Progress Illinois

Working inside the White House is not as glamorous and eventful as some popular TV shows make it out to be, former Obama administration staff members said at a recent panel discussion in Chicago.

“The truth of the matter is that not every single day is incredibly action packed in the White House,” said Elizabeth Jarvis-Shean, former White House research director.

Although Jarvis-Shean worked on issues she said she had a special interest in, such as the Affordable Care Act of 2010 and repealing "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," about 50 percent of her time consisted of “mundane” day-to-day assignments.

Some of her typical tasks included editing speeches or vetting somebody expected to stand on stage with the president, among other things, she said.

Also, White House staffers are not as witty as the characters on “The West Wing” TV show, said Chris Lu, former White House cabinet secretary.

“If you’ve seen ‘The West Wing’ TV show, you know the whole thing is walking and talking,” Lu said at the discussion, sponsored by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. “You can’t walk and talk in the West Wing ... it is tiny in the White House.”

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The Illinois Senate Insurance Committee passed a measure Wednesday that looks to establish a state-run health insurance marketplace for small businesses and individuals as part of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act of 2010.

Some health care and consumer advocates are pushing for a state-based insurance exchange, but questions still remain on how to make the marketplace the best it can be.

"We're walking into a new territory. We haven’t been here yet," said Brigid Leahy, director of legislative affairs at Planned Parenthood of Illinois. "But at least we know that if we're running things at the state level, we can fix things, we can make them better, we have better control over making sure that it works for consumers. If it’s in the hands of the feds, we don’t have that power." 

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Labor advocates hosted a hearing in Chicago today and highlighted the plight of part-time workers in retail and other service industries, while underscoring the need for federal legislation that would extend protections, including health care, family and medical leave and pensions, to part-time employees.

The Part-Time Worker Bill of Rights Act of 2013 (HR 675), sponsored by U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D, IL-9), aims to do just that by building upon the Affordable Care Act and ensuring that part-time employees who work less than 30 hours a week have access to important workplace benefits.

As it stands, many of the federally mandated work-related benefits apply only to full-time workers, but that set up no longer meets the needs of the nation's workforce, Schakowsky said at the hearing, which was held at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership.

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