Wrong to spend tax dollars undercutting ACA

While there is much focus on whether there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in that nation’s interference in the 2016 election, or any obstruction by the president to get at the truth of the matter, the administration appears to be violating other federal laws in plain sight.

On that count, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, joined by two of his colleagues, is calling out the administration and demanding answers.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services social media operation has distributed dozens of anti-Affordable Care Act videos, some with the agency logo. Social media posts of the videos often use the partisan political tag #RepealAndReplace.

Dr. Tom Price heads the agency. He has long wanted the health care law repealed.

In the highly partisan videos, individuals talk about the alleged horrors of “Obamacare” and why they back efforts to do away with it.

In a letter to Price, Murphy, joined by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, point out the potential legal violations and ask where the money for the anti-ACA campaign is coming from, who authorized the propaganda effort, and what HHS employees are involved.

The problem for the administration is that there are several U.S. laws that prohibit the executive branch from using public resources to lobby for pending legislation or push partisan agendas.

Those laws include the Anti-Lobbying Act, which states that, “No part of the money appropriated by any enactment of Congress … be used directly or indirectly to … favor, adopt, or oppose, by vote or otherwise, any legislation, law, ratification, policy or appropriation.”

Then there is the Hatch Act, precluding executive branch employees from using federal resources to push partisan political agendas. And the Consolidated Appropriations Act that bans the use of federal funds to publish electronic communications that support pending legislation — like legislation to repeal and/or replace a health care law.

The principle behind these laws is fundamental. If you want to promote a partisan agenda, use your own money, not money collected from taxpayers, millions of whom disagree with you.

Yes, at times the lines are blurred. The Obama administration published statistics on the HHS website that showed the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. The administration of President George W. Bush provided reports on alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iran (reports that proved wrong) in bolstering its plans to invade.

But these anti-ACA videos are blatantly partisan with no effort to suggest otherwise.

It should come as no shock, given that leading the administration is a president who has said he intends to kill off Obamacare by neglect, disregarding its mandates and his sworn constitutional requirement to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Meanwhile, if Connecticut residents needed more reason to stand with their U.S. senators and congressmen in fighting efforts to repeal the ACA, it came last week in the form of a report released by the Connecticut Health Foundation. It documented that more than 160,000 state residents who could otherwise not afford health insurance have obtained coverage since enactment of the ACA.

The uninsured rate, now only 6.6 percent, would jump to 12 percent if Republican lawmakers repealed the law. Connecticut’s black and Latino populations would in particular suffer from a repeal, the report found. And repeal would leave one in five state residents under age 35 uninsured.

Costs associated with uncompensated care — meaning the cost of providing medical care to the uninsured — have dropped 61 percent. Connecticut hospitals and other providers would again face providing that uncompensated care if the law were repealed.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll last week found that Americans prefer Obamacare over the Republican replacement plan 50 percent to 24 percent.

The president and Republicans should wise up and work with Democrats in repairing the Affordable Care Act. And the Trump administration should stop spending our tax dollars in trying to undermine it.