“Celebrating Misery”: House Republicans’ Ghoulish Defunding Rally
There was something ghoulish about the rally that House Republicans held today in the Rayburn Room after they voted to defund health care reform. The party atmosphere was so boisterous, the cheers and laughter so loud, that it was easy to forget everyone in the room had just voted to keep tens of millions of people from getting health insurance.
By keeping spending at its current levels through mid-December, they had also voted to continue the sequester, which is preventing millions of people from getting public housing subsidies, Head Start seats, and unemployment benefits. The sequester is also taking a serious toll on scientific research and investment in infrastructure, not to mention its infuriating drag on employment and the economic recovery. How about another round of applause?
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, of course, from a House that had voted the previous day to cut food stamps for 3.8 million low-income people, including many very young and very old recipients. But at least they didn’t have a party to celebrate that vote.
Today, though, everyone was in a great mood.
“When we acted, it wasn’t just a group of Republicans, but it was a bipartisan vote,” said Kevin McCarthy, the Majority Whip. (O.K., fine. Two Democrats voted for it, and 188 voted against.) “Let me state that again because I want to make sure you write it correctly. [Huge laughter.] It was a bipartisan vote because we’re Americans first! [Cheers, applause.]”
But some Americans are last, like the millions who would have to get all their medical care from an emergency room if the House had its way. That didn’t seem to bother Eric Cantor, the Republican leader, who pushed through the food-stamp bill and today claimed the health law was turning the country into a part-time economy. (Actually, the recession had started that trend long before President Obama’s health law took effect.)
Mr. Cantor called on Senate Democrats to pass the House bill, which isn’t going to happen, and even named a few from conservative states, like Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Kay Hagan of North Carolina, who Republicans hope to defeat for re-election by linking them to the health law.
What he didn’t mention, though, is that the House’s real beef is with Senate Republicans, not Democrats, many of whom have denounced the extremist tactic of threatening a government shutdown if health reform isn’t defunded. The defeat of the House demand in the Senate is pre-ordained, and when the measure comes back to the House next week without any mention of the health law, and with little time left to avoid a shutdown, the laughter and applause will be long gone.
By: David Firestone, Editors Blog, The New York Times, September 20, 2013
“Hostages Are A Pre-requisite”: Coming To Terms With The Normalization Of Republican Extortion Politics
President Obama spoke yesterday to the Business Roundtable, and used some language to describe Republican tactics that raised a few eyebrows — not because he was incorrect, but because his word choice was provocative.
In his remarks, Mr. Obama accused what he called “a faction” of Republicans in the House of trying to “extort” him by refusing to raise the nation’s debt ceiling unless the president’s health care plan is repealed.
“You have never in the history of the United States seen the threat of not raising the debt ceiling to extort a president or a governing party,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s irresponsible.”
Mr. Obama called upon the business leaders to try to convince lawmakers to avoid the kind of “brinksmanship” that would lead to promises of “apocalypse” every few months. “What I will not do is to create a habit, a pattern whereby the full faith and credit of the united states ends up being a bargaining chip to make policy,” he said. “I’m tired of it,” he added. “And I suspect you are too.”
For the president to publicly reference Republican “extortion” tactics struck some as excessive. That’s a shame; Obama’s right.
Let’s step back for a moment. A traditional, transactional method of governing was in place in Washington for generations, and it worked fairly well. In some cases, policymakers would rely on intra-policy cooperation (“I’ll go along with some of the provisions you want if you go along with some of the provisions I want”), and in other cases it’s been inter-policy cooperation (“I can help move that bill you like if you help me move this other bill that I like”).
The transactional model was never easy, of course, and parties that were supposed to disagree usually did, but governing happened. Bills passed. Policymaking and compromises existed. The nation did not simply bounce from one self-imposed, manufactured crisis to the next.
In the wake of the radicalization of Republican politics, the system broke down, largely because GOP officials came to believe they can no longer accept concessions on anything, and anyone who dares compromise with those they disagree with deserves to lose in a Republican primary.
What matters, of course, is what’s replaced transactional politics.
