to commute the former Army private first class’s sentence, the president and his advisors had to know that any relief granted to Manning would be terribly controversial, and for good reason.

Commuting Manning’s sentence sends a horrible message to everyone who serves in the U.S. military, emboldens those who seek to harm the United States, and disheartens countless Americans—in and out of uniform.

It is important to remember the facts of the case. This was not a whodunit. This was not a case where motive excused his behavior, as some Manning supporters argue.

This is a case about an Army private first class who, while stationed abroad, having access to top secret and other classified material, decided to steal that material and give it to Wikileaks, knowing full well that Wikileaks would publish the material for the world to see.

There is no dispute as to the facts of the case, as in some instances of presidential pardons. After Manning was caught, he was sent to a general (felony) court-martial. After consulting with his able defense attorneys, he decided to plead guilty.

In military guilty pleas, the accused must describe for the military trial judge facts sufficient to convince the judge, beyond a reasonable doubt, as to each and every element in each crime. The accused discusses these facts with the judge while under oath, and those discussions last a long time.

This case was no different.

According to the facts developed in the case, and discussed at the court-martial, between November 2009 and May 2010, Manning was deployed overseas, and during that deployment, had access to secret and top secret data. He had a duty not to disclose the data to any unauthorized person.

Nevertheless, he downloaded 400,000 classified files from the Iraq war, some 91,000 files from the Afghan war, around 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables (emails), sensitive and classified U.S. airstrike videos, and classified documents and files from Guantanamo Bay, including classified assessments of Guantanamo terrorist detainees.

Manning placed that material on a SD-type card, and took it. He gave that highly classified and sensitive material to Wikileaks, knowing full well that they would (1) publish the material and (2) that the material could and likely would fall into the hands of our enemies.

The Army charged Manning with, among other things, aiding the enemy—a crime that under certain circumstances could result in the death penalty.

Eventually, Manning decided to plead guilty instead of contesting the charges against him. The maximum possible sentence to those charges to which he pleaded guilty was 136 years. In other words, it would have been lawful for the trial judge to sentence Manning to 136 years.

At the sentencing hearing, the government presented evidence in aggravation of his crimes. Army Brigadier General Robert A. Carr, a top Pentagon intelligence official, testified that Manning’s disclosures “affected our ability to do our mission,” and endangered U.S. ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management, testified that Manning’s actions sent the State Department into crisis and prompted a costly effort to assess the damage that the leaks had done.

He asserted, “I believe my colleagues abroad are still feeling [the results of the leak].”

Major General Michael Nagata, the deputy commander of the U.S. defense attaché in Pakistan, testified that Manning’s actions had a strong negative effect on the mission of the Office of Defense Representative in Pakistan.

Colonel Denise Lind, the military trial judge, sentenced Manning to 35 years and a dishonorable discharge from the U.S. Army. Manning filed his appeal in May 2016, which is now moot given the president’s commutation.

To some, Manning was a whistleblower who deserved of a pardon, or at least a sentence commutation. Indeed, one of the videos he gave to Wikileaks showed U.S. military personnel in Iraq engaged in a deeply troubling, if not illegal, shooting incident.

But there was so much more to Manning’s crimes than exposing that killing.

By downloading hundreds of thousands of secret documents about some of the most sensitive information related to the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, by disgorging highly sensitive diplomatic emails for the world to see, and recklessly exposing top secret files of terrorist detainees we held at Guantanamo, Manning betrayed his oath to his country, armed our enemies with information that they could only dream about acquiring, and forced our government to expend untold hours and money to minimize the damage inflicted by his criminal conduct.

Those who applaud the commutation also argue that the sentence Manning had received was “excessive and disproportionate.”

Yet it is difficult to imagine, much less point to, another case of a U.S. military member who singlehandedly stole the volume of classified information to an unauthorized source (Wilileaks), or one that caused the multi-layered damage to U.S. military security and diplomatic harmony that Manning caused by doing what he did.

Manning’s defenders argue that his mental health as a “vulnerable person” should act as a mitigating circumstance with respect to his sentence. But that argument was presented, in full, to Judge Lind before she sentenced Manning.

