“From The Party Of No To The Party Of Oops”: How Republican Intransigence Keeps Backfiring
Exasperated with repeated Republican stonewalling of President Obama’s executive and judicial nominees, Senate Democrats on Thursday went nuclear, striking down two centuries of precedent regarding the chamber’s arcane filibuster rules.
By a 52-48 vote, the Senate voted to allow confirmation of federal judge and Cabinet nominees with a simple majority vote. The move did not, however, change the filibuster rules regarding legislation and Supreme Court nominees.
For Republicans, it was the latest defeat to come as a result of the party’s refusal to engage with their Democratic colleagues on even minor issues. The GOP has earned a reputation under Obama as the “party of no” for its intransigence, which in recent months has proven self-defeating more than once.
Take the filibuster.
For a full year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) threatened the nuclear option to circumvent Republican inaction. Most recently, Republicans blocked three nominees to the powerful U.S. District Court of Appeals, not because of any qualms with the candidates’ credentials, but merely because they didn’t want Obama filling vacancies on an influential court that tilts conservative.
With the GOP refusing to back down, Reid finally dropped the bomb, ensuring Obama’s nominees could get an up-or-down vote — and, as a bonus, handing liberals a procedural reform they’ve long sought.
“The American people believe the Senate is broken,” Reid said on the Senate floor Thursday, “and I believe the American people are right.”
Outraged Republicans vowed retribution, saying they would use the process to stack future courts in their favor once they’re back in control. Except to do that, they would need to first retake the Senate and White House, which may not be so easy by 2016.
In the meantime, Democrats have a little extra muscle to help Obama staff his administration as he sees fit (which, let’s remember, used to be common practice). That could be immensely important, since House Republicans have shown no interest in dealing with the president on anything substantive like immigration reform.
As New York‘s Jonathan Chait detailed more thoroughly here, “Obama has no real legislative agenda that can pass Congress,” so his “second-term agenda runs not through Congress but through his own administrative agencies.”
With the filibuster tweak, Obama can now more readily advance his administrative agenda — and Republicans allowed that to happen by forcing Reid’s hand on the filibuster. At that point, he didn’t have much choice: Had he set the precedent of allowing the minority party to prevent judicial vacancies from being filled, Republicans would only have been encouraged to do it again.
“Eventually this escalation would have become untenable,” wrote Salon’s Brian Beutler, “and somebody would have had to go nuclear.”
That’s the same argument Democrats made during the government shutdown, another instance of GOP obstinacy backfiring spectacularly. Had Democrats and President Obama acceded to the GOP’s hostage-taking, it would have established a precedent that government shutdowns and threats of debt default were the norm for legislative negotiations.
And by letting Republicans dig in, Democrats reaped the political benefits of seeing the GOP’s approval ratings tank.
The same dynamic could soon play out on health care, too.
ObamaCare face-planted out of the gate, and Republicans have rightly criticized the administration’s extensive failings in implementing it. However, the GOP has yet to offer a credible alternative health-care plan. The party’s playbook for winning the PR battle over the law, outlined Thursday by the New York Times, is heavy on strategy but light on substance.
“Rather than get out of Obama’s path of self-destruction and focus energy on creating and promoting a positive, forward-looking health-care agenda” wrote National Journal’s Ron Fournier, “the GOP has chosen to cement its reputation as the obstructionist party.”
Republicans will keep stepping on rakes if they opt merely for “no” instead of “no, but instead.” And with ObamaCare possibly set to make something of a comeback in the coming weeks, the clock is ticking.
By: John Terbush, The Week, November 22, 2013
“Ignoring The Elephant In The Room”: No, President Obama’s Policies Are Not Holding Back The Economy
Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger had fun this week arguing that President Obama’s problems implementing health reform pale next to his problems getting the economy back to health. The attack on Obama’s economic stewardship, however, looks just like the standard conservative attack on health reform: it’s light on sound arguments and ignores the elephant in the room — Republican obstructionism.
First, health care. As the president says, it’s on him that the rollout of HealthCare.gov and the health insurance marketplaces — where individuals can purchase health insurance to avoid the fine for not having it — has been, to put it kindly, rocky. But Republicans have provided no clear alternative to expand access to good quality, affordable health care, and they have made the rollout more difficult.
