CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 25, 2013 | By Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times
Abel Maldonado was a young Latino rancher and fresh-faced state lawmaker when he addressed the Republican National Convention in 2000 and was hailed as the GOP's future. Nine years later, he parlayed his deciding vote on tax increases into an appointment as lieutenant governor, albeit for a brief stay. He lost a bid to remain in that job in 2010, and was defeated in a run for Congress last year. But he jumped back onto center stage this month with a brash campaign to repeal Gov. Jerry Brown's corrections policy known as realignment.
BUSINESS
May 22, 2013 | MICHAEL HILTZIK
The chief drawback of a law as complex as the Affordable Care Act, the health insurance reform measure passed in 2010, is that it provides self-interested opponents a multitude of places to stick a wedge in and hammer away. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a campaign against the ACA as narrow-minded and dishonest as the one mounted by medical device manufacturers. This industry, which encompasses makers of everything from tongue depressors to MRI machines, has been grousing from the outset about an excise tax of 2.3% the act imposes on sales of its products.
NATIONAL
March 31, 2013 | By Noam N. Levey, Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - As Republican leaders try to woo Latino voters with a new openness to legal status for the nation's illegal immigrants, the party remains at odds with America's fastest-growing ethnic community on another key issue: healthcare. Latinos, who have the lowest rates of health coverage in the country, are among the strongest backers of President Obama's healthcare law. In a recent national poll, supporters outnumbered detractors by more than 2 to 1. Latinos also overwhelmingly see guaranteeing healthcare as a core government responsibility, surveys show.
NEWS
March 10, 2013 | By Lisa Mascaro
WASHINGTON - Republicans in Congress are renewing their political assault on the nation's new healthcare law, trying to repeal President Obama's signature domestic achievement as part of the next battle over the federal budget. Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, last year's Republican vice presidential nominee, said Sunday his forthcoming budget proposal will include repeal of "Obamacare," as his party calls it. That position puts tea-party conservatives at odds with others in the GOP who want to find common ground with Obama on the nation's fiscal woes after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the health law. In the Senate, conservatives will press for a vote this week to delay funding for the health law as part of a bill that must pass to keep the government running beyond March 27. "We say we get rid of 'Obamacare,' " Ryan said on "Fox News Sunday.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
February 18, 2013 | By Patrick McGreevy
A Senate Republican leader has proposed eliminating limits on campaign contributions to state candidates, arguing the restrictions are ineffective. Sen. Ted Gaines, chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus, introduced legislation to repeal major portions of the Proposition 34 that put a $4,100 limit on contributions by individuals to candidates for the legislature and a $27,000 limit on contributions to candidates for governor. The measure would have to be acted on by the state voters.
BUSINESS
January 25, 2013 | Los Angeles Times
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is seeking to repeal a Medicare-pricing provision in the recent "fiscal-cliff" deal in Congress that benefits Thousand Oaks biotech giant Amgen Inc. Legislation to eliminate the exemption for a class of drugs, including Amgen's Sensipar, that are used by kidney dialysis patients, was filed this week by U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.). The fiscal cliff legislation approved this month excluded these oral medications from Medicare price controls for an additional two years.