Under the law, military trial judges are required to take into account all aggravating and mitigating evidence before sentencing the accused. Thus, Manning already received the benefit of his gender identity issues when he was sentenced in the first place.

The “mercy” that some argue for was actually granted by the trial judge: She didn’t sentence Manning to the 50 or 100 or 136 years he could have served.

And everyone in the military justice system knows that a 35-year sentence of confinement, assuming good behavior while in custody, in reality will result in less than 10 years of confinement. Manning was set to be released in the coming year or so anyway.

Finally, it bears mentioning that U.S. military members across the globe carry out their duties, for the most part, with honor and fidelity. Many have access to secret and top secret material. Some have access to Special Access Program information—the most highly classified material our government possesses.

They guard this information with their lives, and for good reason. They know that if they violated their oaths by stealing this information and providing it to our enemies, American lives and national security would be in grave danger.

By commuting Manning’s richly deserved sentence, Obama is sending a horrible message to dedicated U.S. public servants, in and out of uniform, that honoring their responsibility to keep national security secrets from the public eye isn’t all that important.

This is a slap in their face. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Commutation of Manning Sentence Sends a Horrible Message to Service Personnel” please click HERE)

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Journalist Who Exposed CIA’s Media Control, Conspiracy with Banks, Found Dead at 56

Dr Udo Ulfkotte, the former German newspaper editor whose bestselling book exposed how the CIA controls German media, has been found dead. He was 56.

Ulfkotte was an editor at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the largest newspapers in Germany, when he published Bought Journalists, the bestselling book that cost him his job and perhaps his life.

German media, who were banned from reporting on his work in recent years, are reporting he died of “heart failure”.

Acknowledging that his life was under threat, Ulfkotte explained that he was in a better position than most journalists to expose the truth because he didn’t have any children who could be threatened.

Speaking to the Russian newspaper Russian Insider, Ulkfotte said: “When I told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Ulfkotte’s newspaper) that I would publish the book, their lawyers sent me a letter threatening with all legal consequences if I would publish any names or secrets – but I don’t mind. You see, I don’t have children to take care of.“

His fears for a war in Europe, lead him to his decision to tell the truth about corporate media being controlled by intelligence services on behalf of the financial class.

(Read more from “Journalist Who Exposed CIA’s Media Control, Conspiracy with Banks, Found Dead at 56” HERE)

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History Was Just Made in the Senate — and Hell Hath Frozen Over

If you’ve been around politics for at least five minutes or more, you learn there are certain unwritten rules that conservatives are just supposed to accept to our own detriment. And if you stick around another five minutes longer, you learn those unwritten rules are never to be applied the other way to our favor.

Until now.

Last week there was a shocking sight in Washington. Something not seen since the days when everybody smoked like John Boehner. In fact, we here at Conservative Review didn’t believe it ourselves at first, but we can now confirm that just happened.

A moderate-to-liberal Republican evolved to the Right.

That’s right my fellow randomly evolved via natural process alone primates. If there really was such a thing as Hell it would’ve instantly frozen over at the visual alone of Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. (F, 30%) standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas (A, 97%) — whom he once joked about killing on the floor of the Senate — arguing for the defunding of the United Nations, otherwise known as the progressives’ Taj Mahal.

And it even happened on MSNBC, no less.

“Jesus, take the wheel.”

“Rapture me now.”

“This is the big one. I’m comin’ for you.”

“Goodbye cruel world!”

Whichever parting words you prefer are now appropriate. For there was Graham, the sort of Republican who would typically offer to give the UN even more of our money than the Democrats ask for just to show he’s not one of us, being one of us. Of course, this leads to instant and suspicious speculation, and you really can’t blame conservatives for it. Lucy has pulled the football away from us so often we don’t even try to kick it anymore. We just embarrassingly fall down on our own when it’s offered just to get the disappointment over with.

“What did Cruz sell us out on in return?”

“Let me guess, this doesn’t really defund anything and that’s why Lindsey Grahamnesty supported it, right”

“Maybe defunding the UN isn’t a good idea at all if John McCain’s, R-Ariz. (F, 32%) lap poodle is for it?”