I tend to describe it as extortion politics, which we may be getting used to, but which has no modern precedent in the American system of government.
Consider an example from earlier this year. House Republicans approved a budget plan and challenged Senate Democrats to do the same, assuming they’d fail. The GOP miscalculated and Senate Dems approved their own budget plan in the spring.
From there, lawmakers were supposed to enter bipartisan, bicameral negotiations, which is what always happens when the House and Senate approve competing budget blueprints. But a funny thing happened — Republicans refused to enter the budget talks they said they wanted.
It hasn’t generated much attention, but it’s important to understand why. GOP lawmakers couldn’t go to the negotiating table because that would mean … negotiating. Republicans weren’t prepared to compromise on anything, so why bother with budget talks? What GOP officials wanted instead was to wait until the fall when they might at least try to claim leverage in an extortion plot.
In other words, hostages have become a prerequisite to Republican governance.
We’ve actually reached the point at which the GOP seems genuinely and literally confused about the meaning of the word “compromise.” Consider this item from a week ago:
One group of conservatives on Thursday pressed what they called a compromise: a one-year stopgap spending bill that would raise the debt ceiling for a year, delay all aspects of the health care law for a year, and give back some of the Pentagon cuts as a sweetener. Backers insisted on Thursday that it was a package Mr. Obama should be able to accept.
Got that? In this approach, Republicans would get the health care delay they want and the spending levels they want. What would Democrats get? Nothing except the relief that comes with knowing that the hostage the GOP was threatening would live to see another day.
This, in the delusional minds of congressional Republicans, is not only a “compromise,” it’s the kind of deal the White House might actually go for.
This has become the norm in every major legislative fight since January 2011. Faced with a challenge, Republicans won’t compromise or consider possible concessions; they’ll instead reach for the nearest hostage and start making threats. The nation shifts from one crisis to the next, not because we have to, but because Republicans have made it their m.o. In the last Congress, Republicans created a debt-ceiling crisis and three separate shutdown threats. In this Congress, we’re only nine months in and we’re already facing a shutdown crisis this month and a new debt-ceiling crisis next month.
In each instance, the GOP approach is the same: so long as our demands are met, and we don’t have to compromise, we won’t have to hurt anyone on purpose.
So before the Beltway gets too bent out of shape over Obama using the word “extort” in a speech, I have a question: can anyone think of a more apt description of what’s tragically become the new status quo in Washington?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 19, 2013
“Fraticidal Rage”: Ted Cruz Turns Obamacare Defunding Plan From Disaster To Utter Fiasco
Now that the House of Representatives has passed its bill to keep the government open and rid the world of Obamcare, the full strategic disaster the Republicans have embarked upon is coming into focus. The procedure is a little confusing, but once we disentangle the steps, it quickly becomes clear that the Republicans have started a dumpster fire they have no obvious way to extinguish.
It’s important to keep in mind that a government shutdown does not, in and of itself, stop Obamacare from going forward. Most of the money for that law has been appropriated through channels (tax credits, state-based exchanges, etc.) immune to shutdown. The Obamacare-shutdown method relies on the hope that keeping the government shut down proves so annoying to the president that he (or a filibuster-proof majority in both houses) submits to abolishing his health-care reform in return for reopening the government. That is the only way shutting down the government could result in the defunding of Obamacare.
Step one of this far-fetched scheme was the passage of a “continuing resolution,” which keeps the government open, attached to abolishing Obamacare. Now it goes to the Senate. Once that bill comes up for a vote in the Senate, the majority can vote to strip away the provision defunding Obamacare. That vote can’t be filibustered. It’s a simple majority vote, and Democrats have the majority.
What Senate Republicans can do is filibuster to prevent the bill from coming to a vote at all. That’s the only recourse the Senate defunders have. And Ted Cruz is promising to do just that: “ I hope that every Senate Republican will stand together,” he says, “and oppose cloture on the bill in order to keep the House bill intact and not let Harry Reid add Obamacare funding back in.” A “committed defunder” in the Senate likewise tells David Drucker, “Reid must not be allowed to fund Obamacare with only 51 votes.”
