Congress fraudulently registered as a small business, watchdog says

In a lawsuit filed with the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on Monday, Judicial Watch alleges that Congress is illegally spending millions of Washington, D.C.'s municipal tax dollars on its own health care.

This is accomplished, the nonprofit watchdog says, by having more than 12,000 congressional staff and their dependents acquire health care through the District's Small Business Exchange, which local law explicitly limits to organizations with 50 employees or fewer. "Congress obviously has far more than 50 employees," Judicial Watch dryly notes. Indeed, the thousands of staffers and their families taking advantage of the ObamaCare market "represent an astonishing 86 percent of the Small Business Exchange's total enrollment."

A Judicial Watch FOIA request previously revealed that the House and Senate applications to the Small Business Exchange described both as "state/local government" employing just 45 full-time staff per chamber. The current appeal follows dismissal of the original case earlier this year after the D.C. government said Congress could override its laws.

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