Far be it for Mr. Total Depravity here to be a beacon of hope, but perhaps we should just shut up listen to nana when she taught us “never look a gift horse in the mouth.” I know it seems unlikely, but perhaps Graham simply saw how overtly anti-Israel the UN’s latest actions are and decided to act on his courage of conviction?

Stop laughing. No, really, I wasn’t trying to be funny. That might’ve happened. I mean, it’s not like we just elected a reality TV star, who violated every unwritten rule of decorum and protocol, to the presidency or something.

So maybe it is a brand new day? Or maybe a leopard really never changes his spots? Or maybe we should just be adults and practice that whole discernment thing we tend to cast aside for pack-like, binary-choice thinking. Remember that adults draw distinctions, because the world — as well as the people in it — are more complicated than simple either-or at all times scenarios.

Sometimes people are right for the wrong reasons, and sometimes they’re wrong for the right ones. Sometimes the people you disagree with on everything else are right about this one thing, and sometimes the people you do agree with on everything else are wrong about this one.

In fact, I’ve found myself agreeing with Graham more in the past month than I have the past decade. Why? Because I think he’s been right, that’s why. That doesn’t mean we’re right about what we agree on, by the way, but it does mean as an adult I have a choice to make. Do I believe the truth is the truth, regardless of the one wielding it? Or do I believe truth is determined by the one wielding it? In other words, is truth its own transcendent thing to be sought and found, or do we make our own truth or determine what the truth is?

One view of truth makes you a conservative, and the other doesn’t. Can you guess which is which?

So, yes, typically Graham has not been my kind of Republican. And back when I still was a Republican it’s unlikely I was his type, too. A child considers that knowledge and doesn’t accept Graham’s help when it’s offered, but instead criticizes its own ally like Cruz for accepting it. An adult takes help whenever it’s offered, even from unconventional sources, provided it doesn’t require compromising your own integrity in return and is grateful for it.

And I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention lately, but America is suffering from a dearth of adults at the moment.

“When I was a child I thought, spoke, and reasoned as a child. When I became an adult I set aside such childish things.” – St. Paul

(For more from the author of “History Was Just Made in the Senate — and Hell Hath Frozen Over” please click HERE)

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State Department Held Workshops for Employees Dealing with Trump Transition Stress

The Department of State held workshops in December for agency employees struggling with the emotional stress of the Trump Transition, the Washington Free Beacon reports.

The workshop, titled, “The Emotional Transition: Managing the Stress of Change,” was advertised in an agency-wide email, and employees were allowed to dedicate work time to the hour-long sessions. The sessions were held Dec. 8 and Dec. 14, a month after President-elect Donald Trump defeated former State Department Secretary Hillary Clinton in the presidential race.

“Change is an inevitable part of the human experience,” an email invitation for the workshop said, according to the Washington Free Beacon. “We can become paralyzed by fear or allow the experience of change to propel us closer to self-actualization.”

“Our perspective determines our outcome,” the State Department email continued. “This seminar is designed to discuss the impact of change; the emotional cycles some people experience when confronted with change, and tools to effectively manage the stress of change.”

The stress workshops were sponsored by State’s Bureau of Medical Services, which regularly provides “treatment for problems related to the stress of deployment to high-threat posts, overseas crises and other stressful situations encountered by Foreign Service Officers, family members and State Department employees overseas.” (Read more from “State Department Held Workshops for Employees Dealing with Trump Transition Stress” please click HERE)

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The ‘POTUS Shield’ Descends on Washington to Pray for Trump, State Governments

A group of faith leaders and prelates gathered Thursday in Washington, D.C., to “storm heaven” in prayer for President-elect Donald Trump a week prior to his inauguration. On Friday, they prayed in small groups at the White House, the Capitol, and the Supreme Court.

The “POTUS Shield,” as they call their movement, seeks to “raise up a shield of prayer and prophetic understanding” and lead attendees in prayer, intercession, declarations and decrees over the White House, the Supreme Court and Capitol Hill, the group says on their website. “As some of the faith leaders and prophets that first heard and declared the will of God for this election process, and specifically the breaker anointing upon Donald Trump to usher in a new era; we are now assembling to humbly invoke the voice of the Lord.”

