“Sympathy For The Speaker” GOP Leaders Appear To Know They Have A Credibility Problem
I have sympathy (not much, but some) for John Boehner.
When it comes to the Affordable Care Act, the Republican House Speaker is nearly always between a rock and a hard place.
On one hand, he and the GOP leadership must stand against President Barack Obama’s health care law, because the longer it remains on the books, the more likely those who receive its benefits are going to support Democrats, not Republicans.
On the other hand, if someday the Republicans repeal the law, after having returned to the White House with congressional majorities, they will be forced to devise an alternative — an impossibility given the reactionary impulses of today’s GOP.
In the former scenario, Republicans lose.
In the latter scenario, they lose.
So Boehner must thread the needle while hoping his credibility as a GOP leader isn’t badly tarnished, even as rank-and-file Republicans discover through their experience that Obamacare isn’t actually a harbinger of North Korean-style totalitarianism.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. Boehner reiterated the Republican position on health care on the May 3 broadcast of Meet the Press, saying that Obamacare wasn’t working.
“Obamacare made it harder for employers to hire people,” he said. “You can ask any employer in America, ask them whether Obamacare has made it harder for them to hire employees, and they’ll tell you yes.”
When asked why none of the Republican Party’s dire predictions about health care came true, Boehner responded: “You know why there’s more people insured? Because a lot more people are on Medicaid.” He continued, “Giving people Medicaid insurance is almost like giving them nothing, because you can’t find a doctor that will see Medicaid patients. So where do they end up? The same place they used to end up: the emergency room.”
Events later in the week suggested, however, that something wasn’t right about Boehner’s claims. On Wednesday, the largest independent study of its kind was released. It found that nearly 17 million Americans are now covered under the Affordable Care Act.
Some lost coverage (about 6 million), according to the RAND Corporation study, but many more found coverage, with a net gain of 16.9 million. The evidence also contravenes those who say Obamacare encumbers hiring. For one thing, the largest gains (nearly 10 million) were made in employer-run insurance plans. For another, some 80 percent of the working population under the age of 65 saw no change at all in their health care coverage.
That wasn’t the only reason to look askance at Boehner’s claims. Last Friday’s monthly jobs report showed the unemployment rate had dropped to 5.4 percent, the lowest it’s been since May 2008, before Obama won the presidency. Even wages, which have not typically kept pace with inflation, rose by 2.2 percent in the past year.
So something’s wrong with the picture Boehner is painting. If most employers are offering insurance, and if the job market is expanding, why is Boehner saying that the Affordable Care Act has led to less insurance coverage and more unemployment?
GOP leaders appear to know they have a credibility problem. They are shifting their stance against Obamacare from quantity to quality. According to a report in The Hill published after Boehner’s appearance on Meet the Press, the Republicans now concede that Obamacare has covered more Americans but argue that the coverage is inferior. Hence, Boehner’s comment about Medicaid: Doctors don’t take Medicaid, and having it is like having nothing.
Such a shift raises its own question of credibility. Why would a Republican Party that equates tyranny with the presence of government in the lives of individuals be worried about the government’s role in providing quality health care to individuals?
Some might judge this as hypocrisy and thus dismiss the new Republican position as entirely unworthy of scrutiny. There’s merit to that, as Washington wallows in hypocrisy. But hypocrisy can prevent us from seeing what’s really going on. In this case, I wonder if Boehner and the leadership are worried about holding their ranks, as the temptation to defect grows from within.
Over time, the Affordable Care Act will penetrate deeper into the population. The millions of Americans who will benefit from the law will have an incentive to maintain the status quo. They’ll likely support the Democratic Party as long as the Republicans demand repeal of the law. So, as of now, a vote for a Republican, from the point of someone covered by the Affordable Care Act, is a self-destructive vote. And among those millions are conservatives.
Some might argue that in saying things about Obamacare that just aren’t true, Boehner risks alienating conservatives that make up the base of the Republican Party. Why would they trust the House Speaker if he is so consistently wrong? There’s something to that, but a likelier explanation for the GOP’s continued, and shifting, stance against the health care law is that opposition, no matter how contorted, is the best way to keep the conservatives in line.
