By CAP Action War Room

More Conservative States Are Closing The Coverage Gap

The Supreme Court’s resounding 6-3 decision in King v. Burwell last month demonstrated that serious legal threats to the Affordable Care Act are over and the health care law is here to stay. Next up: Getting all 50 states to close the coverage gap and expand health care to low-income working people. Elected officials in the conservative states that have not expanded Medicaid may have been hoping the high court would strike a blow to the law, but now they are back to facing reality: they have no good reason to refuse federal funding to cover thousands of residents and add millions of dollars to their state economies.

Sure enough, previous holdouts are beginning to take the steps to put patients over politics. In the last few days, Alaska and Utah have announced steps toward expansion.

On Thursday, Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) announced he will use executive action to extend coverage to an estimated 40,000 low-income Alaskans. Walker — a former Republican who has since become an Independent — has been advocating for Medicaid expansion for over a year. Nonetheless, Republican lawmakers have repeatedly blocked efforts to approve the expansion. Now, Walker has had enough and will move forward with Medicaid expansion even without the legislature’s approval. “This is the final option for me — I’ve tried everything else,” Walker said.

On Friday, GOP leaders in Utah reached an agreement of their own to close the coverage gap. A group of six state legislative leaders have continued to meet since the end of the 2015 General Legislative Session to formulate a plan. Now, it will meet with policy makers and other stakeholders to create a formal draft in the coming weeks.

Long story short: on the map below, Alaska and Utah are bringing the number of holdout states down to just 19.

Which state will be next?

BOTTOM LINE: There has never been any moral or economic reason for conservative states to refuse to close to the coverage gap. But after King v. Burwell, conservative state officials have less and less of a political reason to hold out. Alaska and Utah have become the first states since the Supreme Court decision to put patients over politics, and it’s only a matter of time until the other holdouts come to their senses and make the right choice too.

Celebrating 25 Years of the Americans with Disabilities Act

Yesterday, President Obama delivered remarks in the East Room of the White House celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

READ MORE

5 Years of Wall Street Reform, By the Numbers

Five years ago today, President Obama signed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law. (It’s commonly called “Dodd-Frank,” or simply “Wall Street Reform.”) Check out a couple numbers that help show exactly what the law has done these past years.

READ MORE

A New Blue Marble

NASA released its new “Blue Marble” photo yesterday — the first such photo from its new DSCOVR satellite, and the first of many more to come later this year.

SEE THE PHOTO

by democrats.org

By CAP Action War Room

Five Years In, Congress’ Financial Reform Law Is Doing Important Work

Congress’s financial reform law turns five today. Dodd-Frank, the massive package of Wall Street reforms passed in the wake of the Great Recession, is massively underrated. The package overhauled the financial sector with the goals of tightening up enforcement and increasing consumer protections.

One major component of the law was the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB—the only financial regulator dedicated to protecting consumers. In its four years of existence, the CFPB has helped return more than $10.1 billion to more than 17 million consumers in addition to protecting Americans from predatory lenders and deceptive mortgage practices.

Despite this extraordinary success at keeping Wall Street responsible and protecting hard working Americans, the law continues to be under attack. In fact, even though Dodd-Frank isn’t even fully in place yet, Congress has tried 139 times to either amend or repeal parts of the law. And the financial industry has spent $3.25 billion to influence the government in the five years since the law was passed. That means that if financial industry spending in the last five years were a country, it would be the 158th largest economy—bigger than 30 developing nations.

The powerful lobby against the rule has been successful in hamstringing the full implementation of the law. As a part of the package, many regulatory agencies were tasked with creating separate rules and because of the excessive lobbying and infighting, there are still 83 separate rules that haven’t been written yet. Included in the unfinished laws, are important rules like mandating disclosure of CEO-to-worker pay ratios and strengthening the controversial “Volcker Rule.”

BOTTOM LINE: We have Dodd-Frank to thank for the common sense reforms that have helped keep Wall Street accountable and level the playing field between consumers and the financial industry. But despite Dodd-Frank’s success, powerful lobby groups and conservative lawmakers have continued to thwart the law’s implementation.