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“He’ll Have Some Explaining To Do”: Another Republican Governor Has Accepted The Medicaid Expansion—And He Might Run For President

Indiana Governor Mike Pence announced Tuesday morning that the Obama administration had approved the state’s plan for accepting the Medicaid expansion. Starting February 1, 350,000 low-income Indianans will be enrolled in Healthy Indiana, the state’s Medicaid program. With the 2016 presidential cycle now underway, political analysts immediately are judging how Pence’s move affects his presidential odds.

The early consensus is that, if indeed Pence decides to run, this decision would cause him trouble in the GOP primary. But the issue poses a dilemma for the Republican Party more broadly, especially its hopes of recapturing the White House. As we saw during the midterms, the Medicaid expansion pits moderate Republicans versus conservatives, governors versus state legislators—and potentially undermines the party’s newfound interest in helping the poor and reducing inequality.

It’s up to governors to decide whether their state accepts the Medicaid expansion, and it’s hard to pass up. The federal government is offering states money to expand Medicaid so that people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line are eligible for the program. The federal government covers all of the costs from 2014 through 2016 and then that coverage amount phases down slowly to 90 percent by 2022. Governors also face aggressive lobbying from the hospital industry, which is eager to accept the billions of dollars that the federal government transfers to states that expand Medicaid. As a result, 10 states with Republican governors have accepted the expansion over the past few years, and two more, in Tennessee and Wyoming, are considering it.

But some Republican governors have toed the party line, including two likely 2016 candidates: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and former Texas Governor Rick Perry both rejected the expansion. Medicaid, after all, is part of Obamacare, which must be “repealed and replaced.” That’s one reason why most potential Republican candidates—especially those in Congress, like senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio—are opposed to the expansion.

This makes for an interesting rift in the Republican primary.

If Pence runs for president, he’ll have some explaining to do. He would likely argue that he pushed Medicaid in a much more conservative direction through a waiver from the federal government that allows Indiana to require enrollees to contribute a monthly premium to a health savings account, a typical conservative health care idea. He would also likely appeal to his evangelical base by saying that Medicaid expansion is the compassionate thing to do. But he wouldn’t be alone in defending his decision: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie accepted the expansion, too. Not known to sidestep an issue or stay on the defensive, Christie could attack the other governors for not taking advantage of the program and hurting their poor constituents, and he might accuse Cruz et al of not understanding how governing works.

The general election is a different story altogether, which brings us to the GOP’s desire to appeal to lower-class voters.

Over the past few weeks, Republicans have begun emphasizing income inequality and stagnant wages. These are important issues, but the GOP’s economic platform still consists largely of deregulation, spending cuts, and lower taxes. That won’t appeal to the poor, particularly compared to the Democratic proposals of free community college and middle-class tax breaks.

That’s where the Medicaid expansion comes in. Denouncing it as Obamacare may work with the Republican primary electorate, but it won’t work in the general election. We saw as much in the midterms, when new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell twisted himself into knots balancing his commitment to repealing Obamacare and promising not to alter the state’s health care exchange and expanded Medicaid program (both of which, of course, were the result of Obamacare). Granted, McConnell won reelection easily, but it does show how the expansion can be a political liability for Republican candidates.

If Christie or Pence emerge from the crowded field, it won’t be a problem. They can tout the expansion as evidence of their committment to fighting inequality. But the opposite is true for the rest of the field. For them, the expansion will be an even bigger liability if income inequality isn’t just Republicans’ flavor of the month, but a major part of their 2016 platform.

 

By: Danny Vinik, The New Republic, January 27, 2015

January 29, 2015 Posted by | GOP Presidential Candidates, Medicaid Expansion, Mike Pence | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“They’re All Cronies”: Conservatives In Iowa Resist Bush, Romney

Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney face big trouble in Iowa — influential conservatives have had enough of them.

Disdain for the party’s center-right powerhouses, who are both considering seeking the 2016 Republican presidential nominations, could have implications well beyond the nation’s first caucus state.

Iowa conservatives mirror the views of like-minded activists nationwide, and having the party’s vocal right wing blasting away could stagger either candidate throughout 2016. And it’s uncertain that conservatives would actively work in a general election for Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, or Bush, the former Florida governor.

“This could be a big problem,” said Craig Robinson, editor-in-chief of theIowaRepublican.com, a partisan web site.

With its town-hall-like precinct caucuses the first test of the nomination next winter, Iowa usually winnows the field of a party’s nomination contest and previews campaign styles and weaknesses. Just ask the Romneys and Bushes. The families have had a candidate in five competitive caucuses since 1980, and in all but one instance, the outcome foreshadowed the future.

George H. W. Bush was a barely-known former CIA director in 1980 when he stunned the political world by topping Ronald Reagan. Though Reagan would win the nomination, Bush showed enough strength to become Reagan’s running mate.

