boost to jobs numbers. back to you. alisyn: thanks for all that context. new developments on one of our top stories, this morning s court ruling on one state s voter id laws. some conservative groups already calling it a, quote, victory for voter fraud. and a new push by victims families in the fort hood shooting to get recognition for what their loved ones suffered. we ll tell you what the family of staff sergeant sean manning is now trying to accomplish and why it matters so much to not only his family, but the families of all the victims that day. plus, we ll give you an unprecedented first-person view of what goes on during a plane crash from inside the cabin.
requests by service members as of a couple of weeks ago. texas senator john cornyn says this is unacceptable, it s a failure, he says, by pentagon leaders to comply with a 2009 law that was supposed to make it easier for our soldiers to vote. guy benson is political editor of town hall.com. hi, guy. hey, how s it going? alisyn: senator cornyn expressed his serious concerns about this precipitous drop in requests of absentee ballots by our soldiers overseas. what do you think is going on here? that s a very good question, and it s something that we need to find out quickly. as you said, in virginia alone we ve seen a 92% drop in requests for absentee ballots, that number is over 50% in terms of the major states like florida, ohio and nevada. so i think there s a lot of people on the political side of this scratching their heads. as you mentioned, senator cornyn and a group of other republicans
health care premiums have increased by $2500. here s the reason that people are then, businesses are going to drop their plans, they can t afford it any longer because obamacare was supposed to reduce costs right. but it s increased costs. alisyn: simon, in keeping with what i think steve was say, the cbo predicts we may see more companies follow the lead of sears and let their employees buy the coverage through those exchanges agreed. but sears is not allowing them to buy them through the exchanges. this is a group health effort because the exchanges don t exist. this is completely unrelated to the obama health care reform in the sense but this is they re not dumping people into the exchange. this is an exchange that was set up, but the reality is that if you re going to empower these employees of sears or darden, they might as well put slot machines in their lobby as opposed to giving them the kind of information they need.
if people were smart enough to make those kinds of decisions about what benefits they need to buy and what doctors they need to choose, we wouldn t be having this debate today. wait, wait, wait a minute the reality is, look what you re basically saying, doctor, you re basically saying people are too stupid to make these decisions. no. in fact, we have not empowered them with the right information. i m not saying that they re stupid. look, we have, we have plans right now, for example, with high deductible plans, health savings accounts that actually have saved boatloads of money. no. there s a new study that shows if you increase these plans, you could save about $15 billion a year. alisyn: gentlemen, obviously, we could talk about this for a long time. you all made great points, steve, doctor, simon, thank you very much for coming. a high school cheerleading squad heading to court over banners during a football game. plus, the skateboarder, the deer and the colli
it, but you saw the same thing in libya. we immediately had ceremonies, you know, acknowledging what had happened, and then the administration essentially wants to stop talking about it. but the fbi isn t there, the people who have committed this attack have not been held accountable. so you hear a lot of mirrors, a lot of rhetoric, some ceremonies and very little follow-up. and veterans and military members have seen this from this administration whether it s military voting, money that didn t actually help them vote, whether it s the va backlog that s doubled since 2008, whether it s our debt that s gone up by six trillion, there s a lot of talk and not a lot of solutions. alisyn: pete, thanks. we have an update on the lawsuit involving cheerleaders told to remove banners from the field because they included messages from the bible. now there s a ruling in this case. we ll tell you if they have reason to cheer. and we re getting a look at what it s like to be inside a jumbo jet a