The faith leaders include E.W. Jackson, Lt. General Jerry Boykin, Bishop Harry Jackson, Dr. Alveda King, Lance Wallnau and Cindy Jacobs, among others. This leaders, says the group’s homepage, “are especially gifted to help discern and present spiritual plans to prepare the way for transformation, reformation, and revival in our nation.”

“We’re really not looking for Mr. Trump or any human to change America, but we know God can and will do it,” Dr. Alveda King, director of Civil Rights for the Unborn, told CBN News at the gathering.

The group’s mission is to be “prayerfully committed to see, to hear, to declare and decree, and to prepare the way for transformation, reformation and revival of our nation,” with the following key principles in mind:

1. To assemble, structure and activate The POTUS Shield as a powerfully interactive spiritual, apostolic, prophetic force that acts and reacts in unity, with efficiency and expedience;

2. To be a leadership forum that is inclusive and embraces the Bible believing Body of Christ, with a Kingdom heart to embrace the Body of Christ as One, even as prayed by our Lord as written in the Gospel of John, Chapter 17.

3. To connect as an apostolic network exclusively assigned to the affirmation and reformation of The United States of America as ONE nation under GOD;

4. To discern, declare, and decree the strategies of the Lord for our nation, with a special sensitivity to the three branches of the United States Government;

5. To prepare the way and coordinate the simultaneous spiritual alignment of the Kingdom shift that is manifesting and impacting the government and the Church;

6. To lay the foundation to convene in Philadelphia in March during Purim to declare a renewed covenant as the renewed United States of America, as one nation under God, and to commission and plan similar covenants in each of the 50 states in the Union.

Pastor Leon Benjamin from Richmond addressed some of the concerns of the African-American community about the Trump administration. “We must believe for the best,” he told CBN News. “It doesn’t matter who is in the White House as long as there is faith that God has not forsaken us and that He has not left us because of a transition of power. That would be dreadful for us as pastors and leaders to say ‘Oh my God, we’re doomed now!’ So we’re very hopeful.”

POTUS Shield will now begin to focus their prayer on state capitals and agencies.

(For more from the author of “The ‘POTUS Shield’ Descends on Washington to Pray for Trump, State Governments” please click HERE)

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Clinton Foundation Shuts down Global Initiative Due to Decrease in Foreign Donors Paying to Play

The Clinton Foundation revealed last week that it will be discontinuing the Clinton Global Initiative and laying off 22 staffers. The beleaguered organization filed a report with the New York Department of Labor Thursday stating its intentions to terminate the doomed employees on April 15, reports The Observer, a New York City weekly.

The move comes in response to an ongoing FBI investigation into the foundation’s “pay-to-play” schemes, where foreign interests as well as corporate interests contributed heavily to the foundation in exchange for influencing American government, especially during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. The IRS is also investigating the schemes.

Clinton’s Wave of Layoffs

It is a part of a wave of layoffs. According to Politico, the foundation told employees internally last September that dozens of layoffs were coming by the year’s end, and announced that it would no longer be accepting new contributions from foreign or corporate donors.

At that time, there were concerns that if Hillary won the presidency, the loose money would present multiple conflicts of interest. Bill Clinton admitted that foreign interests “may have given money to the foundation to build a relationship with the Clintons or to gain access to the State Department during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.” At its peak, the CBI had about 200 employees. 74 were laid off at the end of last year.

Emails released by Wikileaks exposed tension within the foundation over the conflicts of interest. Top Clinton aide Doug Band expressed his concern about the ethical dilemmas in a 2011 email to John Podesta, especially in regards to Bill.

I signed a conflict of interest policy as a board member of cgi. … Oddly, wjc does not have to sign such a document even though he is personally paid by 3 cgi sponsors, gets many expensive gifts from them, some that are at home etc. I could add 500 different examples of things like this.

The Washington Post reported that “Band helped run what he called ‘Bill Clinton Inc.,’ obtaining ‘in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.’” What the Post called the foundation’s “aggressive strategy” lined up “consulting contracts and paid speaking engagements for Bill Clinton that added tens of millions of dollars to the family’s fortune.”

