Last week, I wrote about Rep. Darrell Issa (R/CA) spending taxpayer dollars to ferry a few Republican colleagues around the country to complain in public about the ACA and to listen to people who feel the same way that they do about it. These junkets obviously serve no real public interest; they're purely an anti-ACA promotional effort, aimed at getting headlines in local news, at our expense.
This week in Texas, Issa jumped the shark.
Texas, need I remind you, is the state with the most uninsured people in the country. It's also a state where the Republican governor and legislature have refused to allow Medicaid expansion that won't cost them anything but would bring some of the tax dollars they send to Washington back to them, and improve the health of their most at-risk citizens.
When Randy Farris, the regional administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was allowed to speak, this is what Issa told him:
"Issa asked Farris whether he knew that all applicant information ended up on the federal site. Farris said private information was not stored there. 'You need to watch more Fox, I’m afraid,' Issa said."
Really, Congressman?
No American needs to watch more Fox. A healthy democracy demands that the citizenry be more informed, not less. Watching Fox has the opposite effect, according to this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this.
And by the way, Congressman Issa, you're wrong on the facts, too. But then, since you apparently watch so much Fox, that shouldn't be a surprise.