e-News 6/26/15

• Listening Tour Continues: Meeting with Mayors
• Believe it or Not: “Iran's Forces and U.S. Share a Base in Iraq.” 
• “Who’s Afraid of America?” 
• Protecting Seniors Access to Medicare
• Salute: Picatinny Team earns NATO Honor

Listening Tour Continues: Meeting with Mayors

My ongoing “Listening Tour” continued earlier this week as I sponsored my annual breakfast in Parsippany, postponed from earlier this year when a snowstorm hampered travel.  While we covered ground on some law enforcement and other domestic issues, unlike other years, the assembled mayoral questions mainly focused on national security: the threat of ISIL and al Qaeda, the violence in Iraq and Syria, the growing threat from Russia and China.

I shared my view that the White House has not done enough on any of these fronts. Evidence of that is that President’s admission that his Administration still lacks a “complete” strategy to stop ISIL in its tracks.  At the same time, the President threatens the veto of my Subcommittee’s Defense Appropriations bill, which is specifically structured to give the President, and our Armed Forces, the tools he needs to act.  In our bill, we have provided the funding and other resources the President will need to fulfill his duties as Commander in Chief.

The media are filled these days with troubling news from just about every corner of the globe.  For example, I was shocked to see this headline this week:

“Iran's Forces and U.S. Share a Base in Iraq.”

Believe it or not! Please read the article by Josh Rogin and Eli Lake onBloomberg View here.

“Who’s Afraid of America?” 

“SINCE the end of the cold war one simple geopolitical rule has endured: do not take on America. The country’s armed forces have been so well resourced and so technologically superior that it would be utterly foolish for any state to mount a direct challenge to the superpower or its allies. This rule still holds—but it is no longer quite as compelling as it once was. Although America still possesses by far the most capable armed forces in the world, the technological advantage that guarantees it can defeat any conceivable adversary is eroding rapidly.”  Read the entire article in the Economist here.

Protecting Seniors Access to Medicare

This week’s Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell is an unfortunate endorsement of a bad law that has driven up healthcare costs for millions of American families – higher premiums, skyrocketing deductibles, elevated co-pays, Obamacare has brought us larger insurance companies and hospital systems and done damage to the critical doctor-patient relationship. This split decision only highlights the need to repeal and replace this broken system with one that protects seniors, middle-income families and small business owners.

As part of that larger effort, the House of Representatives this week passed H.R. 1190, the Protecting Seniors’ Access to Medicare Act of 2015, a bill to repeal Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).

Under Obamacare, the IPAB has the power to deny care to seniors by deciding unilaterally what specific care will be paid for. Patients, families, and doctors should make their own medical decisions, not some Washington-based board of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.  Repealing IPAB will help protect the patient-doctor relationship for Medicare beneficiaries. It is part of what must be a broader effort to focus attention on solutions that put patients first.

Earlier this year, the House passed H.R. 2, legislation permanently replacing Medicare’s Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula with a more stable payment system to help ensure seniors’ access to their doctor.  More recently, the House approved a series of measures to strengthen the Medicare Advantage program for the millions of seniors who rely on it.

Learn more about the IPAB repeal bill here.

Salute:  Congratulations to the men and women Picatinny Arsenal as members of their team earn NATO safety honors. Nine Picatinny Arsenal employees received a technical achievement award presented by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Munitions Safety Information Analysis Center for their work on “insensitive munitions” which are less prone to violent reactions when subjected to external stimuli such as impact from bullets, heat and shock from nearby explosions.