The CGI’s Pay to Play Schemes

Typical of the pay-to-play schemes was the relation of the owner of the Russian company Uranium One to the foundation and to Bill Clinton himself. The owner contributed $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation, which the foundation failed to report. At that time, the Russian owner was in the process of buying the company, a sale that Secretary Clinton approved. Bill Clinton also received $500,000 from a Russian bank for a Moscow speech, where he promoted Uranium One stock.

The conservative news site Heat Street cynically observed, “The Clintons have always claimed their family charitable foundation was able to raise so much money because, deep down, Saudi princes and Ukrainian oligarchs are really concerned about poor children in Haiti.”

Michael Sainato of The Observer wrote that “The Clinton Foundation‘s downward trajectory ever since since Hillary Clinton’s election loss provides further testimony to claims that the organization was built on greed and the lust for power and wealth — not charity.”

Donations stopping dropping even before Hillary Clinton unexpectedly lost the election. Every year, CGI would throw a lavish party with celebrities, heads of state and Fortune 500 CEOs. But sponsors for the annual event started dropping off after 2011, from 46 that year down to just 23 last year. Coca-Cola, Barclays and Goldman Sachs all dropped their sponsorships last year.

Foreign donors to the Foundation also began drying up. The Australian government, which had contributed over $88 million to the foundation over 10 years, ended its partnership. The Norwegian government reduced its contribution from $20 million in 2015 to $4.2 million in 2016. Since the decline in donations began after public criticism of the foundation started heightening, this appears to validate the claim that foreign interests were contributing “predicated on donor access to the Clintons, rather than its philanthropic work.”

Meanwhile, former Clinton Foundation CEO Eric Braverman has now been out of public sight for 85 days. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange that it was a disgruntled Democratic insider who leaked emails to the organization, not the Russians. Based on that statement, Braverman has been named as a possible “mole” within the Foundation. (For more from the author of “Clinton Foundation Shuts down Global Initiative Due to Decrease in Foreign Donors Paying to Play” please click HERE)

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Ben Carson’s Prescription: Get People off Government Assistance

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson appeared before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Thursday to share his vision for the Department of Housing and Urban Development if the Senate confirms him as its next secretary.

In early December, President-elect Donald Trump announced Carson, who was a rival contender for the White House, as his pick to lead HUD.

Here are four highlights from Carson’s appearance:

1. On government assistance.

At the hearing, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis questioned Carson about his vision of best serving those who are on government programs.

“What is the best possible thing we can do for somebody who is on government assistance?” the North Carolina senator asked.

“Get them off of it,” Carson responded.

2. His childhood experience.

Carson said in a written statement that growing up in “inner city Detroit with a single mother who had a 3rd grade education” allowed him to understand housing insecurity.

Carson credited his mother for teaching him the importance of personal responsibility, and said that if confirmed as the next secretary of housing and urban development, he would do more than just advance its programs and funding.

3. Put medical clinics in neighborhoods.

Carson said that as part of his effort to enable and serve the beneficiaries of HUD programs, he plans to potentially put medical clinics in neighborhoods so that people don’t “rely on the emergency room where it costs five times more and where you don’t get kind of follow up that would prevent you from having stage five renal disease.”

4. Will work to benefit ‘all Americans.’

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., asked Carson about his intentions to ensure that none of the money funneled through HUD would specifically benefit Trump’s real estate ties.

“My concern is whether or not, among the billions of dollars that you’ll be responsible for handing out in grants and loans, can you assure us that not one dollar will go to benefit either the president-elect or his family?” Warren asked.

Carson responded by saying that his work would be beneficial to all Americans, not just the select few.

“It will not be my intention to do anything to benefit any American, particularly,” Carson said. “It’s for all Americans, everything that we do.” (For more from the author of “Ben Carson’s Prescription: Get People off Government Assistance” please click HERE)

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What Comes after Repeal? How to Fix American Health Care, Part 2

Thursday, I laid out the case for why Obamacare should be repealed, instead of propped up and tinkered on by additional top-down, boardroom thinking. It’s clear that whatever replaces Obamacare must focus on quality and incremental local solutions, not one-size-fits-all government mandates.