In other words, the new stop-Obamacare plan now entails filibustering the defunders’ own bill. They can do this with just 41 votes in the Senate, if they can get them. But consider how terrible this situation is for the Republicans. If they fail, it will be because a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats to break the filibuster, betraying the defunders. This means the full force of the defund-Obamacare movement – which is itself very well funded by rabid grassroots conservatives eager to save the country from the final socialistic blow of Obamacare — will come down on the handful of Senate Republicans who hold its fate in their hands. The old plan at least let angry conservatives blame Democrats for blocking their goal of defunding Obamacare. Now the defunders can turn their rage against fellow Republicans, creating a fratricidal, revolution-eats-its-own bloodletting.
But what if it succeeds? Well, success means the government shuts down because the Senate Republican majority has successfully filibustered a vote on the House bill preventing a shutdown.
Remember, the whole Republican plan to win the shutdown fight is to pin the blame on Obama. Obama is trying to shut down the government, they are already saying, and we’re trying to keep it open. That message depends on both houses of Congress passing a law that defunds Obamacare, and Obama refusing to sign it. Then they can present themselves as having acted to keep the government open, and Obama refusing to go along merely because he doesn’t want to snatch health insurance away from 20 million people.
It’s a patently disingenuous argument that stands no chance of success. But even that patently disingenuous message relies on establishing the optics of Obama refuses to sign our bill. Now the Republican plan relies instead on maintaining a Republican filibuster in the Senate, in perpetuity, to prevent a vote on a bill to open the government. They have maneuvered themselves into the least tenable position to defend a plan that never stood a chance of succeeding in the first place.
By: Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine, September 20, 2013
“The Party of Me, Me, Me”: The Republican Push To Defund Obamacare Is Just Selfish And Vindictive
Recently, Republicans have shown that their disdain for Obamacare is stronger than their level of caring about the American people, as evidenced by their wanting to shut down the government if there is not a one-year delay in implementating this legislation.
Seriously, tenacity is one thing, but acting like a bunch of spoiled brats at the taxpayer’s expense is not what Americans sent those politicians to Washington to do. Despite 40 votes to repeal, defund, etc., the GOP shows once again that it’s the main attraction at the circus, for they must know this is all for show. The Democratic ruled Senate is not going to vote in favor of such a proposal and, clearly, the president would not sign the law if it made it to his desk.
And are we forgetting the majority of Americans who voted for the president both in his first and second runs for the White House? Doesn’t the population who wants, and for many needs, the Affordable Care Act count? I guess not.
Whether it’s egos, their careers or the inability to stand apart from their terribly fragmented party, Republicans still shows they are the party of no, the party of the rich and the party of the inability to play nice with Democrats to do what is in the best interest of all Americans.
Having said that, we here on the left have been asking: if you want to repeal and replace this piece of legislation, what are you replacing it with? Well today, that has been answered.
A group of House Republicans is going to unveil legislation providing an expanded tax break for consumers who purchase their own health coverage and increasing the government funding for high-risk pools. What the GOP has clearly forgotten is one of the reasons the Affordable Care Act was passed, was because it’s, well, …. affordable!
Has the GOP seen the rates being put forth by the big insurance companies? My husband, my two children and I pay nearly $2,000 a month for our PPO plan; and we are all healthy, thankfully.
The proposal, which was endorsed by the Republican Study Committee, provides a tax credit to people who buy coverage that is approved for sale in their state. The GOP says the American people could claim a deduction of $7,500 against both their income and payroll taxes, regardless of the cost of insurance.
But there are several big problems here. 1) Who decides what is “approved” for sale and based on what criteria? 2) You are giving the states the power of dispensing insurance, but the states can’t afford to. 3) What happens to federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and the numerous states that hold their hand out for their check from Uncle Sam, including some GOP-led states such as New Jersey and Florida? 4) Millions of Americans who should pay their taxes do not. Now you want more people to pay less? And you constantly talk about our deficit and how our government can’t pay its bills? 5) This program is not fair. If one person has a very low-rate plan and is healthy, they can deduct as much as someone paying triple who might not be. And lastly, 6) If Obamacare is difficult to implement and there was much criticism on the delay of this plan, how would the complexity of this proposal be any less?
