The Unending War On Obamacare: Count On Republicans To Stand In The Way Of Fixing Whatever’s Wrong With It
I’m not a historian, so maybe there’s something I don’t know, but it seems to me that there may never have been a piece of legislation that has inspired such partisan venom as the Affordable Care Act. Sure, Republicans hated Medicare. And yes, their rhetoric at the time, particularly Ronald Reagan’s famous warning that if it passed, “We are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free,” was very similar to what they now say about Obamacare. But once it passed, their attempts to undermine it ran more to the occasional raid than the ongoing siege.
I bring this up because Kevin Drum makes an unsettling point today about the future of Obamacare:
No, my biggest concern is what happens after 2014. No big law is ever perfect. But what normally happens is that it gets tweaked over time. Sometimes this is done via agency rules, other times via minor amendments in Congress. It’s routine. But Obamacare has become such a political bomb that it’s not clear that Congress will be willing to fix the minor problems that crop up over time. There’s simply too big a contingent of Republicans who are eager to see Obamacare fail and are actively delighted whenever a problem crops up. This has the potential to be a problem that no other big law has ever had to face.
It’s hard to overstate just how enormous a symbolic presence Obamacare has come to occupy in Republicans’ minds. They’ve invested so much time in not just criticizing it but telling their constituents that it is the worst thing to ever happen to America—and yes, sometimes they literally say things like that—that they’ve lost all moral perspective. To them, trying to fix a feature of the law so that it works better or helps people more would be a horrifying moral compromise, tantamount to sending fur coats to the guards at Stalin’s labor camps in Siberia. If you say to them, “Look, it’s the law now—why don’t we make sure it works as well as possible?” it just won’t register.
Combine that with the fact that in general, congressional Republicans have stopped caring much about policy at all, and they never cared about health care in the first place. They don’t want to know the details of issues; it just isn’t their priority. In the House, conservatives are spending their time clamoring for an opportunity to cast yet another vote to repeal Obamacare. “The guys who have been up here the last two years, we can go home and say, ‘Listen, we voted 36 different times to repeal or replace ObamaCare,” said Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina. “Tell me what the new guys are supposed to say?” Your tax dollars at work.
You can look at this state of affairs and assume that as new difficulties with the law come to light, it will be possible for the Obama administration to address them with administrative action, through the Department of Health and Human Services. And that may be true to an extent. But other changes could require legislation, and it’s a fair bet that no matter what is involved, Republicans in Congress would reject anything having to do with the law that didn’t involve repealing it. You could tell them that there was a typo in the bill which was causing orphans to be turned into Soylent Green and all it would require to fix was a quick voice-vote, and they’d say no, because Obamacare kills freedom.
And let’s not forget, it’s entirely possible that 45 months from now, there will be a Republican president. If that happens, it’s possible that in order to get confirmed, his or her nominee to be secretary of Health and Human Services will have to pledge to Senate Republicans to work every day to dismantle Obamacare. The clock is ticking.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, April 25, 2013
“The Politics of Paranoia”: A Constant Stream Of Desperate Drivel By The Far-Right
Out-of-control federal government. An immediate and immense Muslim threat. Gun grabbing, national registries and eventual mass confiscations. Tyranny.
The politics of the political right have become the politics of paranoia.
According to too many of them, the country is collapsing, and the government is not to be trusted. The circle of safety is contracting. You must arm yourselves to defend your own.
It is no wonder, then, that in this environment, a Washington Post/Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday found that while 47 percent of Americans were angry or disappointed that new gun control legislation in the Senate (including the enormously popular background-checks provision) had failed to pass, 39 percent were very happy or relieved. Fifty-one percent of Republicans had those sentiments, compared with 22 percent of Democrats.
This underscores just how frightened of the government far-right Republicans are.
A Quinnipiac University poll this month found that 91 percent of Americans (including 88 percent of Republicans) said that they supported background checks for all gun buyers. But that same poll found that 61 percent of Republicans worried that if there were background checks for all gun purchases, the government would use that information in the future to confiscate legally owned guns.
Furthermore, a January Pew Research Center report found that for the first time since the question was asked in 1995, most Americans now believe that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms.
