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(TRUNEWS)-The House will consider action Tuesday on the U.S. visa waiver program that allows 40 % of foreign visitors to enter the U.S. effortlessly. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy expects the bill to pass, due to bipartisan support, he told CNN. The program permits citizens of participating countries to travel to the U.S. without a visa for up to 90 days, when they meet certain requirements. Fox News has reported the program has allowed 20 million people from 38 countries to visit the U.S. The bill being voted on in the House will end visa-free visits from people who have...

The House overwhelmingly passed legislation on Tuesday (407 to 19) that would overhaul the federal visa waiver program and bar those from Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Sudan, or those who have visited those countries in the last five years, from traveling to the United States without a visa. Action on the proposal comes in response to the recent attacks in Paris from ISIS operatives, and the shooting in California by a couple that expressed support for the terror group on social media. "This will help neutralize the threat from foreign terrorists entering our country," House Speaker Paul Ryan said...

Congress and the White House are poised for a rare agreement in the fight against terrorism with legislation that would slap new travel restrictions on foreign visitors to the U.S. who have recently been to Syria, Iraq, Iran or Sudan. The bill was given added urgency following the San Bernardino terror attack, even though the proposed changes to the 30-year-old visa waiver program would not stop visitors like shooter Tashfeen Malik, the Pakistani-born woman who entered the U.S. under a separate fiancee visa program in 2014. Malik and her American-born husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, are responsible for the Wednesday attack...

Hillary Clinton admitted to the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Thursday evening that she broke the law in handling security for the U.S. consulate there. Under patient but persistent questioning from Rep. Susan Brooks (R-IN, Clinton admitted that she had not signed a waiver for security arrangements on the site, as required by the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999 (SECCA), 22 USC, 4865 2(B)(ii). Clinton admitted failing to comply with the law in the following exchange:

US President Barack Obama invoked a waiver on Wednesday postponing the relocation of the American embassy to Jerusalem for at least another six months. Despite Congressional legislation mandating that the US move its mission to the Israeli capital, successive administrations dating back to the Clinton regime have used presidential authority to postpone implementation of the law by citing “national security interests.” Jerusalem is not recognized as Israel’s capital, and the international community’s position is that its status is to be negotiated in talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel's annexation of the eastern half of the capital is also not...

The federal government has restored Oklahoma’s flexibility to decide how to use $29 million in public school funding, state officials said Monday. The U.S. Department of Education had withdrawn Oklahoma’s waiver from portions of the No Child Left Behind Act in August, after legislators dropped Common Core guidelines that would have been in place for the current school year. Replacement guidelines—the ones in place before Common Core—weren’t certified until October as being capable of making high school graduates ready for college or the workplace. …

Jerome Hauer, a top aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, appears to have regularly carried a firearm to work in violation of state law. Hauer runs New York’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. Cuomo, an advocate of ultra-strict gun control laws, appointed him to the job in 2011. Hauer’s 9-millimeter Glock first came to the attention of local newspapers when he used the gun’s laser sighting attachment as a pointer during a meeting with a Swedish delegation. That event occurred last October at a State Police bunker, and was first reported by the Albany Times Union in...

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration will grant a waiver exempting volunteer emergency departments, mainly fire departments, from the Affordable Care Act's requirement that employers with more than 50 workers working 30 hours or more per week provide health coverage. The announcement came from a Treasury Department official in a blog posted over the weekend. It means that on January 1, 2015, when employers with 50 or more workers are required to provide health coverage to their workers, volunteer fire department and ambulance companies will be exempted. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who joined some other congressional members in asking for the...

A top Senate Republican is blasting regulations he argues will exempt unions' multi-employer health plans from a key tax under ObamaCare. Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune (S.D.) pointed to a section of a 255-page regulatory filing and said it would amount to a "bailout" for the labor moment, which has grown increasingly dissatisfied with the new healthcare law. "Despite endorsing ObamaCare and working fervently to get it passed, unions are now experiencing the ugly reality of this law, and they want out. This exemption is crony capitalism at its worst," said Thune, who is behind a bill to block...

Via Watchdog.Org, if you can believe it: One of President Obama’s most ardent liberal supporters has defected from Obamacare.Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, told a Colorado health policy think tank that Obamacare premiums will be too expensive for some of the wealthiest addresses in America – ski resorts like Breckenridge and Keystone. …“We will be encouraging a waiver,” Polis told Health Policy Solutions in a story that ran today. “It will be difficult for Summit County residents to become insured. For the vast majority, it’s too high a price to pay.” …Polis also wrote to Colorado’s insurance commissioner asking why an...

