Mark Levin: Rand Paul has some explaining to do

Mark Levin believes blackmail or something may be going behind the scenes in the Senate. Here’s why:

NATIONAL REVIEW – The rumors began trickling in about a week before the scheduled vote on April 23: Republican leadership was quietly pushing senators to pull support for subpoenaing Congress’s fraudulent application to the District of Columbia’s health exchange — the document that facilitated Congress’s “exemption” from Obamacare by allowing lawmakers and staffers to keep their employer subsidies.

The application said Congress employed just 45 people. Names were faked; one employee was listed as “First Last,” another simply as “Congress.” To Small Business Committee chairman David Vitter, who has fought for years against the Obamacare exemption, it was clear that someone in Congress had falsified the document in order to make lawmakers and their staff eligible for taxpayer subsidies provided under the exchange for small-business employees.

But until Vitter got a green light from the Small Business Committee to subpoena the unredacted application from the District of Columbia health exchange, it would be impossible to determine who in Congress gave it a stamp of approval. When Vitter asked Republicans on his committee to approve the subpoena, however, he was unexpectedly stonewalled.

That stonewalling centered around Rand Paul. Vitter needed ten votes from his Republicans on the committee but Rand Paul was against it. So when Vitter declared a public vote on the matter, McConnell got involved and got four other senators to completely switch their positions and vote ‘no’ against the subpoena, to take the heat off of Rand Paul being the sole ‘no’ vote.

Senator McConnell co-opted Rand Paul shortly after the newly elected senator got to Washington DC.

I suspect in exchange for not sabotaging his future Presidential aspirations, Senator Paul agreed to discreetly support McConnell’s positions in times of need.

Rand Paul clearly wants to be President more than he wants to remain faithful to his constituents. Mitch simply took advantage of the situation.

Republican leadership was quietly pushing senators to pull support for subpoenaing Congress's fraudulent application to the District of Columbia's health exchange... allowing lawmakers and staffers to keep their employer subsidies... To Small Business Committee chairman David Vitter, who has fought for years against the Obamacare exemption, it was clear that someone in Congress had falsified the document in order to make lawmakers and their staff eligible for taxpayer subsidies provided under the exchange for small-business employees... When Vitter asked Republicans on his committee to approve the subpoena, however, he was unexpectedly stonewalled. That stonewalling centered around Rand Paul. Vitter needed ten votes from his Republicans on the committee but Rand Paul was against it. So when Vitter declared a public vote on the matter, McConnell got involved and got four other senators to completely switch their positions and vote 'no' against the subpoena, to take the heat off of Rand Paul being the sole 'no' vote.

from the FRchives:

Rand Paul On Shutdown: "Even Though It Appeared I Was Participating In It, It Was A Dumb Idea"
I said throughout the whole battle that shutting down the government was a dumb idea. Even though it did appear as if I was participating in it, I said it was a dumb idea. And the reason I voted for it, though, is that it's a conundrum. Here's the conundrum. We have a $17 trillion debt and people at home tell me you can't give the president a blank check. We just can't keep raising the debt ceiling without conditions. So unconditionally raising the debt ceiling, nobody at home wants me to vote for that and I can't vote for that. But the conundrum is if I don't we do approach these deadlines. So there is an impasse. In 2011, though, we had this impasse and the president did negotiate. We got the sequester. If we were to extend the sequester from discretionary spending to all the entitlements we would actually fix our problem within a few years.
[Posted on 11/19/2013 12:16:51 PM by Third Person]

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