Bush faltered in Iowa in 1988 when he ran for the nomination a second time, this time as the sitting vice president, finishing third behind Kansas neighbor Bob Dole and evangelist Pat Robertson. The caucus prodded Bush to run a tougher campaign, and he went on to win the nomination and the White House.

In 2000, his son cemented his standing as the candidate to beat with a big victory over magazine editor Steve Forbes.

Romney finished second in 2008 and 2012, both times losing to Christian right favorites. It was a signal that that bloc was leery of Romney’s record.

Today, memories of Romney’s previous efforts dog him. “He’s a proven loser,” said John Eggen, a Des Moines air conditioning and heating contractor.

Another campaign, he said, would mean more debate over the 2006 Massachusetts health care law that Romney approved when governor. It’s considered the model for the 2010 federal health care law that Republicans hate.

Bush is also yesterday’s candidate, said Sabrina Graves, a stay-at-home mother from Blue Grass. Bush’s support for Common Core educational standards, which many conservatives view as big government reaching too far into local education, also gets slammed.

“I don’t know what is worse, nominating someone merely because he’s been nominated twice before or nominating a liberal supporter of Common Core because he has a familiar name,” said former New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O’Brien, who spoke at a daylong conservative forum in Iowa Saturday featuring a long list of potential presidential candidates.

Romney and Bush did not attend. Bush, who last week spoke at length with the Iowa Republican chairman and hinted at a White House bid, cited a scheduling conflict. A spokesman for Romney did not respond to a request for comment.

Some of Saturday’s loudest cheers came when businessman Donald Trump fired away. “It can’t be Mitt because Mitt ran and failed,” Trump said, adding “the last thing we need is another Bush.”

The audience was largely hardcore conservatives, the crowd that boosted former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, also a Baptist preacher, in 2008 and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a hero of the Christian right, four years later. Both won the Iowa caucus.

They watched Romney market himself as a fierce conservative in 2012, but never quite bought it. Saturday, they saw New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another moderate favorite, argue that he’s a true conservative.

“If the values I’m fighting for every day in New Jersey and all across this country are not consistent with your values, then why would I keep coming back? I wouldn’t,” he said. Reaction was spotty.

The conservatives say they’ve had enough of nominees with appeal to independent and more moderate voters.

“We are tired of being told who our candidates should be,” said Donna Robinson, a Marengo saleswoman. “They say they’re conservative, then they run to the middle.”

The right wants new faces and new ideas. They were particularly impressed Saturday with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, 47, and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, 44.

“He has a proven record and he’s young,” Eggen said of Walker.

They also like people without lengthy political resumes. That’s why retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former business executive Carly Fiorina got warm receptions.

“People who have been in and around government and politics for their entire lives may no longer be able to see the truth: our government must be fundamentally reformed,” Fiorina said.

The conservatives loved it. Romney and Bush? “They’re all cronies,” Graves said. “I want someone this time who’s not a politician.”

 

By: David Lightman, The National Memo, January 26, 2015

January 29, 2015 Posted by | Conservatives, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Efforts To Reposition Themselves”: Can Republicans Create Their Own Credible Economic Populism In Time For 2016?

When Republicans trooped to Iowa over the weekend for Steve King’s “Freedom Summit,” it was as much of a dash to the right as you would have expected from an event hosted by perhaps the most fervently anti-immigrant member of Congress, in a state whose presidential caucus was won by Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008.

But something else was going on, even there: the search for an economic populist message that might resonate with the general electorate.

Republicans haven’t yet figured out how to present this message, or exactly what policy proposals it ought to be based on. But they’re obviously trying. Here’s part of the New York Times’ report from the event:

A few candidates advanced a concern about income inequality that is percolating within the party, discussing wage stagnation, an issue that has largely belonged to Democrats. Mr. Christie spoke of the anxiety of the middle class. He said that any Republican coalition needed to include the “proud yet underserved and underrepresented working class in this country.”

“The rich are doing just fine,” Mr. Christie said.

Rick Santorum, the winner in the 2012 Iowa caucus, noted that for years Republicans had extolled entrepreneurs and business owners, adding that it made more sense politically to “be the party of the worker.”

“What percentage of American workers own their own businesses?” he asked. “Less than 10.”

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who won the 2008 caucus here, stressed that the falling unemployment rate did not represent an economic recovery for many people. “A lot of people who used to have one good-paying job with benefits now have to work two jobs,” he said.

You may notice that none of these critiques are about Barack Obama, unless you’re arguing that he failed to make things better. That’s because when you start to talk about persistent economic anxiety, you inevitably reach back beyond this administration to problems that developed over decades. Santorum’s message is perhaps the most bracing for Republicans to hear; after years of holding up business owners as the most virtuous and admirable among us, the ones for whose benefit all government policy should be made, it would be awfully difficult for Republicans to decide that bosses aren’t the ones they should be advocating for.