Many Republican governors and state legislatures have left implementation of their health insurance marketplaces (also known as exchanges) to the federal government rather than do it themselves — hardly the usual position of a party that believes in devolving as much power as possible to the states. And, at the moment, 25 states are not moving forward to implement the Medicaid expansions — which are a very good deal for them — leaving a significant coverage gap among low-income adults and complicating the determination of eligibility for coverage on the exchanges.
Finally, Republican proposals to “fix” the problem would undermine, not improve, health reform. The president’s proposal, while not perfect, is the best on the table.
Like problems with the health care rollout, the problems in the economy are plain to see. Henninger plays fair when he notes that the president did not cause the Great Recession, which is the source of the problems with which we’re still grappling. But, he’s wrong to say it’s the president who “has the economy on lockdown.”
First, he ignores what many economists and policymakers see as the main problem we still face – inadequate demand for goods and services. Second, he cavalierly dismisses the benefits of economic stimulus in such an economy. Third, he insists the main thing holding back the recovery is excessive business regulation. With that mindset, he naturally doesn’t acknowledge the drag on economic activity and job creation from the premature austerity that Congress has imposed on the economy since Republicans regained control of the House in the 2010 mid-term elections and the barriers that Republicans have put in the way of a budget plan that could boost the recovery in the short run while still putting deficits and debt on a sustainable longer-run trajectory.
Just a reminder to all who, like Henninger, parrot the shibboleth that stimulus did not work: the Congressional Budget Office finds that gross domestic product has been higher each year since 2009 than it would have been without the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and unemployment has been lower (see chart).
CBO includes a broad range of estimates about the recovery act’s impact to encompass the views of economists who continue to doubt the mounting evidence that stimulus is highly effective under the economic conditions prevailing in recent years. But, that evidence suggests that act’s impact is quite likely much nearer the high than the low estimate.
Here’s what the International Monetary Fund says about that research, the expansionary effects of fiscal policy (tax cuts and increases in government spending) and the “old Keynesian mulitplier” that Henninger mocks: “While debate continues, the evidence seems stronger than before the crisis that fiscal policy can, under today’s special circumstances, have powerful effects on the economy in the short run [and] that fiscal multipliers are larger.”
The powerful effects of fiscal policy in today’s special circumstances work both ways. The economic forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers estimates that the economic uncertainty and policy choices to raise taxes and cut spending that we’ve made since 2010 have cost the economy up to a percentage point per year of slower economic growth and up to 2 million jobs.
It’s Republicans whose policy preferences have pulled policy toward greater near-term fiscal austerity through spending cuts; Democratic plans look more like bipartisan proposals for less spending restraint in the short term and more deficit reduction that’s balanced between revenues and spending down the road when the economy is stronger.
It’s Republicans who have the U.S. economy on lockdown.
By: Chad Stone, Chief Economist, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, U. S. News and World Report, November 22, 2013
“The Party Of Zilch”: The GOP Is Out To Destroy The Country
Yes, the headline is rather hyperbolic. It’s as over-the-top as some of President Obama’s most unhinged critics, who believe he is running the nation without care or concern for the Constitution. But when you look at the actions of the Republican Party, particularly its members in Congress, my headline seems appropriate.
Three different pieces highlighted how the GOP is grinding just about every sector of the federal government to a halt. And it is doing it through a cynical combination of obstruction, saying no and failing to have viable alternative proposals worthy of national debate. Whatever political gains Republicans achieve in the short-term come at the long-term expense of the country. That’s simply unacceptable.
Even though the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) is much more than a Web site, the disastrous roll out of Healthcare.gov has done a number on the president’s standing with the American people. According to the latest Post-ABC News poll, Obama’s overall approval rating sits at 42 percent. His 55 percent disapproval rating is the highest of his presidency. This would be the perfect time for the opposition to step forward with those alternative proposals. But the GOP is “The Party of Zilch,” as Ron Fournier so accurately described.
Rather than be the party of solutions in a gridlocked capital, appealing to a leadership-starved public, the GOP is the party of obstruction, ensuring that its putrid approval ratings nose dive apace with Obama’s.
The country needs sensible immigration reform that brings 11 million or so undocumented residents out of the shadows. No, says the GOP
The country needs to tame a massive debt that will be 100 percent of the gross domestic product by 2038 unless Congress raises revenue and trims entitlements. No, says the GOP.
The country needs fair debate and compromise around existential issues such as climate change, income inequality, and a deteriorating 20th century infrastructure. No, says the GOP.
“Other than hard partisans on the left and right, the majority of the public—moderate, fix-it Americans who simply want a sensible government—now have nowhere to turn, because the GOP is the party of nothing,” Fournier correctly concludes.
