birch paper

ALEC and its granite marionette

New Hampshire House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt (print only UL):

“The [health care compact] bill was absolutely not written by ALEC,” Bettencourt said. “It is a classic tactic of the Democrats to demonize every piece of legislation that they don’t like as the product of an ‘out of state group’ to avoid a substantive discussion on the real issues facing New Hampshire. It’s a completely dishonest fallacy that they continue to use to distract from the fact that they have no solutions other than a bigger government and higher taxes. The Democrats should produce some evidence of their claim.”

He’s right. ALEC had nothing to do with writing it. Just promoting and distributing it to right-wing state legislative puppets:

Alexandria, Va. (Nov. 30, 2011) - The Health Care Compact Alliance today announced the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the nation’s largest nonpartisan individual membership association of state legislators,has adopted the Health Care Compact as model legislation. This move will make the Health Care Compact vision and language widely available to nearly 2,000 state legislators across the country,

An arbitrary section of Bettencourt’s bill:

State Control. Each member state, within its state, may suspend by legislation the operation of all federal laws, rules, regulations, and orders regarding health care that are inconsistent with the laws and regulations adopted by the member state pursuant to this compact. Federal and state laws, rules, regulations, and orders regarding health care shall remain in effect unless a member state expressly suspends them pursuant to its authority under this compact.

An arbitrary section of model legislation adopted by ALEC (.pdf):

State Control. Each member state, within its state, may suspend by legislation the operation of all federal laws, rules, regulations, and orders regarding health care that are inconsistent with the laws and regulations adopted by the Member State pursuant to this Compact. Federal and state laws, rules, regulations, and orders regarding Health Care shall remain in effect unless a Member State expressly suspends them pursuant to its authority under this Compact.

Check more similarities for yourself.

To be fair to the Majority Leader, he did change some capital letters to lower case.

24 January 2012 ·