Large parts of western Virginia– including almost all of the Sixth Congressional District– will not have any health insurance available through the Affordable Care Act in 2018, The Roanoke Times reports.

Insurers blame President Donald Trump for making subsidies unreliable and Congress for failing to stabilize the market.

Virginia Secretary of Health Dr. Bill Hazel said Tuesday that Washington had manufactured this crisis, which will affect about 70,000 of the 350,000 Virginians who purchase policies on the exchange.

“They are the ones who have to fix it,” he said. “Our hands are all but tied.”

Hazel said he has been meeting with Virginia insurers, but none is willing to reenter the market as long as federal cost-sharing reduction payments are at risk. The payments are subsidies to lower-income people to help cover out-of-pocket expenses of high deductibles, co-payments and coinsurance.

…..

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, said several governors have stepped up to find ways to keep exchanges running in their states.

“I hope Gov. McAuliffe will consider a way to do this as well,” he said.

Goodlatte, whose district is widely affected by the insurers’ pullout, said the problem was created by the Affordable Care Act.

“Unfortunately, the collapse of insurance exchanges shouldn’t be a surprise. From the very beginning, many have said, I included, that this law is simply unworkable and the systems put into place by it will not adequately serve American families. Now, those chickens have come home to roost,” Goodlatte said.

So having done virtually everything in his power since the ACA was enacted in 2010 to kill or undermine rather than fix the law that provides affordable insurance to tens of millions of Americans (including more than 30,000 in the Sixth District), Goodlatte blames the law itself and looks to Gov. McAuliffe for a solution.

Sorry, Congressman.  If tens of thousands of your constituents lose their health insurance next year, the blame will lie with you, your Republican colleagues and your Republican president.

Congressman Goodlatte is continuing his war against federal regulations protecting and improving the environment.

In a move that environmentalists charged would undermine the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort, the U.S. House of Representatives has voted to bar the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from taking action against any state in the Bay watershed that fails to meet pollution reduction goals set by the EPA six years ago.

The measure, an amendment to an EPA and Interior Department spending bill put forward by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-VA, passed Thursday night by a largely party line vote of 214 to 197.

…..

In a statement issued after the House vote, Goodlatte said his amendment was needed to prevent a “federal power grab” over the Bay cleanup effort.

“My amendment stops the EPA from hijacking states’ water quality strategies,” he said. “It removes the ability of the EPA to take retaliatory or ‘backstop’ actions against the six states located in the Chesapeake Bay watershed if they do not meet EPA-mandated goals.”

It might be slightly possible to take Goodlatte’s concerns seriously if Virginia Republican Congressmen Rob Wittman and Scott Taylor and Maryland GOP Congressman Andy Harris– normally party-line voters– had not joined the unanimous Democratic minority to oppose Goodlatte’s measure. All three represent districts bordering the Chesapeake Bay.

Congressman Goodlatte did the right thing when he joined the overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives to approve nearly $8 billion in preliminary relief for the parts of Texas and Louisiana devastated by Hurricane Harvey.

In 2005 Goodlatte joined in the almost unanimous vote for a nearly $52 billion aid package after Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana, Mississippi and other parts of the Gulf Coast, and for a bill allowing the National Flood Insurance Program to borrow more money to aid Katrina victims.

But when Hurricane Sandy caused enormous damage to parts of New York and New Jersey in 2012, Goodlatte voted against a nearly $51 billion aid package and against a flood insurance measure similar to the one he approved after Katrina.

Some Republicans said they would have voted for the Sandy relief if it had been offset by spending cuts in other areas. But there were no such offsets for the Katrina relief or the Harvey relief.

According to ProPublica:

The $51.8 billion relief bill passed after Katrina and the $50.7 billion one [for Sandy relief] aren’t exactly the same. The Katrina version allocated almost all of the money to the Department of Homeland Security for disaster relief, while the Sandy one directs relief money to a slew of federal agencies.

Conservatives derided some of the provisions of the Sandy bill as pork. As they point out, the bill allocates billions to dozens of federal agencies, including the National Park Service, the Smithsonian, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Secret Service, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But the bill also specifies the agencies must spend the money on Sandy-related expenses.

I’d hate to think that Goodlatte’s votes were influenced by the fact that Katrina and Harvey struck Republican-leaning “red states” during Republican administrations while Sandy struck Democratic-leaning “blue states” during a Democratic administration.

Perhaps he can offer us another explanation.

Update: Goodlatte voted against a bill to provide $15.25 billion in Harvey relief, raise the debt limit and extend government funding for three months.

After President Trump’s decision to terminate the DACA program– that protects from deportation 800,000 people brought to the US as children by undocumented immigrants– Congressman Goodlatte proclaimed:

I stand ready to work with the Trump Administration and my colleagues in Congress to address this problem the right way: through reasonable legislation passed by Congress, rather than by executive fiat.”