The New York Times editorial board delivered its own party-of-zilch disquisition using opposition to the ACA as the jumping off point.
What is the Republican alternative to this government program, flawed as it is right now? There is none. Party members simply want to repeal the health law and let insurers go back to canceling policies at the first sign of a shadow on an X-ray. They have no immigration policy of their own. They have no plan that will stimulate job growth. They are in favor only of shutdowns and sequesters and repeals, giving the public no reason to believe they have a governing vision or even a legislative agenda.
That congressional Republicans have no “governing vision or even a legislative agenda” was proven in a Politico story on Sunday. The headline said it all: “House GOP 2014 agenda starts with blank slate.”
Last Thursday, a group of House Republicans filed into Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s Capitol office suite and received a blank piece of paper labeled “Agenda 2014.”
The blank slate just about sums up where Republicans find themselves after a year marked by the first government shutdown in 17 years, futile efforts to repeal Obamacare and the inability to pass spending bills at the levels set by Republican leaders.
As bad as that is, what a Republican aide said is worse. “What we have done so far this year clearly hasn’t worked,” the GOP aide involved in the planning sessions told the Politico reporters. “Cantor wants to take us in a new direction, which is good. The problem is we don’t know where we are headed, and we don’t know what we can sell to our members.” This no way to run an enterprise as large and as important as the United States.
The judicial branch is crippled as qualified nominees go unconfirmed due to “unfair hurdles in the Senate.” As a result, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the nation’s second-highest court, has three vacancies on the 11-seat court that handles cases involving federal regulations and national security. Half of the legislative branch is in thrall to a band of right-wing zealots unmoved by facts as much as they are motivated by hatred of the president. As a result, the threat of government shutdowns and default is constant. Inaction on pressing issues is now routine. And the executive branch finds its agenda held hostage by an opposition that schemed against it since before its inauguration in 2009, even though said agenda was approved by the American people — twice.
That the Obama administration has been able to get as much done as it has speaks to the president’s determination to move this nation forward. Yet it’s not enough. Ours is a government that requires two functioning parties that produce good public policy through the necessary friction of governing. Neither party is perfect nor has all the ideas or the answers. But no good comes from a party that gives up completely on governing.
At the end of its editorial, the Times noted, “Democrats may be stumbling right now, but at least they are trying.” Would that Republicans did the same. It is long past time they did.
By: Jonathan Caphart, The Washington Post, November 20, 2013
“They Had A Choice”: Did Frustrated Mainstream Republicans Help Pull The Nuclear Trigger?
The big mystery of today’s majority-imposed rules change in the Senate is: What happened to the deal-making Republicans?
There’s nothing much to figure out on the Democratic side. It was clear to most observers that the three-seat blockade of the D.C. Circuit Court was solidly over the line separating Democratic senators’ individual preference for maintaining the filibuster and their party interest in seating a Democratic president’s choices for the federal bench. Democrats believed that they had no choice but to proceed.
Republicans, however, certainly did have a choice. After all, in the short run, they’re clearly worse off by this change than they would be had they used the filibuster far more selectively. That was enough to get them to compromise the last time this happened. So why didn’t they hold back again?
One possibility is that they simply miscalculated, believing that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was bluffing. If that was the case, however, they could have backed off at the last second.
A second possibility is that they really wanted to eliminate the filibuster, and that they believed that the cost to the Democrats for pulling the trigger was great enough that it was worth the potential three years of majority-confirmed President Obama nominees. That’s possible, although it’s very hard to believe that voters will care at all, and Republican arguments (court-packing!) did not appear designed to appeal to those who might have been willing to condemn Democrats for a “power-grab.”
So here’s a third possibility. The problem with the summer compromise is that it was horrible for deal-making Republicans. The deal essentially said: Republicans will continue to filibuster nominations, but will supply enough votes for almost all of them so that the filibusters will be defeated. But that meant that in practice a handful of Republicans were forced to tag-team their votes, making sure that Democrats always had 60. What’s more, the shutdown fight — which began right after the Senate deal was struck — revealed that radical Republicans led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) were eager to scapegoat those same deal-making Republicans. That raised the cost of the executive branch nominations agreement for tag-teamers such as Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.). In other words, the summer deal might or might not have been stable, but it certainly couldn’t hold in a world in which the majority of Republican senators are looking for ways to separate themselves from mainstream conservatives, and then using that separation to attack them.