And of course, Democrats are going to do what they can to make any populist turn impossible for Republicans. President Obama and his congressional allies will be releasing a steady stream of executive actions and new proposals on things like paid sick leave, boosting overtime pay, and other measures, which Republicans will inevitably oppose, leaving them arguing against benefits for workers.

Which is why it’s important for Republicans to have their own policy proposals if they’re to convince voters that they’re the ones to trust on economics. Republican arguments used to always be about growth, as though that were all that mattered: cut taxes and regulations, the economy will grow, and we’ll all live happily ever after. But with the economy growing steadily and economic anxiety persisting, they have to argue that growth is not enough.

The current Republican efforts to reposition themselves on economic questions remind me a little of how Democrats used to talk about national security before the Iraq War went south and discredited Republican wisdom on the issue. Democrats were always defensive about it, and when they tried to come up with a new message for whatever campaign was looming, the point was never to win the argument over national security. They just wanted to minimize the damage the issue could do to them, or at best, fight to a draw so that the election would hinge on issues where they were stronger.

If Republicans are to do that now on economics, it isn’t a bad start to say their focus has to shift to what people who aren’t wealthy or business owners (or both) care about. Now they just have to come up with an answer to this question: Okay, so what are you going to do about it?

Many Republicans would probably prefer to stick to a populism without economics, one that uses issues like immigration or the latest culture war flare-up to convince voters that Democrats are part of a hostile “elite,” while the GOP is the party of the common man and woman. This has certainly worked before. But the problem for them is that they are now on the wrong side of majority opinion on many of those cultural issues. Which only means that, when it comes to their new-found economic populism, there will be, if anything, more pressure to get specific.

 

By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; The Plum Line, The Washington Post, January 27, 2015

January 29, 2015 Posted by | Economic Inequality, Economic Policy, Republicans | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“A Dangerous Direction”: Corporate Tax Break Scheme Is Gaining A Momentum We Must Stop

There is no real argument over whether the nation needs to do more to improve its infrastructure – its transportation, water, power and information networks. But there is an argument over how best to pay for it all – and that argument is increasingly turning in a dangerous direction.

Financially stressed working-class households who are at best treading water, if not actually sinking, in today’s economy aren’t eager to dig deeper into their own pockets to foot the bill. That’s even more true of the plutocrat class, which has an army of lobbyists at the ready to shut down any suggestion that those who arguably would benefit the most from such things as better roads and public transportation should shoulder the larger share of the load.

Politicians of both parties in Washington are therefore increasingly relying on one of the schemes in the voodoo economics toolbox: give corporations hoarding money overseas to avoid taxation a form of tax holiday in exchange for increased corporate funding for infrastructure.

The Bond Buyer financial news site reports that Sen. Rand Paul (R-TX) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) are close to agreeing on a plan that would give multinationals a deep tax reduction on money they currently have stashed overseas if they bring the money back into the United States, also known as repatriation. Money collected would be deposited into the Highway Trust Fund, which is dedicated to paying for federal transportation projects.

Paul’s promoting of this idea is not new; he had a bill last year that would have permanently cut the tax rate on profits corporations hold overseas, with the funds going into an emergency fund for what it considered high-priority highway projects. But his collaboration with Boxer is likely to give the idea more political momentum.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA), told the U.S. Conference of Mayors last week that raising the gasoline tax to pay for transportation improvements – the most logical near-term solution since that tax hasn’t been raised in almost 22 years – is off the table in his committee. Instead, “the number one source that’s being talked about is this repatriation of funds,” he said, according to The Hill newspaper.

Rep. John Delaney (D-MD) is a leading proponent of a repatriation-for-transportation-funding scheme. In December he filed a bill expected to be reintroduced this year that would allow multinational corporations to bring back overseas profits at a tax rate of 8.75 percent instead of the current statutory tax rate of 35 percent. The revenue collected would be placed in the Highway Trust Fund and in a $50 billion America Infrastructure Fund, which would be used to leverage up to $750 billion worth of state, local and private funding for infrastructure projects around the country.

With the White House giving its tacit blessing to such schemes while refusing to support proposals to raise funding in other ways, tapping profits now held overseas at a deeply discounted tax rate is becoming the default position for how to begin covering a more-than-$1 trillion infrastructure investment deficit.

But is rewarding tax avoidance really the way to fund our public infrastructure needs?

The biggest problem with the Delaney proposal, and the similar proposal from Paul, is that “it would allow companies such as Apple and Microsoft, which have parked hundreds of billions of dollars of US profits in offshore tax havens, to pay a US tax rate of no more than of 8.75 percent, instead of the more than 30 percent tax they should pay on these profits,” says an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice.

