“Balking At Their Own Ideas”: The GOP Offers President Obama A Chained-CPI Off-Ramp
When Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee who’ll oversee his party’s 2014 midterm efforts, accused President Obama of waging “a shocking attack on seniors,” it took an enormous amount of chutzpah. At issue, of course, is a controversial proposal to change the way Social Security is indexed — the “chained-CPI” policy — that the White House does not like, but which Obama offered as a concession to congressional Republicans who demanded it.
In effect, Walden was condemning the president for his own party’s proposal. A day later, House Speaker John Boehner, one of the officials who demanded Obama put chained-CPI on the table, subtly rebuked Walden’s craven criticism.
But let’s not lose sight of the fact that Walden isn’t alone. Last week, Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.) said he’s “not a fan” of the policy, and soon after, they had some company.
“The president is trying to say this draconian thing that no one likes is the Republicans’ fault,” Rep. James Lankford (Okla.), the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, told reporters on Friday.
“It’s not my plan,” Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) said about chained CPI. “This is the president’s plan.”
Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), a House Ways and Means Committee member, added, “I’m very sensitive to the fact that you’re impacting current seniors in particular. It’s something I’m very hesitant to jump up and down and support.”
The word “bullpucky” keeps coming to mind.
Yes, plenty of congressional Republicans, including members of the GOP leadership, have welcomed Obama’s offer — while refusing to point to any comparable concessions they’d accept, of course — so this isn’t a party-wide phenomenon.
But the larger point is that having even some congressional Republicans balk at their own idea offers the president an opportunity.
Remember, the White House doesn’t actually like chained-CPI. Obama freely admits he doesn’t want this policy, and only offered it because Republicans are such enthusiastic supporters of the idea. From the president’s perspective, he and his team are going to have to tolerate some measures they don’t like if there’s going to be a bipartisan compromise in which both sides accept concessions they would otherwise reject.
But over the course of just a few days, GOP lawmakers have called this policy — the one Republicans demanded — a “shocking attack on seniors,” a “draconian” policy, “the president’s plan.”
It is, of course, painfully absurd for the right to criticize Obama for doing exactly what Republicans asked him to do, but therein lies the point: there’s nothing stopping the president from simply walking away from the idea if the GOP has suddenly discovered they dislike their own proposal.
As I mentioned briefly last week, Obama, who doesn’t like chained-CPI anyway and realized his own party is furious, could credibly declare right now, “I thought Republicans wanted this policy. But if they consider this ‘a shocking attack on seniors,’ I’ll gladly drop the idea.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 15, 2013
“Victory For The Middle Class”: On Obamacare’s Third Birthday, There Are Already Reasons To Be Grateful
On March 23, 2010, Obamacare — formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — was signed into law by President Obama.
Three years later, the bulk of the first serious attempt at near-universal health care has not yet taken effect. Health marketplaces are still being formed, states are still deciding if they’ll take Medicaid expansion and the subsidies that will help tens of millions of Americans afford health care won’t roll out until January 1, 2014.
Implementing Obamacare won’t be easy, as even some of the biggest fans of the program admit. Expanding Medicare to cover all Americans would have to be an even simpler solution but a complete political impossibility — given that Joe Lieberman (I-CT), whose vote was necessary to pass the law, single-handedly vetoed a provision that would allow 55- to 64-year-olds to buy into Medicare. It’s a compromise solution that uses unpopular provisions — like the individual mandate — to achieve extremely popular results — ending lifetime limits and banning insurance companies from dropping patients once they become sick.
There will be plenty of time to debate the efficacy of Obamacare — especially with insurance companies enjoying record profits threatening to raise rates in order to justify changes to the law.
But right now we should celebrate the greatest victory for the middle class since Medicare and Medicaid. At its heart, Obamacare is a program that asks the rich and corporations to pay a little more to help working Americans get insurance they can count on, thus lowering the cost of health care for everyone. We already pay for each other’s health coverage, but just in the dumbest possible way — emergency rooms.
Here are five reasons to be grateful for Obamacare, which is already making life better for the middle class.
Obamacare Frees Workers And Entrepreneurs
One of the most popular aspects of Obamacare is that beginning in 2014, insurance companies will no longer be able to deny people coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Because insurance companies had been able to do this, many people avoided going to the doctor for fear of being diagnosed with a disease or condition that would brand them for the rest of their lives. Some stayed in jobs they didn’t want and others didn’t take the leap to start a new business for fear of not being able to get coverage. These changes especially free women — who by federal law can no longer be charged more for care because of their gender — to pursue new opportunities.