Those deal-making Republicans did have another option; They could have just abandoned the radicals. But over what principle? After all, the situation here is that it’s the radicals, not the mainstream conservatives, who want to hold up all these nominations. One way to look at what happened today is that the deal-makers were getting out of the way and allowing the radicals to lose. If the outcome is the same — Obama’s judicial picks get confirmed — then why should the deal-makers ask for the blame for it?
We don’t know yet, and perhaps we won’t, but my guess is that the way Cruz and other Republican radicals acted during the shutdown is what explains the difference between a successful deal in the summer and today’s nuclear action.
By: Jonathan Bernstein, The Washington Post, November 21, 2013
“Republican America”: Voter Suppression Is The New GOP Strategy
Better bring some identification — and not just any identification, official though it may be — if you plan to vote in Republican-controlled states. However, if you contribute tens of millions of dollars to sway an election on Republicans’ behalf, the party will fight to keep your identity a secret.
Consider, for instance, what happened to some attempting to participate in this month’s elections in Texas. The New York Times reported that “Judge Sandra Watts was stopped while trying to vote because the name on her photo ID, the same one she had used for voter registration and identification of 52 years, did not exactly match her name in the official voter rolls.” Both Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis and Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott — the front-runners in next year’s gubernatorial contest — encountered the same obstacle. As did Jim Wright, the 90-year-old former speaker of the U.S. House. Wright, who represented his Fort Worth district in Congress for 34 years, told the local paper that he had voted in every election since 1944 and that he had realized shortly before Election Day that his identification — a driver’s license that expired in 2010 and a university faculty ID — would not suffice under the state’s 2011 voter ID law. Indeed, officials required Wright to produce a certified copy of his birth certificate to procure a personal identification card that would allow him to vote.
Fortunately, no issues of cosmic importance appeared on this year’s Texas ballots. Next year, however, congressional seats and control of the statehouse will be up for grabs, and voter turnout probably will be much higher. The purpose of these and other vote-deterring measures, adopted in Texas and a slew of other GOP-controlled states, is to make sure turnout is not too much higher by reducing voter participation, particularly among the young (student IDs often don’t suffice), the poor (no driver’s license? Sorry.) and racial minorities. That is, groups that tend to vote Democratic.
Voter suppression has become the linchpin of Republican strategy. After Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012, the GOP was briefly abuzz with talk of expanding the party’s appeal to young and Latino voters. Instead, the party doubled down on its opposition to immigration reform and its support for cultural conservatism — positions tantamount to electoral suicide unless the youth and minority vote can be suppressed.
Republicans have justified this crackdown as a way to keep non- citizens from infiltrating the electorate, not that there’s evidence such a thing is happening. But if a non-citizen wants to contribute millions of dollars to one of those “social welfare organizations” that spends gobs of money on an election campaign, Republicans fight to shield his or her identity. Recently released tax documents showed that one such organization — Crossroads GPS, the group headed by Karl Rove that spent $189 million in last year’s elections opposing President Obama and Senate Democrats — received 53 contributions of $1 million or more. The three largest were for $22.5 million, $18 million and $10 million.
Who did they come from? Because Crossroads GPS is classified as a 501(c)4 “social welfare” group, which is not legally required to list its donors, we’ll never know. Could such contributions come from a non-citizen? With donors’ identities shielded by law, there is no way of knowing.
Some states require donors to such campaign groups in state and local elections to be identified. But other states don’t, which allows for the kind of interstate shell games that wealthy right-wing donors played during the 2012 election. In one instance, an anonymous $11 million contribution to a California campaign opposing a ballot measure that raised taxes on the rich and supporting a measure to curtail unions’ political activities was tracked by state election officials to a 501(c)4 organization in Arizona that had gotten its funding from another such group in Virginia. The investigation revealed that a California GOP consultant had raised money for the ballot measure campaigns by promising his donors the anonymity that this shell game provided.
A pre-election tally by the Sunlight Foundation of “dark money” contributions to federal races as of Nov. 1, 2012, showed nearly $175 million going to GOP candidates and roughly $35 million to Democrats. A bill backed by Senate Democrats that would have required such groups to report the identity of donors who give more than $10,000 for electoral campaigns was killed last year by GOP opposition to a cloture motion, even though it was backed by a majority of senators.
So: If you want to vote in the Republicans’ America, remember to bring your birth certificate. But if you want to buy an election and stay under wraps, your secret is safe with them.
By: Harold Meyerson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 21, 2013
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