These profits – more than $2 trillion – are usually laundered through foreign subsidiaries in low-tax or no-tax countries in ways designed to avoid US taxes. That can be done as simply as having that online purchase you think you are making through an American-based company actually handled by a Swiss or Irish subsidiary, or by transferring a patent to an overseas subsidiary so that revenues on licensing that patent flow through the subsidiary. Sometimes, the money isn’t even actually overseas, but is deposited in US banks and is being used for domestic purposes. In any event, regardless of where the money ends up being deposited, it is not “trapped overseas,” as corporate lobbyists and their supporters in Congress often say; it’s just that they don’t want to pay a higher tax on that money.

The last time corporations got a repatriation tax holiday in exchange for the promise to use the profits in job-creating investments, in 2004, corporations instead ended up using the money brought back into the country to boost shareholder dividends and buy back stock (which drives up stock prices and, often, the compensation of CEOs). There is little reason to believe that the same thing wouldn’t happen again in 2015.

Setting a bargain-basement tax rate for profits booked through foreign subsidiaries serves as nothing more than an incentive for corporations to escalate the schemes – or a wedge to convince lawmakers that if an ultra-low corporate tax rate is good for profits repatriated from overseas, perhaps all corporate profits should be taxed at that rate.

In any event, it is the rest of us who end up being the losers. When multinational corporations don’t pay their fair share in taxes, the rest of us have to make up the difference – or suffer the inability to pay for the things that we need, like good roads and public transportation. That includes businesses who don’t have the capacity to set up the fancy tax dodges that their competitors use.

What we need is honest tax reform that makes corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share, closing the door for good on the loopholes and schemes they use to avoid paying taxes. We also need an honest and equitable way to pay for the infrastructure improvements we need. Both are possible, but not without considerable heat from an aroused public. Congress will have to decide this year how it will pay for a multiyear transportation bill. We can’t let the default option be coins from the table of corporate tax avoidance.

 

By: Isaiah J. Poole, Campaign For America’s Future, January 26, 2015

January 28, 2015 Posted by | Corporate Welfare, Multinational Corporations, Tax Loopholes | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Bottom Rungs Of The Economic Ladder”: Boehner Undermines His Own Minimum-Wage Argument

When policymakers debate increasing the minimum wage, there’s nothing wrong with them drawing on their personal experiences when making a decision. Some members of Congress, however, really aren’t good at it.

A couple of years ago, for example, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) argued against raising the minimum wage above $7.25 an hour because, when she was a teenager, she made $2.15 an hour and she “appreciated that opportunity.”

What Blackburn didn’t realize is that inflation exists – when she made $2.15 an hour as a teen, in inflation-adjusted terms, that was over $12 an hour in today’s money. The Tennessee Republican was trying to argue against a minimum-wage hike, but she ended up doing the opposite.

A related problem popped up over the weekend, when House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) appeared on “60 Minutes” and CBS’s Scott Pelley asked if Congress might increase the “federal minimum wage.” The Republican leader replied:

“It’s a bad idea. I’ve had every kinda rotten job you can imagine growin’ up and gettin’ myself through school. And I wouldn’t have had a chance at half those jobs if the federal government had kept imposing [a] higher minimum wage. You take the bottom rungs off the economic ladder.”

Again, there’s nothing wrong with Boehner, like Blackburn, drawing upon his personal experiences. The trouble is that Boehner, like Blackburn, is flubbing the details.

Sam Stein set the record straight:

[W]hen Boehner was first taking on those “rotten jobs,” the minimum wage was actually at its historic high. And when the wage later dipped relative to inflation, Congress passed a series of hikes that raised it some more.

According to Department of Labor statistics, the minimum wage stood at $1.60 an hour in 1968 – the highest it has ever been when adjusted for inflation…. At first, Boehner went into sales – selling plastics, specifically – after his brief stint with the Navy ended. In 1971, he enrolled in Xavier University. According to a recent Politico profile, Boehner took a number of odd jobs while attending school there, among them “a series of humbling janitorial and construction jobs.” He would graduate in 1977.

On “60 Minutes,” Boehner expressed relief that the government didn’t keep “imposing” a higher minimum wage at the time, but in reality, the government actually did keep “imposing” a higher minimum wage, raising in 1974, 1975, and again in 1976 – just as Boehner was working through college.

And adjusted for inflation, those minimum wages had greater purchasing power than the minimum wage now. If Boehner looks back at that era fondly, he has no reason to create tougher conditions for low-wage workers now.

Keep the political context in mind: the debate about the minimum wage has been ongoing for quite a while, it was a major issue in last year’s elections, and the Speaker no doubt expects questions about the policy during interviews like these. But as of the weekend, his go-to talking point is demonstrably wrong.

 

By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 27, 2015

January 28, 2015 Posted by | Congress, John Boehner, Minimum Wage | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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