Given time, more conservatives are going to benefit from the law. And the more they do, they more they will vote their self-interests. And that’s why I have (a little) sympathy for John Boehner.
By: John Stoehr, The National Memo, May 16, 2015
“Ted Cruz: I Won Those Purple Hearts!”: It’s Not The First Time Cruz Has Claimed Credit For Something That Has Raised Eyebrows
Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential stump speech electrifies conservative crowds with a cocktail of growls, whispers, warnings of impending doom, and at least one claim of personal accomplishment so powerful, it often brings many in the audience to their feet.
“Just a few weeks ago, I was down in Fort Hood, where the soldiers who were shot by Nidal Hasan were finally, finally, finally awarded the Purple Heart,” Cruz told activists last weekend at the conservative Freedom Forum in Greenville, S.C. “I’ll tell you the reason those Purple Hearts were awarded. I was very proud last year to introduce legislation in the Senate to mandate that the Pentagon award those Purple Hearts.”
Cruz rightly pointed out that for years, the Obama administration had classified the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, by Army Major Nidal Hasan as a “workplace violence” incident rather than as a terrorist attack, though Hasan’s rampage came after he had been in contact with al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki. Hasan’s shooting spree left 13 dead and 32 wounded, including dozens of military personnel who were deemed ineligible for the Purple Heart because of the Pentagon’s classification of the attack as not combat-related.
At the end of 2014, Congress passed a bill requiring the Pentagon to reclassify the 2009 attack, and the Fort Hood victims were indeed awarded the Purple Heart.
But Cruz voted not once but twice against the Pentagon authorization bill that changed the Purple Heart policy. A Cruz spokesman told the Dallas Morning News that Cruz voted against the bill over an issue unrelated to the Fort Hood shootings but that “he would have found another way to get it done” had the bill had not passed. “Supporting one amendment certainly does not mean a senator is obligated to support the entire bill.”
And although Cruz played an important role on the Senate Armed Services Committee at last year, the credit for changing the Pentagon’s long-standing policy belongs to at least a dozen senators and members of Congress who had pushed the issue relentlessly for years before Cruz ever arrived in the Senate.
It was Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), not Cruz, who originally introduced legislation to award the Purple Heart to the Fort Hood victims in 2009. Cornyn’s bill coincided with a similar bill from Representative John Carter (R-TX), whose district includes much of Fort Hood. Cornyn and Carter would introduce their bills again in 2011 and 2013. Representatives Roger Williams (R-TX), Frank Wolf (R-VA), and Peter King (R-NY) all pushed the matter in their own committees.
Representative Michael McCaul, another Texas Republican and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, held hearings on the matter. Senator Joe Lieberman (I/D-CT), the former chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, did the same and commissioned a months-long investigation into the causes of the Fort Hood attack.
Lieberman introduced a bill of his own, along with Cornyn, in 2012 to mandate that the Pentagon change its criteria for awarding the Purple Heart that would include the Fort Hood victims. In 2014, Senator John Boozman, a Republican from Arkansas who is also on the Armed Services Committee, wrote legislation similar to Cruz’s to mandate that the Pentagon award Purple Hearts to victims of a similar shooting at a Little Rock military recruiting center in 2009.
Neal Sher, a lead attorney for the Fort Hood victims and their families who sued the Pentagon over the policy, said the reclassification was the result of efforts by multiple offices for multiple years on and off Capitol Hill.
“Cruz was instrumental, Cornyn was instrumental, the Texas House delegation, McCaul, Carter, Williams, were all instrumental,” said Sher. “It took years, years. The administration and the Pentagon were opposing it every step of the way. It took an act of Congress to get them to change their tune.”
A staffer who worked on the issue agreed that Cruz did play an important part in the final result for the families, but “the claim nonetheless omits what Lieberman, Cornyn and others had done to get the ball to the one-yard line. In other words, ‘the reason those Purple Hearts were awarded’ phrase is true but insufficient. “
It’s not the first time Cruz has claimed credit for something on the campaign trail that has raised eyebrows back in Washington.
Cruz ran into a buzz saw with Senator John McCain last month after the Texas senator told a New Hampshire audience that he had been pressing McCain to hold congressional hearings to allow members of the military to carry personal firearms on military bases. Cruz suggested that McCain had yet to respond.