The RSC claims a membership of 175 members, about three-quarters of the House Republicans. I wonder, have all 175 Republicans read what’s in it?
Let’s face it. This party is angry. They’re angry a black guy won. They’re angry the black guy got his team to draft and pass health care reform, badly needed in this country. So they want their version, their turn to “win”; that is what this is about. This is not in the best interest of the health of America’s people, nor the health of our economy. If we turn the tables on the GOP, will their plan be a “job destroyer,” as they have suggested Obamacare will be? What’s the start date of their plan? Will there be any glitches?
The bottom line is, Obamacare has been passed. To hold the country financially hostage and threaten to shut it down if the GOP doesn’t get its way and its version of a piece of legislation that is already law is not good leadership; it’s selfish. Is that what America needs in Washington today? I don’t think so.
By: Leslie Marshall, U. S. News and World Report, September 20, 2013
“The Obamacare Is Falling! The Obamacare Is Falling!”: Here Are The Reasons You Shouldn’t Believe Any Of It
As we approach the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act at the end of the year, confusion still reigns. Most Americans don’t understand what the ACA does or how it works, which is perhaps understandable. It is, after all, an exceedingly complex law, and from even before it passed there was an aggressive and well-funded campaign of misinformation meant to confuse and deceive Americans about it, a campaign that continues to this day and shows no sign of abating. To undo uncertainty and banish befuddlement, we offer answers to a few questions you might have about Obamacare.
What’s Happening When?
The next important date is October 1, when open enrollment for insurance plans on the new exchanges begins. Those who sign up will begin their new insurance on January 1, when the rest of the high-profile components of the law take effect. The individual mandate, requiring everyone to carry insurance or pay a fine, takes effect, as does the rule forbidding insurance companies from denying anyone coverage (or charging them exorbitant premiums) because of pre-existing conditions. In fact, after January 1 the entire notion of the “pre-existing condition” will become nothing but a historical curiosity, a feature of the dark past we’ve moved beyond. Insurance companies will also be forbidden from imposing annual limits on what people are covered for (an accompanying ban on lifetime limits is already in effect). Tax credits for small businesses to offer their employees insurance will be expanded, and millions of low-income Americans will be eligible to be covered through Medicaid. While we talk about January 1, 2014 as the date of full implementation, dozens of provisions have already gone into effect, from free preventive care to expanded coverage for young adults to the closing of the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” (you can read a comprehensive implementation timeline here if you’re so inclined).
How Many States Are Expanding Medicaid?
There is probably no provision of the ACA that will have a more immediate and profound impact on as many people’s lives as the expansion of Medicaid. In the current system, each state determines how poor you have to be to become eligible for the joint federal-state program, but under the ACA anyone with an income up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level would be eligible. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court declared that states could refuse to accept the expansion, and many states dominated by Republicans couldn’t wait to say “no” to Barack Obama and to their own poor citizens who desperately need insurance, even though the federal government will be picking up almost all of the tab.
The cruel irony is that many of the states refusing the expansion are those that have the largest proportion of poor people who could benefit, and are already the stingiest with Medicaid eligibility. For instance, in Texas, a working adult with children can’t be covered in Medicaid if her income exceeds 25 percent of the poverty level. So a single mother with three children who makes over $5,888 a year is considered too wealthy to get Medicaid. In Alabama it’s 23 percent; in Louisiana it’s 24 percent. These are all states with high rates of poverty, and states where the Republican governors and legislatures have refused to accept the money the federal government is offering to expand Medicaid. In these states, if you’re a middle-income person, you’ll be able to get government subsidies through the new health-care exchanges, but if you’re poor but not quite desperately poor enough to fall below the Scroogian eligibility limits, you’ll get no help at all. These states have essentially cut off their noses to spite Barack Obama’s face, giving up billions in federal money, a reduction in uncompensated care they end up paying for, and a healthier and more productive populace, all so they can give the finger to the President.
