The first real blood of the 2016 presidential race has been spilled by the group American Encore, which is up on Iowa radio with ads asking why Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul is helping block an investigation into just who it was that certified the U.S. Congress as a "small business" for purposes of Obamacare.

This is not a small deal. It involves not just millions in additional costs to the taxpayers but the integrity of the institution itself which, admittedly, is not very high these days.

During the health care reform debate, several members of Congress took pains to point out that whatever they passed and imposed on the American people would not apply to them. Members of the House and Senate and their staffs and others on Capitol Hill were all part of the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan. Once this was pointed out, and sensing a certain political vulnerability because of it, specific language was adopted removing them from that plan and placing them under the Obamacare regime just like everyone else.



Falsely asserting that Congress is a "small business" defeats the purpose of that effort. Allowing that classification to stand uncorrected perpetuates a fraud on the American people because it means that the Affordable Care Act as it is applied to Congress isn't really the same law that is applied to everybody else. To separate out the two continues an alarming trend exhibited by both parties to elevate those in government to a kind of protected class, entitled to special privileges and subsides and other goodies the rest of us are denied.

Louisiana GOP Sen. David Vitter has not been one to let this issue go lightly. He has obtained and made public the documents showing Congress declared itself a small business but they are, unfortunately, redacted – which is a fancy word meaning that all the useful information, like who signed the forms, is blacked out.



Vitter tried recently to get a subpoena issued out of the Senate Small Business Committee for the unredacted documents, presumably so that the people who signed could be identified, called before the committee and asked under oath who told them to do what they did. He tried – and failed – with all but four of his GOP colleagues, including Sen. Paul, and all the Democrats on the committee voting against him.

Paul does not have an explanation for his vote. Instead, according to an aide to the Kentucky junior senator, he wants it known that he "opposes allowing Congress to exempt themselves from any legislation. To that end, this month, he reintroduced his proposed Constitutional amendment to prohibit Congress from passing any law that exempts themselves. Sen. Paul prefers this option over a partisan cross-examination of Congressional staff."

It's a nice piece of political camouflage that cleverly evades the point. Congress is not exempting itself from the law; rather it has made a false declaration about the number of people who work there in order to obtain a subsidy to which the members and their staffs are not entitled.