According to the report:
“The growing view that the federal government threatens personal rights and freedoms has been led by conservative Republicans. Currently 76 percent of conservative Republicans say that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms and 54 percent describe the government as a ‘major’ threat.”
The report continued:
“By comparison, there has been little change in opinions among Democrats; 38 percent say the government poses a threat to personal rights and freedoms and just 16 percent view it as a major threat.”
Incidentally, 62 percent of those who had a gun in their home thought the government posed a threat, as opposed to 45 percent of those without a gun in the home.
In January, the right-wing Web site World Net Daily, writing about a poll the site conducted with the consulting firm Wenzel Strategies, bemoaned:
“The seeds of a tyrannical government are present in the United States, with a citizenry happy with a heavily armed law enforcement presence and a disbelief that their government could do anything that would make them want to revolt, according to a new poll.” The poll revealed “widespread belief” that the Second Amendment “really is for self-protection and hunting, not for ‘fighting back against a tyrannical government.’”
Fritz Wenzel of the consulting firm is quoted as saying that the poll’s finding “demonstrates the downside of more than 230 years of government stability. This survey shows it is hard for many Americans to think of a situation in which their government would need to be overthrown. Of course, the last time there was a serious fight for the future of the federal government, in the Civil War, Washington won.”
And that’s just the tip of it. Last month, Glenn Beck described the makeup of what he believed was the coming “New World Order.” It did not bode well for America.
“I think you might even have some Nazi influence in the United States, unfortunately, because we’ve had it before. And it will happen there and there, I think,” Beck said, placing dots over the Northwest and the Northeast on a map.
Discussing the Muslim Brotherhood’s “influence,” Beck said:
“I think there’s going to be a slight influence in South America and Mexico and in the United States. I think it is going to be more significant than anyone imagines, and I believe that you are also then going to be co-ruled by a thug-ocracy of this part of the world. And I think it’s going to be, at least in our case, I think it’s going to be China. China will be the balance of our power. They will use Muslim, um, Islam as the real enforcers that they will then help us and whoever is in power in our country. We will be ruled by an American, but it will be a technocrat that will answer to China. And, they will stomp things out and use Islam as much as they have to, to get rid of anyone who’s standing up, I think.”
O-kay.
And Beck delivered this prattle in a suit jacket, not a straitjacket.
This is the constant stream of desperate drivel that has fostered a climate of fear on the far right that makes common-sense consensus nearly impossible.
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, April 24, 2013
“Cherry Picking The Constitution”: Conservative Constitutional Hypocrisy On Gun Control And The 4th Amendment
The Second Amendment and the Fourth Amendment. They’re like kissing cousins, separated in the Constitution by a mere 32 words. And lately they’ve been all over the news.
Now, I don’t know how you feel about the amendments; maybe you have no opinion of them at all. But ask some conservatives and it’s like they don’t even appear in the same document. And when you think about it, that’s a pretty strange thing. Pretty revealing, too. Here’s why:
If you read the Second and the Fourth Amendments without knowing anything about the surrounding politics and then were asked which one conservatives like better, you might well pick the latter. If ever there was an amendment written to appeal to people who are skeptical of big government, this is it. There’s the big bad government, it wants to take your property and your freedom, but the Fourth Amendment says “no way, not on my watch.” It’s a Tea Partier’s dream.
But conservative courts have spent the past few decades carving one exception after another out of the Fourth Amendment and, if the reaction to the Boston Marathon bombing is any indication, a loud contingent on the right is intent on finding even more.
No, it’s the Second Amendment that most conservatives love. Try to pass even the most benign measure aimed at reducing gun violence, as the Senate did just days ago, and they’ll marshal their every resource to defeat it. The reason: They say it’s because they’re strict constructionists and any restraint on guns would violate the plain meaning of the Second Amendment.
One approach to one amendment, a very different approach to another. How to reconcile? There’s one thing that can help make sense of this mess: a marked lack of intestinal fortitude.
Let’s say your thinking about criminal justice is principally governed by being afraid. In that context, if you think guns are an effective way to protect yourself, you’ll want your right to have guns interpreted as expansively as possible, because you’re afraid of what will happen to you if it isn’t. And you’ll want the rights of people who have been accused of committing crimes to be interpreted as narrowly as possible so they are taken off the streets.