McCain said Cruz had never spoken with him about it at all.
“Ask him how he communicated with me because I’d be very interested. Who knows what I’m missing?” McCain said to a group of reporters in the Capitol, according to The Hill. “Maybe it was through some medium that I’m not familiar with. Maybe bouncing it off the ozone layer, for all I know. There’s a lot of holes in the ozone layer, so maybe it wasn’t the ozone layer that he bounced it off of. Maybe it was through hand telegraph, maybe sign language, who knows?”
Cruz later acknowledged he “may have misspoken” about his outreach to McCain. Cruz’s office did not respond to requests for comment on his Fort Hood remarks.
By: Patricia Murphy, The National Memo, May 16, 2015
“Fraternity Of Failure”: GOP Men And Women United By A Shared History Of Getting Everything Wrong, And Refusing To Admit It
Jeb Bush wants to stop talking about past controversies. And you can see why. He has a lot to stop talking about. But let’s not honor his wish. You can learn a lot by studying recent history, and you can learn even more by watching how politicians respond to that history.
The big “Let’s move on” story of the past few days involved Mr. Bush’s response when asked in an interview whether, knowing what he knows now, he would have supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He answered that yes, he would. No W.M.D.? No stability after all the lives and money expended? No problem.
Then he tried to walk it back. He “interpreted the question wrong,” and isn’t interested in engaging “hypotheticals.” Anyway, “going back in time” is a “disservice” to those who served in the war.
Take a moment to savor the cowardice and vileness of that last remark. And, no, that’s not hyperbole. Mr. Bush is trying to hide behind the troops, pretending that any criticism of political leaders — especially, of course, his brother, the commander in chief — is an attack on the courage and patriotism of those who paid the price for their superiors’ mistakes. That’s sinking very low, and it tells us a lot more about the candidate’s character than any number of up-close-and-personal interviews.
Wait, there’s more: Incredibly, Mr. Bush resorted to the old passive-voice dodge, admitting only that “mistakes were made.” Indeed. By whom? Well, earlier this year Mr. Bush released a list of his chief advisers on foreign policy, and it was a who’s-who of mistake-makers, people who played essential roles in the Iraq disaster and other debacles.
Seriously, consider that list, which includes such luminaries as Paul Wolfowitz, who insisted that we would be welcomed as liberators and that the war would cost almost nothing, and Michael Chertoff, who as director of the Department of Homeland Security during Hurricane Katrina was unaware of the thousands of people stranded at the New Orleans convention center without food and water.
In Bushworld, in other words, playing a central role in catastrophic policy failure doesn’t disqualify you from future influence. If anything, a record of being disastrously wrong on national security issues seems to be a required credential.
Voters, even Republican primary voters, may not share that view, and the past few days have probably taken a toll on Mr. Bush’s presidential prospects. In a way, however, that’s unfair. Iraq is a special problem for the Bush family, which has a history both of never admitting mistakes and of sticking with loyal family retainers no matter how badly they perform. But refusal to learn from experience, combined with a version of political correctness in which you’re only acceptable if you have been wrong about crucial issues, is pervasive in the modern Republican Party.
Take my usual focus, economic policy. If you look at the list of economists who appear to have significant influence on Republican leaders, including the likely presidential candidates, you find that nearly all of them agreed, back during the “Bush boom,” that there was no housing bubble and the American economic future was bright; that nearly all of them predicted that the Federal Reserve’s efforts to fight the economic crisis that developed when that nonexistent bubble popped would lead to severe inflation; and that nearly all of them predicted that Obamacare, which went fully into effect in 2014, would be a huge job-killer.
Given how badly these predictions turned out — we had the biggest housing bust in history, inflation paranoia has been wrong for six years and counting, and 2014 delivered the best job growth since 1999 — you might think that there would be some room in the G.O.P. for economists who didn’t get everything wrong. But there isn’t. Having been completely wrong about the economy, like having been completely wrong about Iraq, seems to be a required credential.