Insurance Companies Pay You Back
Insurance companies are required for the first time to prove that they’re spending between 80 and 85 percent of premiums, depending on the size of the company, on actual health care. If companies don’t spend that amount on coverage, they have to return that money to their customers — $1.2 billion was returned in 2012 to self-employed Americans whose insurers didn’t hit the proper ratio.
Millions Of Young People Already Covered
An estimated six million college students are already taking advantage of Obamacare’s provision that lets them stay on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26. This has led to a record drop in uninsured young people, allowing them to go back to school or pursue graduate degrees without taking on as much student loan debt.
Seniors Spend Less On Drugs
One of the most immediate benefits of Obamacare was the closing of the Medicare D prescription drug “donut hole,” which requires seniors to pay for the coverage gap between their deductible and yearly limit, at which point the plan covers all medication — $6.1 billion in drug coverage has already been distributed to seniors, which leads to the irony that Republicans ran and won in 2010 on saying that Obamacare cuts Medicare when, in fact, benefits for seniors have only increased. All the savings come from reforming the way providers are paid.
The Red States Get To Pay The Blue States Back
When the Supreme Court ruled that the mandate in Obamacare was Constitutional, it also gave states the chance to opt out of the Medicaid expansion that will provide free public health care for those not already on Medicaid, but who earn up to 133 percent of the poverty level. The states that are turning down the expansion, unfortunately, are some of those that need it the most. All of the states that have rejected the federal extra funding — which begins at 100 percent of the cost of the expansion and goes down to 90 percent — are states that generally vote Republican.
You probably know that most red states take in more federal money than they contribute, as Republican policies encourage growth of programs like food stamps. Though Republican governors can reject the benefits of Medicaid expansion, their richest citizens and corporations will still have to pay the taxes. As a result, they won’t be such “takers.”
Unfortunately, the working poor of red states — who earn too much to be on basic Medicaid — will suffer without the health insurance they need. Those on Medicare and Medicaid will likely see fewer doctors who want to accept clients from these programs, as Medicaid expansion was supposed to make up for the cut in reimbursement rates that begins in 2014. And all residents will not enjoy the slowdown in the growth of health care costs that will come from shrinking the number of the uninsured.
For red state governors, it’s a chance to fulfill the prophecies of doom Republicans made when Obamacare passed. But for residents of blue states, it’s a chance to make America’s health care system more equitable, with red states finally paying closer to their fair share.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, March 22, 2013; Photo: The Advisory Board Company
“Darrell Issa’s Misguided Priorities”: Desperate Even By GOP Standards
The Beltway’s interest in the role of sequestration cuts leading to canceled White House tours reached farcical heights last week, in large part because congressional Republicans are afraid the scrapped tourist opportunities will make them look bad.
But leave it to House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to go completely over the top.
For those who can’t watch clips online, Issa released an attack video this morning, presumably paid for with our tax dollars, whining once more about the White House tours. The message of the attack itself is rather odd — Issa apparently believes the cancelation of tours will give the president more leisure time, though that really doesn’t make any sense — and comes across as rather desperate, even by House GOP standards.
But what’s especially amazing about this case is Issa’s bizarre priorities. For reasons I can’t understand, the far-right Republican is fascinated by White House tours, but seems entirely indifferent to the meaningful effects of sequestration in his own congressional district.
A Democratic source this morning alerted me to several recent headlines from the area Issa ostensibly represents:
* A rally was held in San Diego last week to “demonstrate the impact of sequestration on low income seniors.” An administrator at a local facility said, “[B]ack in D.C. what they’re talking about are cuts from White House tours and the president’s golf game but in the meantime real seniors who are hungry are not going to have food.”
* A major employer in San Diego announced a series of layoffs, effecting 185 workers, which became necessary “as a result of the cuts being brought about in the federal budget because of sequestration.”
* The sequester is set to shutter an air-control traffic tower in San Diego, which local officials believe will “jeopardize aerial firefighting in a region prone to wildfire.”
The list goes on. Sequestration is causing serious problems at San Diego’s ports, ship yards, and the local economy in general.
