A lonely quest to embarrass Congress

This week, once again, Sen. David Vitter did not get his way.

On Wednesday, in a speech on a near-empty Senate floor, Vitter (R-La.) returned to a lonely quest that has obsessed him since September. He is unhappy — very unhappy — with the health insurance plans available to Congress’s staff.

The problem, Vitter says, is that those plans are too good.

Under the president’s health-care law, Congress and much of its staff are supposed to lose their old health plans and instead buy coverage on the “exchanges” set up for individual Americans. But Vitter says that they are slated to get improper help, including money from the federal government, and that special loopholes allow some to keep their old coverage.

Vitter wants that to stop.

And so he has embarked on an improbable mission: to persuade other legislators to take valued benefits away from the very staffers who write their speeches, guide their votes, answer their mail, and remind them of the birthdays of spouses and the names of Rotary Club presidents back home.

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