In this respect, the federal government’s biggest task for replacing Obamacare is to get out of the way and let state policymakers and health care providers innovate.

First off, let’s get clear what Americans want: They’d like many choices of affordable health insurance plans that allow them to choose their doctors. They want to buy a plan when they are young, then keep their plan from job to job and into retirement. And they’d like it to be truly affordable. These “must haves” are obvious to people of any political orientation.

Instead of approaching this challenge like designing a single system or product (the way Obamacare was constructed), Congress needs to help these conditions develop organically, while preserving freedom of choice for Americans. Here are some further thoughts.

Expand health savings accounts. As we age, our need for medical care increases, yet current government policies offer few incentives for people to save for their future health care needs. The one exception is health savings accounts, which are tax-deductible accounts owned by individuals that roll over from year to year. But those accounts are currently available for just one type of insurance plan—a high-deductible plan.

The improvement would be to expand the scope of health savings accounts so that they can be used with any type of insurance design, as well as to become the accounts into which any funds (either private or public) to help pay for health care needs can be deposited. That way, people would not only have more options, but also a place to keep (for future needs) any savings they get from buying better value insurance and medical care.

Create space for diverse payment models. Congress should remove regulatory obstacles to innovative approaches to providing or paying for medical care. For instance, many direct primary care practices use a monthly subscription payment model instead of the traditional fee-for-service model. This model eliminates significant administrative costs and allows doctors to spend more time with patients. Yet federal and state regulations that inappropriately treat those payments as insurance (as opposed to payments for medical care) further inhibit adoption of this approach that simultaneously reduces costs while improving quality.

Allow innovative new delivery models. In a similar fashion, federal and state lawmakers should remove the regulatory obstacles to other health care delivery innovations, such as specialty hospitals, free-standing emergency rooms, and telemedicine. Indeed, too often those regulatory barriers exist not to protect patients or consumers, but rather to protect less efficient providers from competition.

In general, federal health policy should focus on establishing a few basic rules while leaving most of the detailed decisions to either the private sector or state governments.

For instance, any federal tax relief for health care expenses should be the same regardless of a person’s employment situation. Today, those with employer coverage pay no income or payroll tax on their health insurance benefits, but those purchasing coverage on their own have to use after-tax dollars to buy coverage.

In addition, those who rely on public programs should be able to take the value of their benefits in the form of a contribution that they can apply to the plan of their choice, not dumped into a one-size-fits-all government program.

The federal government should also return to the pre-Obamacare status of setting only minimal rules for insurance markets and deferring to state regulation of insurance as a financial services product.

The federal government should not attempt to design and manage America’s health care system. Federal laws and regulations should allow and encourage insurers and medical providers to compete in offering better quality care at lower costs.

This will require returning health care decision-making to patients and their doctors, and returning policymaking to the lowest level of government that is best equipped to handle it: state legislatures.

Some politicians don’t like the idea of relinquishing that power, but after seeing the results of decisions made in Washington over the last few years, I think it’s worth a try. (For more from the author of “What Comes after Repeal? How to Fix American Health Care, Part 2” please click HERE)

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What Happens for Consumers after Congress Repeals Obamacare

All the talk about congressional Republicans preparing to repeal Obamacare may have some Americans on edge, but GOP lawmakers say they intend to craft a plan that will phase out the health care law to ensure a “stable transition” for consumers who depend on it.

Republicans say they want consumers to keep their health coverage, and continue receiving any subsidies, until Congress can pass a replacement that may not kick in until 2019.

In the days before Donald Trump is sworn in as president Jan. 20, Republicans are continuing to debate the substance of a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.

Details are sparse, but conservative senators are urging Senate leaders to use legislation from 2015 as a floor, or minimum, for what should be done this year.

That bill phased out parts of Obamacare over two years, repealed the health care law’s individual and employer mandates, and did away with fines for not complying. It also eliminated the law’s Medicaid expansion, medical device tax, and Cadillac tax on high-cost plans.