When you look at map of which states are accepting the Medicaid expansion, with just a few exceptions it looks a lot like an electoral college map, with Republican states saying no and Democratic states saying yes:
In just the last few weeks, Michigan has decided to accept the expansion, and Pennsylvania has proposed to take the federal money but use it to give low-income citizens private insurance (the Department of Health and Human Services has to approve such a plan). That will bring the total to 25 states plus the District of Columbia accepting the expansion, with another four (Indiana, Tennessee, Ohio, and New Hampshire) still debating the issue. After the Supreme Court’s decision, many predicted that even Republican-dominated states would find the money the government is offering too good to pass up. So far it hasn’t happened, meaning millions of poor Americans who live in Republican states are out of luck. And you’ll be shocked to learn that the poor in these states, mostly in the South, are disproportionately black.
What’s Up With The Exchanges?
Setting up a health-care exchange requires time, effort, and some minimal level of concern for seeing your citizens be able to take advantage of the ACA’s benefits. So it isn’t surprising that nearly all the Republican states that said no to the Medicaid expansion also didn’t choose to bother setting up their own exchange. In the end, 17 states (including D.C.) decided to do it themselves. Another nine are partnering with the federal government on an exchange, leaving 25 states that have left the process entirely to the federal government. This certainly makes HHS’s job harder, but no one yet knows how well those federally-run exchanges will work. All of those 25 have Republican governors, legislatures, or in most cases, both.
One potential pitfall is that in many of those Republican-run states, the state government is taking active steps to sabotage the exchanges, particularly by making the work of the “navigators” as difficult as possible. These are local groups, like universities, hospitals, churches, and the like, who have gotten federal grants and training to help people find their way through the process of getting insurance through the exchange. For example, Georgia is forcing navigators to get special state licenses (the Republican state insurance commissioner pledged to do “everything in our power to be an obstructionist”); Florida has banned them from the grounds of state health facilities. It remains to be seen just how much of an impact the sabotage efforts will have.
Are My Premiums Going To Go Up?
The answer to that question can be summed up as 1) It’s complicated, and 2) It depends. If like most people you get insurance through your employer (or your spouse’s), things probably won’t change for you. Your premiums have risen steadily in recent years, and in the short term, they’ll probably continue to rise. Nevertheless, recent data show a dramatic slowdown in the rate of increase. Last year, premiums rose by 4 percent, half of the 8 percent per year average of the last decade. That mirrors a slowdown in overall health spending. In other words, that curve the ACA was designed to bend is already bending.
If you’re now on the individual market (or uninsured) and you’ll be buying insurance on the exchanges, how much you pay will depend on how old you are, where you live, what your income is, and what plan you choose. If you make less than 400 percent of the poverty level you’ll get a subsidy so that your premium doesn’t rise above a certain percentage of your income; if you want to try to figure out now what it would be, you can read this report to get an idea of what you might pay. While we can’t make any sweeping statements that apply to everybody, there will certainly be a lot of people who find that insurance is more affordable than they thought. On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services released a report showing that because of the subsidies, 6.4 million people would be able to buy insurance through the exchanges for less than $100 a month. As one Rand Corporation study concluded, “after accounting for tax credits, average out-of-pocket premium spending in the nongroup market is estimated to decline or remain unchanged.” While there are some people who could pay more than they do now—say, young people who make too much to qualify for subsidies, used to have bare-bones insurance, and are now getting one of the more comprehensive plans available through an exchange—overall it doesn’t appear that the threats of “rate shock” will be borne out.
How Many People Are Going To Get Insurance Who Didn’t Have It Before?
This is also a difficult question to answer precisely, because there are a few unknowns. First, over time more states could accept the Medicaid expansion, increasing the number of newly insured people. Second, the fines for those who choose not to carry insurance are quite small, so some people (particularly the young, who are immortal and never get sick) could decide that it’s better to pay a fine that costs less than insurance does, but nobody knows how many of them will. Third, each state will be doing its own outreach to sign people up for the exchanges and for Medicaid; some will inevitably do a better job than others.