So it was good to be reminded that precisely such reasonable legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives back on January 12, 2017, and referred to the Goodlatte-chaired Judiciary Committee– where it still awaits action.

The BRIDGE Act (HR 496)– introduced by Republican Congressman Mike Coffman of Colorado– would extend DACA for three years pending a permanent solution.

As chair of the Judiciary Committee, Goodlatte had the power at any time between January 12 and now to bring up the BRIDGE Act for a vote in committee and send it to the full House for consideration.

He didn’t. And so Coffman has filed a discharge petition, requiring the signatures of a majority in the House, to force the bill onto the House floor for a vote.

Of course Goodlatte could make this effort moot by simply bringing the BRIDGE Act up for debate and vote in the Judiciary Committee.

Will he? He should be asked.

My posts at Goodlatte Watch are almost always aimed at Congressman Goodlatte himself. But my target this time is different.

Executives of some of the nation’s leading information technology companies have reacted with overwhelming disapproval to President Trump’s decision to end the DACA protection for DREAMers brought to the US by their parents.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote:

As a CEO, I see each day the direct contributions that talented employees from around the world bring to our company, our customers and to the broader economy. We care deeply about the DREAMers who work at Microsoft and fully support them. We will always stand for diversity and economic opportunity for everyone. It is core to who we are at Microsoft and I believe it is core to what America is.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, called Trump’s decision “cruel.” And Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, posted this:

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai tweeted:

So perhaps Nadella, Zuckerberg, Sandberg and Pichai would like to explain why their companies’ political action committees so generously funded the most recent reelection campaign (and previous campaigns) of Congressman Goodlatte, who– as chair of the House Judiciary Committee– has for years blocked meaningful immigration reform and who said Trump did “the right thing” on DACA.

Goodlatte co-chairs the Congressional Internet Caucus. The House Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, includes a subcommittee on intellectual property and the internet. It appears that buying political access to the congressman on such matters has overridden any other considerations by these supposedly “enlightened” and “progressive” companies. I hope that changes.

Congressman Goodlatte has issued a statement supporting President Trump’s cruel decision to end the DACA program which allows 800.000 people brought to the US by their parents to remain in the country if they have no criminal records are are going to school, working or serving in the military.

President Trump has done the right thing by ending this unlawfully-contrived program. In addition to working on immigration enforcement legislation, per the President’s request, I stand ready to work with the Trump Administration and my colleagues in Congress to address this problem the right way: through reasonable legislation passed by Congress, rather than by executive fiat.

Putting aside Goodlatte’s dubious assertion that the DACA program is “unlawfully-contrived”: Are we to take this seriously after Goodlatte has done his best as chair of the House Judiciary Committee to block the sort of meaningful and comprehensive immigration reform supported by a majority of Americans?

Can you imagine Congressman Goodlatte writing something like that? Me Neither.

I can only imagine Goodlatte responding to Senator McCain: “Speak for yourself.”

(Source: Almost every post at Goodlatte Watch.)

You guessed it: Congressman Goodlatte– who so piously defends the “rule of law” whenever he thinks it’s politically convenient— has not said a word publicly about President Trump’s outrageous pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted for ignoring a federal judge’s orders to stop detaining people based solely on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally.

All Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee chaired by Goodlatte have written to him asking for hearings on Trump’s action.

The Democrats wrote:

We ask for several reasons. The pardon sends an unequivocal signal that institutionalized racial profiling as practiced by Sheriff Arpaio is acceptable; the pardon is disrespectful to the rule of law in general and to the federal courts in particular; and the President issued the pardon in the complete absence of any advisory role by the Department of Justice and after the President had already asked Attorney General Sessions to drop the case completely.  As you are well aware, although the President has wide constitutional authority to issue pardons, there is also ample precedent for our Committee to review pardons as controversial as this one.
…..
We are not alone in raising these concerns. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) disagrees with the decision, noting that “law enforcement officials have a special responsibility to respect the rights of everyone in the United States.” Senator John McCain (R-AZ) argues that the pardon “undermines [the President’s] claim for the respect of rule of law, as Mr. Arpaio has shown no remorse for his actions.” Senator Jeff Flake would have “preferred that the President honor the judicial process and let it take its course.”

You were similarly critical of a pardon our Committee examined in 2001: “Many executives have this power for the purpose of accomplishing justice or mercy as a last resort, where fairness simply has not taken hold in other aspects of our judicial process.” You argued that President Clinton had “abused this power” and “not used it” for the purposes you described. These statements are directly on point with respect to President Trump’s decision and demonstrate why the Arpaio pardon is worthy, at the very least, of further discussion by our Committee.