As it happens, that’s a pretty good summation of conservative doctrine when it comes to these amendments.
All of which reveals something else about how conservatives think when they look at the Constitution:
It matters who its provisions are perceived to be protecting. Conservatives think the Second Amendment protects them, so they want it as unfettered as possible; but they think the Fourth Amendment protects someone who they find threatening, so they want it to be as weak as possible.
You can take this approach to constitutional interpretation, of course, but if you do, please stop suggesting it has anything to do with fidelity to profound constitutional principles.
There can be no doubt that the Fourth Amendment makes it harder on law enforcement to solve some crimes, but it does so in the service of a larger goal: protecting the accused from the unfettered predations of an overreaching state or the passions of the mob. And, as has been roundly discussed, the idea that the Second Amendment was designed to allow every citizen to be a weapons armory all their own reflects a willful misreading of history.
Both amendments reflect trade-offs that the framers consciously made. We may not like them, but they’re there. And respect for the Constitution requires that we recognize them. If you call yourself a strict constructionist, you can’t pick and choose which provisions of the Constitution you are going to strictly construe. If that’s your approach, there’s another word that may provide a more apt description: hypocrite.
In a lot of cases, fear is a good thing. It’s a warning system that keeps us out of trouble, guides us away from danger, and, in some cases, keeps us alive. But when we allow fear to be the guiding principle of our public policy that gives rise to dangers all its own.
Many conservatives spend a lot of time portraying themselves as tough guys, straight shooters who don’t let emotion get in the way of what has to be done. In the same breath they are likely to portray liberals as weak and craven. But this is just one example of how the reverse is true.
Setting aside something that makes you feel secure on a personal level in the advent of reforms that will actually make many others safer and sticking to the principles upon which our country was founded even in times of crisis — that’s what takes guts. And it’s time for conservatives to show some.
By: Anson Kaye, U. S. News and World Report, April 25, 2013
“You Didn’t Forewarn Us”: Republicans Can’t Decide If They Support Sequestration
As travelers across the country began feeling the consequences of sequester cuts at airports this week, legislators were busy determining who to blame for the increase in disrupted travel. From the beginning Democrats have been consistent in their message—”the sequester will hurt Americans, instead we need a combination of responsible cuts and significant revenue.”
The Republican response to the sequester, on the other hand, has been divided and unclear. Before the cuts materialized, some Republicans were charging Democrats with being “dramatic,” some even welcoming the cuts. Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) said, “It is going to happen. It is 2.4 percent of the budget, and it is not the end of the world. We want the savings. We want to bank those savings, and we want to move on.” Representative Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) echoed those same sentiments: “We had a grand total of three phone calls concerned about it. They don’t buy the scare tactics. Most Americans are going to wake up Friday morning and yawn.”
Meanwhile, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) blamed President Obama for the effects of the sequester, admitted the president never wanted the sequester to happen, and then half-embraced the imminent cuts. Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel said, “We support replacing the indiscriminate cuts in the sequester with smarter cuts and reforms (of an equal amount).”
Others like Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) didn’t find the cuts to be deep enough. “Not only should the sequester stand, many pundits say the sequester really needs to be at least $4 trillion to avoid another downgrade of America’s credit rating. Both parties will have to agree to cut, or we will never fix our fiscal mess,” Paul said in his Tea Party response to the State of the Union.
Now that the cuts have taken place and public outrage over delayed and canceled air travel has increased, Republicans have adopted a new argument—”why didn’t anyone tell us the cuts would be this bad?” In a House Committee on Appropriations hearing, Representative Harold Rogers (R-KY) blamed Federal Aviation Administration Chief Michael Huerta: “You didn’t forewarn us that this was coming; you didn’t ask advice about how we should handle it.”
Republicans have evolved full circle on this issue—from criticizing President Obama, to claiming victory for the cuts, to now indicating they had no idea the cuts would be so severe. White House spokesman Jay Carney responded to these claims on Monday. “We made it clear that there would be these kinds of negative effects if Congress failed to take reasonable action to avert the sequester,” he said. “Policy that everyone who was involved in writing it knew at the time and has made clear ever since was never designed to be implemented. It was designed to be bad policy and, therefore, to be avoided.”
By: Allison Brito, The National Memo, April 25, 2013
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