All of this is happening in Darrell Issa’s own hometown, and he’s focusing his attention on White House tours? I can’t remember the last time I saw a congressman so indifferent to the effects of a policy on his own community.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 20, 2013
“The Obamacare Referendum”: Paul Ryan Is Using Shorthand Again In Selling Changes To Medicare
Did you know that on November 6, 2012, in conjunction with the national election, the United States also had a referendum on Obamacare that Republicans won? No, I didn’t, either, until Paul Ryan informed me of this, via this Think Progress report:
On Sunday morning, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) stopped by Fox News Sunday to preview his new budget, which will be released in full on Tuesday. As it had the past two years, this year’s version will call for massive cuts to social service programs, including food stamps, job training, Medicaid, and Medicare. Host Chris Wallace challenged Ryan on the viability of his plan, pointing out that he wants to repeal and replace Obamacare, and, “that’s not going to happen.”
Still, Ryan insisted that he and then-running mate Mitt Romney won the election on this issue because they “won the senior vote.”
Now I think we all understand that Ryan is using some shorthand here: many Democrats hoped, and Republicans feared, that Ryan’s budget, by proposing to change Medicare from an entitlement to publicly-provided health insurance into a premium-support system, would make his party vulnerable to losses it could not manage in its old-white-folks electoral base. Instead, by a variety of means (including over two years of insanely mendacious “death-panel” demagoguery about the impact of Obamacare on Medicare, and the systematic “grandfathering” of seniors from Ryan’s proposed Medicare changes), the GOP ticket managed to promote a health care message that nicely meshed with its overall pitch to old white folks that those people along with their atheist hippie allies were threatening to take away everything good virtuous retirees had worked so hard to secure for themselves, including Medicare (which they tend to regard as an earned benefit as opposed to Obamacare’s “welfare”).
I suppose it’s understandable that Ryan would view any success in selling big changes in Medicare to old folks would represent a political ten-strike, even if he’s now having to incorporate into his budget the same Medicare savings he implicitly attacked during the campaign as a token of Obamacare’s ultimate goal of sending seniors off to euthanasia camps. But it’s still bizarre that he’s touting an incumbent president’s re-election victory as a repudiation of his most important legislative accomplishment. It’s enough to give Dick Morris hope he can come back from ridicule and disgrace and claim he was right all along in predicting a big Romney-Ryan win.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 11, 2013
“Seniors Take Note”: Republicans Effectively Confessed To Having Mislead Conservative Members Who Now Must Be Mollified
I’m not sure House Republicans realized how large an error they made by kidnapping and then releasing the debt limit earlier this year. By admitting their bluff, they effectively confessed to having misled conservative members, and those members needed to be mollified.
That created a new problem: How could they appease conservatives while lacking the power to satisfy any of their substantive demands? So they offered up grandiose symbolism: A raincheck on the brinksmanship (the current fight over the sequester) and a promise to pass a budget that would wipe out the deficit in 10 years if enacted.
But it’s not clear that they counted their votes, or considered the budget math when they made that promise.
“We are saying a 10-year balance — that’s tougher than the last [Paul] Ryan budget,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), a former Budget Committee member told Politico.
“There could be a significant number of Republicans that say, ‘I’m not going there because it would be too dramatic.’ I have said to my constituents, nobody is talking about changing Social Security and Medicare if you’re 55 years or over.’ I’ve been selling it for three or four years that way. So have many other members. Well, to balance in 10, that 55 years is going to move up to 58, 59, 60. It makes us look like we’re going back on what we were telling people when we were trying to sell this.
We haven’t seen Ryan’s latest budget, so we don’t know what precise ratio of funny math and concessions to reality he’ll use to make the numbers work. And until he’s written it he won’t offer many hints.
But we do know a couple things. First, given Republicans’ famous preference for never increasing taxes or cutting defense spending, we know that it’s probably impossible for them to draft a budget that balances in 10 years without eating into entitlement benefits for people older than 55. Second, per above, we know that GOP leaders promised conservatives a budget that balances over 10 years to win their support for increasing the debt limit. So either Ryan will produce a budget that relies on sleight of hand more than his previous budgets did, or he’ll have to admit that the GOP’s pledge to leave retirement programs untouched for people over 55 was neither sincere nor sustainable.
As Simpson’s quote suggests, that’ll make it harder for Republicans to pass a budget at all; and if they do, it’ll come at a potentially enormous cost with their voting base.
By: Brian Beutler, Talking Points Memo, TPM Editor’s Blog, February 15, 2013
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