What’s going on here? My best explanation is that we’re witnessing the effects of extreme tribalism. On the modern right, everything is a political litmus test. Anyone who tried to think through the pros and cons of the Iraq war was, by definition, an enemy of President George W. Bush and probably hated America; anyone who questioned whether the Federal Reserve was really debasing the currency was surely an enemy of capitalism and freedom.
It doesn’t matter that the skeptics have been proved right. Simply raising questions about the orthodoxies of the moment leads to excommunication, from which there is no coming back. So the only “experts” left standing are those who made all the approved mistakes. It’s kind of a fraternity of failure: men and women united by a shared history of getting everything wrong, and refusing to admit it. Will they get the chance to add more chapters to their reign of error?
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, May 15, 2015
“The Price We Pay For Conservative Scorn Of Amtrak”: Choosing Not To Invest In Safety And Other Improvements To Our Rail Network
On Tuesday night, an Amtrak train spectacularly derailed on its way through Philadelphia, killing at least seven people. On Wednesday morning, a House appropriations subcommittee voted to cut federal funding for Amtrak by about 20 percent. Those are two dots Republicans don’t want you to connect.
“Don’t use this tragedy in that way,” Rep. Mike Simpson is quoted in a Politico article as saying, after Democrats on the appropriations subcommittee for transportation and housing criticized Republicans for proposing and eventually approving the cuts.
The vote took place before news reports that the train may have been going around a curve at speeds of about 100 miles per hour when the derailment occurred. If those reports had surfaced earlier, the Republican objections to linking budget cuts to the derailment would likely have been much louder.
The objections would also have been equally out of line. Here are a couple of issues to consider.
First, there’s the site of the crash itself, which the New York Times reported is at roughly the same location as another spectacular train derailment in which 79 people died – in 1943.
The curve ultimately proved not to be the key factor in that disaster, but it does raise this question: Why is that curve there in the first place, some 72 years later? Why has there not been an effort to rebuild that curve so that trains could move through that area safely at higher speeds?
The answer to that question is easy: conservative scorn for Amtrak, which has been under sustained attack almost from the time it was created, and which has never received the levels of investment in tracks and rail cars that would be appropriate for a national passenger rail system.
Second, if reports prove true that the derailment was caused by the train operating at twice the speed it should have in that section of the track, why were there not automatic controls that would have slowed the train down and perhaps prevented the derailment? The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that “an automatic train control system designed to prevent speeding was not in place where Amtrak Train 188 crashed.”
In fact, there is a requirement that Amtrak, commuter lines and freight railroads have positive train controls in place by the end of 2015. Unfortunately, the task (and the bulk of the funding) was left to the privately run freight railroads, on whose lines Amtrak runs. Trying to implement the train control system on the cheap appears to have dramatically failed. (This article on the Eno Transportation Center website has some background.) In January, notes Gregg Levine writing for Al Jazeera, Amtrak published a newsletter in which it said it was “hopeful” that positive train control would be implemented throughout the entire Northeast Corridor by the end of the year. But in March, the acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, Sarah Feinberg, told Congress that the railroad industry would miss the 2015 deadline.
Meanwhile, a $17 million increase request from the Obama administration for the safety and operations budget of the Federal Railroad Administration, which includes funding for positive train control, was denied by the appropriations subcommittee. The budget was held level at $186 million.
Interestingly, the Republican committee report on the appropriation for the Department of Transportation had far more to say about the pay of workers serving food on the trains than it did about needed investments to ensure trains could operate safely.
“Yesterday’s tragedy in Philadelphia should be a wake-up call to this Committee – we must provide sufficient funding for Amtrak’s critical infrastructure projects to ensure a safer transportation system,” Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said in a statement after the vote. “The majority’s shortsighted, draconian budget cuts stand in the way of the investments that a great country must make.”
Price is not out of line. Advocates for increasing investments in transportation infrastructure – ranging from labor unions to members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – had planned for today to be a lobbying day on Capitol Hill to call attention to the need for more federal investment in our transportation network. Now the entire nation’s attention is focused on what happens when we choose not to invest in safety and other improvements to our rail network. It’s time to ignore the people on the right who don’t want us to make the connection between a disaster and the obstruction of investments that could have prevented it.
By: Isaiah J. Poole, Campaign for America’s Future, May 13, 2015
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