The Committee’s Democrats pointedly noted that “this letter represents the fifth time we have written to ask you to conduct oversight of the Trump Administration.”

Eight months after President Trump’s inauguration, our Committee has yet to hold a single oversight hearing involving the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, the Secretary or Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director or Acting Director of the FBI, or the Director of the Secret Service. Given that our Committee created an entire task force to examine “executive overreach” last Congress during President Obama’s term, it is somewhat disturbing that we have not engaged in any comparable oversight of the Trump Administration.

You’d almost think Goodlatte is afraid to do anything which might suggest even a slight disagreement with Trump.

And all too predictably:

A Republican House Judiciary Committee aide told the Washington Examiner President Trump has “broad authority” to issue pardons under the U.S. Constitution.

And it is because of that, “the committee does not currently have plans to hold a hearing on this matter,” the aide said.

Nancy Trussell of Roanoke wrote in the August 24 Roanoke Times about a frustrating meeting that she and other representatives from the Bread for the World charity held with Congressman Goodlatte at his Washington office in June.

We discussed upcoming legislation that will affect the S.N.A.P (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) as well as the Medicaid expansion provision of the ACA. We told Mr. Goodlatte that 90 percent of S.N.A.P. participants are on it for 10 months or less. This, of course, is not news to him and it really didn’t interest him. Mr. Goodlatte gave our group an earful about the inadequacies and abuses of what I would call a “safety net”. Nor was he interested in our belief that food insecurity leads to health issues that, in fact, cost the U.S. far more than the cost of making sure families in the U.S. have food. We reminded him that 1 in 7 children in Virginia live in poverty and that 14.4 percent of Va. children are food insecure.

When asked what he thought about Virginia’s minimum wage, he explained that Roanoke is an inexpensive place to live and gave us all the impression that he thinks this is a fair living wage. (I’d LOVE to have him try to live on that – if only for a week!).

Mr. Goodlatte listened politely, I commend him for that. But to each fact we presented, he stressed that balancing the national budget is his primary concern. He was unmoved by anything we said about hunger or the families that are suffering here in Roanoke.

(Although Goodlatte routinely introduces balanced budget amendments in Congress, his budget-busting votes during the George W. Bush administration prove that his commitment to balancing the federal budget is, shall we say, flexible.)

Goodlatte has refused to criticize President Trump’s 2018 budget proposal, which would make huge cuts to S.N.A.P., which helps feed more than 31,000 households in the Sixth District, the majority of them with children under 18.

Trussell reports:

I finally lost my temper. I was sitting in his glass tower (yes, he does have a lovely office with fabulous view of the Capitol) but symbolically and literally, he is out of touch with Roanoke and its citizens. I explained that he needs to come back to Roanoke and visit Hurt Park Elementary School on a Friday morning to watch the Raleigh Court Presbyterian Church hunger team pack weekend snack packs while the children looking eagerly at the food and his response was, “What do YOU think I should cut instead?”

It’s hard to imagine a more insensitive and out-of-touch remark. Does Goodlatte believe a program which saves tens of thousands of his constituents (many of them low-wage workers and their children) from going hungry is one of the least essential? Apparently he places a higher priority on funding President Trump’s ridiculous and hugely expensive plan to build a wall along the Mexican border.

Trussell concludes:

When asked to speak to the Bread for the World attendees about my visit with Mr. Goodlatte, I explained that my representative doesn’t care about his constituents and that he must not be re-elected. No one in this great country (already great) should ever be hungry. Not here in Roanoke, that’s for sure.

Congressman Goodlatte is praising the Trump administration for a letter announcing the end of an Obama-era program to protect Americans from exploitative “payday loan” operations.

Goodlatte said the program, known as Operation Choke Point, was “ill-advised” and “discouraged financial institutions from offering services to businesses that the Administration opposed.”

Politico reports:

Under President Barack Obama, the department said the effort was intended to root out fraud by banks and payment processors and to cut off the banking system from wrongdoing by merchants.

Karl Frisch, executive director of [the consumer watchdog] Allied Progress, blasted the letter as “a massive giveaway to predatory payday lenders and other shady financial scam-artists.

“Operation Choke Point has been incredibly effective at cracking down on the flow of money to fraudulent merchants that violate the law and target vulnerable consumers,” Frisch said in a statement.

According to Allied Progress:

Operation Choke Point was implemented in 2013 to prompt financial institutions to, as the Obama administration put it, “‘choke off’ the flow of money to the fraudulent merchants” with the purpose of combating “mass-market consumer fraud schemes in which financial institutions were either direct or indirect participants.” The program’s demise was a high-profile goal of the predatory payday lending industry and its allies in Congress.

Goodlatte continues to be a cheerleader for the Trump administration’s push to roll back federal protections for consumers, workers and the environment.