Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) is joining the list of parties currently suing the Obama administration for frivolous reasons, and his goals are incredibly assholish.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is planning to sue the Obama administration over the federal contributions that lawmakers and their staffs get for health insurance. [...]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said last year that the federal government would continue to help members of Congress and staffers offset the costs of those plans, as the government does for other federal employees.
In case it isn’t clear, what Senator Ron Johnson is seeking is higher out-of-pocket costs for healthcare for congressional staffers. Staffers who don’t necessarily make a lot of money.
Johnson claims that Obamacare has ‘created a wedge between a member of Congress and their constituents,’ but average constituents also receive contributions from their employers. It just so happens that, for a congressional staffer, their employer is the federal government.
The good news is Senator Johnson has enlisted the aid of former solicitor general Paul Clement in his crusade. Clement, as you may be aware if you’ve been following along, has a proven track record of failure on high-profile cases.
Clement failed to stop Obamacare on behalf of the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), he failed to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and he failed to defend Arizona’s “Papers Please” anti-immigration law, SB1070. And yet Republicans keep hiring him.
If Clement’s string of failures isn’t a sign that he may not be up to the job, it’s certainly a sign that conservative complaints against the federal government have no merit or legal basis.