Senator Ted Cruz Threatens To Subpoena Treasury Officials To Testify About Obamacare

Roll Call states that Senator Ted Cruz is warning he might seek to compel testimony from the Treasury Department about the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

The Texas Republican senator – who is also a presidential candidate – is in control of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts.

He said his staff had been informed by the Obama administration that witnesses would not be available to testify about the rule-making process for providing subsidies under Obamacare because of ongoing litigation.

“For two main reasons, this excuse is entirely invalid,” Cruz wrote in a new letter to Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew.

“First, Congress retains its right to conduct oversight of the executive branch at all times, regardless of any perceptions of poor timing by, or inconvenience to, the executive branch. The Senate Judiciary Committee has obligations to ensure the proper functioning of the federal government at all times, and not just during windows of convenience for political officials. Second, your Department’s pending litigation justification is without basis, particularly given how you have provided at least one Department witness for the exact same topic during the pendency of other litigation over the last few years.”

http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/cruz-threatens-to-subpoena-treasury-officials-to-testify-about-obamacare-rules/

Was Reagan ‘Middle Of The Road?’

In the video below, neocon foreign policy in regards to Russia is explored with retired Reagan Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts.

According to Wikipedia, Paul Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939) is an American economist and a columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and was noted as a co-founder of Reaganomics. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. He has testified before congressional committees on 30 occasions on issues of economic policy.

“Roberts has written extensively on the effects of the neo-liberal economic policies pursued since the 1990s and about jobs-offshoring which he has strongly criticized. He has argued that these policies, favoring the financial services ‘industry’ at the expense of other sectors of the economy, has eroded America’s industrial capacity, its workers’ skills and has sharply decreased upward social mobility. He has stated that these policies which condemned American workers to low-paying unskilled jobs, as the only jobs available, caused them to increase their net personal debt to maintain living standards, significantly contributed to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.”

In the video, the emboldening of the far right by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and the move towards reckless endangerment of global peace is discussed, as is Russian policy. The Reagan administration figure talks about how the political landscape has changed for the worse in this uncensored political discussion on Buzzsaw, hosted by Sean Stone.

The Lip TV