All of those variables make precise estimates difficult. One National Bureau of Economic Research experiment to see how uninsured people respond to the cost of getting covered concluded that “75 percent of the uninsured are projected to enroll, implying that 39 million individuals would gain coverage as a result of the law.” The Congressional Budget Office, on the other hand, projects that the ACA will reduce the ranks of the uninsured by 25 million. One thing we can say is that though tens of millions will probably become newly insured, there will still be millions of uninsured people in America. One of the main tasks in coming years will be getting that number as close to zero as we can.
Are There Going To Be Terrible Effects On The Economy?
If you’ve been paying attention to health-care news, you’ve probably seen stories featuring an employer who has 49 employees and says he’d love to hire more people, but since Obamacare’s employer mandate kicks in at 50 employees and he’d have to offer health coverage if he hired anybody else, he won’t do it. It’s quite remarkable how reporters always seem to find that business with just under 50 employees (my suspicion is that the National Federation of Independent Business, a conservative small-business group, finds them, recruits them, and passes them along to journalists). But the truth is that they’re extremely rare. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 93 percent of companies that size already offer health benefits, even before the law’s requirements kick in. And the administration has delayed the employer mandate by a year anyway.
Another charge is that employers everywhere are cutting employees’ hours below 30 per week, the level at which the mandate will eventually kick in, so they don’t qualify as full-time. While there are certainly employers who have done this, there’s little evidence it’s happening on a large scale. The number of workers just below that 30-hour cutoff is tiny to begin with and didn’t increase as the original date for the mandate approached. If employers were rushing to cut workers’ hours, those numbers would be large and growing; instead, the opposite is true.
You could condemn an employer who figures out a way to avoid giving her workers health benefits, even if not all of them are as repulsive as John Schnatter, the CEO of Papa John’s, who whined that if he had to give his employees health coverage it could raise the price of a pizza by as much as a shocking 14 cents. But one of the main things the ACA was meant to accomplish was to make those employer decisions less damaging to employees. “Job lock,” where you’re forced to keep a job you’d rather leave in order to hold on to your insurance, will be a thing of the past. And now that affordable insurance will be available to anyone regardless of whether they’ve been sick before, employers can decide to drop insurance without necessarily hurting their employees.
To see how, consider this story. Last week, Trader Joe’s announced that it would no longer be offering coverage for its employees who work less than 30 hours per week. Instead, it will give them $500 and send them to the exchanges. This seemed surprising, since Trader Joe’s is known for being an employee-friendly company. But as the company argues pretty persuasively, employees at that level are likely to get a better deal through an exchange than through their company policy when subsidies are factored in (and of course, the company will save money). We might see this pattern repeated with other employers. But would that be a bad thing? If an employee gets equivalent coverage for less money on an exchange, then they’ve effectively gotten a raise. Companies save money, which allows them to either raise salaries or hire more people. On the other hand, there is a cost to the federal budget of more people getting subsidies, but that may be a cost we’re willing to pay. It may be some time before we know how common an occurrence this is and what effect it’s having on the economy and the budget.
Is Obamacare Going To Make Doctors Quiz Me About Who I’m Sleeping With?
Here’s a good tip: if you read a story with a crazy new allegation about what the Affordable Care Act is going to do to you, there’s a good chance two things are true. First, it’s false. Second, Betsy McCaughey probably had something to do with it. She’s the woman who gave us “death panels,” and her latest bit of crazy is to try to convince you that because of Obamacare, doctors are suddenly being forced to ask you inappropriate questions about your sex life (this is a pattern you’ll become familiar with: she takes an ordinary feature of health care, like the fact that questions about sex are standard practice when taking a medical history, and makes it sound both sinister and a product of Obamacare). You can decide whether this kind of thing is just silly or pernicious and generally despicable (I lean toward the latter), but don’t be surprised if we see a whole round of new allegations like this one. Conservatives failed to stop the ACA from being passed into law, then failed to get it overturned in the Supreme Court, then failed to win the election that would have allowed them to repeal it. They will almost certainly get increasingly desperate after January 1st when the law is implemented and we don’t all suddenly find ourselves standing in breadlines wearing gray sackcloth, our spirits broken by the socialist hellhole into which we’ve descended. So who knows what they’ll come up with.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 20, 2013
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