Even tho most lawmakers are rich enough not to need it. But their staff are !

Do not look to find logic in their argument.

but when it comes down to actual comprehension, forget it.

Bottom line, they don't know what it said.

It already says that all new policies will be through ACA...

Congress employs more than 50 people, but these idiots are DEMANDING Congress be exempt from the law where employers of more than 50 people must provide healthcare coverage to the employees!

When the ACA was being debated in the Senate, Chuck Grassley (R, Iowa) thought he would have a clever "gotcha" to make Democrats look bad: force Congresspeople and their staffs to use the DC exchange.

This showed a fundamental misunderstanding of what the exchange is about (there's no need to put someone on an exchange if their employer is providing insurance), but Grassley mostly just thought it would make for good sound bites. But Grassley totally misjudged the situation. He assumed Democrats would recoil and say "My God! I don't want to be on one of those exchanges!" when in fact most of the Democratic lawmakers thought that overall an exchange is a pretty good idea (and for that matter the government essentially runs one for its employees already) so they really didn't have any problem at all agreeing to it.

After that, David Vitter (R, Diaper Fetish Brothel) decided this wasn't producing nearly enough sound bites, so he decided to do one of the most petty and mean-spirited things I've ever seen a Senator do (and that's going a ways) and require that Congress stop providing the health insurance subsidies it's been providing for decades and force the staffers and Congresspeople onto the DC exchange with only their nominal salaries to pay for it -- meaning that the already incredibly underpaid staffers would be getting a 15% or so pay cut.

This provision eventually died a well-deserved death in the Senate (for that matter, it was unconstitutional as written since a given Congress can't change its own pay anymore), but because nobody's attention span exceeds three seconds anymore, the very simple fact "Congress will continue to subsidize its employees' participation in Obamacare" gets translated to "Congress has exempted itself from Obamacare".

(On a side note: making Congresspeople and staffers participate in their home state's exchange is an interesting idea...)

I'd emphasize that the "subsidies" Congress members and staffers currently get are merely the employer contributions to their health plan cost.

that the rest of us have to live with.

If Rand Paul is that broken clock that's right twice a day, he's right about this and the TSA.

edited to add link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/04/16/177496734/how-congress-quietly-overhauled-its-insider-trading-law

ordinary citizens.

but I remember that they exempted themselves from workplace discrimination laws when they were enacted.

or at least there weren't last time I worked there. I think FMLA doesn't apply to staffers either, though it does apply to employees of the Architect of the Capitol (ie most of people who literally staff the buildings: janitors, electricians, etc.)

to abide by it?

The Federal Government is the employer of these people. So in certain cases the Federal Government must act like an employer and provide healthcare to their employees (since they have more than 49 employees). Some can't grasp that the Government must act like an employer. It is simply beyond them.

The thing is, that if the Federal Government is exempt from providing coverage for their employees, this will be used to argue that no employer should be forced to provide healthcare coverage since the Federal Government doesn't do it. And It Is All OBAMA'S Fault!!! (as always)


There are a couple different things going on in different factions of the Thug party (which is the normal state of affairs nowadays).