Greg Abbott discusses illegal healthcare fixes by the Obama Administration with Sean Rima on KTSA.
SEAN RIMA: Good morning, sir.
ATTORNEY GENERAL GREG ABBOTT: Well good morning. This is like a two-for-one. I get to be on this show and I get to talk to you at the same time.
RIMA: That’s right. It’s kind of weird, isn’t it? It is for me.
GENERAL ABBOTT: Exactly. Well happy new year to you.
RIMA: Happy new year to you as well, sir. First off we have this letter that you and I believe ten other Attorneys General have signed off on regarding sort of the arbitrary changing of the mandates in ObamaCare. What’s in the content of this letter?
GENERAL ABBOTT: Well, several things. First, the broad strokes are that as all Americans have seen in the past few months, Barack Obama and his Administration are constantly changing what ObamaCare law is. And frankly it’s astounding because the president looked America in the eye and tried to beat back our attempt to take down the law through our lawsuit. And said listen, ObamaCare is settled law and it’s time for America just to move on. Well, it was settled law after that Supreme Court decision, but now it’s unsettled law because Barack Obama and his Administration are constantly changing what ObamaCare is. Sean, listen, we are a nation of laws. Not a nation of men, that’s one of the fundamental tenants of our nation. And the reason for it is we didn’t want some dictator or king or monarch constantly changing the rules, applying one set of rules to one set of people and a different set of rules to a different set of people. And yet, we are living under the very doctrine that this country fought to escape from. And so the fundamental tenant of this letter is to tell the president–tell Secretary Sebelius–that these constantly changing of the law by the Chief Executive is illegal, unconstitutional. Only Congress can write the laws and the president is assuming the duties, the power of the Congress by rewriting the ObamaCare law to suit his political end. So we’re telling the Administration, you have to follow the law or not, you could be subject to another lawsuit.
RIMA: As you worded it, these changes in these mandates quote compounds illegal executive action. I’ve been mystified as to how he ever had the authority to individually change different aspects of a written law, of an acted law. What is his justification? Is there any justification on his end or on the Administration’s end as to how, legally, they’re able to do this?
GENERAL ABBOTT: Legally, there is no justification. He does it because he believes that he can get away with it. He has the support, of course, of certain areas of the media that has allowed him to get away with it. It’s the same support group that allowed him to look into the camera and lie to the American people when he told them that if you like your healthcare insurance, you will get to keep your healthcare insurance. If you like your doctor, you’ll get to keep your doctor. All of these promises about ObamaCare have proven to be false. And now that the light has revealed the falsehood of ObamaCare, he’s scrambling to try to change it. But what you said is the fundamental point. And that is he has no legal authority to make these changes to ObamaCare, and if we allow the President of the United States to establish the precedent that the president can make these changes to laws, it changes our entire construct of our Constitution. It eliminates the power of the legislative branch of government and even reduces the power of the court system. And it puts all the power into an all-powerful President of the United States, which again, is the fundamental thing that we fought against to establish this country in the very beginning.
RIMA: Speaking with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, old friend of the station on 550 KTSA. What does the letter..what do you want to do? What are you threatening to do or what’s the next step after sending this letter?
GENERAL ABBOTT: Well two things that unfortunately gets even more complex. One is we lay out some more details about how the president and his Administration are violating the Constitution by constantly making up new laws, new rules, new regulations and we point out several of these and we tell Secretary Sebelius for them to act legally to stop acting illegally. But there’s a second component to the letter. And that is one that focuses directly on Secretary Sebelius’ negligence and failures as it concerns the navigators, and the dangers that the navigators are posing to Americans. And we offer some specific ideas about what the Health and Human Services department needs to do to make sure that Americans don’t have their information compromised by these completely, inadequately trained and equipped navigators, who are signing up, I would say millions of Americans but we don’t know how many people they’re really signing up. But compromising the information of your listeners, who may sign up with these navigators, who are unskilled, untrained, and sometimes may be criminals who have your information.
RIMA: Well and we’ve seen this with some of these sting videos over the past month, where we have examples of some of these navigators actively telling people to lie about their situation. If they’re capable of doing that to someones’ face, I agree with you, why would they not be capable of stealing your information as it’s presented?
GENERAL ABBOTT: Key point as a reminder to everybody…those sting videos were taped here in the state of Texas and they caught these so-called navigators, on tape, basically committing felonies by suggesting to potential purchasers of the ObamaCare healthcare insurance to lie on a form on a federal document about what their income level may be…about whether or not they qualify for certain tax credits, etc. etc…which is basically urging people to engage in fraud. And so if they’re willing to urge other people to engage in defrauding their own federal government, can we trust these people with our own personal, private information? And the answer, of course, is no.
RIMA: That’s a big no. Yeah, I’m going to agree with you there.
GENERAL ABBOTT: And there’s no criminal background checks on these people. There’s no training like there would be with a typical person who is selling insurance. This is a system that is more defective than the computer system rolled out just a couple of months ago that attempted to try and sign up people in the first place. And so this is one problem compounded on another problem in the complete failure of the ObamaCare system.
RIMA: We’re speaking with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, once again on 550 KTSA. We only have a couple of minutes here. Now I got to ask you also about this William White thing with Wendy Davis. She’s calling for his resignation. I talked about the payday loan places on my show probably for an hour and a half the other night. She’s calling for his resignation on a couple of points. The first point is totally ridiculous. That is, that he is the VP of one of these places, as they sort of half to be in the industry to even be on this commission. But then the comments he made to the El Paso Times about people making their own decisions and nobody is forcing him to take these loans. I absolutely agree with that. I actually know folks who work in the payday loan industry and they don’t force or trick anybody into anything. What’s your reaction to Wendy Davis and these accusations and this suggestion that William White resign?
GENERAL ABBOTT: Well this will tell you everything that you need to know about Wendy Davis and about the campaign for governor between Wendy Davis and myself over the coming year. And that is, as you just said, and as maybe some people have read, Wendy Davis is calling for the resignation of this official who was appointed to this board. Well guess what? Guess who voted to confirm this individual to that board position, knowing full well who he was and what he does? Wendy Davis. So what she did first was to confirm him in his position, knowing full well what the challenges were about his potential conflict. And so she confirmed him, said okay yeah I’m in favor, go do what you need to do. And then turns around and says, oh wait a second this is a conflict of interest you need to resign. So she’s calling for the resignation of a person that she put there in the first place.
RIMA: She does tend to invalidate herself, doesn’t she?
GENERAL ABBOTT: Exactly. And so she completely lacks credibility on this issue and other issues. Listen, what a governor needs to do is not to appoint someone and then call for their resignation. We need to go about the process of making good decisions to make Texas a better place. To focus on creating jobs, to focus on improving our education system, as opposed to finding ways that Wendy can try to pull down appointments that she confirmed.
RIMA: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, thank you so much sir for joining us. It’s always a pleasure.
GENERAL ABBOTT: My pleasure, thank you.