The national GOP has moved-on from their unpopular attempts to strip healthcare from millions of Americans. Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel evidently did not get the memo. On Tuesday, he announced that he was spending your state tax money in yet another attempt to kill the Affordable Care Act.
Along with the AG of Texas, Schimel is leading the charge to destroy our healthcare system. If he succeeds, anyone with a pre-existing condition can be denied insurance. The sale of useless junk insurance will once again be legal. Kids under 26 could be thrown off of their parents' coverage. There will be no limits on how much more you can be charged if you are older, or sicker, or a woman. Insurance prices will skyrocket due to hordes of newly-uninsured descending on hospitals and clinics.
Appearing on Fox (of course) on Tuesday, Schimel boasted about his new suit against the Federal Government to declare the ACA unconstitutional. Schimel's weak legal argument is based on Congress's recent ending of the penalty on individuals who decide to go without insurance. The abolition of the penalty was one tiny aspect of the huge tax-cut for the rich that was jammed-through Congress late last year.
According to Schimel's bizarre logic, without a financial penalty for going without insurance, the personal mandate built into the ACA is not constitutional. Further, without the the mandate, the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. As Schimel gleefully told his Fox interviewer, "If this falls, the whole thing is gone."
This is not Schimel's first attempt to use your state tax dollars to sue the US government (which is ironically supported with your federal tax dollars) over the ACA. In your name, he entered into three other national lawsuits to fight various ACA provisions.
Where is all of the money coming from to advance Schimel's far-right agenda? I thought that Wisconsin was broke! At a time when our university system, roads, public schools, and the DNR have undergone drastic cuts, the DOJ keeps getting more and more money. Walker gave the DOJ a hefty 5.2% increase in funding between 2014 and 2017. The DOJ got another 2.5% increase in the new 2017-19 budget.
What are Wisconsinites getting for all of that increased legal spending? Schimel has built himself quite the little empire. He formed a Solicitor-General office in the DOJ and staffed it with at least six new hires. According to a spokesperson, the group's ominous mandate is to "counter the multiple overreaches by the federal government".
In addition to his multiple suits fighting the ACA, Schimel has many more GOP-fantasy cases in his large portfolio. He has entered into federal cases to protect polluters, punish workers, support partisan gerrymanders, end reproductive freedom, deport the Dreamers, and fight trans bathroom rights.
Wisconsin Attorney General, Brad Schimel has taken gross GOP partisanship to an unprecedented level. Hardworking Wisconsin taxpayers are footing the bill for his spree of lawsuits against the federal government.
Many of us rely on the ACA to survive. We don't need our elected officials working to end it. We need an Attorney General whose first obligation is to the people, not to his extreme ideology.
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