...Laborers (LIUNA) President Terry O'Sullivan, who endorsed the resolution, told the convention delegates that without changes to the way the ACA is implemented, there are likely to be "unintended consequences" that will hurt workers' health care coverage. AFT Secretary-Treasurer Lorretta Johnson said many AFT members, including para-professionals, adjunct college professors, nurses and public employees, have had their hours cut to under the 30-hour week threshold they must work before ACA requires employers to provide affordable, comprehensive health care coverage or pay a penalty. Trumka did tell the delegates that "the labor movement is engaged in ongoing dialogue with a number...

The federal government granted Indiana a year-long Obamacare waiver on Tuesday, allowing the state to continue to run its own Medicaid pilot program, The Washington Post reports. Indiana, along with Iowa and Arkansas, requested major exemptions from the law, and is the first state to receive one. “Securing a waiver to continue the Healthy Indiana Plan is a victory for Hoosiers enrolled in this innovative program and will ensure that Indiana remains at the forefront of consumer-driven healthcare in the United States,” Republican Gov. Mike Pence said in a statement. Pence will now consider expanding Medicaid under the state’s “Healthy...

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday issued proposed rules that would ease the administrative requirements for companies and insurers when they report employees' health coverage information to comply with President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law. The proposal issued Thursday would, among other things, eliminate the need for employers to determine whether particular employees are full-time if adequate coverage is offered to all "potentially full-time employees." It also would let employers report specific costs for health plans only if the cost is above a certain threshold dollar amount.

America has a two-party system. But it’s not Republicans versus Democrats. It’s the ruling class — Republicans and Democrats — against everyone else. Consider how President Obama just gave Congress its very own Obamacare waiver. Obamacare includes a provision that should cost each member of Congress and each staffer $5,000 to $11,000 per year. Needless to say, the ruling class was not pleased. Congress wasn’t about to try to exempt itself from this provision explicitly, though. If John Q. Congressman voted to give himself an Obamacare waiver that his constituents don’t get, he wouldn’t be John Q. Congressman much longer....

News broke late last evening about the debate playing out over Obamacare and whether members of Congress and their staffs will get special treatment. Yet a detailed analysis of this issue by Heritage Foundation experts found that the Office of Personnel Management does not have the legal authority to do what the Obama Administration promised Congress last night. Furthermore, it is mighty curious that word of the Obama Administration “solving” Congress’ problem was suddenly leaked to a couple reporters at 9 p.m. — just hours before the release of Heritage’s report (embargoed copies of which had been given to the...

The Office of Personnel Management, under heavy pressure from Capitol Hill, will issue a ruling that says the government can continue to make a contribution to the health care premiums of members of Congress and their aides, according to several Hill sources. A White House official confirmed the deal and said the proposed regulations will be issued next week. Just Wednesday, POLITICO reported that President Barack Obama told Democratic senators that he was personally involved in finding a solution. The problem was rooted in the original text of the Affordable Care Act. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) inserted a provision which...

When Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the Patient Affordability Care Act, many of us considered him derelict in his duty to enforce the Constitution. He engaged in judicial activism to give the appearance of avoiding judicial activism. He wrote: "Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation's elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their...

Few fair minded Americans would argue that the tenants of Capitol Hill should suffer the slings and arrows which complicate the lives of mere commoners. After all, seeing to the 24/7 needs of the underclasses is burden enough for anyone. But thanks to an amendment to the Affordable Care Act, members of the political ruling class and their congressional staff will soon join the little people in suffering the financial distress promised in a 2,700 page law read and understood by very few within the beltway. And the DC elite do not like it one bit. Before ObamaCare was rammed...

Dozens of lawmakers and aides are so afraid that their health insurance premiums will skyrocket next year thanks to Obamacare that they are thinking about retiring early or just quitting... The fear: Government-subsidized premiums will disappear at the end of the year under a provision in the health care law that nudges aides and lawmakers onto the government health care exchanges, which could make their benefits exorbitantly expensive... If the issue isn’t resolved, and massive numbers of lawmakers and aides bolt, many on Capitol Hill fear it could lead to a brain drain just as Congress tackles a slew of...

Two weeks ago, I pointed out Section 1555, one of the major chinks in PPACA's armor according to an attorney at the Goldwater Institute. Section 1555 is in the law under "Subtitle G - Miscellaneous Provisions." Since bringing this up, I've heard from some who believe that this section is limited solely to those who sell ("issue") health insurance. Here again is Section 1555: "No individual, company, business, nonprofit entity, or health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall be required to participate in any Federal health insurance program created under this Act (or any amendments made...