US senate panel advances global treaty

Bid to protect people with disabilities from discrimination

WASHINGTON, July 23, (RTRS): A US Senate committee voted on Tuesday to advance a U.N. treaty to protect people with disabilities from discrimination, but the agreement faces a tough fight winning the two-thirds majority needed for ratification by the full Senate.

Although 146 nations and the European Union have ratified the United Nations convention, it has failed to win approval in the deeply divided US Senate, where many conservatives are wary of subjecting American social policies to global laws.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 12-6 in favor of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Only two Republicans, John McCain of Arizona and John Barrasso of Wyoming, joined the panel’s 10 Democrats in favor.

The treaty is supported by leading US military veterans organizations, advocates for the rights of sumers, it would result in an average premium increase of 76 percent. Customers now pay $82 on average on total monthly premiums averaging $346. The federal subsidy of $264 a month makes up the rest of the premium.

Two judges appointed by Republican presidents voted against the administration’s interpretation of the law while one appointed by a Democratic president dissented.

The Obama spokesman said the administration would seek a hearing by the full 11-judge court. The full court has seven judges appointed by Democratic presidents, including four appointed by Obama.

Opinion

The majority opinion handed down Tuesday concluded that the law, as written, “unambiguously” restricts subsides to consumers in exchanges established by a state. That would invalidate an Internal Revenue Service regulation that tried to sort out confusing wording in the law by concluding that Congress intended for consumers in all 50 states to have subsidized coverage.

In Richmond, the three-judge 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals panel was unanimous in its decision upholding the law’s financing.

The seemingly arcane issue is crucial to the success of the health law people with disabilities and business groups.

Opponents, including many socially conservative Republicans, worry it could expand abortion rights, threaten US parental rights such as the ability to home-school children, and shift power to the federal government from US states.

The treaty’s backers dismissed those concerns and accused opponents of injecting divisive social issues into the debate to score political points.

“It is so wrong to the disabled people to catch them up in this debate,” California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer said during heated discussions in the committee meeting.

Backers said the agreement would face stiff resistance winning the 67 votes it would need to be ratified by the full 100-member Senate, where Republicans hold 45 seats.

The treaty was defeated by just because most states have been unable or unwilling to set up their own exchanges. The inaction stems in many instances from opposition by Republican governors to the Affordable Care Act.

The small business owners filing the lawsuit say the tax credits enacted by Congress were intended to encourage states to set up their own health benefit exchanges and that the penalty for not doing so was withdrawal of tax credits for lower-income residents.

Supporters of the act say the purpose of the tax credit was not to promote the establishment of state exchanges, but rather to achieve Congress’s fundamental purpose of making insurance affordable for all Americans.

The case revolves around four words in the Affordable Care Act, which says the tax credits are available to people who enroll through an exchange “established by the state.”

The challengers to the law say a literal reading of that language invalidates the IRS subsidy to people in the federal exchanges. The opponents say that people who would otherwise qualify for the tax credits should be denied that benefit if they buy insurance on a federally facilitated exchange.

The Obama administration and congressional and state legislative supporters of the Affordable Care Act say the challengers are failing to consider five votes in the Senate in 2012. McCain, a war veteran and strong advocate for the treaty, said: “We won’t quit on this issue because we believe it is a fundamental issue of human rights.”

To press the issue, McCain and other treaty backers scheduled a news conference on Wednesday with representatives of veterans organizations, including the American Legion and Vietnam Veterans of America, and former Kansas Senator Bob Dole, a wounded war veteran who has championed the international accord.

Dole, now 91, was badly injured while fighting in World War Two, but went on to a long career in public office that included stints as Senate Majority leader and the 1996 Republican presidential nomination.

He watched from a wheelchair in the Senate in 2012 as members voted against ratification. the words of the statute in its entirety.

The judges on the Washington case were Thomas Griffith, an appointee of President George W. Bush; A. Raymond Randolph, an appointee of Bush’s father; and Harry Edwards, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, who dissented.

A lower court had ruled that the law’s text, structure, purpose, and legislative history make “clear that Congress intended to make premium tax credits available on both staterun and federally-facilitated Exchanges.”

But the appeals court concluded the opposite - that the letter of the law “unambiguously restricts” the law’s subsidies to policies sold through exchanges established by the state.

The Obama administration is developing a new way for religious nonprofits that object to paying for contraceptives in their health plans to opt out, without submitting a form they say violates their religious beliefs.

The government has been searching for solutions since the Supreme Court decided an evangelical college in Illinois can avoid filling out the form while the case is being appealed. That move undercut the accommodation the Obama administration had devised in hopes of resolving religious group’s objections without shifting the cost for birth control to employees.