Page 6 - 5-29-15 Friday's Edition

U. S. Government
Democratic Group Urges Medicaid Expansion As State Legislature Goes Into Special Session
Appeals Court Issues Blow To President’s Amnesty Action
A press conference was held outside the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce office Wednesday where a coalition led by U.S. Repre- sentative Kathy Castor urged Florida Legislators to expand Medicaid coverage.
The Florida Legislature, dominated by Republicans will have to have a three-week spe- cial session that begins Mon- day, to write a state budget.
This is due to the Republi- can-controlled House resisting the Senate-crafted plan that would bring Medicaid cover- age to 800,000 uninsured Floridians under the Afford- able Care Act, and the House Legislators leaving the session early without getting its job done.
Republican Gov. Rick Scott and his cronies are smoke-screening concerned that the $5 billion the state would have to pump into the expansion over the next eight years would hurt its economy.
To account for its uncom- pensated care, Florida cur- rently relies on the federal Low-Income Pool. But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plan to re- duce those funds from $2.1 bil- lion this year to $1 billion next year.
“The money that Florida has relied on in the past for un- compensated and emergency room care will be shrinking dramatically,” said Cong.
Castor, whose district in- cludes parts of Tampa and St. Petersburg.
The CMS said last week it would offer Florida $600 mil- lion to make up for the esti- mated amount of uncompensated care while it transitions from Low-Income Pool funding and expands Medicaid.
Medicaid expansion, Cas- tor said, also could provide about $2 billion a year to Florida more than what it cur- rently gets.
“That is money that is di- rectly tied to jobs in our hospi- tals and healthcare sectors,” Castor said.
“This is a great opportunity for the Florida Legislature to get something right, and to do some greater good,” said state Rep. Dwight Dudley, D-St. Petersburg.
Gov. Scott filed a lawsuit against the federal govern- ment claiming it coerced the state into expanding Medicaid by slashing the Low-Income Pool funding.
Members of the coalition said they want to move past that and come to an agreement for people who cannot afford healthcare.
“I want to apologize on be- half of my legislature for the dereliction of duty in walking away from work,” said Tampa state Rep. Janet Cruz. “When I walk away from Talla- hassee, I don’t want to be known and I don’t want to be remembered for funding stadi- ums; I don’t want to be re- membered for funding transportation,” said state Rep. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa. “I want to be remembered for saving lives.”
A federal appeals court re- fused to lift an injunction against President Obama’s deportation amnesty in a rul- ing Tuesday that delivers a sec- ond major legal setback to the administration and keeps mil- lions of illegal immigrants on hold.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sided with a lower court that ruled Mr. Obama probably broke the law in taking unilateral action last year to grant an amnesty from deportation. The three- judge panel, ruling 2-1, shot down Mr. Obama’s hopes of quickly restarting the amnesty, and make it likely he’ll have to go to the Supreme Court to try to win his case.
The majority, Judges Jerry E. Smith and Jen- nifer Elrod, said the Presi- dent’s new program, known as Deferred Action for Parental Accountability, or DAPA, is a binding policy that should have gone through the usual public
PRESIDENT OBAMA
notice and comment period in- stead of being announced uni- laterally by Mr. Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson late last year.
Twenty-five states joined Texas in suing to halt the amnesty, arguing they would bear new costs in having to issue driver’s licenses to the il- legal immigrants and provide health care and other services to them. The states said the President’s actions were un- constitutional or, at the very least, illegal.
Politicians and Chamber members hold press conference in St. Pete.
IRS Say Cyber Breach Originated In Russia
The IRS believes that a major cyber breach that al- lowed criminals to steal the tax returns of more than 100,000 people originated in Russia, two sources briefed on the data theft tell CNN.
On Tuesday, the Internal Revenue Service announced that organized crime syndi- cates used personal data ob- tained from elsewhere to access tax information, which they then used to file $50 mil- lion in fraudulent returns.
The IRS said the agency's Criminal Investigation Unit and the Treasury Inspector
General for Tax Administra- tion are investigating. The agency also alerted the Home- land Security Department of the breach, a DHS official con- firmed.
An IRS spokeswoman said the agency does not discuss on- going investigations.
Obama Administration Takes Over Small Waterways
President Obama’s administration on Wednesday claimed dominion over all of Amer- ica’s streams, creeks, rills, ditches, brooks, rivulets, burns, tributaries, criks, wetlands.
The Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Army Corps of Engineers, says it has the authority to control all waterways within the United States — and will exercise that authority.
“We’re finalizing a clean water rule to protect
the streams and the wetlands that one in three Americans rely on or drinking water. And we’re doing that without creating any new permitting requirements and maintaining all previous ex- emptions and exclusions,” EPA head Gina Mc- Carthy told reporters Wednesday.
The moves comes as part of the Clean Water Act and federal officials say they are simply try- ing to help businesses comply with regulations.
Race For The White House
Race For The White House 2016: Federal Judge Orders Clinton Emails Be Released Every 30 Days
Watchdog Groups Want Jeb Bush Campaign Funds Investigated
Watchdog groups want the Justice Department to investi- gate whether Jeb Bush is im- properly coordinating with his Right to Rise super PAC, launched with the goal of giv- ing his campaign an unprece- dented financial advantage once he makes it official.
Democracy 21 and the Cam- paign Legal Center, both of which track campaign finance law, sent a letter Wednesday to Attorney General Loretta Lynch alleging that Bush and the PAC “are engaged in a scheme to allow unlimited con- tributions to be spent directly on behalf of the Bush cam- paign and thereby violate the candidate contribution limits enacted to prevent corruption and the appearance of corrup-
Former Florida Governor, and candidate for 2016 Elec- tion, Jeb Bush.
tion.”
The groups, concerned
about the Federal Election Commission’s limited ability to enforce campaign finance laws, are calling on Lynch to ap- point an independent special counsel to investigate potential violations.
A federal judge issued an order Wednesday requiring the State Department to make public batches of former Sec- retary of State Hillary Clin- ton's emails every 30 days starting next month.
U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras also set particular targets for the agency to meet each month as it wades through the roughly 30,000 emails totaling about 55,000 pages.
The monthly disclosure es- sentially splits the difference between the State Depart- ment's most recent proposal of releases every 60 days and lawyers for Vice News reporter Jason Leopold, who pro- posed releases every two weeks.
The State Department ini- tially proposed releasing the
Hillary Clinton, who is a candidate for president in 2016 has been dealing with controversy since announcing.
vast majority of the emails in a single batch by next January, but Contreras rejected that suggestion, citing the public interest in the materials.
Clinton, now a Democratic candidate for president, has
said she wants the emails re- leased by State as quickly as possible.
Clinton returned the 55,000 pages of emails to her former agency in December after an October request to four former secretaries asking for any official records in their possession. The former secre- tary, who used a private ac- count for all her emails during her four years as America's top diplomat, also has said she had erased an equivalent number of emails her lawyers deter- mined to be personal or pri- vate.
Last week, the State Depart- ment released on its website about 850 pages of the Clin- ton emails pertaining to the deadly attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi in 2012 and re- lated issues.
PAGE 6-A FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY FRIDAY, MAY 29, 2015