Congressional committees have started work on a repeal bill. But already President Barack Obama, Democrat lawmakers, and other supporters of the health care law warn that 20 million Americans they say gained coverage under Obamacare—a figure that is disputed as inflated—are in jeopardy of losing that coverage.

Though Republicans plan to send a bill repealing Obamacare to Trump in the next few weeks, GOP lawmakers are considering delaying implementation of the repeal for two years to protect those who gained coverage under Obamacare.

“The repeal legislation will include a stable transition period as we work toward patient-centered health care,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday in a speech mapping out Republicans’ path for repeal.

A two-year transition before Obamacare’s official repeal takes effect would give Congress time to pass and implement a replacement plan. The goal is to ensure that those who obtained health coverage under the law—and received tax credits—would continue to until the replacement for Obamacare is implemented.

“There’s more of an understanding that if you just throw 20 to 30 million [insured Americans] out on the street, that’s not politically wise and, as far as I’m concerned, immoral,” Timothy Jost, professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and a supporter of the Affordable Care Act, told The Daily Signal.

“How do you deal with that?” Jost said. “I think the idea is you repeal it and put it off for some period of time and adopt and implement a replacement plan.”

Many proposals introduced by Republican members of the House and Senate, including House Speaker Paul Ryan’s “A Better Way” plan, include tax credits to provide financial assistance to consumers who purchase coverage in the individual market.

“We want to have tax credits that give everybody a shot at buying, take their tax credit and go buy a health plan of their choosing,” Ryan said Thursday during a town hall hosted by CNN.

Republicans “generally are not talking about” ending all subsidies, Jost said. But since they haven’t yet introduced a replacement for the health care law, he said, it isn’t clear whether tax credits will be based on a consumer’s age or income.

Republicans may agree it will take time to eliminate Obamacare without imperiling Americans’ insurance status, but GOP lawmakers remain split over aspects of the repeal legislation itself.

Some Republican senators, for example, would like to see a repeal of Obamacare’s taxes delayed for several months, while others say the taxes should be rolled back immediately after Trump signs the repeal bill into law.

The 2015 reconciliation bill, which members of the last Congress said plotted the steps for successfully dismantling Obamacare, repealed all of the law’s taxes immediately. Obama vetoed that bill.

Alyene Senger, a policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Health Policy Studies, advocates following the model set by the 2015 legislation and repealing the taxes immediately. Included are taxes on prescription drugs and health insurers, as well as higher restrictions and penalties placed on health savings accounts.

Other Republican lawmakers want to see GOP leaders produce a replacement plan before they vote to repeal Obamacare.

At first, House conservatives advocated a repeal-first, replace-later strategy. Now, though, they’re backing a plan to replace the law soon after voting to repeal it.

Congress took a major step toward repealing Obamacare this week after members passed a budget resolution for fiscal 2017. The resolution instructs committees in the House and Senate to begin writing the bill to repeal the law using a process called reconciliation.

After the November election, Republican lawmakers said they planned to have a bill repealing Obamacare on Trump’s desk not long after his inauguration Jan. 20.

But Trump has begun to set his own expectations for Congress.

At his first press conference since the election, the president-elect Wednesday mapped out a timeline for Obamacare’s repeal and replacement that centers around Senate confirmation of Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., his pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

“We’re going to be submitting as soon as our secretary is approved, almost simultaneously, [or] shortly thereafter, a plan,” Trump said. “It will be repeal and replace.”

The Senate Finance Committee, which has primary jurisdiction, hasn’t scheduled a confirmation hearing for Price.

The Georgia Republican will appear at a courtesy hearing next Wednesday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, chairman of that panel, said earlier this week he doesn’t expect Price to be confirmed until mid-February.

Under Trump’s timeline, that would delay repeal of Obamacare until at least then.

But GOP leaders in Congress hope to move faster.

Ryan said Thursday that congressional Republicans are “moving as quickly as they can” to repeal and replace the health care law. But, Ryan admitted, it will take “a little bit of time.”

“The law is collapsing,” Ryan said, “and so we’ve got to rescue people from the collapsing of this law and fix this problem.” (For more from the author of “What Happens for Consumers after Congress Repeals Obamacare” please click HERE)

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